December 26, 2025 • 35 mins
Featured in hour one of the Friday December 26, 2025 edition of The Armstrong & Getty Replay...
- Why America Stopped Moving
- Jack's Ukrainian Girlfriend Update!
- Ezra Klein on Dems
- Blue States New Attitudes About School Closings
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong, Joe, Katty Armstrong, and.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Joy and arms Strong Strong. I've got a pony in
the studio. It happened. I got a pony for Christmas.
And we're live. We're not live from the studio. See,
we're home with our presents. Well, we're live on Taylor.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
It's like authentic artificial cheese or what was the craft
a cheese product?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Cheese food. Get jesus, he's adjacent and we're live adjacent.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
The point is a lot of time in Trouble has
been taken to groom the following segments for your listening enjoyment.
It's the Armstrong and Getty replay.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Keep moving me in Countenances. Maybe I'll just stop and
relieve myself. Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
So this is one of the most fascinating things I've
read in the last several years. It is shockingly from
the Atlantic, which is just suffocatingly lefty these days. It
was written by a fellow by the name of Yannie
apple Bomb why Americans stopped moving houses and why that's
(01:27):
a very big problem. Actually, Yannie might be a woman.
I don't know, probably is. But the subtitle of it
is how Progressives Froze the American Dream. And I was
surprised to see that on the cover, but I dove in.
I'm gonna hit you with parts of it. Jack comment
like as much as you like, obviously, So the lead
is the idea that people should be able to choose
(01:47):
their own communities instead of being stuck where they are
born is a distinctly American innovation. It is the foundation
for the country's prosperity and democracy, and it just may
be America's most profound contribution.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
To the world.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I have been saying this for years. You have in California,
the Midwest, all kinds of places I've lived, was settled
by people who thought they could get a better deal here.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
No society has ever been as mobile as the United
States once was. No society has even come close. In
the nineteenth century, friends, the heyday of American mobility. Roughly
a third of all Americans changed addresses each year.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Wow a third each.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Year, they quote a couple of commentators of the day.
The American has devoured with a passion for locomotion, said
one French writer. He cannot stay in one place. Americans
moved far more often, over longer distances and to greater
advantage than did people in the lands from which they
had come. They described how in Europe that you stayed
on the land, you stayed in the town. People were
(02:46):
very suspicious of outsiders. We'll get to that. But over
the past fifty years, this engine of American opportunity has
stopped working. Americans have become less likely to move from
one state to another, to move within a state, or
going to switch residences within a city in the nineteen sixties.
Now remember it was about one in three in the
(03:07):
eighteen hundreds. The nineteen sixties, about one out of every
five Americans moved in any given year, down from one
in three in the nineteenth century, but a frenetic rate, nonetheless,
so one in five in the nineteen sixties. In twenty
twenty three, only one in thirteen Americans moved.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
That's unbelievable, the sharp decline in geog.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
You go ahead, sorry, Joe and I both moved a
lot for our radio careers, and I don't think it's
shocking to say the success of this project depended on it.
Wouldn't It have never happened without the willingness to like
move to that town, than to that town, to then
(03:49):
that town for opportunity, and probably it's a good time
for a disclaimer.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
We both were also raised by people who sought their
fortune in various ways.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Moved is necessary for career.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
My dad was in the military for a while and
then in the publishing industry, and we moved to fair
Mounta until we finally settled in Chicagoland. But so we
we can feel and appreciate that side.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Of the argument, not that it's an argument per se.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Somebody who's lived, you know, hometown, Mom and dad and
the cousins are always around. You have giant Sunday dinners
together on that sort of thing. Yeah, I get a
tear in my eye thinking about how wonderful that would be.
But like I've said many times, everything has a cost
and a benefit.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
You just have to decide, you know, what's for you anyway.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Reading on from Applebaum's piece, the sharp decline in geographic
mobility is the single most important social change in the
past half century, although other shifts have attracted far more attention.
In that same span, fewer Americans have started new businesses
and fewer Americans have switched jobs. From nineteen eighty five
to twenty fourteen, the share of people who have become
entrepreneurs fell by half.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Wh Wow, that is seriously troubling.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And then he gets into more Americans end up worse
off than their parents. I think part of that is
coming down from the high of the post WW two
American dominance that was just going to be hard to avoid.
But then he gets into how church membership is down
by a third since nineteen seventy, as is the share
of Americans who socialized several times a week. Membership in
any kind of group is half down by half. Well,
(05:23):
you know, the earth rates keep falling.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
One interesting aspect of the not being tied to your
local church and not socializing seems like that would make
you more mobile as opposed to less mobile. If you're
socializing and have a social network, that would be hard
to leave behind. If you don't socialize, what the hell
do you care? Go to the next down they got
a better job.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
The other side of that coin is really interesting, and
we're going to get to that in a bit, but
I'll skip to it. And I can relate to this
because Judy and I relocated four years ago. Something like that,
and it makes you more likely to want to go
out and meet people. Oh interesting, it up with the
discomfort of going to a new church or joining a club,
(06:03):
or you know, just for me jumping out a tea
time that had one opening and introducing myself and meeting
people because you want to make connections.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
And indeed that's what they found sociologically. That's interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
You know, it's kind of counterintuitive, but it made people
more sociable the fact that we moved all the time.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
And then there's an interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Political aspect to this, and I don't want to get
on a partisan thing because that's not what this about.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
This is about. I will just say that people who.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Felt anger and frustration at their financial situation tended to
vote more for Trump than Hillary, for instance, But the
number of those people who lived within a two hour
drive of where they grew up or had never even
left their hometown was.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Way more huge. It was a huge gap.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
The number of people who said I'm unhappy with my
financial life in my career, they were wildly disproportionately people
who had not relocated to seek their fortune.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
No, I don't want to make this partisan at all,
because I don't think it needs to be. But we
have been saying on this show for years, you know,
broadcasting out of California, people talking about how expensive it
is to live in San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Well, then move someplace cheaper. That's what I always did.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
If I didn't afford to live somewhere, I moved someplace cheaper,
rather than expect the government or somebody to come in
and make it cheaper so you can stay. Why does
the why do other taxpayers owe you the ability to
stay in a particular town.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
That's nuts, right, right?
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And just you know, you live your life the way
you see fit, and I will not judge you unless
you come.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I will harsh tax money, and I'll tell you to
your chapace.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I mean, we were very, very successful our first job
together in Wichita, but we knew economically speaking, we had
topped out and needed to go, you know, seek our
fortune elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
But a lot of people do that.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Anyway, this I wanted to get to this part and
then there's more on the general topic to come and
trust me.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
So interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
You've heard the expression moving day, right, I mean people
throw it around a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
It's funny.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
It's a term in golf. It's like the midway point
of a tournament. You got a chance to move off
blah blah blah. And so I'm familiar with the term
in that way. How do we How did I not
know this? How did all of us not know this?
