The YoJoeShow™ Podcast – Episode 3

This time Yo and Joe talk US and Global Tariffs, the Houthis Rebels, the RFK Jr. led Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, and the state of health and healthcare in America, USAID, and the alarming prevalence of Orwellian-style Government Overreach in Ireland, the UK, and elsewhere, and how the solution may or may not be "going right to jail!" Join us!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome, everybody, to the Yojo Show.
Welcome,
Joe. It's nice to see you. Hey, Josef.
Good seeing you too. That's, glad to be
back here with you.
We got a lot to talk about again
just like last time.
It's a good thing. Right?
Yes. The world is an interesting place like
we were saying last time. So and it
keeps on keeps on giving us gifts to

(00:21):
discuss. So that's what we are here to
do, and we hope you guys enjoy listening
to our discussions and rambles.
Remember, not financial advice, just,
dumb people rambling.
Maybe not completely dumb.
But we're gonna have a conversation. If someone
wants to listen in, join in eventually, that'd
be all terrific. We we we certainly have
no problem

(00:42):
having a conversation
about anything pretty much. We're here to learn
as much as we are here to inform.
So, you know, we last time, we did
do a pretty good job, I think, of
starting to talk about some of the things
going on
in the news, some of the craziness.
And, you know, I think that
maybe one of the things that's got a

(01:03):
lot of attention, and that is, like, top
headline right now has to be these tariffs.
I mean, you think that might be a
good topic?
Yeah. And I've I've had a lot of
thoughts on it. I've been listening and watching
a lot on this subject recently. Not enough
yet,
but I do kind of have, conflicting opinions.

(01:26):
Yeah. Let's let's get into it, I guess.
Topic number one, what do you think about
the tariffs? Let's just start with that because
I'll go a few different places. It's not
it's not a two second answer, but, I
mean, basically,
I I think the first thing we have
to at least acknowledge is that tariffs have
been, you
know,
a thing forever. We've had tariffs for a

(01:46):
long time imposed on other countries, and other
countries have imposed on The United States. What
most people don't realize
is some of the tariffs and some of
the protective type of,
policies of other countries make it impossible
for The US to sell products to to
certain countries.
That's why if you go, you won't see,
American made cars.

(02:07):
Barely. Yeah. In Europe. Yeah. In Europe. It's
it's very difficult.
Japan sells a lot of vehicles, obviously, to
The United States, but
what did Japan and look at an American
car, American made a Ford or you know
and and when I say made, it doesn't
mean it doesn't mean they're assembled in The
United States anymore.
I have a Buick,
which is assembled

(02:28):
in South Korea. So when I say American,
I'm just referring to it being an American
based
automaker, which, again, that's another topic as well,
is
even American made products, quote, unquote, may just
be assembled
or sold or the company may just be
owned in The United States, but maybe the
work's being done anywhere else.

(02:51):
And the reality is that
most people in our daily lives, it's not
obvious that
in other countries, they're not buying our goods.
We're buying theirs.
And
there's different opinions on that. There are people
that have thought, well, you can move manufacturing
to, for example, Mexico. It's right next to
United States. Labor is less expensive,

(03:11):
lesser regulations, and so forth. A lot of
companies have moved manufacturing
to Mexico. I knew a fellow who
was actually manufacturing car parts just across the
border for General Motors. Yeah. Basically, The US
companies have outsourced almost all car production
aside from final assembly sometimes
to Mexico and Canada just because of NAFTA

(03:32):
and and other trade agreements.
So and it's not just that. When you
look at agricultural goods and other goods,
they're not buying none of it. The one
thing
that US is successful at exporting is services.
Right?
And, traditionally,
from a financial point of view, that was
considered like the apex. Right? Like, you know,

(03:52):
countries start off with, like, subsistence farming, and
then they become agricultural
societies.
And then they kind of have the their
own industrial revolution and they become a manufacturing
society, which is considered a step up above
an agricultural society.
And then at the very high end is
a country that optimizes and becomes, you know,
service based like The US, where the iPhone

(04:13):
is not manufactured in The US and no
parts of it are manufactured in The US,
but it is designed in The US.
You know,
Microsoft
Office is designed in The US and sold
all across the world. So those are the
the few goods that that The US is
is exporting. It's mostly tech and software. And
that's why if you look at the the
stock market, you know, the the the top
seven, which are mostly, you know, tech and

(04:35):
software companies have been taking up, you know,
over 30% of the value of, you know,
NASDAQ and equivalent, indices, etcetera.
You know, even there, when you talk about,
you know, professional labor, there's a lot of
like India, for example.
A lot of people may not realize there
are cities in India which are ultra modern.
You think you're in Dubai.
And,

(04:55):
I know someone that
that works at the bank that we bank
with and sure families fought. They have I
mean, it's a very
advanced city.
And, you know, a lot of the engineering
people could be computer engineering. It could be
what other other,
you know, professionals that are there might have
actually come to The United States and been
trained here at our universities. They return there.

