July 2, 2024 • 40 mins
Ever wondered how something as simple as a gradient puzzle could transform your day? Find out in this episode as we celebrate the zen-like qualities of gradient puzzles and their unique ability to relax and center your mind. Then, join us as we toast an extraordinary academic milestone: our guest's insightful paper on compassionate principalism in bioethics has been accepted by a prestigious journal. Discover how integrating compassion into healthcare could revolutionize the way we treat pain and suffering, offering a more holistic approach to medical ethics.
Ever thought printing more money could solve national debt? Think again. We break down why this common misconception is flawed and explore the real driving forces behind national debt—policies that have favored the wealthy since the 1980s. This discussion not only debunks the household debt analogy but also highlights the societal and geopolitical consequences of national borrowing. Learn why the issue isn’t just about government overspending, but rather how wealth disparity and tax policies have shaped our current financial landscape.
Why has national debt become a tool for enriching the wealthy rather than addressing public needs? We take a deep dive into the historical tax rates and the growing influence of money in politics, revealing how these factors contribute to political gridlock. With insights into potential solutions like ranked choice voting and reflections on the pandemic response, we offer a comprehensive look at how to tackle these entrenched issues. Plus, hear our critical review of Noah Fisher's "Economics 102" podcast for more perspectives on economic stability. Join us for a thought-provoking journey through the complexities of national debt, enriched by our guest's expert insights and timely reflections on upcoming 4th of July celebrations.
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Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.
Email: solutionsfromthemultiverse@gmail.com
Adam: @ajbraus - braus@hey.com
Scot: @scotmaupin
adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)
Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
I am excited about some recent purchases.
Tell me this is a thing I cantalk about, because I I guess I
think this is normal, but otherpeople find it weird.
But I told you a little bitabout it.
I like puzzles and I only doone kind of puzzle.
I do gradient puzzles now.
So it's just one big field ofcolor shifting slightly or
(00:30):
shifting to another color.
So, like I've, I've done a few,but so you've?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
you've limited yourself to just gradient
puzzles.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Well, those are the ones I like, yes.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Those are the only ones.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I've done for a while , but like that's, this is what
I've got coming up.
I have this blue one that I'mshowing you.
It's got blue to blue, it's asquare.
And then this other one that Ijust got today I was very
excited about is pink to yellow.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I don't know why yellow yeah, that's all it is.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
It's just colors.
I mean, it's as basic as itsounds that wild but it is like
a meditation, just sitting thereand taking the pieces and
you're yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
In some ways it's sort of easy right, because you
just have to look for the nextpuzzle piece in the direction of
the gradient.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, everything is only going to fit one spot on
the map.
Right, right is only going tofit one spot on the map, right,
right.
So in some ways it's aboutsorting through and just
discerning what the most yellowor the most pink is and like
trying to figure it out.
But it, yeah, it's.
It's also.
It just distills it down toshape and color.
That's really just the essenceof it, and you're not worried
(01:42):
about like I gotta put this facetogether or I'm trying to put
this car together.
Right, it's just color andshape.
But it's just relaxing.
It's very nice to do whileyou're listening to something or
watching something.
It's fun.
I say this because I know yourpartner is also a puzzle person,
so I recommend to her sometimeto try out one of these, cause
(02:05):
they are enjoyable.
Surprisingly.
I don't think I would haveknown that before I tried one,
but I was looking for hardpuzzles and I stumbled into this
gradient puzzle thing and I waslike, oh, that's surprisingly
relaxing and meditative.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
That's wild.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, that's really wild.
Yeah, it's crazy.
Yeah, that's really wild.
Well, I have not been doingvery many puzzles recently, or
painting, which to me, paintingis just like puzzle.
A painting is basically a bigpuzzle, okay, you have to kind
(02:45):
of like put the right colorswhere they belong, except for
you make every piece by hand.
That's sort of what a paintingis right.
So I haven't been doing verymany paintings, I don't know.
I think I'm more interested inmy um, my phd, writing stuff
that kind of takes all mycreative energies.
Which big news got one of my,my first paper accepted, sweet.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Very nice.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Congratulations by a pretty major journal, actually
Not a top, top, top tier journal, but second tier.
So you think it's not Harvard,but it's, like you know,
University of Pennsylvania orsomething.
Like it's still up there, verycool.
So yeah, it was actually prettyamazing, my kind of advisor guy
.
You could discern his amazementwhen I told him.
(03:28):
I think he was like, wow, I didnot expect it to go through.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So do we get to know what the topic of the paper is,
or is that later you know?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
we were talking about it last episode or two episodes
ago.
Oh, the new shirts with noarmpits.
Okay, that's what the wholething you're gonna.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
You're doing a phd on armpit.
You're like okay, so I havesweaty armpits.
Go with don't where.
Where's everyone going?
Why are they?
What?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
my ted talk of sweaty armpits can you get a phd in
fashion?
I guess art phd in art fashionmaybe, maybe that's what I'm
getting, so I should be able toget it.
You're getting a PhD in fashion.
Well, because of the armpits,that's one of my part of my.
The key thing, no, it's themisery stuff.
It's the misery, you know ifyou want Misericordianism.
(04:17):
Yeah, misericordianism, if youwant to like.
We talked about an ethic thatdoesn't require God and is based
on evolution and neurobiology.
That's kind of what we talkedabout before.
This paper was not about thatpart of it.
This paper was about applyingit to bioethics.
So like basically saying that,yeah, basically there's a theory
(04:40):
of bioethics that's verypopular called principalism, and
I sort of offered like thatthere are problems with
principalism and that we couldsolve some of those problems if
we adopted compassion as part ofthe principalism.
And if you add compassion toprincipalism, you create what I
call compassionate principalismand then you can still do
(05:01):
principalism the same way asthey do it every day, but you
add this compassion piece to tryto minimize suffering and it
solves a bunch of the problemswith traditional principalism
and they seem to really likethat.
Take that sort of compassionateprincipalism.
Take it should make it so thathealth care is delivered with
more justice and with morerespect to people's pain and
(05:22):
suffering.
Both sound like good things.
Yeah, so a reduction of painand suffering Both sound like
good things.
Yeah, so a reduction of painand suffering is a good idea.
But, yeah, so that was a bigcelebration for today and sure,
on this podcast I talked aboutthe idea of minimizing suffering
as an ethical principle acouple times, and so I'll just.
Some people are gettinginterested in it who are not
(05:43):
just wackos like me.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Okay, that's good, but hey we're going, but today
we're, we're, we're coming up onthe 4th of july here it is true
, in a couple days from when wedrop this, it'll be the 4th of
july.
Do you have?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
any big plans for the 4th fireworks?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
nothing, yet we're pre-recording barbecue I don't
even plan much more than a weekout.
But no, I no.
I'm sure I'll have hot dogs.
I'm sure I'll have a hot dog.
Any excuse to have a hot dog.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
All right, don't choke.
A really good hot dog man goesa long way.
Like you've ever had wholefoods like their beef hot dogs
from whole foods they're amazing.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I have not I mean, I recommend everyone loves the.
Uh the raymond costco hot dogis the classic.
Oh, the costco hot I dog.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I thought you were going to say everyone loves
Raymond.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Well, I don't know, raymond, but I was going to say,
oh, everyone loves Ray.
Wait, raymond, the show.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Wait, are we doing a mandala effect?
Was it always everyone?
Speaker 1 (06:36):
loves Ray.
Is it called?
Everyone Loves Raymond.
That's not the name of the show, was it?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I've seen zero episodes was it?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
yeah, I think so.
I've seen zero episodes, yeahraymond.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Everyone loves raymond, okay, all right,
whatever mine, maybe in yourmandala.
Oh, it's ray romano.
Yeah, but no one ever calledhim raymond romano.
That's maybe where I'm gettingthat's true everyone does love
raymond romano call me, raymond.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So today in in uh, you know, thinking about the
fourth of july I, I put togethera nationalistic solution.
Oh cool, this is never going togo wrong.
No, it's going to be great.
So, this is a solution to thenational debt.
Okay, do we have one of thosethe national debt.
I thought we were all square.
(07:18):
What no have?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
we had one like is it just recent or have we had it
for a while?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
We've had it for a goodly amount of time.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
It's like is it just recent or have we had it for a
while?
We've had it for a goodlyamount of time.
It's only 34 trillion dollars.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Oh, I thought it was going to be something I should
worry about.
Only 34 trill, that's not a bigdeal.
I just googled the nationaldebt.
It says 34 trillion.
Is it really that much?
Yeah, 34.6 trillion the totalamount of outstanding a total
amount of outstanding borrowingby the us federal government,
accumulated over the nation'shistory.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I love that you just threw a 0.6 on there and that
0.6 represents $600 billion.
You're like yeah, 30, no 0.6.
And I'm like, oh yeah, that'sjust a little bit more.
Wait, no, wait, it's a lot more.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
So the GDP of the United States is $25.4 trillion.
Okay, so we just have to do twoyears of spending, of saving,
and then we're good.
Yeah, does nobody buy anythingfor two years?