The great holiday of America, when it was so nomadic,
was called Moving Day, observed by renters and landlords throughout
(08:29):
the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth with a
giant game of musical houses. Moving Day, they write, was
a festival of new hopes and new beginnings, of shattered
dreams and shattered crockery, quite as recognized today as Christmas.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Or the fourth of July. Wrote a Chicago newspaper in
eighteen eighty two.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
I as much as I read history, have never come
across this.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I know it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
It was primarily an urban thing, although many rural communities
and suburbans kind of had their own sort, and it varied.
It might be at or October first, but May first
was by far the most popular. Literally, everybody who is
renting a home, and the vast majority of people rented
home ownership was way way lower than it is right now.
(09:14):
The vast majority of people would move on Moving Day,
every year, or almost every year. Nothing quite so astonished
visitors from abroad as the spectacle of thousands upon thousands
of people picking up and swapping homes in a single day.
For months before moving day, Americans prepared for the occasion.
(09:35):
Tenants gave notice to the landlords, a received word of
the new rent. Then followed a frenzied period of house
hunting as people, generally women, scouted for a new place
to live that would in some respect improve upon the
old quote they want more room, or they want as
much room for less rent, or they want a better location,
or they want some convenience.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Not heretofore enjoyed.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
The Topeka Daily Capital summarized, these were months of general anticipation.
Cities and towns were a lot with excitement. So if
you've ever seen one of those street scenes from back
in the day where everybody's got like they're junk.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Piled on wagons, that was moving day.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
And the point of putting that in the article, obviously
is to just point out that the cultural attitude about
moving was so much different. And as we've said, every
part of this country, people coming out west, starting in
the very very eastern part of the country, and the
(10:32):
colonies and spreading to you know, when when the wild
West was Ohio and Kentucky, and then going further and
further for a better opportunity. And now not to be
too disparaging of various industries and people, because I understand,
like Joe said, I fully understand why it'd be awesome
to stay in your hometown where you grow up and
(10:54):
have your kids go to the same school and you know,
all your family and friends. I got I would love that.
But the idea that coal mining goes away and you're
gonna stay in the same dead town that's never gonna come.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Back is nuts.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, it's nuts in terms of the history of this
country or you know, working for General Motors in whatever
town in Michigan or whatever. If something's gone away, then
you got to move to a different town where the
new industry is. That's what everybody has done forever in
this country. And yeah, pointing out that that's gone away
and now we're like Europe where you do plan to
(11:33):
stay in the town your family is from for generations,
which again I understand the appeal.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Sure, Yeah, one charming anecdote from this which I can't find,
but I can paragraph a paraphrase. They mentioned that in Europe,
indeed you stay in the same place, very insulur, and
that newcomers would simply cause a more subdivision of the
goods and services and land available there. So newcomers were
like a bad thing, whereas in America it was such
(12:02):
a constant that the idea of a stranger went from
a threat to literally Americans would say.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Hello, stranger.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
You're not from around here, are you, And it was
not a term of suspicion, it was a term of greeting.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
That's really interesting, and I don't think good for the country.
Armstrong an update on my Ukrainian girlfriend. If you've been
following this, well, if you haven't been following this saga,
a quick background, so you know my email has been
hacked like yours has a million times. All kinds of
(12:39):
people have your email address and some bad actor is
trying to get me involved in a scam, like happens
all the time, but in.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
This case it love as a scam.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
In this case that somebody portrayed themselves as a young
Ukrainian woman who like immediately was in love with me just.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Because of my email address or something like that.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Jack Armstrong.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
And she writes in funny ways. I guess you would
if you don't, you're not a native English speaker. She's Ukrainian.
She says things like jack, my precious diamond love you
know that sort of thing, and how much she loves me.
And she sends pictures. The weird thing is all the
pictures are like different girls. She looks different than the
different pictures. But anyway, she's like lady gay guys. She's
(13:21):
constantly reinventing herself. So what I was wondering is what
was the scam? What's the scam? Is it gonna be
the as she asks for money? Does she get to
try to get me to click on a link? She
did send me like voice memos if you would like
to hear my voice? How beautiful it is? You know
here it is, so there was something to click on.
I did not click on it. And I've been like
(13:42):
sending one word replies or a one sentence replies every
now and then. You know, I've been thinking of you
all night. You know, how are you that sort of thing? Wow,
good Man waiting waiting for the scam? I just wondered,
what which kind of scam this is? Well Hanson came
up with the idea of scam her first. Tell her
you have had a medical emergency and need five thousand dollars,
(14:04):
or you're in jail or whatever it's going to be,
ask her for money. But we decided to lead up
to that, and so I had sent this email two
days ago. You were on my mind the entire weekend.
I really want to see you, my buttercup, and I
really want to see you. Who is gonna be followed
by I have almost all the money I need for
a plane ticket. I just need five hundred dollars more
(14:26):
or something like that. But her response shocked me. All
my kisses for you, Jack, exclamation point, exclamation point. If
you really want to have a relationship with me, please
answer all the letters I wrote to you and all
my questions another way. Please do not disturb me anymore.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
She actually like, if you're not gonna actually email me
back and participate in this relationship, I want out, is
the way she responded, which is surprising to me.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Wow, she replied, if I might, don't build me up, Buttercup,
just to let me down.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
To quote the old Motownish song.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
So I don't know what the thing now, but that's
a weird scam. Oh no, no, that's it's good. It's smart.
She's trying to convince you of her sincerity. So that's
supposed to make me as a really pathetic, sad, lonely,
perhaps mentally ill person. Oh no, I'm in jeopardy of
losing this.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yes, yeah, yeah, I've got to be serious about this.
I've got to treat this girl like she deserves to
be treated. Yes, God, I got to answer all our questions.
I don't want to answer all our questions. He had
a lot of questions about, like, you know, what's your
favorite movie or flower or whatever.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
You know the way, you know, the way women are
with their questions while you're trying to watch TV.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Did you have a comment, Katie.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
No, it just sounds like she's totally trying to guilt
you into keeping this going.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Oh okay, gotcha.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
And I heavily think you should answer all of the
questions and continue this because this is fantastic entertaining.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
God, we've only been together for two weeks and already
it's then. And why didn't she answer my question? Who
was working? Do you know what you did? Yeah? Exactly? Okay, Well,
I guess I'll respond.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I really want to know what the ask is going
to be. When she's really to be small small.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Ish, I can't remember what the term for it is,
but she will need a pitdlling amount of money.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
She will keep her five dollars. It's either a bot
or some you know, criminal gang. It's not some buarded guy.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
In his mom's basement.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah, yeah, that's more likely some port bastard and slaved
in Southeast Asia being.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Forced to do this. Well, because that's what a lot
of that is. That's not romantic, that's not my buttercup.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Yes, Skatie, Yeah, I think it'll be a small amount,
but for something that's very serious, she'll create some major
crisis and just be like, this is all I need,
though in order to fix it, and then it's going
to grow from there.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Look at it like a series of interviews. The you
responded was the first interview. We've looked at your resume
and it's pretty attractive. We'd like you to come back
for a second interview. The second interview is the can
we lure this guy into sending forty dollars on some pretext?
And if that happens, then you get the full court press.