(05:19):
They can provide services back to The US
through companies they operate or work for at
a substantially lower
cost
per hour or per project
than our American counterparts here based in The
United States could do the same work. And,
again, there's nothing wrong with it. They have
certainly the skill. They have the same training,
perhaps, maybe with the same universities. But it

(05:40):
just The ironic thing is is many times
they want to stay in The US and
form their company in The US. I think
this is even true about, like, Jack Ma
who founded Alibaba. Like, he wanted to to
stay in The US and form his company
in The US, but then The US said,
hey. Sorry. You're on a, you know, a
student visa, and you gotta return home. So
we bring them in. We give them, you
know, the world class education. Although in in

(06:02):
many aspects of of high end education, it
could be considered, you know, world class,
brainwashing. But at least in terms
of STEM,
US universities definitely are at the top of
the world, and then we force them away.
I think, recently, Trump has been discussing that
your visa will come with your diploma, basically.
As you graduate

(06:22):
from a top university, your your visa to
start your company in The US will be
basically accompanied with that. And and and I
think that's a fairly smart, opinion.
Well, let's get back to there. Go ahead.
Like the the gold card. Are you you've
been hearing about this like the green card,
but you invest, I believe it's $5,000,000.
You know? They they vet these individuals. This
isn't just, you know, handing out the ability

(06:45):
for someone to be here, but it it's
a way for someone to
reside in The United States, still be a
citizen of another
country, reside here, but start building businesses here
that they would have built somewhere else. It
gives Yeah. The cool thing about that is
that
unlike every other American who has to pay
taxes on worldwide income,
these people with a gold card will be

(07:05):
exempt from their worldwide,
income
and and will only pay taxes on US
based income. And it's I think it's pretty
smart because if you want the the the
rich and successful to come and start businesses
here, they won't do it if now you're
gonna tax them on all their on all
their their income elsewhere. Yet it will bring
in aside from the 5,000,000 from actually purchasing
the card, it will bring in more jobs

(07:27):
and more companies. And a lot of a
lot of people do wanna start a business
in The US. Personally, I wanted to start
a business in The US. Right? So,
it's like
being in Israel,
you could be very successful. It's a very
high end economy.
You can make a lot of money, but
you are surrounded by brilliant people who are

(07:47):
out there to eat your lunch. Right? Competition
is fierce. Right? It's like being a baby
shark and your siblings are chewing you up.
So whereas in The US, it's it's so
much easier to be successful because The US
is such a huge market of, you know,
350,000,000
people
with very high average income. Right? Very high,
you know, personal GDP.
It's just by far the best market to

(08:08):
sell to. And that's what we've seen is
that with the,
quote, unquote, liberalization
of the economy,
with free trade agreements with typically we're both,
you know, staunch capitalists.
And typically, free trade agreements are considered very
good
and very positive for both sides, which is
why I was a little conflicted on on

(08:29):
these tariffs. Right? If you look,
the the staunch supporter of
of of reducing tariffs
was Ronald Reagan, right, of all people,
the
almost godfather of the current Republican Party.
So it is a little ironic,
but I think The US is in a
very unique situation, especially right now, why these

(08:50):
tariffs do make sense. And I think we
can get into them, but what's your opinion
on this? So yeah. So, I mean, ultimately,
that I think that's an important point. Tariffs
serve a purpose. They're a tool,
and you need different tools for different, you
know, projects.
Where The United States is right now is
different than it was fifty or a hundred
years ago. That's super important. It was twenty

(09:11):
years ago.
The other thing is that, you know, if
you look at what's being done,
when you, you know, when you talk free
trade,
it sounds great.
But
if you just leave the door open, the
problem is there can be this tendency. So,
for example, what do you see?
You see labor
free for very long. It's a one way

(09:32):
free trade. Right? The US does free, and
then the other country slowly just starts returning
their their tariffs or,
VAT or other taxes. And and VAT is
a little different because that's also implemented
on the local population, local manufacturing as well.
The explanation I just heard from,
whether it's Lutnick or Scott Bessen or one
of those was that

(09:54):
Europe and other countries are using the VAT
to subsidize their industries. Right? So they'll use
the money from the VAT to subsidize energy,
which makes it, you know, which makes their
companies more competitive or sometimes directly subsidizing car
manufacturers. Right? So therefore, the VAT that's why
The US is kind of, at least under
Trump, is basically coalescing.
When they say tariffs,
they're not necessarily only referring to tariffs, and

(10:15):
that's why it's a little obfuscated and confusing.
It's tariffs plus VAT plus other types of
regulations that that could harm,
US exports. Go ahead. So yeah. So, basically,
we have to think about this. What happens
when you just have,
an open agreement with another company another, excuse
me, another country? I mean, the first thing

(10:36):
that that we've seen happen is we we
had a a massive
loss net loss of manufacturing jobs. Why? Because
we took advantage of the fact companies took
advantage of the fact that they could move
labor to a country that would pay people
much, much less. Okay?
And so we lost jobs to places like
Mexico, for example,