So so the important thing whenyou're thinking about the
national debt, I mean bignumbers sound big but there's
(08:17):
like inflation and da da, da, dada, and so what you have to do
is actually compare to topercentage of GDP.
That's the most accurate way tothink about the amount of debt
are we in Like, are we in toomuch debt or too little?
There's no way to say just fromthe number.
The better way to look at it islike you do it as a percentage
of GDP.
So if you look at the chart ofpercentage of GDP, you can see
(08:42):
it looks like a big bow, like abig bow shape, and at the very
top on the left side, in thepast was 1946.
We had just fought World War IIand we had taken out national
debt to be about a hundredpercent of GDP.
So we had about a hundredpercent of GDP debt size right
(09:03):
after World War II.
We had just fought for fouryears and defeated the Nazis.
Okay, then it drops way downand by 1975, it's like 30% of
GDP.
And then it crawls back up fromthe 80s all the way up.
It kind of goes like this inhumps All the way up to 2020,
it's above 100% gdp.
(09:25):
So now it's it.
Now it's at 120 percent of gdp.
Okay, so we?
So it's as if we just foughtworld war ii, but we didn't
fight world war ii.
We just are living our liveslike normal people, okay.
So, solution to this debt.
(09:46):
I can provide a solution, okay.
Okay, we just have to printmore money.
I understand how this works.
That would work actually.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
We make dollar bills.
What do we print up?
33 trillion of them.
And then just pass it on.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
But hand them over to the bank and say we are square
now, Right.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
That's right, and not just to the bank, but to all
the people who, who own, who ownof course, yeah, these are no
dollars that's right, so there's.
There's what I think the keything.
There's a lot of different waysthat people talk about to, to,
to, to fix the national debt.
Right, there's, but I think thekey thing that we have to do is
(10:31):
we have to think about thenational debt in a different way
than people generally do.
So I think people generallythink about the national debt as
if, well, the government's beenspending too much and then
therefore borrowing, borrowing,needing to borrow more than it,
more than it should, right,right, that's kind of how people
talk about it.
Wow, we're spending too muchmoney and so we're borrowing,
(10:54):
we're living beyond our meansand therefore we'll, we're
destined to live beneath ourmeans.
That's kind of like ron paul'sthing that he says sure, I love
ron paul, but you know that.
But I don't actually agree withthis.
But this is sort of the commonway of thinking about it, and
the reason why we think of itthis way is because we think of
the government like a household,like if you or I just were like
(11:15):
racking up more on our creditcard than we could make in a
year, that would be bad.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Eventually it would catch up to us right.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, it would be really bad, but the government's
not a household for a number ofreasons, and so those kind of
intuitive ways of thinking aboutit are not correct.
I still think it's a bad thingthat the national debt is this
high, but it's bad for adifferent reason than people
(11:43):
think it's not bad because, youknow, someday the government's
going to have to pay its creditcard bill, the way that you and
I would eventually have to payour credit card bills.
That's not why it's bad.
It's bad for other reasons.
And that has to do with what itcauses in terms of societal
problems and also geopoliticalproblems.
That's really kind of the badthings about it, but it's not
(12:03):
analogous to a household,exactly, um.
So let me put it this way,though the key thing we have to
understand is the only reason wehave a national debt is because
national debt is just a way tofor the rich to avoid paying
taxes that's all it is.
That's all it is for me why yeah, so when we fought World War II
(12:23):
, we actually needed to fightWorld War II and so we needed to
print a bunch of bonds, a bunchof debt, and sell them to the
American people.
And the American people boughtthem because they wanted to
fight the war and so that debtwas actually to to the american
people and then, over the youknow, 1946 down to the 75, there
(12:47):
were high taxes that paid backthat debt to the american people
.
Okay, what you see in 1980,like early 1980s, is you start
to see the, the lowering oftaxes, and especially the
lowering of taxes on the wealthy, and the exact proportion to
the lowering of taxes on thewealthy and the exact proportion
(13:07):
to the lowering of taxes on thewealthy right is the national
debt.
That's what it is.
So you have to think of it thisway you and I, normal people,
you and me, working people whoare listening to this, who just
work we pay taxes, right, sure,and then do you ever get that
money like back?
(13:27):
No, it just goes to thegovernment.
You might get services and youknow the benefit of the
government, but you don't getany money back, right, right,
okay, if you're very wealthy,you just buy bonds.
That's essentially taxes thatnow you get paid back with
interest from the government,taxes that now you get paid back
(13:49):
with interest from thegovernment.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Okay, wouldn't you like to be paid back your taxes
with interest?
Well, don't?
I have the option to buy bondstoo, but in addition of paying,
taxes.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Oh, I see, but the wealthy have been saying for
since the 80s, since when westarted to have a bad national
debt, the wealthy have beensaying lower taxes on us and
then they've been buying thebonds, which means they've
essentially said, instead oftaking our money and not giving
us anything in return, take ourmoney but give us it in return
(14:15):
with interest.
So that's all the national debtis.
The national debt is just the,the taxes that we should have
been charging rich people sincethe 80s yeah, that's all it is.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
That's all it is, it's not.
It's not like stuff we borrowedfrom other countries or we sell
it to chinese people.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
We, you know, with the chinese government, we sell
it around, we, we sell it allaround.
But but if we, if we tax thewealthy, we wouldn't have any,
we wouldn't need any of it.
I got no complaints.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah, I feel like a lot of the wealthy we wouldn't
need any of it.
I got no complaints.
Yeah, I feel like a lot of thewealthy don't pay, like we were
talking about the flatpercentage or not a flat tax,
but like where?
The like, if you have moremoney, you pay more.
And that sliding percentage, oh, when we were talking about
workday fines, yeah, and I waslike so you could do workday tax
and you're like, well, theyalready pay that, but I, but I
(15:06):
think they get out of payingtheir taxes a lot, and this is
what I'm talking about.
Like this, the wealthy the.
The idea is, if you have likesmart money people, they can get
you to pay virtually nothing inactual taxes.
When it comes down to it, whenyou should be contributing under
FDR's America, you would becontributing a lot more and then
(15:26):
we would just have a lot moremoney as a group.
But then people are like it'sfine that the government doesn't
have more money because theywould do bad things with it,
which might be true, but theycan do nothing without any money
.
So it's right.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
So, just like you said, is exactly what's been
proven recently, which is thatthe you know we think we have a
progressive taxation system.
Everyone says, well, there'sprogressive taxes.
If I make more money, then someof that money goes into a
higher tax bracket.
I pay higher taxes on it, andthe presumption for normal
people like you and me is thatthat's just like kind of a
smooth sort of stepwise ladderall the way up to the absolute
(16:03):
most wealthy people.
Sure right, yeah, that it's somesort of yeah, but the reality
is that tops out at the highestwage earners, like $300,000,
$400,000 a year wage earners andthen after that there's a
completely different taxstructure where, in effect,
people wealthier than that, likewealthier than the wealthiest
doctors and lawyers and business, you know, executives, people
(16:26):
wealthier than that pay actuallynow less percentage of their of
their income than normal peoplelike you and me, working stiffs
.
You know, and this has beenshown, uh, in multiple places,
it's been reported on, not justby some sort of you know, oh, I
don't know, you know, think tankor something.
This has been reported by thenew york times, pro publica,
(16:49):
brookings institute center foramerican progress.
Sure, it's been reportedeverywhere that this is the case
.
I think even the White Housereleased a report that showed
this.
I mean, this is like this goesall the way back, all the way,
you know, everywhere.
So this is an accepted fact isthat the wealthy essentially
don't pay a progressive taxationanymore in the United States.
(17:10):
Only if it tops out at thepeople who pay the most taxes.
A percentage of their income isprobably like wealthy doctors,
because they're making verylarge incomes and then those
large incomes pay of, you know,the highest tax bracket and the
income tax.
But if soon, as soon as thosethose, as soon as you switch
over from having a high wage, tosay, owning a lot of stock and
(17:32):
real estate, then you can startto dodge a lot of taxes, and if
you then get really, reallywealthy, you can start to do all
kinds of weird stuff like thecarried tax interest rate, or
you can ship all your corporateprofits abroad to tax havens, or
you can you can do all thiskind of wacky dacky stuff to
avoid paying taxes, and forevery.
(17:53):
So, when we think about thenational debt, the focus is
always on entitlements, whichthe Republicans call
entitlements, but then the restof us just call, you know,
essential services that peopleneed.
That's always the focus reducedspending.
But the reality is all of thisjust comes from not taxing the
wealthy their fair share.
That's what all of this comesfrom.
(18:14):
That's the whole national debt.
So the solution of the nationaldebt is to stop tax cheats.
That's it stop tax cheats andclose tax loopholes and raise
taxes on the wealthy.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Okay this is the solution.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
There's no need to reduce any kind of spend.
I mean we could be moreefficient spending, you know but
?
But you know, but we don'tactually have to.
We just raise taxes.
The wealthy are wealthier thanthey've ever been.
They're paying taxes at a lowerrate than they've ever paid,
and there's no reason not tojust reverse that.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So is that a matter of getting Congress to do
something?
