11/19/25: Major Recession Indicator, Sheinbaum Hits Back At Trump, AOC-Zohran Bend Knee To Jeffries, Young Men Crisis

Ryan and Emily discuss major recession indicator, Sheinbaum hits back at Trump, AOC-Zohran bend knee to Jeffries, young men in misery. 

Van Lathan: https://x.com/VanLathan?s=20 

America's Human Arithmetic: https://www.aei.org/research-products/book/americas-human-arithmetic/#:~:text=In%20America's%20Human%20Arithmetic%2C%20Eberstadt,their%20human%20arithmetic%20lays%20bare. 

 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 3 (00:33):
Let's move on to this new report about housing. This
headline here, more than half of US homes lost value
in the past year. More than half of US homes
lost value in the past year. Just to reiterate that,
the story says home values are falling for more than
half of the nation, the biggest share in more than

(00:54):
a decade when the US was still struggling to claw
out of the Great Recession. As of October, fifty three
percent of homes in the country had lost value in
the past year, according to Zillo Data. Nationally home price
appreciation has been roughly flat. With that figure masks large
regional disparities. Home prices are falling in much of the
southeast and parts of the West, while they're rising in

(01:14):
many cities in the Midwest and northeast. Ryan right off
the bat here, what do you make of the geographic disparity.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
Yes, so you've got the southeast and the West, and
also Texas and the Southwest like Phoenix, Las Vegas. So
you know, a couple of things going on. You know,
Florida has its own, I think somewhat unique situation where
it's basically anybody who's watching this from Florida can can

(01:44):
testify to this in the comments. It's getting extremely difficult
to get insurance and they're probably going to need some
like sort of government bailout in the future to just
make to make mortgages possible, because to get a mortgage
you need insurance, and to getting insurance in Florida now

(02:05):
they're like, wait a minute, you want you want us
to ensure this house it's flooded four times in the
last four years and was knocked over by a hurricane.

Speaker 5 (02:13):
How about we.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
Don't ensure that. That's not a good business model.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
You should take that up with the National Flood Insurance Program,
which subsidizes the rebuilding of homes.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
Right, So they're not just going to subsidize, they're going
to I think they're just going to completely cover it,
that's my guess, rather than trying to deal with the problem.
And tho'se be some mediation as well. But yeah, so
in West Coast, different situation.

Speaker 5 (02:40):
That's more.

Speaker 4 (02:43):
Uh, you know, it's getting unaffordable for people right like
and also the and as this reporting alludes to, the
interest rates are so stubbornly high that the gap between
what the person selling has on their.

Speaker 5 (03:02):
Mortgage interest rate between what you'd be getting.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
Makes it so that it's an unmatched market because the
amount you have to spend a month to get a
certain amount of home is completely different.

Speaker 5 (03:14):
You know, three percent vers six, six or seven percent.

Speaker 4 (03:17):
You could develop and I was talking to somebody who
does housing finance policy recently, you could develop a portable
mortgage so that you could take you could basically sell your.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Mortgage, which the Trump administration is thinking about, and they should.

Speaker 4 (03:31):
Do it like it's it's it would require you because
the problem is, right now, we bundle all our mortgages
into these securities, recreate these mortgage backed securities. So the
bank that makes the loan sells the loan immediately and
they slice it up and send it out and securitize it.
So the people who hold those securities don't want you

(03:53):
to be able to have a portable mortgage. So you'd
have to basically unroll those securities by making those those
investors whole somehow or just seizing them.

Speaker 5 (04:03):
So you know something, you have to do something.

Speaker 4 (04:06):
So that the bank can kind of retake control of it,
and then you can move it.

Speaker 5 (04:11):
Then then it's totally fine.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
You have a three percent mortgage, you want to keep it,
you can keep it, you have to move, you can,
you can sell.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
If you like your mortgage, you can.

Speaker 5 (04:18):
You like your mortgage, you can keep it.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
Yeah, if you ran on that right now, you'd have
tens of millions of homeowners like, yeah, I do like
my mortgage, I would.

Speaker 5 (04:26):
Like to keep it.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
That would go well, yes, yeah, and.

Speaker 4 (04:28):
I just want a different house, right and somebody else
can live in this house. How about that called a
market buy and sell things. Instead we've just completely frozen
the market.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Well, it would definitely help with the phenomenon of boomers
who are in houses that they want to downsize from,
but right now, it makes no sense for them to sell.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
And they have to pay just as much for the
smaller house right with a seven percent mortgage, exactly as
they're paying on their three percent mortgage on their bigger house.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
Right And they're the houses which would be great for
Gen Z and millennials like younger families, and they know
that would be great for younger families. They wish a
young family could move into them, but it doesn't make
any sense for them to sell, even though they want
to downsize and other people want to upsize. So it's
that actually would help with this disastrous generational mismatch right now.

Speaker 4 (05:16):
Mm hmm, right, so, but it's like, but the question
then becomes is the United States capable of actually governing?

Speaker 5 (05:26):
Like can the United States do policy?

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Spoiler alert, I.

Speaker 5 (05:30):
Don't think so.

Speaker 4 (05:31):
Yeah, it's wild, like we're we're just basically on like
some type of cruise control.

Speaker 5 (05:38):
We're just just rolling.

Speaker 4 (05:40):
Like people can have ideas, the public can have a
will and demands, but the government just doesn't do anything.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Aaron Wren, who's a really interesting substacker. He just yesterday
sent out a very interesting piece on two dueling pieces
in the Wall Street Journal actually, where one is about
the luxury economy doing just incredibly well, which is fascinating.
I mean, markets are up and the luxury economy is
doing well, so like luxury hotels charging more money, doing

(06:11):
really well. But there's also a piece in the journal
about how people are now diluting their clorox and their
windex to pinch pennies, essentially because it's getting too damn
expensive to continue buying more and more swiffer pads or toothpaste.
This is where one woman in the story draws the
line at diluting her toothpaste. But these are two stories

(06:35):
in the Wall Street Journal essentially at the same time.
And it gets to as he goes and quotes this
Financial Time story that was very buzzy when it came out.
The top ten percent of earners now account for almost
half of all spending, up from about a third in
the nineteen nineties. The quote laoffs are surgeon. Consumer sentiment
has fallen by thirty percent year to year to near

(06:56):
record lows, and three out of four Americans tell polsters
that the economy is in fair or poor shape, and
they say the share of Americans who described themselves as
middle class has dropped from eighty five percent a decade
ago to fifty four percent. Over forty percent of Americans
considered themselves lower a working class, and so that's you know,
there's a lot that you could read into how we

(07:17):
describe ourselves. It was true for years that most Americans,
whether they were middle class or not, would describe themselves
as middle class. That an eighty five percent number was
kind of a constant, And it was a cool thing
actually about the US that even people who weren't middle
class were kind of aspirationially middle class, but they felt
like the word middle class described them because they felt
like they were relatively comfortable. So the drop in people

(07:40):
who considered themselves middle classes, I think actually very very
interesting and instructive phenomenon and a sad phenomenon. But also
just to see the luxury economy taking off while people
are literally being squeezed so much that they are diluting
windecks to get more out of it. Now, some of
your penny pintures have always do, and that's entirely fair, but.

Speaker 5 (08:03):
More and more people, more people doing it.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, yeah, because the cost of living is just outrageous,
and now you have half of home prices around the
country falling.