(10:58):
where they're not paying as much to the
individuals
or India or a new you know, numerous
other countries.
And, ultimately, there's a number of questions, even
some ethical moral questions at some point if
people in these other countries are being taken
advantage of to do the labor. There's been
no shortage of talk of the Uyghurs in,
you know, China

(11:18):
being slave labor basically for the Chinese government.
And for companies that are doing trade with
China and doing manufacturing in China, who's actually
doing the labor, and how much are they
being paid, and what are the working conditions?
You know, it's sort of an an easy
sort of excuse
to ship all this manufacturing elsewhere and then
just say, well, it's not

(11:39):
my problem because I'm not the one that
you know, it's this other country that are
following their regulations.
But, you know, so there's that that side
of it. Without a doubt, you can
save money
and make things cheaper
in China or in other countries than perhaps
paying the wages we have here. But, you
know, things are changing. We're gonna have robotics
and automation.

(12:00):
There's I think I might have sent you
this thing where,
Tesla's
apparently putting in a bid to manufacture or
to, to put put up,
and construct,
or rebuild an airport in Lisbon, Portugal
using robotics.
It sounds like bullshit to me. I follow
Tesla very closely and Elon, and I haven't

(12:20):
heard anything about that yet. Listen. This may
not this may not be the thing. It
just is you know, a lot of it's
talk. But you know what?
Twenty years from now, is it still gonna
be talk?
Maybe not. No. Not not even five years
from now. We'll be able to gonna be
in a minute because I think that is
a a relevant
solution for why tariffs are are

(12:42):
possible
here.
But be before we get to that, I
mean, the the whole concept of, you know,
let's outsource to save a few bucks,
it's,
it's funny. You you have an MBA, a
master's in business, and
I I almost rail against,
MBAs.
Not not that there's necessarily any anything wrong

(13:02):
with it, but
the McKinsey style
of trying to squeeze out every last cent
of profit
without looking at the big picture whatsoever
is really just shooting yourself in in the
legs. Right? So what happens is in order
to specialize in something, you really have to
get really good at manufacturing and iterating. Right?

(13:24):
So you have to
have prototypes and and have them you test
them and fail them and and iterate iterate
iterate at rapid speed. Right?
And that's really hard to do when you're
halfway across the world and then time zone
is the exact opposite of yours. Right? But
it's not even just that.
It's that when we lose the ability to
manufacture, we can't even do the prototypes by
us. Right?

(13:45):
And then we lose
the ability
to advance technology quickly, which is usually done
by by, you know,
high speed iterative,
you know, trials and fail and and failures.
Right? And when we lose that, we basically
lose the real value add. Right? So we
can no longer vertically,

(14:07):
integrate because everything is being outsourced to another
country in the world to save a few
cents on on every part.
We can no longer prove our product because
our products are now created by suppliers,
and the suppliers aren't motivated to improve their
tech. Right?
So if I'm manufacturing something, I can wanna
improve the the the processes,

(14:28):
both of manufacturing
and then also the quality of the end
good every single day of the year, but
my suppliers have the exact opposite,
motive. Right? Their motive is to reduce their
own costs. Right? So
I I outsource to them to save a
few bucks. Now I lost the specialization. I
lost the I lost the ability to
to advance the technology at a rapid speed.

(14:50):
And even if I find an advancement and
I request it from them, it'll take them
six months to get it done. Right? And
they're disincentivized to do it because
their incentivization is to save cost, not improve
product. Right? So it it really just it
creates false incentives. And pretty much every time
we see that there's a bad distort in
the market, it is almost always call caused

(15:11):
by,
incentivizing the wrong things. And that is really
what happened with the MBAfication
of the economy where, you know, all these
consulting firms basically moved into every single business
and said, hey. We can save you some
money. Let's let's outsource. And then we end
up outsourcing for everybody. I I think, another
point that's important to note is it isn't

(15:33):
the only reason that we outsource. Another important
reason we outsource was ESG.
And for some reason,
it really helps improve the ESG score if
we have no factories in The US and
manufacture nothing here. And instead in China, they
manufacture things, like you mentioned, with slave labor,
treating people horribly, and about 10,000 times more
polluting. But it doesn't really register on the

(15:55):
ESG scale, so it's good for our the
company's ESG score. Right? So we had a
whole bunch of companies doing it for that
reason, which is which is crazy in its
own right. But it really the bad incentives
create really bad outcomes,
and it really slows our ability to improve
technology and to improve products and improve goods,
which makes us uncompetitive.
Right?