Is that starting the House ofRepresentatives?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Like that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
But it feels like all that gets stalled out because
of the wealth of the peopleinvolved in making those
decisions.
So how do we get around that?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Well, the Congress people don't really care about
wealth.
They don't have that much money.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Well, why haven't, why haven't we passed this in
the last 40 years?
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Well, because the wealthy people buy off the
Congress people.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
OK, so that's what I was saying.
Yeah, oh, yeah, you go theCongress people don't care.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Because the Congress people are so wealthy that they
are affected by some, but theyare now.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
they're paid.
Yeah, they're paid to do it.
So how do we get around that?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Well, we've talked about a few things already as
solutions here.
I don't.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
First, of all, I don't actually think money in
politics is as powerful aspeople think, so you just said
that you, just you just gave theexample why it is extremely
powerful and impossible to fixand the cause.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
It's also every time you turn the entire national
debt.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
That's what you just talked about, right, I know, but
I think it's actually you'resaying you don't think that's
money in politics, even thoughthat's exactly what it's causing
politics is important, but Ithink the more important thing
is, but I think the moreimportant thing is.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Honestly, I think the more important thing is ranked
choice voting.
I think that's the key thing.
I think if we had ranked choicevoting but why?
Not focus on money in politics,because that seems like the
more important thing that'sdirectly related, that we just
found out was directly relatedto it.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Now you're like that's not related.
That makes no sense to me.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I'm being paid off, Scott.
No, I'm not saying.
I'm saying it makes no sense tome, so I'm trying to make it
make sense.
I'm making my mortgage paymentsnow because the Heritage
Foundation said it needs checks.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
When anyone says I don't think money in politics is
a problem, I go cool.
No, no, it's, and we just wentover this look at this.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Look at bloomberg's run for president okay he spent
a billion dollars which is aninsane, a crazy amount of money.
Yeah, and he never broke morethan, I think, six percent of
the vote in the polls.
He was a walking kind ofamazing yeah, but I mean, but
think about it.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
If the premise is, if the premise is money is, you
know, totally in charge inpolitics, then bloomberg should
have gotten 20 of the vote well,if the premise is that
bloomberg one person only gotsix percent of the vote,
therefore put money in politicsacross the board is not
effective I think that's aflawed premise.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
That's not what I'm saying.
I think that's a crazy.
I'm just saying.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
I'm saying maybe it's , maybe it's not, maybe it's not
a one variable thing on why aperson isn't elected president,
right but he was a particularlydumb candidate anyway.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
No, no, he's beloved.
No, he's beloved, he wasgenerally beloved.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
I mean, he wasn't beloved for burning down a
billion dollars trying to runfor president Right.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
But I think he was also seen, as you know, late to
the game and not you know,people didn't want a billionaire
to be president.
Well, I don't think that's true, donald.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Trump won.
You're wrong, donald.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Trump won twice.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
He's good at winning twice, unfortunately, but people
didn't want Bloomberg becausepeople didn't want a billionaire
to be president.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
But Donald Trump's a billionaire.
The people voting for Bloombergin the primary are not the
people voting for the pro-yayfor Donald president.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
For Donald Trump.
Yeah, I thought you meant Toseparate the thing, Well you
said everyone.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I thought you meant yeah, okay, donald, yeah, so
here's the.
So okay, yes, I'm notdisagreeing that money is not a
problem in politics.
I'm just saying it doesn't seemto be the entire problem.
Part of the problem is frankchoice voting okay and rank
choice voting I'm on reason.
I like that yeah because thereason why that will fix things
(22:17):
is because as soon as thepoliticians are not mud slinging
at each other, that will changethe like media dynamic.
And I think the media dynamicis actually the bigger problem,
which is, you know, you go onthe news and anytime you want to
talk about the national debt,it immediately gets pulled over
into questions of spending.
And no one even brings up thereality here, which is that the
(22:41):
entire national debt, the excessof national debt, is like
one-to-one the tax breaks we'vegiven the wealthy people since
1982 or so.
So no one ever just points outthat actually the whole national
debt is just caused by loweringtaxes on the wealthy.
If we just restored the tax onthe wealthy back to 1982 levels,
there would the national debtwould just creep down back to
(23:04):
very, very manageable levels.
So what?
Speaker 1 (23:05):
would my life be like ?
How would my life be differentif the national debt was zero
Like I'm.
I'm going, I'm going aroundright now.
No, it's a real question yeah.
And and and I, my life is whatyou know, like, I go shopping, I
go to work, I go to see movies,I, you know like, go to the gym
.
How is if now, all of a sudden,we fix this and the national
(23:27):
debt gets paid down to zero?
How, how does, how is it?
Where do I see the effects?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I think the effects for you don't come day to day
because government spendingreally really big, aggressive
government spending is usuallydone in an emergency.
So the difference would come inan emergency.
So say, we pay down thenational debt over the next 10
or 15 years, 20 years, down to,like you know, back to 30%, kind
(23:54):
of a more manageable level.
And then there's anotherpandemic, right, and it's like,
oh, shoot this.
We need to like respond to thispandemic very strongly and
protect people who are sick andwho are vulnerable, and we need
to keep the economy fromcrashing and burning.
We need to keep people employedand we need to spend, like you
(24:14):
know, $10 trillion to do that.
Well, if the national debt isonly 30% of GDP, then the
government could be like, yeah,let's spend $30 trillion, like
you know today, like let's do itbecause because they can simply
do that and I mean there mightbe inflationary effects to that,
but they can do it and not blowthe lid on people being freaked
out like that.
(24:34):
The American government has aweaker sort of credit score, you
know, yeah, and that's good,because if the American
government keeps a strong, kindof strong credit score, then we
can sell our debt for a lotTriple A bonds that we can keep
getting strong debt and thatgovernment, the government, can
use that money.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
But if we don't have any debt, like what do we like?
How's that?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
It just, it just loosens up the, the government's
ability to spend.
Okay, right, so if thegovernment says, hey, you know,
actually an asteroid is comingtowards earth and in five years
it's going to hit earth, we needto spend like 10, you know,
infinite I mean as much money aswe possibly can to avoid
disaster hitting earth.
That well then, at that pointactually, you probably.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Just, you're talking about like a three-body problem,
that's what you're.
Yeah, if there's supposing,what if there were some?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
yeah, we have an economic, some kind of economic
crisis.
Like what if, tomorrow, youknow, a super ai emerged and the
super ai like just trashed likeall of our systems and we were
like really in trouble.
You know we had to like rebuildthe economy from scratch, where
40, you know 70% of people hadno jobs and you know it'd be
nice to be like, well, thegovernment can help support some
(25:40):
kind of transition for the nextfive or 10 years, because we
actually have a lot of room inthe national debt, you know we
still have.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
That sounds like our government.
That totally sounds likesomething our government would
jump to do.
Certainly wasn't like pullingteeth to get them to give
anybody any money during COVIDfor years.
That wasn't hard.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Well, it might have been hard, but it was probably
hard because our GDP was it wasour national debt was already up
more than 100%.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
GDP.
Yeah, if we gave them lots ofmoney they would definitely be
way more generous.
Or maybe there's some otherproblem.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, like so basically the national debt
jumped 20, 20 trillion dollarsduring covid, so it jumped from.
It jumped from all right above100 to 126 percent and then it's
come down a little bit underbiden biden's kind of you know,
paid things off a little bit, um, back down to 20 but 120.
(26:33):
But you, but you know, so theydid During Trump, during COVID
the government spent $20trillion to, like, protect the
American people from COVID.
I mean, it wasn't nothing youknow Sure yeah.
You know, but that it was harder.
It might have been able to be30 or 40 trillion if we had only
been at, you know, more like a30 or 40% of GDP.
(26:54):
So I think that's the reasonwhy you want the low GDP or the
low national debt is so you canafford crises better.
The other reason is, I thinkagain that we haven't spent the
national debt on somethingworthwhile.
It's just been a giant taxbreak to the wealthy.
That's all it's been.
It's just been a direct wealthtransfer from the public funds
(27:16):
to the private funds of thewealthy.
So you know.
So when we talk about this, youknow, I think that's the key
thing we have to keep in mind isthat it's been a theft of the
treasury.
That's how we should thinkabout the national debt.
It's just a.
It's just a theft.
The wealthy people have thievedthe public funds.
You know like it's like if thesultan has, you know, the has
(27:36):
taxed people, and then thosetaxes are sitting in like the
gold vault of the sultan, andthen the like grand vizier,
who's friends with all themerchants is just like, oh,
sultan, we're just gonna likestart giving out this gold to
the merchants and then themerchants just took all the gold
from the sultan.
Now all the people's money isgone, because that would have
been spent on, you know,building roads.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Are you describing the Sultan as-?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
This is Aladdin.
This is an Aladdin analogy.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Is his name?
Bernie Madoff?
Is that the Sultan you'retalking about?
That's the merchant.
That's the merchant.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah, or you know Jeff Bezos or anyone, it doesn't
matter.
They're all know that.
They all know that they'reagainst the workers and the
regular people.
The workers and regular peopledon't often realize that we are
all one class and we areactually against the wealthy.