Speaker 4 (08:12):
And what's so scary about the stat that you're talking
about there ten percent, the top ten percent, accounting for
fifty percent of the consumption, is that there's always been
this hope among people that, Okay, our our our elites,
our betters, do not care about us, but they need

(08:34):
us because we're a consumer economy. And so they will
take some baseline minimum level of care of the people,
whether it's ubi or some other figured out how they're
going to actually do this, but there's some level of
comfort that they're gonna they're gonna take care of people
just because they need the people to take care of

(08:54):
them by fueling the consumer economy.

Speaker 5 (08:57):
Right, But if you can fuel.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
The consumer economy just with luxury goods, then all of
a sudden you're like, well, wait a minute.

Speaker 5 (09:05):
What if they don't need us.

Speaker 4 (09:07):
So if ten percent can account for fifty percent of
the purchasing, what if they that ten percent is ten
percent can't buy everything, But they could push that up
to maybe seventy seventy five percent, and then the ten
percent underneath them could account for another ten to fifteen

(09:28):
percent of the purchasing, so you wind up with like
the top twenty percent consuming most of the economy. And
so then if you're a consumer economy, you're like, oh, well,
these one in five people are actually still buying stuff.
So maybe we don't actually have to do a UBI
or actually take care of the bottom eighty percent other

(09:50):
than through surveillance and repression and distraction and authoritarianism and dystopia.
Maybe let's just deliver them that and see if that's enough.
And if you need to, like you know, just keep
them alive. You can give them now, you can expand
snap benefits.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
And so Neil Ferguson had a piece actually in the
Free Press recently where he points out, this is where
it gets really scary. Financial Times columnists or here Sharma
estimates that AI companies account for eighty percent of the
gains in US stocks this year. Not a surprising number
if you've been following this, but a stunning number. Nonetheless.
Ferguson goes on to say blogger economist Noah Smith knows

(10:32):
that quote more than a fifth of the entire S
and P five hundred market cap is now just three
country companies. Nvidia Microsoft and Apple, two of which are
basically big bets on AI. Ferguson points out the mag
seven account for more than a third of the S
and P five hundred's market cap. Quarterly capital expenditures by
these companies now exceed one hundred and ten billion, which

(10:53):
is roughly three times what it was two years ago.
Nearly two fifths of that total consists of purchases by
everyone else of Nvidia's graphics processing units. Ferguson goes out
to point out goes on to point out how circular.
It's basically illustrating what's pretty obviously a bubble because of
how circular the spending on AI often is in the

(11:14):
Invidia's circular investment scheme, which we are going to look
back on after this bubble likely bursts as being an
insane way obvious you're going to look at it like subprime,
like an insane way to organize an economy. But when
you see run.

Speaker 5 (11:28):
Away documentary about it in three years and like, wow,
that was crazy.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
We absolutely will and we're like the insane way that
you have runaway luxury spending right now, So much of
it is predicated on these tech stocks that are wildly
inflated because again there's this like circular financing scheme happening,
and meanwhile other people are let's put this on the screen.

(11:52):
This is C two. Home Depot is predicting a recession
based on Ryan. You found this story some indicator as
Home Depot can be a bell weather, they said. The
home improvement chain said it it served fewer customers in
the past three months than expected. This was on an
earnings report latest quarter earnings report from Home Depot, and

(12:16):
Home Depot said it was quote hurt by fewer violent
storms reaching American shores. Well weird way to say you're hurt,
more anxiety among US consumers, and a housing market in
a deep funk. And so when you see Ryan, the
juxtaposition of runaway luxury spending, a stock market that just
keeps going higher and higher and higher, and on the

(12:36):
flip side, people struggling on absolute basic spending, things look
really scary.

Speaker 4 (12:44):
I like that side note too, is it tells you
how damaging some of these storms are.

Speaker 5 (12:49):
That just by the fact that.

Speaker 4 (12:52):
We haven't had as many recently means that fewer people
have to replace all the stuff that gets destroyed by
these storms. Yeah, the housing market too, like when people
aren't selling their home and moving, they're going to go
to the home depot much less.

Speaker 5 (13:06):
I mean, also the and the anxiety.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
That they put off refurbishing.

Speaker 4 (13:10):
Right then and then consumers just feeling nervous about it.
There's also the kind of fast casual collapse that is underway.
You put up C three, Chipotle, Kava, Sweet Green, they
have they have all recently said that they're way way down, Like,

(13:31):
by no, it's high, high, double digits ten.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
So why are we calling these slop bull chains that's
in the business. Stop it.

Speaker 5 (13:42):
It's so good, all delicious.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
All the Chipotle's problem is they got rid of the
honey chicken. But in all seriousness, actually right, you have
a theory on this being a zembically, I.

Speaker 4 (13:50):
Feel like it's got there's some GLP one going on
here too. So they're saying and you know, they know
what they're talking about, because this is their business. You know,
they're you know, they think it's partly and I think
absolutely they're right that people are hurting and don't have
the same amount of money. The number of people on

(14:11):
some form of ozampak or GLP one, though, is astronomical
in this country.

Speaker 5 (14:17):
At this point, and the kinds.

Speaker 4 (14:18):
Of people that would care enough about their kind of
health to try to shed some weight. I would assume
there's a significant overlap with the kinds of people that
would eat it, like Chipotle, Kava Sweet Green, And when

(14:38):
you're on these GLP ones or whatever they are, you
just don't want a twenty dollars salad because like you're
going to eat like a quarter of it at most.
You can't like a giant burrito. You're like, it's like
a week's worth of food.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Right there, exactly.

Speaker 5 (14:57):
And that's adding up.

Speaker 4 (14:58):
Like when ozamba first came in, the brands like Oreos
and others were like, yeah, this is hitting us.

Speaker 5 (15:05):
Yeah, people are not.

Speaker 4 (15:07):
Yeah, But I think as it's gone from it first
was being prescribed to people like morbidly obese. Now it's
spreading the people who you know, just trying to lose
a little bit of weight.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
And I think in the economy it's probably a combination
because to your point, they're way way down, so it's
a perfect storm for Chipotle or wherever else. But it's
also people are really pinching pennies because things are starting
to feel very precarious, and if you're, you know, super
overpriced salad company, no offense. I love all those chains,

(15:41):
but people realize they can, you know, do that a
little differently.

Speaker 4 (15:45):
I love how people are trying to take the model
to everything. Have you seen the Indian one down the
street from here.

Speaker 3 (15:50):
You told me about this, you said it was good.

Speaker 5 (15:52):
It's very good.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
It's like it's basically Indian food, but done Chipotle style.
You can get bulls or burritos, I mean Tandory chicken burrito.

Speaker 5 (15:59):
It's genius the.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
People that do that with sushi.

Speaker 5 (16:02):
Yes, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
I don't feel right about it. And speaking of the
tech stocks, we can put C four up on the screen,
big anti trust win for Meta Yesterday. I'll read a
bit from the CNBC story Metal one, it's high profile
anti trust case against the FTC, which it accused the
company of holding a monopoly and social networking. What a
shocking accusation. In a memo opinion released Tuesday, Judge James

(16:27):
Bosburg familiar name, of course Boseburg, he of the Mini
Trump contentious radical f Judge Bosburg uh said the FDC
failed to prove its argument. The case, initially filed by
the FTC five years ago centered on Meta's acquisitions of
Instagram and WhatsApp. And here's a quote from Boseburg in
this memo opinion whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power

(16:50):
in the past, though the agency FTC must show that
it continues to hold such power now. The court's verdict
today determines that the that the FTC has not done so.
A judgment so stating shall issue this day. Ryan. These were,
interestingly enough Obama Air mergers and some of the big
Obama Air mergers that people just were blazed right through. Yep,

(17:16):
snatch them up, It's all fine. And immediately you started
to recognize the consolidation when Meta snapped up those companies.
But it was at the time the Obama administration was
barely giving its second thought.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
Right, Yes, that was one of the huge turning points
in our economy that the Obama administration was so corporate
controlled when it came to its competition an anti trade
policy that they allowed this stuff to go through. I mean, effectively,
what the judge is saying here is that, well, maybe
they were a monopoly then, but they suck so much
now that people have moved into TikTok and TikTok is

(17:53):
such a significant competitor, and you got Twitter, and was
it about to say you've got threads that's another meta
at a one, you.