They bring in their real pros. I am her precious Rose.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
At least that's what she says the Armstrong and Getty Show. Yeah, Marjah,
your show, podcasts and our hot links.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
So I mentioned this last week and we never got
around to it. I'm glad we are now and I'm
looking forward to Joe's reaction to this. So this is
Ezra Kline of The New York Times on Lex Friedman's
podcast from a couple of weeks ago. And Lex Friedman's
an interesting guy if you've never heard his podcasts. First
of all, they're all two to four hours long, and
I don't know who listens to those old things. But
(17:49):
he has people on of all different kinds of political
stripes and worldviews and stuff like that, and he just
wants to hear what they think. And he opened with
this great question for Ezra Kline of the New York Times.
You don't know his act.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
He is a.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Columnist, writer, liberal progressive, not a bomb chucker though that's
just his I mean, he's a really smart he's an intellectual,
but he's a progressive. And Lex had him on to
say the first question was basically lay out the progressive
point of view or the democrat point of view of
(18:23):
the worldview. And I thought, Okay, this is fantastic. I'm
going to hear this from a smart guy. And I thought,
I am going to listen to this podcast in my
earbudgs as I was like doing laundry or something like that,
and I thought, I am going to, like, in a
relax manner, listen to this, see if I can find
any common ground, Like fully understand you know where they're
(18:44):
coming from, right, not the cable news version, but like
the intellectual version of how they see the world.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
And I didn't make it more than like thirty seconds.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Before I said out loud in my bedroom, Oh, you've
got to be effing kidding me.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So this is how it went.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
You can define the left in different ways. I think
the left has a couple fundamental views. One is that
life is unfair. We are born with different talents, We
are born into different nations, right. The luck of being
born into America is right, different than the luck of
being born into Venezuela. We are born into different families.
(19:23):
We have luck operating as an ominive presence across our
entire lives, and as such, the people for whom it
works out. Well, we don't deserve all of that. We
got lucky. I mean, we also worked hard, and we
also had talent, and we also applied that talent. But
at a very fundamental level, that we are sitting here
(19:43):
is unfair, and that so many other people are in
conditions that are much worse, much more precarious, much more exploited,
is unfair. And one of the fundamental roles of government
should not necessarily be to turn that unfairness in to
perfect equality, but to rectify that unfairness into a kind
(20:04):
of universal dignity, right, so people can have lives of flourishing.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
So I'd say that's one thing. He has a very
low voice for a child. Yeah, I'll hold back for now.
I see what you mean. Though my eyes were wide.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
You don't deserve that, That's what I said in my bedroom.
Oh you gotta be effing kidding me. Wow.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Well, and I want to hear the next part, obviously,
But he kind of denied his own purpose there at
the end, And we're not trying to come up with
some perfect equality.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
But yeah, let's hear a little more and then we
can discuss.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
The left is fundamentally more skeptical of capitalism and part
of the unchecked forms of capitalism than the right. I
would think this is hard to talk about because what
we call unchecked capitalism is nevertheless very much supported by government.
So I think in a way you have both, like
are things that are enforced by government, Whether they are
you know, how you set the rules of them is
what ends up different between the left and the right.
(21:06):
But the left tends to be more worried about the
fact that you could get rich building coal fired power
plants belching pollution into the air, and you could get
rich laying down solar panels, and the market doesn't know
the difference between the two. And so there's a set
of goals about regulating the unchecked potential of capitalism that
(21:29):
also relates to sort of exploitation of workers. There's like
very fundamental questions about how much people get paid, how
much power they have. Again, the rectification of economic and
other forms of power is very fundamental to the left.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So it reminded me, of course, when Obama said, you
didn't build that, that attitude, and I thought, okay, as
Ezra client just laying that out a little more clearly.
I heard a podcast with this guy. He's got the
most famous economics podcast in America.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
I can't remember what his name is, but.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Anyway, and he's he leans left, but he his uh,
his take on the whole. Okay, even if you've got
a situation where where you like, in the most blatant example,
it's not fair that this person, you know, they're born
with a better brain. Their parents got him a tutor,
(22:26):
they had connections to get him into a better school.
Whatever it is versus someone else, how is the government
going to weigh in to fix it? He said?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Even if I buy.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
All the lack of fairness, in what sense could you
structure a government that's gonna even that out that doesn't
do more harm than good?
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Well, exactly that The last phrase is the key one.
And it is interesting to me to hear somebody who's
obviously fairly intelligent, like Ezra Klein, be so narrow in
his vision, so incredibly unwise to not recognize that if
you empower somebody. I was gonna summarize his creed with
as the following, I'm so smart, I and people like
(23:06):
me should be in charge of everything because we will.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Make it good.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
But a guy who is reasonably intelligent to lack the
wisdom to see that a government empowered to right all
of these pique un wrongs or equalize somehow or other,
even if not a perfect equality, but like getting us
halfway there, that government would be so awesome and not
(23:32):
in the modern word like causing awe and horror, so
powerful and monumentally huge.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
It would be terrifying. How do you miss that?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
As, Oh no, we would just do the good things,
not the bad stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Well, right, and then.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
The problem being that where you draw the line between
unfair advantages that people didn't earn and choices that you make,
Because lots of people make really really bad.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Choices in life.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
I've made bad choices in life that damaged me a lot,
and some people keep doing them. I don't dismiss the idea.
It's like I haven't told my story about the uber
driver I.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Had the other day. Maybe I'll do that for the
podcast today.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
But I was thinking, in that trip, which was really sketchy,
that this poor guy is never going to be able
to do very well in life. So I got a
better brain than he did. That is unfair, that's not
his fault, it's not my credit. But then he got
all the life choices that people make, And I've seen
so many smart people make horrible life choices. What is
(24:37):
the government gonna do to even out results there?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
And I've known the proverbial c student.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Oh yeah, absolutely, and I'm not gonna go with the
old trope that but they're very straight smart and blah
blah blah. No, I've known some people who aren't very bright,
but they make good, sound moral decision after decision and
fitted quite nicely from those decisions. Anyway, what makes a
(25:05):
person though again in the morning and want to.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Pursue the idea of that person has more than that person.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
We need to get them closer together. What is that well?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
And the means that they use to pursue that goal
or are often horrible from my point of view. I mean,
if you have a charitable view of the world and
you think I ought to do something to help those people,
you have my full blessing until it becomes And what
I am going to do is, at the point of
the government's gun, take money from people and compel them
to do these things, because that's the opposite to generosity, that's,
(25:41):
you know, totalitarianism. I hate to even use the word
fairness in any context in this because it's become such
a cliche rhetorical cliche of the left, because people have
an instinctive view of what fairness is from childhood on.
That is, everything should be fair. That's it least the ideal.
(26:01):
Whereas you know, being born with a better brain or
a worse brain, or a taller, good looking or talented
or whatever, that the difference among people is one hundred
percent fair. It's the very definition of fairness. Nothing has
been done by anybody to pervert the natural unfolding of it.