(28:26):
But the wealthy know that.
The wealthy 100% all day long,know we're the wealthy, they're
the poor, the working class.
We try to take as much money aswe can from them and prevent
them from taking money from us.
But we don't.
But a lot of people who areworking class don't do that.
They sit around and think, oh,jeff Bezos likes me, you know he
does this for my good orsomething.
Um, I shouldn't pick on JeffBezos.
He's not the worst of thebillionaires.
(28:46):
The worst billionaires arepeople who you know destroy the
planet, create ox, you know,destroy, destroy.
You know various systems in thesociety.
Yeah, and you know pollutersand people just inherit their
money and then they'rebillionaires.
Nepo, baby, these are obviouslythe most.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Lex luther yeah, they're the most sort of lex
luther amazon is actually notthat bad.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
In a way, they're you know, they're relatively
environmentally.
They have some cool.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Your hot takes this episode are.
Amazon's not that bad and moneyin politics isn't a big deal.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Cool, well, yeah, yeah, I think we should temper
our our rages a little bit andpoint them in the right
direction, like we should bemuch more focused on rank choice
voting, I think, thannecessarily trying to control
money in politics.
If you had rank choice voting,it would.
It would put a huge it would.
It would completely it'd bemuch harder to like influence
elections with money if you haveranked choice voting in place
so and it's hard to get moneyout of politics.
(29:41):
But actually ranked choicevoting is pretty straightforward
.
You just do it.
You just do a state-by-stateballot initiative well, but it's
hard.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
It's also hard.
Any change in the powerstructure which is needed to be
approved by those in power ishard, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
But it doesn't have to be approved by those in power
in states that do a ballotinitiative, sure, okay.
So that's good, yeah, but Iguess that's the solution for
today.
It's just a perspective change.
If you change your perspectiveon the national debt and you
don't think of it as thegovernment legitimately spent
more than it legitimately tookin, you know, then then the
(30:18):
national debt seems like, oh, wehave this huge problem.
But if you realize that it'slike, no, the government spent
probably less than itlegitimately should have,
because it took in far less thanit legitimately should have,
because the to the, the wealthy,just you know, browbeat the
legislature to cut down theirtaxes, yeah then you realize the
national debt is just a sign ofthe theft of the wealth from
(30:42):
the public coffers by thewealthy, that's all it is.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
You know we didn't fight a war.
We didn't.
You know we didn't, I mean surewe fought the pandemic in the
last just over two years.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Did we really fight it, though?
Is that the right verb?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
two years.
Did we really fight it, though?
Is that that the right verb?
Did we fight the pandemic?
Sure, we shut down the wholecountry for like a year by the
country the pandemic is that ohyeah, you were like he didn't
fight it too late.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, I, I binge watched the pandemic.
Is that maybe I?
I, uh I pizza ate the pandemic,I don know.
Thought doesn't feel like my.
What happened for me.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, I've been listening to Noah Fisher's
podcast which is calledEconomics 102.
And it's interesting to listento.
I think you know he's quite,you know, smart, well-read guy
and obviously he has a take oneverything, which is cool.
And it's fun to hear him kindof go on and on about stuff and
(31:40):
some things he knows a lot about.
Like he talks about Japan, heknows a lot about that.
Other things you can start tofeel like the thinness of how
much he knows, but he still islike a pining so he gets a
little thin but it's stillinteresting to hear his
perspective and you can kind ofbake it into yours.
So this episode's a little bitof a.
I'm sure Nathan Bishop wouldhave a very different idea than
I do about this, but maybe notso different.
(32:02):
Well, we would see.
That'd be cool if he actuallyresponded.
I don't think he would though.
But yeah, he's quite good Ifanyone wants a good.
Like how's the world working?
They talk about they call itEcon 102, and they say they're
coming at it from theirperspective in economics.
(32:22):
Yeah, but I feel like they'rejust coming at it from the
perspective of like worldsystems.
Like they're talking aboutsystems in the world.
Like well, this is how the euworks, this is how the american
government works, this is how,like this market works and that
market works with these playersin it, like they're much more
institutional than it is, likepure sort of classical
economical theory or something.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
But it's it's a good one to listen to.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Okay, that sounds good, we'll give it a spin.
What's it called again?
Economics 102.
It's called Econ 102.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Econ 102.
Yeah, it's part of a network ofpodcasts that are pretty cool.
They're kind of very SanFrancisco either, called
Turpentine.
They have a whole network ofpodcasts.
I think the.
I think that the way Turpentineworks is the guy who's at the
center of Turpentine.
He basically realized that sub,sub, sub, some sub.
There were some subs, you knowsome subs, the newsletters.
(33:08):
No, oh, there's this websitecalled some sub or not?
Some sub sub.
The hell is it called?
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Substack.
Yeah, I do know that one.
Yeah, yeah, so Substackbasically, there was all these
people.
The real website name yes, I doknow that.
Yes, the fake one that you hadno, I didn't know that one.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
So I think what he realized is that there was all
these great substacks and theydidn't have podcasts.
And he just contacted them andsaid I will be your co-host and
I will just interview you everyweek and you'll just talk about
what you wrote last week on yoursub sub, your sub stack, and
then I will pay you a fractionof the income circuit from your
podcast.
(33:47):
I'm pretty sure that's exactlywhat it is, cause one's like an
AI podcast, one's like a econpodcast, one's like a history
podcast and they're all fromturpentine and they're everyone
is a sub stack like a major substack guy Interesting turpentine
and they're everyone is a substack like a major sub stack guy
interesting, interesting.
Yeah, so I think it's got.
Hey, look at that, could be abusiness model for an
entrepreneurial young, it's true.
Podcast producer like yourself,contact really popular people,
(34:07):
stackers, and say I'll be yourco-host and then they already
have a huge.
So the problem with podcastsright, is not this podcast, but
most podcasts have a problemgetting a audience.
But if a Substack already has50,000 subscribers, the Substack
can say listen to our podcastBoom, and it creates this
flywheel Maybe.
And then now Turpentine saysfind our other flywheel.
You know there's an ad in everyepisode for other Turpentine
(34:30):
podcasts and so itcross-pollinates this whole
Turpentine sort of wheelhouse.
So yeah, it's pretty smart,this whole turpentine uh sort of
wheelhouse.
So yeah, it's pretty smart.
Um, and I like the econ 102 ontheir ai one is pretty cool too.
They have one about economic.
They have one about financialmarkets called riff cool, sounds
fun, very nice.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
All right, well, new podcast and get rich people to
pay their taxes so that we canyeah, national debt debt debt
down.
Happy, happy independence day.
Everybody and you, we can lowerspending debt debt down.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Happy Independence Day everybody and we can lower
spending.
There are things to lowerspending on, like, for example,
you know the way, like I'vealready, I've already proposed
we should, we should allow newcolleges to start.
That would then lower the costof college tuition, which then
would lower the burden on thefederal government to lend money
to students to go to college.
So that would lower, you know.
So if we just allowed newcolleges to start, just that
(35:19):
would tremendously lower thespending on higher education.
Healthcare we could do Medicarefor all.
It would dramatically lower thecost of healthcare for the
garbage country.
You could lower costs of allkinds of things.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Wait, did I tell you my idea for one big garbage bag?
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Wait, what's that?
Well, well, I was gonna justglaze over that.
Yeah, no, I noticed.
Maybe I just stopped and rewindmy g.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
What is, what is?
Well, you know how everyone hasall these garbage bags, these
little garbage bags, and theyfill up the landfill.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah well, we just have one big one, like in the
middle of the I love that middleof town and you take your
garbage into the one big garbagebag and then you get it lifted
up by like helicopter.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
I'd love just one bag .
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I'd love that, but I have a.
What about neighborhood bags?
What about neighborhood sizebags?
This is what they have ingermany a neighborhood size bag.
Yeah, you know how.
Right now, every singleindividual house has like a
garbage and recycling rightcompost, like you're talking
about dumpsters, what you do isyou just put a dumpster on each
block.
So every two or three blocksthere's a dumpster, and then to
(36:20):
take your garbage out you haveto walk a block and then throw
it in that dumpster, and thenthe truck comes and it just
takes the dumpster away.
It's pretty good, but whatabout?
Speaker 1 (36:31):
one big truck instead of lots of little garbage
trucks.
What about?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
one big garbage truck .
Well, you said a helicoptereven would be cool.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
We take the helicopter to the one big truck.
I like the helicopter idea Onebig helicopter, one big truck
and one big garbage bag.
That's my idea.
I'm down.
It's just one One thing.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
I'm on board.
It would be so nice, becausethen you wouldn't have to have
all these little garbage wheeliethings everywhere.
It would be so much moreaffordable and fast, and then
everyone would get a little walk.
Right, everyone gets a littlewalk to the neighborhood, get a
little walk to the smelliestplace and you see other
neighbors who are also walkingand you can all be like, hey,
how are you Great communitySnoop?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
with each other.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
So it's like a hole.
You throw it in the hole andthen it's gone.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
You can't get in there and get it out what if I
want people to see like my trash, to like show how cool like my?