Speaker 5 (18:02):
Got blue Sky.

Speaker 4 (18:04):
That there are some other options, so you're not the
only social network, so therefore it's fine.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, yeah, Facebook doesn't have a monopoly because of course
YouTube exists. Amazing argumentation. Yeah yeah, but Trump's FTC is
mourning this. So Joe Simonson says, what, we are deeply
disppointed in this decision. That dec was always stacked, to
guess with Judge Bosberg, who is currently facing articles of impeachment.
We are reviewing all our options. But that's an interesting

(18:35):
little part of the FTC suit in this case is
that there really was in around twenty twenty in particular,
you remember this, there's so much populist left right anger
at consolidation, which there should be, because this entire segment
has been about consolidation basically driving up stock prices to

(18:57):
unsustainable bubble levels. And here you see why, exactly why
that's happening.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
Yeah, and we'll see if the government has better luck
on appeal or if they appeal.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
Yeah, yes, we will keep an eye on that for sure.
Let's turn to Mexico City. Run.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:18):
So last week or the week before, I forget when
time blends together.

Speaker 5 (19:23):
Soger and I reported that.

Speaker 4 (19:26):
Donald Trump, when he was persuaded to take on Venezuela,
was told that the reason that they were going to
do this is because Venezuela was a major source of
drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl.

Speaker 5 (19:40):
So he asked his intelligence community to come back to
him with targets.

Speaker 4 (19:48):
So, okay, you're telling me that there's enormous amount of
drugs coming out of Venezuela. Where where are they coming from,
where they're going? How can we kinetically militarily intervene here?
What can I bomb to change this? The problem was
that this was mostly a lie. Venezuela is not involved
in the fentanyl trade and barely involved in even the
cocaine trade. There's a couple there's a little bit of

(20:10):
coca area along the Venezuela Colombia border, but it's kind
of like a stateless area. It's barely accurate to say
it's even Venezuela. And so the intelligence community came back,
and this is the danger of these types of fishing expeditions.
They came back with a list of targets in Colombia
and Mexico because those are actually.

Speaker 5 (20:31):
The places where there's.

Speaker 4 (20:33):
Drug draf geting going on, which reminded me a lot
of Right after nine to eleven, in a meeting, Rumsfeld
famously said that they shouldn't go after Afghanistan, but instead.

Speaker 5 (20:47):
They should go after Iraq because Iraq is.

Speaker 4 (20:49):
A target rich environment and there's not enough targets in Afghanistan.

Speaker 5 (20:54):
Yeah, I mean, like, hold.

Speaker 4 (20:55):
On a second, they didn't have any they didn't have
anything to do with nine to eleven. Why are we
You can't just bomb them because they have targets.

Speaker 5 (21:02):
That's not how it works, right, And rum I was.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
Like, no, no, no, actually, trust me, I know how
it works.

Speaker 5 (21:07):
That's precisely what we're going to do.

Speaker 4 (21:09):
So then that creeps you into a place where now
all of a sudden, you're discussing war.

Speaker 5 (21:15):
With Colombia and Mexico.

Speaker 4 (21:17):
So saga I reported that a couple weeks ago, the
strong confirmation of that emerged from Donald Trump talking about
wanting to bomb Mexico because you know the things that
he gets briefed on, you know, they don't stay secret forever.
They vomit out of his mouth when he is surrounded
by reporters.

Speaker 5 (21:37):
So let's roll D one. There's Trump.

Speaker 6 (21:40):
Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stub drugs? It's
okay with me. Whatever we have to do to stop
drugs Mexico is Look. I looked at Mexico City over
the weekend. There's some big problems over there. If we
had to do what we do there, what we've done
to the waterways. You know, there's almost no drugs coming

(22:00):
into our water is anymore. Colombia has cocaine factories where
they make cocaine. Would I knock out those factories?

Speaker 7 (22:09):
I would be proud to do it.

Speaker 6 (22:10):
Personally, I didn't say I'm doing it, but I would
be proud to do it because we're going to save
millions of lives by doing it.

Speaker 4 (22:19):
So these Colombian cocaine factories, So that to me reads
like a very clear reference to the target list that
he was given.

Speaker 5 (22:27):
You can read our story to get more details about that.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
About that list, he also and this is where the
creep gets dangerous too, mentioned Mexico City.

Speaker 5 (22:35):
He said, I saw what happened in Mexico City this weekend.

Speaker 4 (22:38):
So he goes from drugs Venezuela drugs to Mexican drugs,
to I saw what happened in Mexico City over the weekend,
then would I bomb Columbia?

Speaker 5 (22:47):
Sure, I'd be happy to.

Speaker 4 (22:49):
So let's reverse the record to go back to Okay,
what happened in Mexico City.

Speaker 5 (22:52):
Yeah, we can.

Speaker 4 (22:54):
And that's when there was this significant opposition party protest
where they tried to like ransack their way in the
presidential palace.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
A little bit of opposition from left and the right
actually together.

Speaker 4 (23:08):
And but with the go on, people are skeptical that
there was any non trivial left involvement here.

Speaker 5 (23:17):
But we can.

Speaker 4 (23:18):
We can talk about that in a second, Cloudy Shinbaum,
the President's still like a seventy plus approval rating. Yeah,
so she responded to Trump's threat to bomb Mexico.

Speaker 5 (23:29):
Here's Shinebaum. You want to read.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
As I said, the last time the US intervened in Mexico,
they took half our territory.

Speaker 7 (23:38):
True.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
I've said it many times in my phone conversations with
President Trump. He has repeatedly suggested or offered a US
military intervention in Mexico. Like how she said't went from
suggested to offer or whatever. We need to combat criminal groups.
But I've told him every time that we can collaborate,
that they can help us with any information they have,

(23:58):
so that's intelligent sharing, but that we operate within our
own territory. We will not accept intervention, all right. So
that's a very typical line from Shinbaum and actually like
Marina that they are defending Mexican sovereignty and won't want
any military incursions apart from intelligence sharing, which she just

(24:19):
alluded to there on Mexican soil, which is you know,
getting to be I mean Trump. The best case scenario
here is that Trump is making threats that force other
people to clean up their own houses. Whether or not
he's in a position to that is a different question.
But when you have these major military build ups, that

(24:40):
arguably is the best case scenario is that it's a
kind of piece through strength formula. But right now he
seems pretty eager, Ryan, and your reporting suggests that they
are putting pieces in place that aren't mere signals of
intent but actually look like intent.