(26:24):
Nobody cheated anybody.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Right the Jefferson idea of just you go as far
as your talent and effort will take you.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Right exactly that it's there could be nothing more fair.
Then you get dealt a hand in life. And then
you've got to go from there with you know, the
help of the people around you and the people care
about you, and the government protecting your rights. That's why
the government exists, and off you go. Read Harrison Berger
(26:54):
on the Great Kurt Vonna Gets Short Story. If you
don't have a lot of time, read Thomas Soule a
Conflict Divisions. If you have more about this sort of thing.
But I hate and it breaks my heart that my
daughter is autistic and life will always be extremely difficult
for her. I hate that, I adore her, but I
(27:20):
wouldn't use the word unfair to describe that.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
It just is.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
I got kicked off of a jury before I made it,
the only time I've ever made it this far to
like actually get into the courtroom and they started, the
lawyer start asking me questions, and the question that got
me kicked out was looking back to the starting point
of your life where you've end up now, is it
more the circumstance you were born into or your life's choices.
(27:51):
And I went with life's choices, and that got me
kicked off the jury that I think life's choice is good,
bung fair good. Vocal fry from Ezrak Klein. I don't
know why socialism goes with vocal fry. I don't know
why those two things go together. But I still think
life choices have more to do with it than where
(28:11):
you were born, who you were born to in brain
power you have in terms where you're going to end
ultimately end up. And he obviously does not believe that.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Ya.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And then even if you agree with as recline, you're
still at the point.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Of how could the government fix that? Anyway?
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Well?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Right, And my response to all of it would be
so what, So now what are you going to do?
That is always the question at every moment of your life. Okay,
so now what are you going to do?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
So, speaking of.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Policy, and this is so incredibly important, Jack is afraid
it will vanish into the dustbin of history, and I
think he's probably right. But now, even for instance, the
New York Times is admitting keeping the schools closed was
a horrific idea and utterly unnecessary. I called it a
disaster before. No Mount Krakatoa covering your village in Lava
(29:04):
is a disaster. This was a crime, a partisan political crime,
and the victims were children in society as a whole, and.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
One of the worst things our government has ever done. Yes,
I would agree, absolutely, it was.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
It was like the internment of the Japanese or whatever.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
You could even make a case for that.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
The scientific case for keeping the little kids out of
school was null and void. Within a few months of
the beginning of COVID anyway, New York Times writing haying
the price school children in Massachusetts, Ohio and Pennsylvania are
still about a half year behind typical pre COVID reading levels.
In Florida and Michigan, the gap is about three quarters
of a year. In Maine, Oregon, and Vermont, for instance,
(29:43):
it's close to a full year. This morning, group academic
researchers released their latest report card on pandemic learning loss
and it shows a disappointingly slow recovery in almost every state.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
And maybe closures, yes, and maybe you're going to get
into this or they get into this, but that's just
measuring the learning without measuring the disruption to classes. We've
heard from lots of teachers of kids are different now.
They missed a couple of years of having to sit
there and pay attention and get homework done, and they
just they're not You can't get them back in the group.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
They don't really get into that.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
And I'm really glad you brought that up, because the
socio psychological damage to kids, hell, that might make the
reading scores look like you know, Irish school closures during
COVID set children back in most districts have not been
able to make up the lost ground, obviously, partly because kids,
when they're that young, they absorb information in a way
(30:37):
that I envy with every fiber of me. And you
can't just have them not do that for a while
and say all right, now we're going to do it
even more than usual. It's not the way kids work. Yeah,
does everybody not know that or whatever?
Speaker 3 (30:48):
But anyway, up until about age eight, your brain runs
about a thousand times faster it does after that. You
take a kid out of school for two years before
age eight, oh my god, you've done damage to them.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yes, it's a horrifying yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
So, and here we get into a couple of the
more interesting specific aspects of this. One other reason for
the lack of, you know, catching up progress is school absences.
The huge rise has continued long after COVID, says Thomas Kana,
Harvard Economists, member of the research team that we're going
to talk about a little bit, said, the pandemic may
(31:22):
have been the earthquake, but heightened absenteeism is that tsunami.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
And it's still rolling through school, right, that part, not
just not showing up to school, is still a problem.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
And as I've said many times, when the New York
Times isn't being just unforgivably idiotically biased, they actually do
some pretty good deep dive reporting and they look into
the state variations. According to a new report from scholars
at your big name universities comparing performances across states, I.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Hope you're not going to tell me that blue cities
and states even got poorer performance than red.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
I hope you're not gonna have come.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
I'm going to need you to sit down, needs you
to brace yourself. Michael Jack's about to need a bit hug,
all right. You know how he loves that from other males.
So today's report shares a wide variety of outcomes in
the states that have made up the most ground. They're
getting close to how they were doing five years ago,
but the overall picture is not good. And I will
(32:19):
skip some of the specific stats and get to what
they call the Blue Red divide. Political leaders in red
and blue America made different decisions during the pandemic. Gavin Newsom,
I'm looking at you, you lying monster. Chris Ker, child grooming scumback.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Because rage reads disdeath Santus and people like that wanted
kids to die for some reason.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
They enjoy stacks of dead children at their skulls.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Right exactly, Many schools in heavily democratic area stayed closed
for almost a year from the spring of twenty twenty
to the spring of twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
One, or longer. It was longer than that around here
cal Unicornia.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Yeah, in some Republican areas, by contrast, schools remain closed
only for the spring of twenty twenty and opened right up.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
And this helps explain a partisan gap in learning loss.
How do you get in this specific stass.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
I can't believe this wasn't more fairly reported on or
discussed or whatever. I use this example all the time
because I got it in my own life. I got
two schools seven miles apart, the public school and the
private school. My son's now in. The private school barely
shut down at all. The public school was closed for
like two years, and there were not I was joking,
(33:33):
There were not stacks of dead children everywhere.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
No our teachers, no, no, our teachers. The private school
was fine.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Now, how do you explain that, teachers union public schools,
How do you explain that that school's open over there,
And it's not like they got tons extra money for
some sort of special ventilation or something like that.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
What a joke.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Randy Weingarten, the head of the Big Teachers Union, who
is a demon from hell sent to punish us for
our sins, used it like a their unions did as leverage.
You want the kids back in? I can tell you
really really want the kids back in. You got to
give us more money. You got to give us more
of this, You got to give us more of that.
No than the kids stay home.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
I fully believe she was doing that and knew that,
and I honestly don't know how she sleeps at night.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
I don't because she has no conscience. She's a monster.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
You are a monster. You certainly don't care about children.
I mean, you're beyond not caring about them, fine with
them having awful lives if you can have more power,
You're a disgusting human being. But you know what she's like,
yah Ya Sinhlar of Hamas.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
She cares in children inso much as they are leverage,
just like Sinoar and Jmask here's about Palestinian citizens.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Deaths are leverage.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah, I put it in that category, but I know
plenty of teachers that that's not what their angle was.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
They believed the whole it was too dangerous to have
schools open. Thing for summer. Yeah, yeah, because Trump said
it was good to open them.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
The left went crazy explaining how incredibly unwise that would be,
and if there needed to be more horrifying irony for
the political left.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
All kids were hurt pretty badly. Poor kids were just decimated.