(16:16):
So the outsourcing
really is shooting yourself in in in the
foot. Yes. You may save a few dollars
in the short term. The CEO may be
able to get a nicer bonus. But in
the long term, you're losing everything that makes
your company special.
So I agree with you. I don't know
that bashing the MBAs is is really the
but
I I do agree that, you know, just

(16:37):
looking at stock prices, looking at profitability, looking
at you know, there you have to take
things in totality.
I can give you one simple example of
how little things
make big differences.
As, you know, back in the day, we
had people answering phones at all these companies,
okay, all of our companies. You'd call a
number, and someone would pick up the phone
and route the call. Now, of course, it's

(16:57):
all automated. Right? You call up, and you
press 1 for this and 2 for that
and 3 for that, and good luck if
you could even get to a human being.
Right?
And, you know, what's sad is for you
know, you call a company and they need,
like, an account number. What if you don't
have it? Oh, if you don't have it,
you try some other way, and it may
not work. You may be on the phone
for fifteen minutes just trying to get to
someone
to speak with. And the bottom line is

(17:19):
it may seem trivial,
but these companies have saved huge amounts of
money getting rid of entire departments of people
answering phones. But in the end, it creates
some downstream problems for the companies that took
years for them to even realize. Many companies
would rehire some people back and do have
easier ways of accessing human beings. Until we
get to the point where AI is sufficiently

(17:41):
capable of carrying on an adequate conversation,
we still need these humans, many of which
have to be rehired.
So you're right. A lot of times in
business,
decisions are made
for the short term, you know, returns. They're
trying to be able to get bonuses and
and do all the things they need to
do to show that they're saving money and,
yes, ESG, and, yes,

(18:03):
saving the environment and making sure that we're
carbon neutral or what have you. Okay? At
the end of the day,
which is idiotic if you if you're moving
all the manufacturing to come to countries
that are much more polluting than The United
States by far.
But The US doesn't take the hit on
the spreadsheet showing that it's putting out all

(18:24):
this pollution.
So, ultimately,
that's
a big part of all of this that
has gotten us to this point. We have
entire industries which were decimated.
You know, we were we were not only,
you know,
able to produce enough fossil fuel for our
needs, but we were actually a net exporter
of fuel

(18:44):
right not that many years ago at the
end of the first press Trump presidency.
And we had that's a big important thing
because whether or not you think we should
be using fossil what what we maybe incorrectly
call fossil fuels long term, the reality is
we're just not ready
to move away from that. It's needed for
so many things that we need to be

(19:05):
able to survive in the type of world
we live, And even infrastructure for electric vehicles
doesn't exist. We don't have the power capacity
in most of our areas in The United
States to support all this. These are things
we wanna do, but sometimes people jump to
gun. They make all these decisions. They do
these things. And then you take a look
back and go, okay. Well, we have we

(19:26):
don't manufacture
virtually anything here. It's all done somewhere else.
We're impacted by things such
as problems with
piracy
of the seas and other things and terroristic
attacks on ships moving goods. I mean, there's
so many things that ultimately now impact
goods that we use in The United States,

(19:47):
not just tariffs. These are other things that
when we start
outsourcing everything to everybody,
at our own detriment,
it's it can be problematic.
So the tariffs are really a tool. Right?
So, ultimately,
you know, it's it it would seem to
be that the purpose for these tariffs right
now is to get these other countries
to come to the table because what, again,

(20:09):
most people don't realize is
most of these countries have massive tariffs that
we pay for our goods
to get into those countries
if we were even able to bring in
and sell goods there. Many of these countries,
we can't. They just won't allow it. And
people go, why does that matter? Well, because
guess what? We wanna be able to sell
things too that other people are gonna buy.
And there's some things including, you know, our

(20:32):
farmers wanna be able to sell crops to
other countries. Some countries they just can't sell
to.
We have, you know, obviously, petroleum products and
so forth which we wanna sell, but there's
so much more than that. And, ultimately, there
are markets that are completely closed or
make it
not viable for a consumer of those countries
to buy American goods. All we're doing now

(20:52):
is inflicting the same style of pain onto
these other countries
to make a point. I think it's not
that anyone wants to have these tariffs as
a source of perpetual income for The United
States.
The goal is to balance it off.
And, ultimately,
you know, that's
I heard one of the tariffs, which was
a tariff on Vietnam.

(21:13):
And part of the reason had to do
with Vietnam
being used as a country where goods from
China
were sort of circumventing
some of the restrictions we have on certain
products coming out of China, and they just
they manufacture them in part in China. They
go to they go to Vietnam, and then
Vietnam
exports them, and it looks like it's an
export from them. And you can bypass,

(21:36):
you know, China, you know, tariffs that we've
imposed. There's many you know, it's it's a
lot of moving parts. I think
people have to accept
that if you look at the tariffs that
US goods get get charged in other countries,
at the very least, we should have the
ability. If these are products that we are
able to export successfully,
we should be able to compete like everyone

(21:57):
else. Competition, again, in capitalism, it is to
compete. If you can compete
and become more efficient because you have markets
that are asking and wanting your products,
things change. If you go to Europe,
what what type of cars do you think
you see on the streets in Europe?
Yeah. European cars mostly. And and there it's
funny. As a kid, when I was visiting

(22:17):
Europe, I used to think that, you know,
of course, in America, we also want BMW
or Mercedes. They're better cars. And
there is
some some some validity to that argument. I
mean, American car companies, aside from Tesla, haven't
been very innovative in in a while.
But just to steal man
the case against these tariffs,