Speaker 4 (24:59):
Right And they right, they certain they certainly are putting
the pieces in place. And that's that's the trouble, that's
the that's the fear because once they get in place,
it's very hard to slow them down. And we're seeing
that now in the Caribbean. I was on Pierce Morgan,
uh did that or whatever talking about the war with Venezuela,
which is, you know, Trump just keeps or Rubio, I

(25:21):
should say, just keeps ratching up the pressure and it
you you get you you move dangerously close to a
place where you either have to then completely climb down
and capitulate and slink back to the US without getting anything,
or you then have to launch an actual war because
of your bluff has been called because they Maduro keeps

(25:44):
offering basically the entire store to Trump, and but Rubio's
Rubio's refusing to take it, and Trump is not intervened
yet to say just just take it like he's he's
offering you everything, just just take it. In So in
Mexico City, to talk about what's going on there, and
to back up to the point about pressuring them to

(26:06):
clean up the previous Mexican government, under pressure both domestically
and also from the United States.

Speaker 5 (26:15):
Launched in full on, all out war on the cartels.

Speaker 4 (26:20):
And it was a complete and total catastrophe, and it
did nothing to reduce drug trafficking, and it only ended
up strengthening the cartels in the end. And so when
Lopez overdoor came in, you know, he was saying, we're
going to try to take a different policy. We're going
to try to reduce drug trafficking. We're also going to

(26:42):
reduce violence. We're going to make Mexico livable again, like
entire places were just absolute Afghanistan.

Speaker 5 (26:51):
Level war zones.

Speaker 7 (26:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (26:52):
Absolutely, And if you look at the data around violence
in Mexico, it's way way down.

Speaker 8 (27:00):
Now.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
The idea that you're going to eliminate drug trafficking when
you have a wealthy, drug hungry country right next door
is a fantasy.

Speaker 5 (27:10):
Well in parts of somebody's going to feed our noses.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
Well, part of the Mexican economy is built up around trafficking. Yeah,
I mean it's just.

Speaker 4 (27:17):
In the American economy built up but around consuming the.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
Drugs, definitely. But there's obviously also that's baked into Mexico
as well. Now there's cartels for years have been built
up on this infrastructure related to trafficking. And I remember
I asked O and Grillo early in the Trump administration.
He's a great journalist, done in Mexico City and was
doing some excellent coverage and getting tear gas done into

(27:43):
Sokolow over the weekend. But he pointed out if the
Trump administration shuts down the mass human trafficking that was
going with migrants throughout Mexico up through Central America, but
in Mexican cartel Sinaloa, they were all heavily involved in that.
Where else do they find profit? He's like, what are

(28:03):
you talking like. They'll go back to heroin. They'll go
back to that, they will find they will make up
that lost revenue with drugs. They've always done it, They're
used to doing it.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
And so the right wing in Mexico, the kind of
upper class in Mexico has always hated Lopez Oberdoor.

Speaker 5 (28:21):
They do not like Shinebaum.

Speaker 4 (28:23):
They had been agitating against her over the last you know,
several weeks and months, and then in early November, Carlos
Manzil Rodriguez, which is the mayor of European in the
Michael Khan state, which is a cartel heavy state, was
assassinated November first at the Stay of the Dead event.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
And he had been militant, he had been.

Speaker 5 (28:44):
He was trying to old.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
He was trying the old style that he's going to
bring the hammer down, he's going to go to war
against the cartoon.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
He's trying to push shinebaumb in that direction.

Speaker 4 (28:53):
Yeah and so, and he was assassinated, probably by the
cartels yea.

Speaker 5 (28:58):
Yeah, and so.

Speaker 4 (29:01):
That generated understandable outrage that that look like you're headed
back into this area. Now, the idea that that justifies
that you should go back to a military war against
the cartels is I don't think the country agrees with.
But so the protests then started adopting some of the
cartel We need to crack down the cartel rhetoric too,

(29:21):
because these are op opportunistic protests.

Speaker 5 (29:24):
They're trying to create.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
They're trying to create scenes in the street that that
suggests that Mexico is a repressive place and like Shine
bombs at Tyrant and that the US should then intervene
and get rid of her and replace, you know, put
the upper classes candidate back in.

Speaker 5 (29:44):
They this was sold as like a gen Z protest.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
You can look at the crowd itself, like very few
young people in the crowd.

Speaker 5 (29:53):
This is as they're trying to take enter the palate.

Speaker 4 (29:56):
And if you look, you can see this guy who's
kind of like bossing around these other goons. I interviewed
a Mexican reporter yesterday at drop site who said that
it's it's well known that there are these elements of
organized crime in the city that are for sale for protests.
It's like, if you need to, if you need a
goon squad to call to cause trouble at a protest, we

(30:19):
will bring them. And he said he could just tell
by the way that and that's one of the videos
he took, by the way that they were operating, that
they were one of these organized goon squads. Like he
is somebody who's on the left. He knows the black block,
he knows the anarchists. It's like they were not there.
It's like you can tell the anarchists from from the
organized crime goons, right, and the anarchists were not.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
There or there. But I mean what I saw from
a couple of journalists were there, they were in small numbers.
It wasn't right, like a huge comparison. It wasn't a
huge It wasn't equatable.

Speaker 4 (30:52):
Right, You're always gonna have a couple for sure, like
you know somebody, but like the that violence that you
saw was organized crime figures, ironically saying that we need
to crack down on organized crime we can put up.
The final element to this was one of the funniest
photos that was circulating.

Speaker 7 (31:16):
It.

Speaker 4 (31:18):
So Griffin was down at the Mexican protest and his
one piece T shirt. People thought that this was Vicente Fox.
He's claiming it's not.

Speaker 5 (31:28):
It does look like him, Whether it is or not, it's.

Speaker 4 (31:31):
Just comical because like the like late middle aged dude
with the hat and the glasses stash and a one
piece T shirt is giving the most hello fellow kids
energy that you could ever possibly. Yes, like the only
thing he's missing is the skateboard. So yes, the gen

(31:52):
Z were out in force.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
And the demanding regime change.

Speaker 4 (31:58):
The reporter we had this on our drop side stream yesterday.
The Mexican reporter interviewed a whole bunch of these old
people at the rally and they're just they're just.

Speaker 5 (32:05):
Right wing, rich white people.

Speaker 4 (32:08):
Who are old, and which is fine, Like those people
are entitled to not like Claudia Shinbaum and be able
to protest her, but you can't also call yourself gen z.
Come on Z words A meaning you're not young.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Sorry, I mean on a serious note, of course, and
one de Vidro hast pointed this out in his great
piece of Compact. There have been you know, if violence
is going down overall in Mexico, great, there have been
a lot of killings of mayors and journalists. The violence
in Mexico is still absolutely horrific. So when you see
the the killing at a Day of the Dead, it

(32:47):
was like a candle lighting ceremony just in front of
other people of a local mayor. Horrific, but also part
of an ongoing pattern, a really really serious situation for
the people of Mexico, of course. But Shinebaum's approval rating
is hovering around like seventy percent.

Speaker 4 (33:08):
It's very, very high, and nobody you can't even imagine
that in the United States.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
Even on the question of violence, she has a pretty
high of cracking down on cartel violence, she has a
pretty high well, one points out her approval on handling
of public security has more than doubled to over fifty
percent since she assumed office. So the question whether this
was some type of referendum on shinebamb herself obviously wasn't.

(33:34):
So that's important, important, Yeah, for sure. All right, Ryan,
let's get to talking about the Democrats.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
Democratic Minority leader Hakim Jefferies is getting a challenge from
she Osa, who was a city councilor in New York
City who represents bed Sty and parts of Crown Heights.
He's also a Democratic Socialist, but he is not getting
the support of the most prominent Democratic Socialists in the cities.
Are on Mom Donnie or Alexandria Okazio Cortes to talk

(34:03):
about what this means for the Democratic Party. We were
joined by Van Lathan, friend of the show and a
host of higher learning and as people know, Man about town. Van,
delightful to have you on the program. Finally we've been
talking about doing this. Glad to get you on here
and hope you hope to have you back again soon.