Armstrong and
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong, Joe, Katty Armstrong, and.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Joy and arms Strong Strong. I've got a pony in
the studio. It happened. I got a pony for Christmas.
And we're live. We're not live from the studio. See,
we're home with our presents. Well, we're live on Taylor.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
It's like authentic artificial cheese or what was the craft
a cheese product?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Cheese food. Get jesus, he's adjacent and we're live adjacent.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
The point is a lot of time in Trouble has
been taken to groom the following segments for your listening enjoyment.
It's the Armstrong and Getty replay.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Keep moving me in Countenances. Maybe I'll just stop and
relieve myself. Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
So this is one of the most fascinating things I've
read in the last several years. It is shockingly from
the Atlantic, which is just suffocatingly lefty these days. It
was written by a fellow by the name of Yannie
apple Bomb why Americans stopped moving houses and why that's
(01:27):
a very big problem. Actually, Yannie might be a woman.
I don't know, probably is. But the subtitle of it
is how Progressives Froze the American Dream. And I was
surprised to see that on the cover, but I dove in.
I'm gonna hit you with parts of it. Jack comment
like as much as you like, obviously, So the lead
is the idea that people should be able to choose
(01:47):
their own communities instead of being stuck where they are
born is a distinctly American innovation. It is the foundation
for the country's prosperity and democracy, and it just may
be America's most profound contribution.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
To the world.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I have been saying this for years. You have in California,
the Midwest, all kinds of places I've lived, was settled
by people who thought they could get a better deal here.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
No society has ever been as mobile as the United
States once was. No society has even come close. In
the nineteenth century, friends, the heyday of American mobility. Roughly
a third of all Americans changed addresses each year.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Wow a third each.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Year, they quote a couple of commentators of the day.
The American has devoured with a passion for locomotion, said
one French writer. He cannot stay in one place. Americans
moved far more often, over longer distances and to greater
advantage than did people in the lands from which they
had come. They described how in Europe that you stayed
on the land, you stayed in the town. People were
(02:46):
very suspicious of outsiders. We'll get to that. But over
the past fifty years, this engine of American opportunity has
stopped working. Americans have become less likely to move from
one state to another, to move within a state, or
going to switch residences within a city in the nineteen sixties.
Now remember it was about one in three in the
(03:07):
eighteen hundreds. The nineteen sixties, about one out of every
five Americans moved in any given year, down from one
in three in the nineteenth century, but a frenetic rate, nonetheless,
so one in five in the nineteen sixties. In twenty
twenty three, only one in thirteen Americans moved.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
That's unbelievable, the sharp decline in geog.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
You go ahead, sorry, Joe and I both moved a
lot for our radio careers, and I don't think it's
shocking to say the success of this project depended on it.
Wouldn't It have never happened without the willingness to like
move to that town, than to that town, to then
(03:49):
that town for opportunity, and probably it's a good time
for a disclaimer.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
We both were also raised by people who sought their
fortune in various ways.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Moved is necessary for career.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
My dad was in the military for a while and
then in the publishing industry, and we moved to fair
Mounta until we finally settled in Chicagoland. But so we
we can feel and appreciate that side.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Of the argument, not that it's an argument per se.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Somebody who's lived, you know, hometown, Mom and dad and
the cousins are always around. You have giant Sunday dinners
together on that sort of thing. Yeah, I get a
tear in my eye thinking about how wonderful that would be.
But like I've said many times, everything has a cost
and a benefit.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
You just have to decide, you know, what's for you anyway.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Reading on from Applebaum's piece, the sharp decline in geographic
mobility is the single most important social change in the
past half century, although other shifts have attracted far more attention.
In that same span, fewer Americans have started new businesses
and fewer Americans have switched jobs. From nineteen eighty five
to twenty fourteen, the share of people who have become
entrepreneurs fell by half.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Wh Wow, that is seriously troubling.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And then he gets into more Americans end up worse
off than their parents. I think part of that is
coming down from the high of the post WW two
American dominance that was just going to be hard to avoid.
But then he gets into how church membership is down
by a third since nineteen seventy, as is the share
of Americans who socialized several times a week. Membership in
any kind of group is half down by half. Well,
(05:23):
you know, the earth rates keep falling.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
One interesting aspect of the not being tied to your
local church and not socializing seems like that would make
you more mobile as opposed to less mobile. If you're
socializing and have a social network, that would be hard
to leave behind. If you don't socialize, what the hell
do you care? Go to the next down they got
a better job.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
The other side of that coin is really interesting, and
we're going to get to that in a bit, but
I'll skip to it. And I can relate to this
because Judy and I relocated four years ago. Something like that,
and it makes you more likely to want to go
out and meet people. Oh interesting, it up with the
discomfort of going to a new church or joining a club,
(06:03):
or you know, just for me jumping out a tea
time that had one opening and introducing myself and meeting
people because you want to make connections.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
And indeed that's what they found sociologically. That's interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
You know, it's kind of counterintuitive, but it made people
more sociable the fact that we moved all the time.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
And then there's an interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Political aspect to this, and I don't want to get
on a partisan thing because that's not what this about.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
This is about. I will just say that people who.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Felt anger and frustration at their financial situation tended to
vote more for Trump than Hillary, for instance, But the
number of those people who lived within a two hour
drive of where they grew up or had never even
left their hometown was.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Way more huge. It was a huge gap.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
The number of people who said I'm unhappy with my
financial life in my career, they were wildly disproportionately people
who had not relocated to seek their fortune.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
No, I don't want to make this partisan at all,
because I don't think it needs to be. But we
have been saying on this show for years, you know,
broadcasting out of California, people talking about how expensive it
is to live in San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Well, then move someplace cheaper. That's what I always did.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
If I didn't afford to live somewhere, I moved someplace cheaper,
rather than expect the government or somebody to come in
and make it cheaper so you can stay. Why does
the why do other taxpayers owe you the ability to
stay in a particular town.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
That's nuts, right, right?
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And just you know, you live your life the way
you see fit, and I will not judge you unless
you come.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I will harsh tax money, and I'll tell you to
your chapace.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I mean, we were very, very successful our first job
together in Wichita, but we knew economically speaking, we had
topped out and needed to go, you know, seek our
fortune elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
But a lot of people do that.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Anyway, this I wanted to get to this part and
then there's more on the general topic to come and
trust me.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
So interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
You've heard the expression moving day, right, I mean people
throw it around a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
It's funny.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
It's a term in golf. It's like the midway point
of a tournament. You got a chance to move off
blah blah blah. And so I'm familiar with the term
in that way. How do we How did I not
know this? How did all of us not know this?
The great holiday of America, when it was so nomadic,
was called Moving Day, observed by renters and landlords throughout
(08:29):
the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth with a
giant game of musical houses. Moving Day, they write, was
a festival of new hopes and new beginnings, of shattered
dreams and shattered crockery, quite as recognized today as Christmas.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Or the fourth of July. Wrote a Chicago newspaper in
eighteen eighty two.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
I as much as I read history, have never come
across this.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I know it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
It was primarily an urban thing, although many rural communities
and suburbans kind of had their own sort, and it varied.