(22:40):
the concept of a trade imbalance being bad
is a little bit awkward. It's kind of
like saying,
all of if I have a factory
and I have suppliers,
if my suppliers are not
my clients to the equal degree that I
buy products from them, they don't buy products
from me,
then they can't be my suppliers anymore. And

(23:01):
that is like, that's crazy. Right? Nobody would
ever say such a thing. And that's that's
kind of the tariff argument that Trump is
presenting. Right? Hey. There's this huge trade imbalance.
Everybody is selling us products and not buying
from us,
and therefore,
they're gonna have to buy as much as
we sell to them. And and, like, Legacy
Media likes pointing out, oh, there's an island
near Antarctica, and the and the,

(23:25):
the penguins there aren't purchasing enough US goods.
And
even the Falcon Islands, you know, they they
basically, their entire import from The US was,
like, $350,000
and and half of it was one machine.
Right?
So to to to try and claim that,
hey. There needs to be a trade balance
isn't necessarily
a smart thing. Right? And if we look

(23:47):
at the original reason why
The
US
outsourced
under Ronald Reagan,
nonetheless,
started especially with with outsourcing,
of manufacturing, it was because
there weren't enough US workers and the price
of US of US labor, you know, skyrocketed.
And it is more efficient, and it does

(24:08):
make more sense for other countries to specialize
in different things. And, you know, The US,
we can specialize at designing products, etcetera.
So there was some logic to it. Right?
At the end of the day, the The
US
employees tend to be lazy and not very
hardworking.
It's much easier to, to find a hardworking
Chinese or Vietnamese employee even though they may

(24:28):
be whipped at night.
But
like we said, it's just
Americans are good very good consumers, but we
don't want that to only be the case.
So the original reason kinda makes sense. And
like we said, if it really is free
trade, then it then it's fine. But if
they put up
other taxes,

(24:49):
other regulations
to impede our exports, that really makes us
un uncompetitive. What we've seen with China do
is manipulate their currency as well,
in order to keep their products cheap cheaper
than they really should be.
And that obviously creates a trade imbalance as
well. So
the general concept
of, hey. There has to be a perfect

(25:10):
match of, you know, imports and exports of
every country is a dumb one. Right?
But I don't think that's the real point
of the tariffs here.
I think and, again, The US is in
a very unique situation because The US is
by far the richest country in all of
human history, and therefore, US consumers are are
by far the best consumers.

(25:30):
And like anybody from anywhere in the world
is very familiar with,
the dream is to have
is to export to The US. Right?
You know, first, you start exporting to you
know, you manufacture something. You sell it within
your own country. Then he starts exporting to
nearby countries or other friendly countries. The dream
always is to ex export to The US
market because you can charge so much more

(25:51):
because Americans are so rich and, you know,
they don't even realize it.
Obviously, that hasn't been the situation for many,
many middle state
Americans whose lives have been devastated because the
factories that kept them all running were shut
down, and then they fell down the trap
of fentanyl, which is in itself a very

(26:12):
funny reminder of the,
the
opioid wars between the British and the Chinese.
And the Chinese are really just kind of
getting back at us,
at The US in this case. But I
think what's different here about the tariffs so
so the thing is, like, hey. We wanna
bring back manufacturing. Unemployment in The US is
at, like, three and a half, 4%, which

(26:32):
is basically
as low as it gets in terms of
unemployment.
So why is it like, we're gonna bring
back, you know, hundreds of new factories. Who's
gonna work in these factories?
Right? Now the unemployed person in,
you know, Ohio may disagree and say, no.
We want these factories.
But
there is a legit question of, like, who's

(26:52):
gonna work in these in these factories. Right?
So what's the point of having tariffs if
it's just gonna make products more expensive because
labor is gonna go up, etcetera? So like
you mentioned, the original reason why we were
outsourcing is because labor in China was cheap.
Important to note that that's no longer the
case. China was a very poor country. Now
it's a middle income country. There are a
lot of very rich people in China,

(27:13):
and,
the Chinese average salary is higher than in
Mexico nowadays. So nowadays, it's literally cheaper to
manufacture in Mexico than it is China, and
Mexican engineers tend to be, better than Chinese
engineers supposedly. Like, Chinese engineers are good, but
you need, like, 10 for one.
So that's why originally after COVID, we saw
this whole near shore near shoring concept. It

(27:34):
was like, okay. We realized our dependency on
China was way too big. We can't even
get drugs because it's all made there. We
can't get, you know, parts for weapons because
it's all made there. We can't do anything
because everything is China, and China is basically
in control of everything. When they close things
up due to China due to COVID, it
really woke the world up to being like,
wait. We have way too much dependency on
China. So what we started to see is

(27:54):
a shift from China to Southeast Asia, notably
Vietnam, India, and maybe Thailand,
and, of course, Mexico. Mexico and Canada because
especially with NAFTA, that was, like, the no
brainer. Right? You just manufacture there to sell
them in The US. And,
yes,
these, quote, unquote, free trade agreements with which,
like we said, may have started out free