Speaker 5 (34:20):
But welcome to Breaking Points.

Speaker 9 (34:22):
Oh man, you guys have no idea what it means
to be here. After having watched you guys for so long,
watching Matt wallsh squirm over Haiti, There's so many things
I could bring up. Let's get into the issues of
the day.

Speaker 5 (34:34):
All right, Let's do it. Excellent, all right.

Speaker 4 (34:36):
So, oh Say apparently had a bit of a falling
out with the Mom Donnie campaign. It was reported that
he was not at the election night party. As a
result of this, I did not see him there, can't
confirm if he wasn't sneaking around somewhere else. And so
right out of the gate, after mom Donnie's win there
starts there's starting to be rumors that he's going to
challenge Hkeem Jeffries the for the congressional seat in that

(35:01):
in that area. You then get reports that Mom Donnie
doesn't want him to do it. And now you have
and we can put up e one here. So AOC
was asked about this and she said she told Axios
in a brief interview at the Capitol quote not aware
there's challenging, which is kind of crazy because it's.

Speaker 5 (35:17):
Been quite public.

Speaker 4 (35:19):
But she added, I certainly don't think a primary challenge
to the leader is a good idea right now. Enormous
amount to unpack here. What what what was your reaction to,
like AOC uh and Mom Donnie telling uh this, uh
telling this challenger Osay that now is not the time.

Speaker 9 (35:39):
A couple of things. One, before I even get into it,
I want to shout out she Osay's dad who's passed away,
Reggie os Combat, Jack pioneering pioneering black hip hop podcast,
or maybe the first black hip hop podcast. I remember
going on uh Cheese Wikipedia and seeing that combat Jack

(36:00):
was his dad and going, oh my god, man, I
knew your father. What are the son of a legend?
So you know, the apple doesn't fall too far from
the free the tree as far as making an impact,
this is what I'd say. I sometimes feel for the
average progressive constituent, particularly the young ones, because they have

(36:26):
to wake up one day to the sober and reality
that all of these people become politicians. They are political
operatives and they make deals.

Speaker 7 (36:36):
Right.

Speaker 9 (36:38):
I need Hakeem Jeffries Gone. I need that wing of
the centrists. I need him gone, I need him Schumer gone.
I need people that are clearly anti genocide and clearly
pro healthcare. Those My bar is so low right now, guys.
I just want you to be clearly anti genocide and

(36:58):
clearly you don't have to go broke because you got cancer. Right,
that's the bar. That's it. Okay. However, in understanding how
these things work, I'm sure there's some sort of deal
that's been cut between Mom Donnie and Jeffrey's in terms
of you don't support a primary challenger to me, and

(37:21):
I help normalize you to the Democratic centrist elite base
and we try to get some things done. So everybody
out there that is still looking at AOC and Zoron
as crusaders and not politicians that make deals, I think
they're going to be continuously disappointed in sort of their
stomach for actual revolution. This is not to say that

(37:43):
these people are not useful. I'm not saying that at all.
This is not to say that they don't represent the
politics that we want to see. But they're politicians. So
they're going to do some things that are going to
disappoint you, and it's better that they do it earlier
than at a time you're really expecting them to come through.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
It's an interesting question about Jefferies, too, which is like,
is it if you topple Jeffries, who comes in Jeffries' place?
And are they better or worse than Jeffries would be?
If you're already cutting deals with Jeffries, you could have
asked the same question, and AOC had to confront this
many times, as Ryan has written about extensively with Nancy Pelosi.

(38:23):
So I guess that's a question in and of itself
is that I mean, right now is a right moment.
So it's tempting, of course to just go full fringe
revolution and knock everybody down. But then there's a question
that way. But you know, you know what I'm saying,
like it is a good moment, like this was the

(38:43):
Tea Party did to John Bayner get rid of leadership.
But then you get Paul Ryan. So that's a question.
I think that's probably worth confronting as well with Hakim Jeffries.

Speaker 9 (38:53):
Yeah, I mean I get it. And once again, this
is the difference between someone who's in the inside and
someone who's on outside. No one watches Star Wars and
then goes, I wonder who's gonna come after the emperor.
We can't do this. We like somebody worse might be
on the other side of the dark side of the forest.
They just go Emperor gone movie. We win, right, But

(39:17):
when you're inside of the thing, you have to make
those political calculations. So yeah, there's a whole bunch of
things that you have to think about. But this is
what people don't want to believe, what people don't want
to believe, and this is the what's running up or
what's sort of enmeshed in all of this. People don't
want to believe that as business as usual. The thing

(39:39):
that people are most afraid of is the business as
usual aspect of politics, which is, you know, in two
thousand and eight, everyone's unemployed, the system looks like it's crumbling,
and somebody comes along and says hope and change, and
you buy in. You go, all right, hope and change.
We are the ones that we have been wait for.

(40:00):
Still the coldest line any politician has ever up, that's
up there with fear itself. We are the ones that
we've been waiting for. You looked at yourself in the mirror.
I went tears streaming down. I was like, oh me,
I oh them together? And then what do you get?
Pod drone? So like my like, the business as usual

(40:22):
thing is what sours people to the belief that we
can actually live in a different type of world. And
so uh, that is kind of what AOC and Mom
Donnie are up against. Is we elected them. They promised
a revolution that was worker first, affordability first, and look
at them now they would Haquem Jeffries and that is

(40:46):
going to be chilling to a lot of people. And
it's up to them. Last thing I'll say, I'm typically long,
more long with than than this. You guys are getting
a brief first. It's up to them to make it
plain to their constituents that that's not what's happening here.
Although it's a tough sale right.

Speaker 4 (41:03):
Now, especially a tough selle because of the history here,
which makes it almost even more deflating, because AOC in
twenty eighteen knocked out Joe Crowley, who was the caucus
chair on his way to becoming a speaker. When he's
knocked out, there's then an election to replace him, and
it was Barbara Lee versus Akeem Jeffries, and AOC got

(41:27):
behind Barbara Lee. It was a pretty close contest, you
lost by ten or twenty or so. But Akeem Jeffries,
who was Crowley's deputy, you know, takes the caucus chair
position and then is next in line, and that's how
he eventually becomes a leader. So to go from there
to then, well, it's not time to take him on.

(41:47):
I think it's you know, it's got to be frustrating
for a lot of people, but like you said, they're
making a different calculation. Like Mom, Donnie at this point
wants to take on real estate developers. He wants, he
wants he's got his agenda that he he ran on,
he wants to get that accomplished, and he he sees
it going after Jeffries as not just a distraction, but

(42:08):
maybe a hindrance. My counter argument might be, sometimes the
best defense is a good offense, Like if you've got
if you've got Jefferies on his heels, and if you've
got Jeffries and his allies, then defending this position, then
maybe they have less time to mess with you the
whole time in city Hall. So I mean that, So

(42:28):
just even if it's all about pragmatics and we're not
revolutionaries here, maybe pragmatically going on offense might work. Like
when has backing off helped.