It might be at or October first, but May first
was by far the most popular. Literally, everybody who is
renting a home, and the vast majority of people rented
home ownership was way way lower than it is right now.
(09:14):
The vast majority of people would move on Moving Day,
every year, or almost every year. Nothing quite so astonished
visitors from abroad as the spectacle of thousands upon thousands
of people picking up and swapping homes in a single day.
For months before moving day, Americans prepared for the occasion.
(09:35):
Tenants gave notice to the landlords, a received word of
the new rent. Then followed a frenzied period of house
hunting as people, generally women, scouted for a new place
to live that would in some respect improve upon the
old quote they want more room, or they want as
much room for less rent, or they want a better location,
or they want some convenience.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Not heretofore enjoyed.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
The Topeka Daily Capital summarized, these were months of general anticipation.
Cities and towns were a lot with excitement. So if
you've ever seen one of those street scenes from back
in the day where everybody's got like they're junk.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Piled on wagons, that was moving day.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
And the point of putting that in the article, obviously
is to just point out that the cultural attitude about
moving was so much different. And as we've said, every
part of this country, people coming out west, starting in
the very very eastern part of the country, and the
(10:32):
colonies and spreading to you know, when when the wild
West was Ohio and Kentucky, and then going further and
further for a better opportunity. And now not to be
too disparaging of various industries and people, because I understand,
like Joe said, I fully understand why it'd be awesome
to stay in your hometown where you grow up and
(10:54):
have your kids go to the same school and you know,
all your family and friends. I got I would love that.
But the idea that coal mining goes away and you're
gonna stay in the same dead town that's never gonna come.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Back is nuts.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, it's nuts in terms of the history of this
country or you know, working for General Motors in whatever
town in Michigan or whatever. If something's gone away, then
you got to move to a different town where the
new industry is. That's what everybody has done forever in
this country. And yeah, pointing out that that's gone away
and now we're like Europe where you do plan to
(11:33):
stay in the town your family is from for generations,
which again I understand the appeal.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Sure, Yeah, one charming anecdote from this which I can't find,
but I can paragraph a paraphrase. They mentioned that in Europe,
indeed you stay in the same place, very insulur, and
that newcomers would simply cause a more subdivision of the
goods and services and land available there. So newcomers were
like a bad thing, whereas in America it was such
(12:02):
a constant that the idea of a stranger went from
a threat to literally Americans would say.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Hello, stranger.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
You're not from around here, are you, And it was
not a term of suspicion, it was a term of greeting.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
That's really interesting, and I don't think good for the country.
Armstrong an update on my Ukrainian girlfriend. If you've been
following this, well, if you haven't been following this saga,
a quick background, so you know my email has been
hacked like yours has a million times. All kinds of
(12:39):
people have your email address and some bad actor is
trying to get me involved in a scam, like happens
all the time, but in.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
This case it love as a scam.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
In this case that somebody portrayed themselves as a young
Ukrainian woman who like immediately was in love with me just.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Because of my email address or something like that.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Jack Armstrong.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
And she writes in funny ways. I guess you would
if you don't, you're not a native English speaker. She's Ukrainian.
She says things like jack, my precious diamond love you
know that sort of thing, and how much she loves me.
And she sends pictures. The weird thing is all the
pictures are like different girls. She looks different than the
different pictures. But anyway, she's like lady gay guys. She's
(13:21):
constantly reinventing herself. So what I was wondering is what
was the scam? What's the scam? Is it gonna be
the as she asks for money? Does she get to
try to get me to click on a link? She
did send me like voice memos if you would like
to hear my voice? How beautiful it is? You know
here it is, so there was something to click on.
I did not click on it. And I've been like
(13:42):
sending one word replies or a one sentence replies every
now and then. You know, I've been thinking of you
all night. You know, how are you that sort of thing? Wow,
good Man waiting waiting for the scam? I just wondered,
what which kind of scam this is? Well Hanson came
up with the idea of scam her first. Tell her
you have had a medical emergency and need five thousand dollars,
(14:04):
or you're in jail or whatever it's going to be,
ask her for money. But we decided to lead up
to that, and so I had sent this email two
days ago. You were on my mind the entire weekend.
I really want to see you, my buttercup, and I
really want to see you. Who is gonna be followed
by I have almost all the money I need for
a plane ticket. I just need five hundred dollars more
(14:26):
or something like that. But her response shocked me. All
my kisses for you, Jack, exclamation point, exclamation point. If
you really want to have a relationship with me, please
answer all the letters I wrote to you and all
my questions another way. Please do not disturb me anymore.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
She actually like, if you're not gonna actually email me
back and participate in this relationship, I want out, is
the way she responded, which is surprising to me.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Wow, she replied, if I might, don't build me up, Buttercup,
just to let me down.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
To quote the old Motownish song.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
So I don't know what the thing now, but that's
a weird scam. Oh no, no, that's it's good. It's smart.
She's trying to convince you of her sincerity. So that's
supposed to make me as a really pathetic, sad, lonely,
perhaps mentally ill person. Oh no, I'm in jeopardy of
losing this.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yes, yeah, yeah, I've got to be serious about this.
I've got to treat this girl like she deserves to
be treated. Yes, God, I got to answer all our questions.
I don't want to answer all our questions. He had
a lot of questions about, like, you know, what's your
favorite movie or flower or whatever.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
You know the way, you know, the way women are
with their questions while you're trying to watch TV.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Did you have a comment, Katie.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
No, it just sounds like she's totally trying to guilt
you into keeping this going.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Oh okay, gotcha.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
And I heavily think you should answer all of the
questions and continue this because this is fantastic entertaining.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
God, we've only been together for two weeks and already
it's then. And why didn't she answer my question? Who
was working? Do you know what you did? Yeah? Exactly? Okay, Well,
I guess I'll respond.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I really want to know what the ask is going
to be. When she's really to be small small.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Ish, I can't remember what the term for it is,
but she will need a pitdlling amount of money.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
She will keep her five dollars. It's either a bot
or some you know, criminal gang. It's not some buarded guy.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
In his mom's basement.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah, yeah, that's more likely some port bastard and slaved
in Southeast Asia being.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Forced to do this. Well, because that's what a lot
of that is. That's not romantic, that's not my buttercup.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Yes, Skatie, Yeah, I think it'll be a small amount,
but for something that's very serious, she'll create some major
crisis and just be like, this is all I need,
though in order to fix it, and then it's going
to grow from there.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Look at it like a series of interviews. The you
responded was the first interview. We've looked at your resume
and it's pretty attractive. We'd like you to come back
for a second interview. The second interview is the can
we lure this guy into sending forty dollars on some pretext?
And if that happens, then you get the full court press.