(28:14):
for both sides, but then ended up not
being free for both sides, maybe only just
just for one side.
But these free trade agreements were good at
and are very good at lowering the price
of goods and of goods,
like we said, at a huge cost to
the Americans that was never kind of calculated
in.
If we're gonna bring back manufacturing to The
US, we will still have that same problem

(28:36):
because we still,
excuse excuse me, do not have enough employees
for those factories.
But
manufacturing nowadays How about manufacturing?
Well, manufacturing nowadays is a very small part
human labor and a very large part robotic
labor. So that whole argument or the whole
reason why we outsource in the first place
doesn't exist, a, because China is no longer

(28:57):
cheap,
And, b, because if robots are doing it,
they may as well do it in The
US rather than China. Right? And and then
the the jobs that do exist of maintaining
the robots and and planning the the robots
and designing them and and implementing them and
everything. Those are very high end jobs. Those
are the jobs we definitely want in The
US. Right? So that's so that's the point

(29:18):
because that is what's happened. Automation has taken
over a lot of this work.
Why are we allowing
this all to be done offshore
and now with the tariffs?
Literally, every day, we're hearing about more and
more companies that are wanting to do that
here, whether it's building a data center, whether
it's going and assembling vehicles, whether it's whatever.

(29:39):
They wanna do it in The US. Why?
Well,
to avoid the tariffs and to get other
benefits they'll have for being here. So it's
you know, when we think of manufacturing, it
isn't all about inexpensive labor now. I brought
it up because that was a thing in
the past before automation
became as advanced as as it already is
and will continue to to, you know, improve

(29:59):
upon. But,
ultimately,
I think it's a way to reset
kind of where things are at, to encourage
other countries
to
open up markets we've never had access to
with our goods,
and to be able to encourage
those companies and certainly US companies as well
to not establish their manufacturing elsewhere. Because like

(30:21):
you said, it's not about necessarily
the cost of the labor, although you mentioned
China. That's why they do have this group
of individuals they tend to use for a
lot of the labor, which, again, they deny,
but, there's a lot of concern that there's
individuals within China that are actually being forced
to essentially do work at at next to
nothing,
and,

(30:41):
under horrible conditions.
So a lot of these things could be
fixed, the ethical and moral things,
the costs,
certainly now with automation and AI and so
forth. You know, there's what they call dark
factories where it's all robotics
that are doing the work. They don't have
to put lights on in the factories. In
these in the sections of the factories where
the robots are working, they don't need light
to see, the same way we would. So,

(31:04):
ultimately,
I think the world has changed.
Technology has advanced substantially.
The reasons why maybe corporations wanted to move
certain things
out of The United States, that may no
longer be there. Yet we still don't have
the op opportunity to sell much of what
we produce here. And then I agree with
you. I don't think anyone's really saying,

(31:25):
oh, we wanna sell, you know, exactly the
same quantity of of
widget x from our country to your country
that you guys produces. I don't think it's
quite like that. However, in negotiations, you start
off by asking. Constantly mentioned again and again
and again is, hey. We you know, there's
such bad trade imbalance, and he would make
it like, you know, they're stealing from us.

(31:46):
So Or is this the way he talks?
Right. So that's
you hit the nail on the head. It's
the way he talks. It's the art of
the deal. When you're in negotiations,
k, it's like the old joke. Right?
The kid gets home,
and
the kid's, like, all frantic. And the the
the the daughter gets home. The father's like,
what's going on? The mother comes up, says

(32:07):
something's wrong with our daughter. Look at her.
She's freaking out. She ran to a room.
Honey, come out here. The girl comes out
and says, what what's going on? Said, I
don't know if I can tell you. I
don't think you're gonna be able to to
deal with this.
I mean, it's it's just so bad. And,
they're like, no. No, honey. We love you.
Just tell us what happened. And the girl
says,

(32:28):
I'm pregnant.
And they're, like, freaked out initially, and then
they go,
deal with it. We'll figure it out.
Oh my goodness. How did that happen?
And the girl says, okay. I'm not really
pregnant, but I dented the car. No. Thank
god.
Okay. So you start off with something that's
gonna be
much less expected, a shock

(32:49):
shocking news,
and then you go back with something else
which would have never been tolerated.
But now they're just so happy
that it you know, the first thing isn't
true, that they're not bothered at all with
the, you know, with the, the damage to
the vehicle that otherwise would have resulted in
some grounding or screaming or what what have

(33:09):
you. And,
you know, it's like in medicine. Right? There's
another joke I'll I'll since we you know,
laughter is the best medicine, we might as
well talking about tariffs and all these bad
things. You know, guy goes to the doctor,
and the doctor says, you know,
what's what brought you in today? And the
the guy says, oh, when you know, it
really hurts when I lift my arm. It

(33:31):
really hurts when I lift my arm. Doctor
says, just don't lift your arm. You know?
So it
sometimes,
when you look at the problem, you have
to understand there's different ways to look at
them, at the answers. There's many solutions. Right?
And when when certain people are negotiating, definitely
Trump,
he's gonna make some bold statements.
He's not scared of going and