Speaker 9 (42:40):
I'd say never. I tend to agree with your assessment.
You know, Mam. Donnie's in the position to where he's
not just governing for himself. He's governing for collection of
ideas and for an approach to polics, to where he

(43:02):
is sort of proof of concept of something and if
it fails, he will be the example that it cannot
work right. And sometimes I wonder what that pressure or
what that spotlight is like now listen. I don't give
any quarter to politicians. I believe that you are basically

(43:22):
like a waiter in a restaurant. If I go into
a shout out to all the service and restaurants everywhere, okay.
But if I go into a restaurant and I say, hey,
I want my food, and the waiter is very charming
and very nice, but I don't get what I want.
I'm gonna say, hey, man, look, I'm glad that you
told me about your family. Can you go back to
the kitchen and maybe bring the stakes out? Very charming,

(43:43):
very nice waiter that lets me down in a very
eloquent way. I'm like, no, at some point, bring the meat,
all right. That's basically what Bill Clinton did for President
Trump allegedly, And at some point I want to meet
all right, bring the stakes out. Mamdani has to bring

(44:07):
the stakes. He has to deliver the protein to the people.
And the question is what else is he going to
need to do that? And how much disappointment can you
endure from the political process on the way. I tend
to believe, like you believe, I tend to believe that
upheaval is the best way to progress clean the trash

(44:29):
off the street and you drive down the roads easier.
But it's just hard to do. These people are entrenched,
they've been around for a very very long time. They
carry an intense amount of favor, and they are very
good at promise making well.

Speaker 3 (44:43):
And there's also, I mean, you see this on social
media a lot and understandable impatience on the populist left
and the populist right with their proof of concept type politicians.
And I'm curious how you see the left's expectations going
into the Mom Donnie meyrality, because he's now going to
be in this position of great power not just over

(45:04):
in New York City but also over the trajectory of
the party. And he's a politician. You know, you like him,
you'd be a great waiter to continue in your metaphor.
But the expectations of like the young generation of the
left are on his shoulders, and that is I mean,
nobody can meet expectations that high. So I guess I'm
curious how you see people right now preparing to treat

(45:28):
Mom Donnie as a as a politician.

Speaker 9 (45:31):
I saw a good tweet on this, a great tweet
on this from Mia Khalifa, Mia Khalifa. Actually, I like, actually,
I saw she's a smart lady. I saw a tweet
she was like, Okay, everybody's for was for mom, Donnie.
Everybody wanted to see this happen. And it wasn't just
because of the collection of policy. It was because, you know,

(45:51):
I don't have any problem with I just can't see
anyone having no problem with like free buses, grocery stores
and affordability, Like I don't have any problem with making
services more ready available to people, bringing costs and prices down.
I just don't know what was so scary to everyone.
But you know, political differences and economic outlooks aside. The

(46:13):
people wanted to believe that there was somebody that was
brave enough to say what we all know is that
this isn't working. This religious allegiance to the most cutthroat
brand of American capital, it's not working. It's not working.
People are being left behind. People can't live where they

(46:36):
grew up, People have to move to the outskirts. People
aren't finded. It's not happening. Everything is too expensive. We're
not looking at the Americans that didn't make this country great,
that are making this country great every day and he
said that with a lot of zeal and, with a
lot of compassion, and with just he was a devastating

(47:00):
communicator all of that. He's not an angel, he's not
a deity. He's a politician. He's a local official that
now became a mayor. And what her tweet said was,
Let's not put him on a pedestal. Let's not make
our entire lives and our entire belief system. Let's not
get two down in the dumps about the obvious political

(47:24):
disappointment that's going to come at some point from this guy.
Let's try to be realistic about what he's up against,
what he's going to have to do, and who he's
going to have to be. Let's try to like, like,
let go just a little bit. She says, let's not
put him on a pedestal. He's a politician. We're gonna
have to do that, and that's gonna be hard. But

(47:45):
part of that, though, I'll say, is this, part of
that is the media's responsibility. And this is why speaking
of you know, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, now I'm
gonna do it to you guys a little bit. This
is why independent media is important because of the long
form investigation into topics, the context that is given, the

(48:08):
sometimes sobering realities that can be had when something is
deep dove into to where you can come back feeling
like everything is not a zero sum game, you know.
And so to me, this is the whole deal with
all of this stuff. Do I am vision a world
that's closer to mom Donnie's world? Sure I do, I

(48:30):
absolutely do. But do I think that he has unilateral
authority all he's all powerful to blink and make New
York into the vision of New York that he wants
it to be. He just doesn't. He doesn't. And so
there are going to be some things that he is
going to win on and some things that he is
going to be lose lose on. If you lose complete

(48:53):
hope in him, then you're losing hope in that brand
of politics. And I think that would be a tragedy.

Speaker 4 (48:59):
Meanwhile, so Jeffreys was asked about OSE's primary challenging role
E three.

Speaker 8 (49:04):
Here, New York City councilman she Os filed paperwork today
to run against you to represent Brooklyn. He has said
that Democratic leadership has failed to effectively fight against President
Donald Trump.

Speaker 7 (49:16):
What's your response? Come on in the water is warm.

Speaker 5 (49:20):
Water's one I think water is nice. This is the phrase.

Speaker 4 (49:22):
But okay, I was talking to a high school friend
yesterday actually about Jeffries. And he's not a committed he's
an independent. But he was like, you guys got to
do something about a keep Jefferies. I'm like, what do
you mean you guys?

Speaker 5 (49:37):
By the way, first of.

Speaker 4 (49:37):
All, he's like, but he's like that guy's the guy's
bad for the He's like every time I see him
or Schumer, like, I just dislike Democrats more. He's hurting.
He's hurting what you guys are doing. Even that, it's like.
And Jefferies' thing when he came up was that he
was supposed to be this great communicator. That was his

(50:01):
selling point. I don't know what happened between now and then.
Just for fun speaking, since you mentioned Epstein, our man
did find himself unfortunately in those files, if.

Speaker 5 (50:15):
We can roll not in the way you're thinking.

Speaker 4 (50:19):
Basically, a consultant of his was reaching out to Epstein
to do a fundraiser, invite him to a fundraising dinner.
But here's E four and him getting dragged into these files.

Speaker 10 (50:27):
Another email shows Democrat fundraisers invited Epstein to an event
or to meet privately with Hakeem Jeffries as part of
their twenty thirteen effort to win a majority. So Hakeem
Jefferies campaign solicited money from Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 9 (50:44):
That's what we.

Speaker 10 (50:45):
Found in the last document batch. The files underscore why
former President Trump must appear for his deposition. We've subpoened him.
To date, the Democrats have done nothing to help us
secure his appearance. I support full transparency Over committee will
continue to work to get the truth to the American
people and to get justice for the victims. That's our

(51:06):
goal of this investigation.

Speaker 9 (51:08):
With that, I yiel back.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
Now, I don't even know if Jeffries had any idea
who Epstein was, but bad luck for him that his
fundraising consultant reached out to Epstein to try to hit
him up for money back in twenty thirteen, telling telling Epstein,
you really need to meet this guy.

Speaker 5 (51:23):
He's a rising star. You know, he's going to be
a top Democrat.

Speaker 7 (51:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
So I don't know, like Hakim Jeffries, what's going on
with this party.

Speaker 9 (51:35):
A couple of things. Number one, it's very hard to
be a good communicator if you are measuring every single word, right,
if you're measuring every single word, if your brain is
Q testing every single word, are they gonna like me?
Or they going to like me? Do I come off cool?
Do I come off like the cool guy? Is this cool? Swam?