They bring in their real pros. I am her precious Rose.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
At least that's what she says the Armstrong and Getty Show. Yeah, Marjah,
your show, podcasts and our hot links.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
So I mentioned this last week and we never got
around to it. I'm glad we are now and I'm
looking forward to Joe's reaction to this. So this is
Ezra Kline of The New York Times on Lex Friedman's
podcast from a couple of weeks ago. And Lex Friedman's
an interesting guy if you've never heard his podcasts. First
of all, they're all two to four hours long, and
I don't know who listens to those old things. But
(17:49):
he has people on of all different kinds of political
stripes and worldviews and stuff like that, and he just
wants to hear what they think. And he opened with
this great question for Ezra Kline of the New York Times.
You don't know his act.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
He is a.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Columnist, writer, liberal progressive, not a bomb chucker though that's
just his I mean, he's a really smart he's an intellectual,
but he's a progressive. And Lex had him on to
say the first question was basically lay out the progressive
point of view or the democrat point of view of
(18:23):
the worldview. And I thought, Okay, this is fantastic. I'm
going to hear this from a smart guy. And I thought,
I am going to listen to this podcast in my
earbudgs as I was like doing laundry or something like that,
and I thought, I am going to, like, in a
relax manner, listen to this, see if I can find
any common ground, Like fully understand you know where they're
(18:44):
coming from, right, not the cable news version, but like
the intellectual version of how they see the world.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
And I didn't make it more than like thirty seconds.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Before I said out loud in my bedroom, Oh, you've
got to be effing kidding me.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So this is how it went.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
You can define the left in different ways. I think
the left has a couple fundamental views. One is that
life is unfair. We are born with different talents, We
are born into different nations, right. The luck of being
born into America is right, different than the luck of
being born into Venezuela. We are born into different families.
(19:23):
We have luck operating as an ominive presence across our
entire lives, and as such, the people for whom it
works out. Well, we don't deserve all of that. We
got lucky. I mean, we also worked hard, and we
also had talent, and we also applied that talent. But
at a very fundamental level, that we are sitting here
(19:43):
is unfair, and that so many other people are in
conditions that are much worse, much more precarious, much more exploited,
is unfair. And one of the fundamental roles of government
should not necessarily be to turn that unfairness in to
perfect equality, but to rectify that unfairness into a kind
(20:04):
of universal dignity, right, so people can have lives of flourishing.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
So I'd say that's one thing. He has a very
low voice for a child. Yeah, I'll hold back for now.
I see what you mean. Though my eyes were wide.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
You don't deserve that, That's what I said in my bedroom.
Oh you gotta be effing kidding me. Wow.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Well, and I want to hear the next part, obviously,
But he kind of denied his own purpose there at
the end, And we're not trying to come up with
some perfect equality.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
But yeah, let's hear a little more and then we
can discuss.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
The left is fundamentally more skeptical of capitalism and part
of the unchecked forms of capitalism than the right. I
would think this is hard to talk about because what
we call unchecked capitalism is nevertheless very much supported by government.
So I think in a way you have both, like
are things that are enforced by government, Whether they are
you know, how you set the rules of them is
what ends up different between the left and the right.
(21:06):
But the left tends to be more worried about the
fact that you could get rich building coal fired power
plants belching pollution into the air, and you could get
rich laying down solar panels, and the market doesn't know
the difference between the two. And so there's a set
of goals about regulating the unchecked potential of capitalism that
(21:29):
also relates to sort of exploitation of workers. There's like
very fundamental questions about how much people get paid, how
much power they have. Again, the rectification of economic and
other forms of power is very fundamental to the left.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So it reminded me, of course, when Obama said, you
didn't build that, that attitude, and I thought, okay, as
Ezra client just laying that out a little more clearly.
I heard a podcast with this guy. He's got the
most famous economics podcast in America.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
I can't remember what his name is, but.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Anyway, and he's he leans left, but he his uh,
his take on the whole. Okay, even if you've got
a situation where where you like, in the most blatant example,
it's not fair that this person, you know, they're born
with a better brain. Their parents got him a tutor,
(22:26):
they had connections to get him into a better school.
Whatever it is versus someone else, how is the government
going to weigh in to fix it? He said?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Even if I buy.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
All the lack of fairness, in what sense could you
structure a government that's gonna even that out that doesn't
do more harm than good?
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Well, exactly that The last phrase is the key one.
And it is interesting to me to hear somebody who's
obviously fairly intelligent, like Ezra Klein, be so narrow in
his vision, so incredibly unwise to not recognize that if
you empower somebody. I was gonna summarize his creed with
as the following, I'm so smart, I and people like
(23:06):
me should be in charge of everything because we will.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Make it good.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
But a guy who is reasonably intelligent to lack the
wisdom to see that a government empowered to right all
of these pique un wrongs or equalize somehow or other,
even if not a perfect equality, but like getting us
halfway there, that government would be so awesome and not
(23:32):
in the modern word like causing awe and horror, so
powerful and monumentally huge.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
It would be terrifying. How do you miss that?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
As, Oh no, we would just do the good things,
not the bad stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Well, right, and then.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
The problem being that where you draw the line between
unfair advantages that people didn't earn and choices that you make,
Because lots of people make really really bad.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Choices in life.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
I've made bad choices in life that damaged me a lot,
and some people keep doing them. I don't dismiss the idea.
It's like I haven't told my story about the uber
driver I.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Had the other day. Maybe I'll do that for the
podcast today.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
But I was thinking, in that trip, which was really sketchy,
that this poor guy is never going to be able
to do very well in life. So I got a
better brain than he did. That is unfair, that's not
his fault, it's not my credit. But then he got
all the life choices that people make, And I've seen
so many smart people make horrible life choices. What is
(24:37):
the government gonna do to even out results there?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
And I've known the proverbial c student.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Oh yeah, absolutely, and I'm not gonna go with the
old trope that but they're very straight smart and blah
blah blah. No, I've known some people who aren't very bright,
but they make good, sound moral decision after decision and
fitted quite nicely from those decisions. Anyway, what makes a
(25:05):
person though again in the morning and want to.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Pursue the idea of that person has more than that person.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
We need to get them closer together. What is that well?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
And the means that they use to pursue that goal
or are often horrible from my point of view. I mean,
if you have a charitable view of the world and
you think I ought to do something to help those people,
you have my full blessing until it becomes And what
I am going to do is, at the point of
the government's gun, take money from people and compel them
to do these things, because that's the opposite to generosity, that's,
(25:41):
you know, totalitarianism. I hate to even use the word
fairness in any context in this because it's become such
a cliche rhetorical cliche of the left, because people have
an instinctive view of what fairness is from childhood on.
That is, everything should be fair. That's it least the ideal.
(26:01):
Whereas you know, being born with a better brain or
a worse brain, or a taller, good looking or talented
or whatever, that the difference among people is one hundred
percent fair. It's the very definition of fairness. Nothing has
been done by anybody to pervert the natural unfolding of it.
(26:24):
Nobody cheated anybody.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Right the Jefferson idea of just you go as far
as your talent and effort will take you.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Right exactly that it's there could be nothing more fair.