Trash is just full of gold barwrappers, like from all the gold
bars I buy at the store, and sothey're gonna have to rich dude
as, as you're walking up, youhave to trip very theatrically
and the trash has to like oh mytrash and just go everywhere and
(37:45):
you're like oh, my gold bar.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
I just saw this so embarrassing filled all my empty
caviar cans.
I'm so sorry everybody, that'sright I'm so sorry.
That was unintentional andeveryone will be like tax that
man Tax tax, tax, tax, tax tax.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
I couldn't possibly.
I'm just needing to buy bonds.
I couldn't possibly.
Yeah right, All right.
Well, thanks for bringing us afun one.
Yeah, man, and thanks forjoining us again.
No problem, Thanks everybodyfor coming next time.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Happy Independence Day.
Keep it, climaty, yeah, bye-bye, bye, thank you.
I am excited about some recent purchases.
Tell me this is a thing I cantalk about, because I I guess I
think this is normal, but otherpeople find it weird.
But I told you a little bitabout it.
I like puzzles and I only doone kind of puzzle.
I do gradient puzzles now.
So it's just one big field ofcolor shifting slightly or
(00:30):
shifting to another color.
So, like I've, I've done a few,but so you've?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
you've limited yourself to just gradient
puzzles.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Well, those are the ones I like, yes.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Those are the only ones.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I've done for a while , but like that's, this is what
I've got coming up.
I have this blue one that I'mshowing you.
It's got blue to blue, it's asquare.
And then this other one that Ijust got today I was very
excited about is pink to yellow.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I don't know why yellow yeah, that's all it is.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
It's just colors.
I mean, it's as basic as itsounds that wild but it is like
a meditation, just sitting thereand taking the pieces and
you're yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
In some ways it's sort of easy right, because you
just have to look for the nextpuzzle piece in the direction of
the gradient.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, everything is only going to fit one spot on
the map.
Right, right is only going tofit one spot on the map, right,
right.
So in some ways it's aboutsorting through and just
discerning what the most yellowor the most pink is and like
trying to figure it out.
But it, yeah, it's.
It's also.
It just distills it down toshape and color.
That's really just the essenceof it, and you're not worried
(01:42):
about like I gotta put this facetogether or I'm trying to put
this car together.
Right, it's just color andshape.
But it's just relaxing.
It's very nice to do whileyou're listening to something or
watching something.
It's fun.
I say this because I know yourpartner is also a puzzle person,
so I recommend to her sometimeto try out one of these, cause
(02:05):
they are enjoyable.
Surprisingly.
I don't think I would haveknown that before I tried one,
but I was looking for hardpuzzles and I stumbled into this
gradient puzzle thing and I waslike, oh, that's surprisingly
relaxing and meditative.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
That's wild.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, that's really wild.
Yeah, it's crazy.
Yeah, that's really wild.
Well, I have not been doingvery many puzzles recently, or
painting, which to me, paintingis just like puzzle.
A painting is basically a bigpuzzle, okay, you have to kind
(02:45):
of like put the right colorswhere they belong, except for
you make every piece by hand.
That's sort of what a paintingis right.
So I haven't been doing verymany paintings, I don't know.
I think I'm more interested inmy um, my phd, writing stuff
that kind of takes all mycreative energies.
Which big news got one of my,my first paper accepted, sweet.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Very nice.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Congratulations by a pretty major journal, actually
Not a top, top, top tier journal, but second tier.
So you think it's not Harvard,but it's, like you know,
University of Pennsylvania orsomething.
Like it's still up there, verycool.
So yeah, it was actually prettyamazing, my kind of advisor guy
.
You could discern his amazementwhen I told him.
(03:28):
I think he was like, wow, I didnot expect it to go through.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So do we get to know what the topic of the paper is,
or is that later you know?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
we were talking about it last episode or two episodes
ago.
Oh, the new shirts with noarmpits.
Okay, that's what the wholething you're gonna.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
You're doing a phd on armpit.
You're like okay, so I havesweaty armpits.
Go with don't where.
Where's everyone going?
Why are they?
What?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
my ted talk of sweaty armpits can you get a phd in
fashion?
I guess art phd in art fashionmaybe, maybe that's what I'm
getting, so I should be able toget it.
You're getting a PhD in fashion.
Well, because of the armpits,that's one of my part of my.
The key thing, no, it's themisery stuff.
It's the misery, you know ifyou want Misericordianism.
(04:17):
Yeah, misericordianism, if youwant to like.
We talked about an ethic thatdoesn't require God and is based
on evolution and neurobiology.
That's kind of what we talkedabout before.
This paper was not about thatpart of it.
This paper was about applyingit to bioethics.
So like basically saying that,yeah, basically there's a theory
(04:40):
of bioethics that's verypopular called principalism, and
I sort of offered like thatthere are problems with
principalism and that we couldsolve some of those problems if
we adopted compassion as part ofthe principalism.
And if you add compassion toprincipalism, you create what I
call compassionate principalismand then you can still do
(05:01):
principalism the same way asthey do it every day, but you
add this compassion piece to tryto minimize suffering and it
solves a bunch of the problemswith traditional principalism
and they seem to really likethat.
Take that sort of compassionateprincipalism.
Take it should make it so thathealth care is delivered with
more justice and with morerespect to people's pain and
(05:22):
suffering.
Both sound like good things.
Yeah, so a reduction of painand suffering Both sound like
good things.
Yeah, so a reduction of painand suffering is a good idea.
But, yeah, so that was a bigcelebration for today and sure,
on this podcast I talked aboutthe idea of minimizing suffering
as an ethical principle acouple times, and so I'll just.
Some people are gettinginterested in it who are not
(05:43):
just wackos like me.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Okay, that's good, but hey we're going, but today
we're, we're, we're coming up onthe 4th of july here it is true
, in a couple days from when wedrop this, it'll be the 4th of
july.
Do you have?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
any big plans for the 4th fireworks?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
nothing, yet we're pre-recording barbecue I don't
even plan much more than a weekout.
But no, I no.
I'm sure I'll have hot dogs.
I'm sure I'll have a hot dog.
Any excuse to have a hot dog.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
All right, don't choke.
A really good hot dog man goesa long way.
Like you've ever had wholefoods like their beef hot dogs
from whole foods they're amazing.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I have not I mean, I recommend everyone loves the.
Uh the raymond costco hot dogis the classic.
Oh, the costco hot I dog.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I thought you were going to say everyone loves
Raymond.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Well, I don't know, raymond, but I was going to say,
oh, everyone loves Ray.
Wait, raymond, the show.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Wait, are we doing a mandala effect?
Was it always everyone?
Speaker 1 (06:36):
loves Ray.
Is it called?
Everyone Loves Raymond.
That's not the name of the show, was it?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I've seen zero episodes was it?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
yeah, I think so.
I've seen zero episodes, yeahraymond.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Everyone loves raymond, okay, all right,
whatever mine, maybe in yourmandala.
Oh, it's ray romano.
Yeah, but no one ever calledhim raymond romano.
That's maybe where I'm gettingthat's true everyone does love
raymond romano call me, raymond.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So today in in uh, you know, thinking about the
fourth of july I, I put togethera nationalistic solution.
Oh cool, this is never going togo wrong.
No, it's going to be great.
So, this is a solution to thenational debt.
Okay, do we have one of thosethe national debt.
I thought we were all square.
(07:18):
What no have?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
we had one like is it just recent or have we had it
for a while?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
We've had it for a goodly amount of time.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
It's like is it just recent or have we had it for a
while?
We've had it for a goodlyamount of time.
It's only 34 trillion dollars.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Oh, I thought it was going to be something I should
worry about.
Only 34 trill, that's not a bigdeal.
I just googled the nationaldebt.
It says 34 trillion.
Is it really that much?
Yeah, 34.6 trillion the totalamount of outstanding a total
amount of outstanding borrowingby the us federal government,
accumulated over the nation'shistory.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I love that you just threw a 0.6 on there and that
0.6 represents $600 billion.
You're like yeah, 30, no 0.6.
And I'm like, oh yeah, that'sjust a little bit more.
Wait, no, wait, it's a lot more.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
So the GDP of the United States is $25.4 trillion.
Okay, so we just have to do twoyears of spending, of saving,
and then we're good.
Yeah, does nobody buy anythingfor two years?
So so the important thing whenyou're thinking about the
national debt, I mean bignumbers sound big but there's
(08:17):
like inflation and da da, da, dada, and so what you have to do
is actually compare to topercentage of GDP.
That's the most accurate way tothink about the amount of debt
are we in Like, are we in toomuch debt or too little?
There's no way to say just fromthe number.
The better way to look at it islike you do it as a percentage
of GDP.
So if you look at the chart ofpercentage of GDP, you can see
(08:42):
it looks like a big bow, like abig bow shape, and at the very
top on the left side, in thepast was 1946.
We had just fought World War IIand we had taken out national
debt to be about a hundredpercent of GDP.
So we had about a hundredpercent of GDP debt size right
(09:03):
after World War II.
We had just fought for fouryears and defeated the Nazis.
Okay, then it drops way downand by 1975, it's like 30% of
GDP.