(51:56):
Come on in the water. I bet he thought he
killed with that man. He walked off stage and he
was like, jo see what I said? I said. I
told him come on in. The water is warm. And
there was some stafford that was like boo, yeah like
that he thought that was so cold. I bet when
he walked like, come on man, you know, like be yourself,

(52:21):
like believe, say the things that you believe, living your authenticity.
It shows when you don't, I promise. Another thing is this.
I want to make sure that everybody on the right,
everybody everywhere, understands this. I'm gonna speak for myself. It
don't matter who is in the Epstein files, done with

(52:42):
all of them. There's not a person that could be
in those files right now that I'm gonna be like, nah, man,
we need to stall on them out. Everybody's like, well,
what happens when you when you find out that Bill
Clinton is in there? I'm like, what are you talking
what are you talking about?

Speaker 7 (53:00):
Cares?

Speaker 9 (53:01):
What is it? Ninety nine?

Speaker 7 (53:03):
Who like?

Speaker 9 (53:05):
Who cares? And I just want everyone to know this
because I said this on TMZ in nineteen and this
is one of the things that I got in trouble
from all the things I said on TMZ. I said this.
I said, the death of Jeffrey Epstein is Washington's most
bipartisan accomplishment in decades. Right, And that is a thing.

(53:25):
It's a fact. Everyone is co mingled in this. I
want people to take a step back and look at
what this actually is. This is the connection that you
of guys have always feared. It's the elites. It's the
people that cover for each other. It's the people that
make easy soft beds for each other to lie in.
It's the thing that you've been talking about. And when

(53:46):
people have been said been saying, hey, the left is
involved in this, the right is involved in this at
least in terms of the political structure and the political elites.
And they're like, no, our guys are the great guys.
Our guys are gonna dream the swamp. Our guys are
the ones. No, it's a class thing. It's a thing
that's there's a political ruling class and how they get

(54:08):
on with each other. So sit back, watch it fall,
and don't get connected to these people. They're not the
LSU Tigers, they're not the Yankees, they're not the Lakers,
they're not political teams. These are people with agendas, and
sometimes those agendas involved dealing with people like Jeffrey Epstein.
However horrible and disgusting that that is.

Speaker 5 (54:27):
Yep, Van Lathon really appreciate you being here. I'm happy
to have you back anytime soon.

Speaker 7 (54:35):
Jack.

Speaker 9 (54:38):
I want to tell Saga something. When I get up
and I do my Andrew Huberman thing, when I walk
around the neighborhood, there's something else I do in the morning, Saga,
and you're not gonna like it. In the morning, I
soga with something else. I'm about to go go get
into it right now. Don't get mad. I'm still productive.
There's something else I like to do, Sager. I want to.
I want you to come on and tell me mean

(55:00):
why generations of Lathan's are wrong. I believe in them.
We've been doing this for a long time, Sager.

Speaker 5 (55:07):
This would be a fun segment that we have to
get you on with. Sager.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
Yeah, that would be good.

Speaker 9 (55:11):
Actually, no problem.

Speaker 4 (55:12):
Thank you guys that we're definitely gonna make it happen.
I take it easy and enjoy whatever you're up to.

Speaker 9 (55:16):
Next. Thank you every morning, same time. Peace.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
We are joined now by Nicholas Eberstatt, who's the author
of the new essay collection called Human Arithme Arithmetic, very
very interesting new book. Nicholas eberstat thank you so much
for joining us here on Breaking Points this morning. We
appreciate it.

Speaker 7 (55:41):
Hey, thanks for inviting me.

Speaker 3 (55:43):
Yeah, of course, I wanted to start with this section
here from the introduction of the book, where you talk
about how the damage from America's men without work problem,
with which you have written extensively on what radiates outward
their unnatural condition makes for slower economic growth, wider income
and wealth gaps, increased welfare dependent they reduce social mobility,
more fragile families, and a weaker civil society. And you

(56:05):
go on make some really interesting points here. But I
wanted to ask that in the context of this news report,
we can put this from Wall Street Journal up on
the screen. The headline here, Companies predict twenty twenty six
will be the worst college grad job market in five years,
and I thought this was a good place to start, Nick,
because you've been following this particular problem and actually you've

(56:26):
been helping us understand it with data and explanations socioeconomic
explanations for a long time. It seems as though this
problem is poised to get worse. But I'm curious if
you agree with that what you're seeing in the data
right now and how people should be thinking about it, Well, it.

Speaker 7 (56:44):
Would be a little bit more helpful if the government
were actually producing the monthly FATA on the jobs report
that we kind of like to analyze. But we've been
seeing a gradual flight from work by men and by
older people that the other older people part is new.

(57:08):
We're also seeing a somewhat weaker job market now, and
that's probably not surprising given some of the uncertainties real
and perhaps needless that we see in the in the
job market now, in the economic outlook. Some of this

(57:30):
is policy created, some of this is business cycle. I
don't think I would make generalizations about long term trends
from a single year. Let's just say that.

Speaker 4 (57:44):
Well, I mean, so what are you seeing overall when
it comes to when it comes to young men and
what has surprised you, and as anything surprised you about it,
as somebody who's been kind of monitoring this for some time.

Speaker 7 (57:57):
Well, I mean, the only thing that a surprise is
that so many people seem to be surprised by it.
This didn't start yesterday. This is a historical trend that's
been underway since the nineteen sixties. But because we are
still fighting the Last war with our employment numbers, our

(58:19):
jobs reports were our framework was developed in thirty nine
and forty to track the Great Depression when it would
have seemed outlandish to think that a guy who didn't
have a job wouldn't be looking for one. So we
have a set of numbers that are great for looking
at unemployment. But nowadays, for every guy who's out of

(58:42):
work and looking for a job, they're over three who
are not looking for work. And if you are using
just the unemployment metric, you're missing over three quarters of
the problem. We have a work rate for twenty five
to fifty four year old guys today that is basically
at the nineteen forty level, which is the tail end

(59:04):
of the Great Depression. So we've got a Great Depression
scale problem for work for guys. And if we if
we don't look at it, we're going to be surprised
by a lot of other things that are happening in America.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
And it's amazing how it lurks under the surface and
gets so little attention in the ways that you describe
it because you've studied for a long time the effect,
particularly the de industrialization, but also you know, welfare programs,
and you and I may disagree with that with Ryan
on that, but if we focus on de industrialization just
specifically with this AI transformation of the economy coming, we've

(59:40):
seen the effects that you know, these these rapid changes
in jobs have had, and you know, places like where
I'm from, the rest belt and outside Milwaukee, for example.
Is that something people seem like they're about to replicate
at an even larger scale with AI. Howard, are you
thinking about the changes that are about to appear like

(01:00:02):
they're about to happen in the American economy with the
examples we've seen in the last several decades.

Speaker 7 (01:00:07):
I don't want to make a fool of myself in
front of you by making categorical predictions about AI, because
it's evolving so rapidly that I'm not sure that anybody
knows exactly where it's going to be in five years,
much less fifteen years. What we can say in general,
looking at past technological innovations is that people who have

(01:00:32):
skills are able to kind of harness the new technologies
and multiply their productivity and their incomes, and people who
don't have skills are more likely to be displaced. So
under any circumstances, we'd want to be skilling up our
young people. But in the face of this this new

(01:00:53):
AI wave, that makes it, I think even more imperative.
I should say that one thing we also about what's
going on in the United States is the extraordinary variety
disparity of circumstances from one community to the next. When
I was a young guy, we talk about the Deep

(01:01:15):
South or Appalachia or later the rust Belt. But again
this is something that kind of escapes us because we
don't collect good information around all the time. Three quarters
of the difference in work rates and workforce participation rates
for young adults for young guys now within states. I mean,

(01:01:37):
you go ten miles and you find radically different employment
prospects community prospects all within given states in the USA,
And we're kind of blind to this because number one,
we don't collect the right information for it. Our information
systems are way behind the times. Number two, we need

(01:02:02):
journalists who will actually go out and talk to human
beings and take a bus and go from one community
to the next, because doing that you get the kind
of the human face on this nerdy sort of number
stuff that I do in my basement, so to speak.