Then you get dealt a hand in life. And then
you've got to go from there with you know, the
help of the people around you and the people care
about you, and the government protecting your rights. That's why
the government exists, and off you go. Read Harrison Berger
(26:54):
on the Great Kurt Vonna Gets Short Story. If you
don't have a lot of time, read Thomas Soule a
Conflict Divisions. If you have more about this sort of thing.
But I hate and it breaks my heart that my
daughter is autistic and life will always be extremely difficult
for her. I hate that, I adore her, but I
(27:20):
wouldn't use the word unfair to describe that.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
It just is.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
I got kicked off of a jury before I made it,
the only time I've ever made it this far to
like actually get into the courtroom and they started, the
lawyer start asking me questions, and the question that got
me kicked out was looking back to the starting point
of your life where you've end up now, is it
more the circumstance you were born into or your life's choices.
(27:51):
And I went with life's choices, and that got me
kicked off the jury that I think life's choice is good,
bung fair good. Vocal fry from Ezrak Klein. I don't
know why socialism goes with vocal fry. I don't know
why those two things go together. But I still think
life choices have more to do with it than where
(28:11):
you were born, who you were born to in brain
power you have in terms where you're going to end
ultimately end up. And he obviously does not believe that.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Ya.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And then even if you agree with as recline, you're
still at the point.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Of how could the government fix that? Anyway?
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Well?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Right, And my response to all of it would be
so what, So now what are you going to do?
That is always the question at every moment of your life. Okay,
so now what are you going to do?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
So, speaking of.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Policy, and this is so incredibly important, Jack is afraid
it will vanish into the dustbin of history, and I
think he's probably right. But now, even for instance, the
New York Times is admitting keeping the schools closed was
a horrific idea and utterly unnecessary. I called it a
disaster before. No Mount Krakatoa covering your village in Lava
(29:04):
is a disaster. This was a crime, a partisan political crime,
and the victims were children in society as a whole, and.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
One of the worst things our government has ever done. Yes,
I would agree, absolutely, it was.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
It was like the internment of the Japanese or whatever.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
You could even make a case for that.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
The scientific case for keeping the little kids out of
school was null and void. Within a few months of
the beginning of COVID anyway, New York Times writing haying
the price school children in Massachusetts, Ohio and Pennsylvania are
still about a half year behind typical pre COVID reading levels.
In Florida and Michigan, the gap is about three quarters
of a year. In Maine, Oregon, and Vermont, for instance,
(29:43):
it's close to a full year. This morning, group academic
researchers released their latest report card on pandemic learning loss
and it shows a disappointingly slow recovery in almost every state.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
And maybe closures, yes, and maybe you're going to get
into this or they get into this, but that's just
measuring the learning without measuring the disruption to classes. We've
heard from lots of teachers of kids are different now.
They missed a couple of years of having to sit
there and pay attention and get homework done, and they
just they're not You can't get them back in the group.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
They don't really get into that.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
And I'm really glad you brought that up, because the
socio psychological damage to kids, hell, that might make the
reading scores look like you know, Irish school closures during
COVID set children back in most districts have not been
able to make up the lost ground, obviously, partly because kids,
when they're that young, they absorb information in a way
(30:37):
that I envy with every fiber of me. And you
can't just have them not do that for a while
and say all right, now we're going to do it
even more than usual. It's not the way kids work. Yeah,
does everybody not know that or whatever?
Speaker 3 (30:48):
But anyway, up until about age eight, your brain runs
about a thousand times faster it does after that. You
take a kid out of school for two years before
age eight, oh my god, you've done damage to them.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yes, it's a horrifying yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
So, and here we get into a couple of the
more interesting specific aspects of this. One other reason for
the lack of, you know, catching up progress is school absences.
The huge rise has continued long after COVID, says Thomas Kana,
Harvard Economists, member of the research team that we're going
to talk about a little bit, said, the pandemic may
(31:22):
have been the earthquake, but heightened absenteeism is that tsunami.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
And it's still rolling through school, right, that part, not
just not showing up to school, is still a problem.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
And as I've said many times, when the New York
Times isn't being just unforgivably idiotically biased, they actually do
some pretty good deep dive reporting and they look into
the state variations. According to a new report from scholars
at your big name universities comparing performances across states, I.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Hope you're not going to tell me that blue cities
and states even got poorer performance than red.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
I hope you're not gonna have come.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
I'm going to need you to sit down, needs you
to brace yourself. Michael Jack's about to need a bit hug,
all right. You know how he loves that from other males.
So today's report shares a wide variety of outcomes in
the states that have made up the most ground. They're
getting close to how they were doing five years ago,
but the overall picture is not good. And I will
(32:19):
skip some of the specific stats and get to what
they call the Blue Red divide. Political leaders in red
and blue America made different decisions during the pandemic. Gavin Newsom,
I'm looking at you, you lying monster. Chris Ker, child grooming scumback.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Because rage reads disdeath Santus and people like that wanted
kids to die for some reason.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
They enjoy stacks of dead children at their skulls.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Right exactly, Many schools in heavily democratic area stayed closed
for almost a year from the spring of twenty twenty
to the spring of twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
One, or longer. It was longer than that around here
cal Unicornia.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Yeah, in some Republican areas, by contrast, schools remain closed
only for the spring of twenty twenty and opened right up.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
And this helps explain a partisan gap in learning loss.
How do you get in this specific stass.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
I can't believe this wasn't more fairly reported on or
discussed or whatever. I use this example all the time
because I got it in my own life. I got
two schools seven miles apart, the public school and the
private school. My son's now in. The private school barely
shut down at all. The public school was closed for
like two years, and there were not I was joking,
(33:33):
There were not stacks of dead children everywhere.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
No our teachers, no, no, our teachers. The private school
was fine.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Now, how do you explain that, teachers union public schools,
How do you explain that that school's open over there,
And it's not like they got tons extra money for
some sort of special ventilation or something like that.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
What a joke.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Randy Weingarten, the head of the Big Teachers Union, who
is a demon from hell sent to punish us for
our sins, used it like a their unions did as leverage.
You want the kids back in? I can tell you
really really want the kids back in. You got to
give us more money. You got to give us more
of this, You got to give us more of that.
No than the kids stay home.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
I fully believe she was doing that and knew that,
and I honestly don't know how she sleeps at night.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
I don't because she has no conscience. She's a monster.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
You are a monster. You certainly don't care about children.
I mean, you're beyond not caring about them, fine with
them having awful lives if you can have more power,
You're a disgusting human being. But you know what she's like,
yah Ya Sinhlar of Hamas.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
She cares in children inso much as they are leverage,
just like Sinoar and Jmask here's about Palestinian citizens.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Deaths are leverage.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah, I put it in that category, but I know
plenty of teachers that that's not what their angle was.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
They believed the whole it was too dangerous to have
schools open. Thing for summer. Yeah, yeah, because Trump said
it was good to open them.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
The left went crazy explaining how incredibly unwise that would be,
and if there needed to be more horrifying irony for
the political left.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
All kids were hurt pretty badly. Poor kids were just decimated.
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