(33:51):
freaking people out of it.
He hasn't yet said that he's pregnant, but,
you know,
he might say something to that effect and
to get a rise out of people. And
then he'll eventually
go to his fallback position. And by then,
the fallback position won't look anywhere near as
shocking as the first position. So Yeah. And
he lays this out very clearly in the

(34:12):
art of the deal, and we've sent we've
seen him do this again and again and
again. Although the advantage with that is
you shift the Overton window. Right? So, for
example, with the situation in in, you know,
Gaza,
it was like Biden was like, ceasefire, ceasefire,
ceasefire. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. You know,
never one thought about how do we solve

(34:32):
the problem, how do we make sure this
doesn't happen again,
any real solutions. Right? And it's just like
because the
the foreign the state department,
right, has been so fixated
on just avoiding conflict at all cost
that it hasn't realized that sometimes the only
way to solve a problem is is with
conflicts

(34:52):
is with conflict. And by delaying
the the good side of completing their objective
every time forcing a a cease fire upon
them. And we we saw that with protective
edge, and I think, it was, like, 2021
or 2019.
The different wars that the war between Israel
and Gaza,
where again and again, The US basically forced

(35:12):
upon Israel a ceasefire.
And then if you don't actually solve the
problem, it only comes back to bite you
way worse the next time. Right? You you
only you end just end up with with
a larger problem. And then what Trump did
when he said, hey. We should just move
it out and turn it into, you know,
beautiful Singapore.
It's like, he just changed the Overton window.
Right? So what was considered, you know, radical

(35:33):
on the extreme right wing of the Israeli
politics
suddenly is mainstream discussion, and now we have
the Arab countries, you know, clamoring into to
find a solution. So, yeah, it is I
do wanna get back to tariffs, but it
is kind of the art of it it
is literally what he put in what he
put in the book, and that doesn't able
to to change the Overton window, which is
the subject of discussion, if if anybody's unfamiliar

(35:55):
with that term. It's like, what is even
conceivable for people to talk about?
And for example,
removing the people from Gaza and creating something
else there was just out of the discussion
aside from the the very most extreme of
the right wing in Israel. And the minute
you change the Overton window, it enables for
for new solutions.
In terms of tariffs, I think the key

(36:18):
to being able to why now we're able
to bring back manufacturing to The US, which
was not possible in the past,
is because, yes, factories, you know, were 80%
out of automation, let's just say. There's still
20% human labor. And the labor cost is
somewhat effective even though nowadays it's only 20%.
It's it's a small percent. It's a small,
level of effectiveness.

(36:39):
But we are really at the dawn
of mass manufacturing of humanoid robots.
We're seeing Tesla doing this with their Optimus
robot. We're seeing other companies like Unitree and
a whole other bunch of other companies.
There are probably about 30 companies nowadays who
claim to be manufacturing
humanoid robots,

(37:01):
of which maybe 15 or 20 have showed
actual demos.
Maybe
it's funny because of those 30, probably 20
or 25 are Chinese. There may be two
or three Israeli. There are few Europeans, maybe
one Australian company, and a few more US
companies aside from Tesla. But it's basically the
that entire list is,
is

(37:22):
Chinese.
But
the fact that we will have
just endless of months of humanoid,
labor labor very soon, and we can get
into why humanoid is actually happening now. So
in general, we had Honda had Asimov, you
know, which is a quote, unquote humanoid robot
for thirty years now. Nothing ever happened. Right?
It was this one of these things that

(37:44):
humanoids are coming next year for the last
thirty years. Right? Kind of like they say
about fusion.
Twenty twenty years out forever,
which is now also we're starting to see
that that's no longer the case. But the
reason why humanoids were always
here but never here was because manufacturing physical
body of a of a humanoid robot
was fairly, you know,

(38:06):
easy, not easy, but plausible, understandable as a
fairly predictable route. The problem was teaching
a robot to understand the three d world.
And
when we started the race for full self
driving, we saw this huge bifurcation where you
basically had Tesla go one route and the
entire industry take take another route. So,
companies like Waymo

(38:27):
and,
what's it called, Cruise Automation and a whole
bunch of other companies,
their trick
for doing automation was we will highly three
d map a very specific neighborhood, a very
specific location
with extremely high density,
very expensive three d mapping, and it has
to be maintained on on a regular basis.

(38:48):
And then we'll we'll take a regular car.
We'll shove it with every possible sensor
you can imagine to basically raise red flags
if there's anything in it ever anything suspicious,
and
will put this car on its track, which
is the three d mapped area, and voila,
it can self drive. And it's it's great
for having first impressions
to the executives from

(39:09):
GM who come to Cruise Automation
to see the amazing progress. You put them
in your self driving car. It looks all
cool with all the, you know, road rotating
LIDAR sensors.
And,
you know, it takes them around the block
or around the neighborhood, and they're super impressed
and excited excited. Right? So that's the route
that basically
every self driving company took aside from Tesla.