And then it crawls back up fromthe 80s all the way up.
It kind of goes like this inhumps All the way up to 2020,
it's above 100% gdp.
(09:25):
So now it's it.
Now it's at 120 percent of gdp.
Okay, so we?
So it's as if we just foughtworld war ii, but we didn't
fight world war ii.
We just are living our liveslike normal people, okay.
So, solution to this debt.
(09:46):
I can provide a solution, okay.
Okay, we just have to printmore money.
I understand how this works.
That would work actually.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
We make dollar bills.
What do we print up?
33 trillion of them.
And then just pass it on.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
But hand them over to the bank and say we are square
now, Right.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
That's right, and not just to the bank, but to all
the people who, who own, who ownof course, yeah, these are no
dollars that's right, so there's.
There's what I think the keything.
There's a lot of different waysthat people talk about to, to,
to, to fix the national debt.
Right, there's, but I think thekey thing that we have to do is
(10:31):
we have to think about thenational debt in a different way
than people generally do.
So I think people generallythink about the national debt as
if, well, the government's beenspending too much and then
therefore borrowing, borrowing,needing to borrow more than it,
more than it should, right,right, that's kind of how people
talk about it.
Wow, we're spending too muchmoney and so we're borrowing,
(10:54):
we're living beyond our meansand therefore we'll, we're
destined to live beneath ourmeans.
That's kind of like ron paul'sthing that he says sure, I love
ron paul, but you know that.
But I don't actually agree withthis.
But this is sort of the commonway of thinking about it, and
the reason why we think of itthis way is because we think of
the government like a household,like if you or I just were like
(11:15):
racking up more on our creditcard than we could make in a
year, that would be bad.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Eventually it would catch up to us right.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, it would be really bad, but the government's
not a household for a number ofreasons, and so those kind of
intuitive ways of thinking aboutit are not correct.
I still think it's a bad thingthat the national debt is this
high, but it's bad for adifferent reason than people
(11:43):
think it's not bad because, youknow, someday the government's
going to have to pay its creditcard bill, the way that you and
I would eventually have to payour credit card bills.
That's not why it's bad.
It's bad for other reasons.
And that has to do with what itcauses in terms of societal
problems and also geopoliticalproblems.
That's really kind of the badthings about it, but it's not
(12:03):
analogous to a household,exactly, um.
So let me put it this way,though the key thing we have to
understand is the only reason wehave a national debt is because
national debt is just a way tofor the rich to avoid paying
taxes that's all it is.
That's all it is for me why yeah, so when we fought World War II
(12:23):
, we actually needed to fightWorld War II and so we needed to
print a bunch of bonds, a bunchof debt, and sell them to the
American people.
And the American people boughtthem because they wanted to
fight the war and so that debtwas actually to to the american
people and then, over the youknow, 1946 down to the 75, there
(12:47):
were high taxes that paid backthat debt to the american people
.
Okay, what you see in 1980,like early 1980s, is you start
to see the, the lowering oftaxes, and especially the
lowering of taxes on the wealthy, and the exact proportion to
the lowering of taxes on thewealthy and the exact proportion
(13:07):
to the lowering of taxes on thewealthy right is the national
debt.
That's what it is.
So you have to think of it thisway you and I, normal people,
you and me, working people whoare listening to this, who just
work we pay taxes, right, sure,and then do you ever get that
money like back?
(13:27):
No, it just goes to thegovernment.
You might get services and youknow the benefit of the
government, but you don't getany money back, right, right,
okay, if you're very wealthy,you just buy bonds.
That's essentially taxes thatnow you get paid back with
interest from the government,taxes that now you get paid back
(13:49):
with interest from thegovernment.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Okay, wouldn't you like to be paid back your taxes
with interest?
Well, don't?
I have the option to buy bondstoo, but in addition of paying,
taxes.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Oh, I see, but the wealthy have been saying for
since the 80s, since when westarted to have a bad national
debt, the wealthy have beensaying lower taxes on us and
then they've been buying thebonds, which means they've
essentially said, instead oftaking our money and not giving
us anything in return, take ourmoney but give us it in return
(14:15):
with interest.
So that's all the national debtis.
The national debt is just the,the taxes that we should have
been charging rich people sincethe 80s yeah, that's all it is.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
That's all it is, it's not.
It's not like stuff we borrowedfrom other countries or we sell
it to chinese people.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
We, you know, with the chinese government, we sell
it around, we, we sell it allaround.
But but if we, if we tax thewealthy, we wouldn't have any,
we wouldn't need any of it.
I got no complaints.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah, I feel like a lot of the wealthy we wouldn't
need any of it.
I got no complaints.
Yeah, I feel like a lot of thewealthy don't pay, like we were
talking about the flatpercentage or not a flat tax,
but like where?
The like, if you have moremoney, you pay more.
And that sliding percentage, oh, when we were talking about
workday fines, yeah, and I waslike so you could do workday tax
and you're like, well, theyalready pay that, but I, but I
(15:06):
think they get out of payingtheir taxes a lot, and this is
what I'm talking about.
Like this, the wealthy the.
The idea is, if you have likesmart money people, they can get
you to pay virtually nothing inactual taxes.
When it comes down to it, whenyou should be contributing under
FDR's America, you would becontributing a lot more and then
(15:26):
we would just have a lot moremoney as a group.
But then people are like it'sfine that the government doesn't
have more money because theywould do bad things with it,
which might be true, but theycan do nothing without any money
.
So it's right.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
So, just like you said, is exactly what's been
proven recently, which is thatthe you know we think we have a
progressive taxation system.
Everyone says, well, there'sprogressive taxes.
If I make more money, then someof that money goes into a
higher tax bracket.
I pay higher taxes on it, andthe presumption for normal
people like you and me is thatthat's just like kind of a
smooth sort of stepwise ladderall the way up to the absolute
(16:03):
most wealthy people.
Sure right, yeah, that it's somesort of yeah, but the reality
is that tops out at the highestwage earners, like $300,000,
$400,000 a year wage earners andthen after that there's a
completely different taxstructure where, in effect,
people wealthier than that, likewealthier than the wealthiest
doctors and lawyers and business, you know, executives, people
(16:26):
wealthier than that pay actuallynow less percentage of their of
their income than normal peoplelike you and me, working stiffs
.
You know, and this has beenshown, uh, in multiple places,
it's been reported on, not justby some sort of you know, oh, I
don't know, you know, think tankor something.
This has been reported by thenew york times, pro publica,
(16:49):
brookings institute center foramerican progress.
Sure, it's been reportedeverywhere that this is the case
.
I think even the White Housereleased a report that showed
this.
I mean, this is like this goesall the way back, all the way,
you know, everywhere.
So this is an accepted fact isthat the wealthy essentially
don't pay a progressive taxationanymore in the United States.
(17:10):
Only if it tops out at thepeople who pay the most taxes.
A percentage of their income isprobably like wealthy doctors,
because they're making verylarge incomes and then those
large incomes pay of, you know,the highest tax bracket and the
income tax.
But if soon, as soon as thosethose, as soon as you switch
over from having a high wage, tosay, owning a lot of stock and
(17:32):
real estate, then you can startto dodge a lot of taxes, and if
you then get really, reallywealthy, you can start to do all
kinds of weird stuff like thecarried tax interest rate, or
you can ship all your corporateprofits abroad to tax havens, or
you can you can do all thiskind of wacky dacky stuff to
avoid paying taxes, and forevery.
(17:53):
So, when we think about thenational debt, the focus is
always on entitlements, whichthe Republicans call
entitlements, but then the restof us just call, you know,
essential services that peopleneed.
That's always the focus reducedspending.
But the reality is all of thisjust comes from not taxing the
wealthy their fair share.
That's what all of this comesfrom.
(18:14):
That's the whole national debt.
So the solution of the nationaldebt is to stop tax cheats.
That's it stop tax cheats andclose tax loopholes and raise
taxes on the wealthy.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Okay this is the solution.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
There's no need to reduce any kind of spend.
I mean we could be moreefficient spending, you know but
?
But you know, but we don'tactually have to.
We just raise taxes.
The wealthy are wealthier thanthey've ever been.
They're paying taxes at a lowerrate than they've ever paid,
and there's no reason not tojust reverse that.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So is that a matter of getting Congress to do
something?
Is that starting the House ofRepresentatives?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Like that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
But it feels like all that gets stalled out because
of the wealth of the peopleinvolved in making those
decisions.
So how do we get around that?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Well, the Congress people don't really care about
wealth.
They don't have that much money.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Well, why haven't, why haven't we passed this in
the last 40 years?
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Well, because the wealthy people buy off the
Congress people.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
OK, so that's what I was saying.
Yeah, oh, yeah, you go theCongress people don't care.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Because the Congress people are so wealthy that they
are affected by some, but theyare now.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
they're paid.
Yeah, they're paid to do it.
So how do we get around that?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Well, we've talked about a few things already as
solutions here.