Speaker 4 (01:02:17):
And so you talked about there being three men, what
you say, twenty five to thirty four, twenty five to forty.

Speaker 7 (01:02:25):
Four, twenty five to fifty four as.

Speaker 5 (01:02:28):
The nish one, So twenty five to fifty four.

Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
So for every man who's looking for work and can't
find it in that category, there are three men who
aren't looking for work. And I think all of us
can answer this question kind of anecdotally and make our
own guesses at it. But what are the data say
about how those men are surviving? Like, how are they
where are they living, how are they getting by? How
are they feeding themselves? If they have families, how are

(01:02:50):
they feeding their families?

Speaker 7 (01:02:52):
Well, as best as best one can tell from the
limited information we have that's numbers and things that I
sift through, they get by with the help of their
you know, by the help of their friends. They get
by with the help of their family, and they get

(01:03:13):
by with the help of their uncle. And his name
is Sam. There's over half of the guys who are
neither working or looking for work seem to be obtaining
one or more disability program benefits. I'd be a little
more informative about this, except that our crazy quilt of

(01:03:36):
disability programs don't talk to each other, and so there's
nobody in Washington who can tell you exactly how many Americans,
much less prime age guys are obtaining these disability benefits.
You can't live a princely life on them. But quite

(01:03:57):
evidently it is possible to live a life where you
do not engage with you with the labor market anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
And you also randed you have okay. You also write
sort of about the effect this has on the spiritual
condition of the country, on young men in particular. And
in light of the news yesterday, we can put this
on the screen. This is pro publica reporting that the
Trump administration appears to have attempted to help Andrew Tate.

(01:04:27):
The propublic headline is White House intervened on behalf of
ACU sex traffick or Andrew Tate during a federal investigation.
But Nick, there's so much discourse at the moment about
Nick Fuentes, and Andrew Tate and young men. And just
because you're somebody who studied this for so long, what's
your I guess perspective on this swirl of controversy? Is

(01:04:50):
the economic well being related to the spiritual wellbeing of
young men in a way that seems to be fueling
any of these trends? What do you make of it?

Speaker 7 (01:05:00):
Well, you know, I'm a grandfather, I'm a couple of
generations removed from this stuff. But I've got ears and eyes.
Now there's a there's a world of hurt and loneliness
and despair out there that wasn't wasn't at all comparable,
you know, Uh, when I was that age. We've got

(01:05:23):
a lot more loneliness. We've got a lot more family breakdown,
We've got a lot more spiritual angst, we've got a
lot more we've got a lot more dependence on substances
than we had back then. Uh. And if you are isolated,
if you're cut off from work, if you're cut off

(01:05:44):
from family, if for whatever reason you're cut off from
faith and from your community. You suffer for that. I mean,
there's a reason that people that a lot of people
think that solitary confinement is a cruel and unusual punishment.
So we've got to do I think we've got to
do a much better job of, you know, reaching vulnerable

(01:06:07):
groups in our country. And part of what we've got
going on, I think is this monumental empathy gap between
the describers and deciders in the United States and little
people who are suffering.

Speaker 4 (01:06:23):
So have you seen anything work, any pilot programs, any
any efforts by communities to prevent plant closures or like
you know, you know in places where you have like
you know, workers take you know, they're going to shut
a plant down, or the workers take it over and
keep it going.

Speaker 11 (01:06:40):
I think you have some famous cases of it. A
couple of a couple of a couple of thoughts. One
is we could look around the country and see where
there are healthy communities and when they're where there are
communities that are really struggling. Because there's a there's an
enormous and disparity of social success in communities in the

(01:07:06):
United States and then mostly within within states, not across states.

Speaker 7 (01:07:11):
As I mentioned, and a little bit of a little
bit of curiosity about human beings might help at this
point in our national history. I mean, that's one thing
to mention. Another thing to mention is the extraordinary problem
of X cons in America, because the x cons are

(01:07:34):
almost invisible in our country, and yet it is a
gigantic army at this point. We don't we do not
collect information on x cons. You know, once they're out
of the correctional system, they're invisible as far as our
stat guys are concerned. But my own back of the

(01:07:56):
envelope working on some I think pretty good research by
some of my defiant NERD demographer colleagues suggests that one
in seven adult guys has a felony record and his background.
Do we really think that this has nothing to do
with the circumstances that we find ourselves in today. Shouldn't

(01:08:18):
we be at least a little bit curious about this?
How people live, how they reintegrate into society, or repair
their job reputations. There's it's all anecdotal now, because we
don't collect the information that would allow us to see
what's working and what's not working.

Speaker 4 (01:08:38):
Yes, I've always thought that if you actually for people
who are serving time in prison, like you know, there's
some people can get work release, but most people are
going to either be reading books or be at the gym,
or just be stuck, you know, either in the common

(01:08:59):
area or just you know, frittering away, you know, years
and years of their life. Has there been any effort
to say, you know, let's actually bring bring some genuine
education here, like, let if you do three years, you should.

Speaker 5 (01:09:13):
Come out, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:09:15):
Knowing how to do carpentry or as an electrician or
with it, or with your associate's degree or or maybe
or an undergraduate degree. Like I know there's some programs
in that direction that are very small, but have you
have you seen any of that.

Speaker 5 (01:09:30):
Work to intervene in this.

Speaker 7 (01:09:34):
Yeah, I mean there are a lot of a lot
of good people working to try to help with re
entry all around the country. But this is all a
sea of anecdote at this point, and it doesn't have
to be that way. It really doesn't have to be
that way. And we talk about we talk about the

(01:09:54):
mass and coraceration situation in the United States, and that's
true as far as it goes, But what we don't
talk about is that for every person who's in prison,
there are ten people with a felony in their background
in our general society, and they're just basically kind of invisible.
We can do a lot more with a lot more

(01:10:16):
with skills. In the United States, we've got, even with
the economy softening, we have so many millions of unfilled positions,
right and some of that is a skills gap. You
don't have to go to college to come up with
the skill set that's going to give you a good
income and let you pay for a family and a home.

Speaker 3 (01:10:39):
Nick eversaid, thank you so much. The new book is
called Human Arithmetic. We really appreciate you stopping by to
break some of this down for us.

Speaker 7 (01:10:47):
Thanks so much for inviting me.

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):
Of course, really big show today, Ryan. We covered a
lot of ground and had some great guests.

Speaker 5 (01:10:53):
We did. Indeed, what is.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
The saying, the real victories, the friends you may along.

Speaker 5 (01:10:58):
That's right, exactly, very true today, Yes, indeed, and uh so,
we'll see you on.

Speaker 4 (01:11:03):
Friday, and if you're a premium scer back on Thursday.

Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
If you're a Prevement subscriber, will see you right now
in the Live AMA. If you want to get access
to the live amas to the second half of the
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We love answering your questions, so head on over and
Ryan and I will see you Friday.

Speaker 5 (01:11:26):
See you then,