I don't.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
First, of all, I don't actually think money in
politics is as powerful aspeople think, so you just said
that you, just you just gave theexample why it is extremely
powerful and impossible to fixand the cause.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
It's also every time you turn the entire national
debt.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
That's what you just talked about, right, I know, but
I think it's actually you'resaying you don't think that's
money in politics, even thoughthat's exactly what it's causing
politics is important, but Ithink the more important thing
is, but I think the moreimportant thing is.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Honestly, I think the more important thing is ranked
choice voting.
I think that's the key thing.
I think if we had ranked choicevoting but why?
Not focus on money in politics,because that seems like the
more important thing that'sdirectly related, that we just
found out was directly relatedto it.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Now you're like that's not related.
That makes no sense to me.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I'm being paid off, Scott.
No, I'm not saying.
I'm saying it makes no sense tome, so I'm trying to make it
make sense.
I'm making my mortgage paymentsnow because the Heritage
Foundation said it needs checks.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
When anyone says I don't think money in politics is
a problem, I go cool.
No, no, it's, and we just wentover this look at this.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Look at bloomberg's run for president okay he spent
a billion dollars which is aninsane, a crazy amount of money.
Yeah, and he never broke morethan, I think, six percent of
the vote in the polls.
He was a walking kind ofamazing yeah, but I mean, but
think about it.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
If the premise is, if the premise is money is, you
know, totally in charge inpolitics, then bloomberg should
have gotten 20 of the vote well,if the premise is that
bloomberg one person only gotsix percent of the vote,
therefore put money in politicsacross the board is not
effective I think that's aflawed premise.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
That's not what I'm saying.
I think that's a crazy.
I'm just saying.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
I'm saying maybe it's , maybe it's not, maybe it's not
a one variable thing on why aperson isn't elected president,
right but he was a particularlydumb candidate anyway.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
No, no, he's beloved.
No, he's beloved, he wasgenerally beloved.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
I mean, he wasn't beloved for burning down a
billion dollars trying to runfor president Right.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
But I think he was also seen, as you know, late to
the game and not you know,people didn't want a billionaire
to be president.
Well, I don't think that's true, donald.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Trump won.
You're wrong, donald.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Trump won twice.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
He's good at winning twice, unfortunately, but people
didn't want Bloomberg becausepeople didn't want a billionaire
to be president.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
But Donald Trump's a billionaire.
The people voting for Bloombergin the primary are not the
people voting for the pro-yayfor Donald president.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
For Donald Trump.
Yeah, I thought you meant Toseparate the thing, Well you
said everyone.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I thought you meant yeah, okay, donald, yeah, so
here's the.
So okay, yes, I'm notdisagreeing that money is not a
problem in politics.
I'm just saying it doesn't seemto be the entire problem.
Part of the problem is frankchoice voting okay and rank
choice voting I'm on reason.
I like that yeah because thereason why that will fix things
(22:17):
is because as soon as thepoliticians are not mud slinging
at each other, that will changethe like media dynamic.
And I think the media dynamicis actually the bigger problem,
which is, you know, you go onthe news and anytime you want to
talk about the national debt,it immediately gets pulled over
into questions of spending.
And no one even brings up thereality here, which is that the
(22:41):
entire national debt, the excessof national debt, is like
one-to-one the tax breaks we'vegiven the wealthy people since
1982 or so.
So no one ever just points outthat actually the whole national
debt is just caused by loweringtaxes on the wealthy.
If we just restored the tax onthe wealthy back to 1982 levels,
there would the national debtwould just creep down back to
(23:04):
very, very manageable levels.
So what?
Speaker 1 (23:05):
would my life be like ?
How would my life be differentif the national debt was zero
Like I'm.
I'm going, I'm going aroundright now.
No, it's a real question yeah.
And and and I, my life is whatyou know, like, I go shopping, I
go to work, I go to see movies,I, you know like, go to the gym
.
How is if now, all of a sudden,we fix this and the national
(23:27):
debt gets paid down to zero?
How, how does, how is it?
Where do I see the effects?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I think the effects for you don't come day to day
because government spendingreally really big, aggressive
government spending is usuallydone in an emergency.
So the difference would come inan emergency.
So say, we pay down thenational debt over the next 10
or 15 years, 20 years, down to,like you know, back to 30%, kind
(23:54):
of a more manageable level.
And then there's anotherpandemic, right, and it's like,
oh, shoot this.
We need to like respond to thispandemic very strongly and
protect people who are sick andwho are vulnerable, and we need
to keep the economy fromcrashing and burning.
We need to keep people employedand we need to spend, like you
(24:14):
know, $10 trillion to do that.
Well, if the national debt isonly 30% of GDP, then the
government could be like, yeah,let's spend $30 trillion, like
you know today, like let's do itbecause because they can simply
do that and I mean there mightbe inflationary effects to that,
but they can do it and not blowthe lid on people being freaked
out like that.
(24:34):
The American government has aweaker sort of credit score, you
know, yeah, and that's good,because if the American
government keeps a strong, kindof strong credit score, then we
can sell our debt for a lotTriple A bonds that we can keep
getting strong debt and thatgovernment, the government, can
use that money.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
But if we don't have any debt, like what do we like?
How's that?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
It just, it just loosens up the, the government's
ability to spend.
Okay, right, so if thegovernment says, hey, you know,
actually an asteroid is comingtowards earth and in five years
it's going to hit earth, we needto spend like 10, you know,
infinite I mean as much money aswe possibly can to avoid
disaster hitting earth.
That well then, at that pointactually, you probably.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Just, you're talking about like a three-body problem,
that's what you're.
Yeah, if there's supposing,what if there were some?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
yeah, we have an economic, some kind of economic
crisis.
Like what if, tomorrow, youknow, a super ai emerged and the
super ai like just trashed likeall of our systems and we were
like really in trouble.
You know we had to like rebuildthe economy from scratch, where
40, you know 70% of people hadno jobs and you know it'd be
nice to be like, well, thegovernment can help support some
(25:40):
kind of transition for the nextfive or 10 years, because we
actually have a lot of room inthe national debt, you know we
still have.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
That sounds like our government.
That totally sounds likesomething our government would
jump to do.
Certainly wasn't like pullingteeth to get them to give
anybody any money during COVIDfor years.
That wasn't hard.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Well, it might have been hard, but it was probably
hard because our GDP was it wasour national debt was already up
more than 100%.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
GDP.
Yeah, if we gave them lots ofmoney they would definitely be
way more generous.
Or maybe there's some otherproblem.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, like so basically the national debt
jumped 20, 20 trillion dollarsduring covid, so it jumped from.
It jumped from all right above100 to 126 percent and then it's
come down a little bit underbiden biden's kind of you know,
paid things off a little bit, um, back down to 20 but 120.
(26:33):
But you, but you know, so theydid During Trump, during COVID
the government spent $20trillion to, like, protect the
American people from COVID.
I mean, it wasn't nothing youknow Sure yeah.
You know, but that it was harder.
It might have been able to be30 or 40 trillion if we had only
been at, you know, more like a30 or 40% of GDP.
(26:54):
So I think that's the reasonwhy you want the low GDP or the
low national debt is so you canafford crises better.
The other reason is, I thinkagain that we haven't spent the
national debt on somethingworthwhile.
It's just been a giant taxbreak to the wealthy.
That's all it's been.
It's just been a direct wealthtransfer from the public funds
(27:16):
to the private funds of thewealthy.
So you know.
So when we talk about this, youknow, I think that's the key
thing we have to keep in mind isthat it's been a theft of the
treasury.
That's how we should thinkabout the national debt.
It's just a.
It's just a theft.
The wealthy people have thievedthe public funds.
You know like it's like if thesultan has, you know, the has
(27:36):
taxed people, and then thosetaxes are sitting in like the
gold vault of the sultan, andthen the like grand vizier,
who's friends with all themerchants is just like, oh,
sultan, we're just gonna likestart giving out this gold to
the merchants and then themerchants just took all the gold
from the sultan.
Now all the people's money isgone, because that would have
been spent on, you know,building roads.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Are you describing the Sultan as-?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
This is Aladdin.
This is an Aladdin analogy.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Is his name?
Bernie Madoff?
Is that the Sultan you'retalking about?
That's the merchant.
That's the merchant.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah, or you know Jeff Bezos or anyone, it doesn't
matter.
They're all know that.
They all know that they'reagainst the workers and the
regular people.
The workers and regular peopledon't often realize that we are
all one class and we areactually against the wealthy.
(28:26):
But the wealthy know that.
The wealthy 100% all day long,know we're the wealthy, they're
the poor, the working class.
We try to take as much money aswe can from them and prevent
them from taking money from us.
But we don't.
But a lot of people who areworking class don't do that.
They sit around and think, oh,jeff Bezos likes me, you know he
does this for my good orsomething.
Um, I shouldn't pick on JeffBezos.
He's not the worst of thebillionaires.
(28:46):
The worst billionaires arepeople who you know destroy the
planet, create ox, you know,destroy, destroy.
You know various systems in thesociety.
Yeah, and you know pollutersand people just inherit their
money and then they'rebillionaires.
Nepo, baby, these are obviouslythe most.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Lex luther yeah, they're the most sort of lex
luther amazon is actually notthat bad.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
In a way, they're you know, they're relatively
environmentally.
They have some cool.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Your hot takes this episode are.
Amazon's not that bad and moneyin politics isn't a big deal.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Cool, well, yeah, yeah, I think we should temper
our our rages a little bit andpoint them in the right
direction, like we should bemuch more focused on rank choice
voting, I think, thannecessarily trying to control
money in politics.
If you had rank choice voting,it would.
It would put a huge it would.
It would completely it'd bemuch harder to like influence
elections with money if you haveranked choice voting in place
so and it's hard to get moneyout of politics.
(29:41):
But actually ranked choicevoting is pretty straightforward
.
You just do it.
You just do a state-by-stateballot initiative well, but it's
hard.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
It's also hard.
Any change in the powerstructure which is needed to be
approved by those in power ishard, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
But it doesn't have to be approved by those in power
in states that do a ballotinitiative, sure, okay.
So that's good, yeah, but Iguess that's the solution for
today.
It's just a perspective change.
If you change your perspectiveon the national debt and you
don't think of it as thegovernment legitimately spent
more than it legitimately tookin, you know, then then the
(30:18):
national debt seems like, oh, wehave this huge problem.
But if you realize that it'slike, no, the government spent
probably less than itlegitimately should have,
because it took in far less thanit legitimately should have,
because the to the, the wealthy,just you know, browbeat the
legislature to cut down theirtaxes, yeah then you realize the
national debt is just a sign ofthe theft of the wealth from
(30:42):
the public coffers by thewealthy, that's all it is.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
You know we didn't fight a war.
We didn't.
You know we didn't, I mean surewe fought the pandemic in the
last just over two years.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Did we really fight it, though?
Is that the right verb?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
two years.
Did we really fight it, though?
Is that that the right verb?
Did we fight the pandemic?
Sure, we shut down the wholecountry for like a year by the
country the pandemic is that ohyeah, you were like he didn't
fight it too late.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, I, I binge watched the pandemic.
Is that maybe I?
I, uh I pizza ate the pandemic,I don know.
Thought doesn't feel like my.
What happened for me.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, I've been listening to Noah Fisher's
podcast which is calledEconomics 102.
And it's interesting to listento.
I think you know he's quite,you know, smart, well-read guy
and obviously he has a take oneverything, which is cool.
And it's fun to hear him kindof go on and on about stuff and
(31:40):
some things he knows a lot about.
Like he talks about Japan, heknows a lot about that.
Other things you can start tofeel like the thinness of how
much he knows, but he still islike a pining so he gets a
little thin but it's stillinteresting to hear his
perspective and you can kind ofbake it into yours.
So this episode's a little bitof a.
I'm sure Nathan Bishop wouldhave a very different idea than
I do about this, but maybe notso different.
(32:02):
Well, we would see.
That'd be cool if he actuallyresponded.
I don't think he would though.
But yeah, he's quite good Ifanyone wants a good.
Like how's the world working?
They talk about they call itEcon 102, and they say they're
coming at it from theirperspective in economics.
(32:22):
Yeah, but I feel like they'rejust coming at it from the
perspective of like worldsystems.
Like they're talking aboutsystems in the world.
Like well, this is how the euworks, this is how the american
government works, this is how,like this market works and that
market works with these playersin it, like they're much more
institutional than it is, likepure sort of classical
economical theory or something.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
But it's it's a good one to listen to.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Okay, that sounds good, we'll give it a spin.
What's it called again?
Economics 102.
It's called Econ 102.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Econ 102.
Yeah, it's part of a network ofpodcasts that are pretty cool.
They're kind of very SanFrancisco either, called
Turpentine.
They have a whole network ofpodcasts.
I think the.
I think that the way Turpentineworks is the guy who's at the
center of Turpentine.
He basically realized that sub,sub, sub, some sub.
There were some subs, you knowsome subs, the newsletters.
(33:08):
No, oh, there's this websitecalled some sub or not?
Some sub sub.
The hell is it called?
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Substack.
Yeah, I do know that one.
Yeah, yeah, so Substackbasically, there was all these
people.
The real website name yes, I doknow that.
Yes, the fake one that you hadno, I didn't know that one.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
So I think what he realized is that there was all
these great substacks and theydidn't have podcasts.
And he just contacted them andsaid I will be your co-host and
I will just interview you everyweek and you'll just talk about
what you wrote last week on yoursub sub, your sub stack, and
then I will pay you a fractionof the income circuit from your
podcast.
(33:47):
I'm pretty sure that's exactlywhat it is, cause one's like an
AI podcast, one's like a econpodcast, one's like a history
podcast and they're all fromturpentine and they're everyone
is a sub stack like a major substack guy Interesting turpentine
and they're everyone is a substack like a major sub stack guy
interesting, interesting.
Yeah, so I think it's got.
Hey, look at that, could be abusiness model for an
entrepreneurial young, it's true.
Podcast producer like yourself,contact really popular people,
(34:07):
stackers, and say I'll be yourco-host and then they already
have a huge.
So the problem with podcastsright, is not this podcast, but
most podcasts have a problemgetting a audience.
But if a Substack already has50,000 subscribers, the Substack
can say listen to our podcastBoom, and it creates this
flywheel Maybe.
And then now Turpentine saysfind our other flywheel.
You know there's an ad in everyepisode for other Turpentine
(34:30):
podcasts and so itcross-pollinates this whole
Turpentine sort of wheelhouse.
So yeah, it's pretty smart,this whole turpentine uh sort of
wheelhouse.
So yeah, it's pretty smart.
Um, and I like the econ 102 ontheir ai one is pretty cool too.
They have one about economic.
They have one about financialmarkets called riff cool, sounds
fun, very nice.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
All right, well, new podcast and get rich people to
pay their taxes so that we canyeah, national debt debt debt
down.
Happy, happy independence day.
Everybody and you, we can lowerspending debt debt down.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Happy Independence Day everybody and we can lower
spending.
There are things to lowerspending on, like, for example,
you know the way, like I'vealready, I've already proposed
we should, we should allow newcolleges to start.
That would then lower the costof college tuition, which then
would lower the burden on thefederal government to lend money
to students to go to college.
So that would lower, you know.
So if we just allowed newcolleges to start, just that
(35:19):
would tremendously lower thespending on higher education.
Healthcare we could do Medicarefor all.
It would dramatically lower thecost of healthcare for the
garbage country.
You could lower costs of allkinds of things.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Wait, did I tell you my idea for one big garbage bag?
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Wait, what's that?
Well, well, I was gonna justglaze over that.
Yeah, no, I noticed.
Maybe I just stopped and rewindmy g.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
What is, what is?
Well, you know how everyone hasall these garbage bags, these
little garbage bags, and theyfill up the landfill.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah well, we just have one big one, like in the
middle of the I love that middleof town and you take your
garbage into the one big garbagebag and then you get it lifted
up by like helicopter.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
I'd love just one bag .
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I'd love that, but I have a.
What about neighborhood bags?
What about neighborhood sizebags?
This is what they have ingermany a neighborhood size bag.
Yeah, you know how.
Right now, every singleindividual house has like a
garbage and recycling rightcompost, like you're talking
about dumpsters, what you do isyou just put a dumpster on each
block.
So every two or three blocksthere's a dumpster, and then to
(36:20):
take your garbage out you haveto walk a block and then throw
it in that dumpster, and thenthe truck comes and it just
takes the dumpster away.
It's pretty good, but whatabout?
Speaker 1 (36:31):
one big truck instead of lots of little garbage
trucks.
What about?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
one big garbage truck .
Well, you said a helicoptereven would be cool.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
We take the helicopter to the one big truck.
I like the helicopter idea Onebig helicopter, one big truck
and one big garbage bag.
That's my idea.
I'm down.
It's just one One thing.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
I'm on board.
It would be so nice, becausethen you wouldn't have to have
all these little garbage wheeliethings everywhere.
It would be so much moreaffordable and fast, and then
everyone would get a little walk.
Right, everyone gets a littlewalk to the neighborhood, get a
little walk to the smelliestplace and you see other
neighbors who are also walkingand you can all be like, hey,
how are you Great communitySnoop?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
with each other.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
So it's like a hole.
You throw it in the hole andthen it's gone.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
You can't get in there and get it out what if I
want people to see like my trash, to like show how cool like my?
Trash is just full of gold barwrappers, like from all the gold
bars I buy at the store, and sothey're gonna have to rich dude
as, as you're walking up, youhave to trip very theatrically
and the trash has to like oh mytrash and just go everywhere and
(37:45):
you're like oh, my gold bar.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
I just saw this so embarrassing filled all my empty
caviar cans.
I'm so sorry everybody, that'sright I'm so sorry.
That was unintentional andeveryone will be like tax that
man Tax tax, tax, tax, tax tax.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
I couldn't possibly.
I'm just needing to buy bonds.
I couldn't possibly.
Yeah right, All right.
Well, thanks for bringing us afun one.
Yeah, man, and thanks forjoining us again.
No problem, Thanks everybodyfor coming next time.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Happy Independence Day.
Keep it, climaty, yeah, bye-bye, bye, thank you.
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