(39:30):
The reason why they took this route is
it's impossible
to to teach at the time, ten years
ago, the theory was or ten, fifteen years
ago, the theory was it's impossible to teach
a robot to understand the three d world.
So we'll prepare for it a roller coaster
ride, which is, you know, the the the
high def three d mapping,
and we'll add every sensor, and then it
can kind of get things done. Whereas Tesla
is like humans drive using neural networks and

(39:52):
vision. There's no reason why computers can't do
it the same thing. So even if it's
super hard, this is what we have to
solve. Right? And they hired the the chip
engineer who designed the m one chips for
Apple to create a supercomputer,
and they started implementing it every single Tesla
vehicle. And what's crazy about this is the
profit margin on most cars is between $300

(40:13):
and $3,000, and that in itself is pretty
remarkable.
And Tesla was now putting in a $3,000
supercomputer into every single vehicle whether you paid
it for for FSD or not. I personally
have had s FSD for over a decade,
and I've really been able to watch it
progress.
But the the investment
Just just everyone, full self driving

(40:33):
capability.
Yeah. For for yeah. Exactly.
But
the
so the but I've really been able to
watch it progress. You've watched the brain
learn to understand the three d world. Right?
And anybody who's driven a Tesla with FSD
recently really knows how how remarkable it is.
And now that it's so remarkable,

(40:55):
now that they've really gotten to teach,
a robot because Tesla vehicles are robots with
wheels
and and the cockpit and the chamber. But
now that we've been able to train robots
to navigate the three d world at 80
miles an hour, it's a whole lot easier
to say, hey. Now you're just walking, you
know, around the house at two miles an
hour down the block at five mile five
miles an hour. So we've taught

(41:17):
brains to understand the three d world, at
least Tesla has, and therefore, it's very easy
to build relevant humanoid robots that can actually
get stuff done. Yes. There's a lot of
training. It has there's a whole lot more
interactions with, you know, three d objects around
the house.
So it's it's not simple in any way,
shape, or form,
but it's definitely conceivable
and possible. So

(41:40):
how do we get from there to tariff?
How do we get from tariffs here? I'm
because the world's changed, and it is gonna
change more. And the tariffs are a reset
point
to, I think, get us to where we
need to be with all these changes. Again,
the labor markets
are changing. Give another simple example.
You know, we know AI is gonna take
a lot of

(42:00):
jobs that are currently your call center jobs.
Okay? Or white colored jobs too. Yeah. Yeah.
But just a simple thing. You you call
somewhere and you need something. K? We'll give
you example of something happened to me maybe,
I don't know, two years ago,
and called Amazon
for an Amazon.com,
a prime delivery that that got misdelivered or
something wrong with it. And usually what happens,

(42:22):
the calls get routed to some when you
ask for customer service,
to some offshore center where someone picks up
the phone and helps you or calls you
back in a minute or a few seconds
and has a conversation, tries to help you.
Overall, I can say the customer service that
I've received when I call Amazon has improved
over the last few years. And at one
point, I kinda hated the customer service. Now

(42:43):
it's really very good.
But I had this very
surprising thing happen. And it must have been,
like I said, couple of years ago. Call
up, some kind of issue,
and I have this AI voice saying to
me, hi. I'm so and so. I'm an
AI,
but I really wanna try to help you.
So it was trying to

(43:03):
be you know, kinda tug at my heartstrings
and make me feel bad. So can you
give me and it basically asked me if
I would give it a chance. Yeah. Like
that. I actually like If not and if
not, I'll transfer you a good thing. But
I can I actually, you know, can solve
a lot of the problems quicker, and you
won't have to wait if you give me
the chance the opportunity? So I go and
I talk with it,
and it has a very,

(43:25):
you know, intuitive sort of conversation,
very fluid.
Just like talking to a human being.
And then at the end,
it asks, of course, if I it was
so it would have we have to cancel
an item and reorder it and whatever, give
me a refund, whatever it was. And it
did it, and then it said you know,
ask me if there's anything else, and I
said no.
Did I you know? And it it says,

(43:47):
how did I do? You know, as an
AI, I wanna know if I did okay
because I know that normally a human would
do this. Something that get to eat dinner
tonight or or do I get punished
in in the hell in in the hell
of AIs?
Well,
it was so cool. It was so good.
It was so impressive. And then in the,
you know, year or two since I've called

(44:08):
back, I never get that. So I don't
know if they're just testing it or they
were testing it, but it was, like, honestly,
a great
experience.
And if we can get to the point
and clearly Amazon is, you know, a big
player in all this. If if we get
to the point in the next couple of
years where more of that exists
I mean, first of all, you know so
in the example

(44:28):
for everyone. No. It's it's I mean, honestly
and what I liked about it is they
actually had coded it so that it kind
of it was really nice about the fact
it was an AI and kinda knew the
people might be reluctant.
So it was asking if we would just,
like, be kind enough to give it a
chance to try because it wanted to show
me
that, you know, what it's capable of doing.
I mean, I'm like, okay. Like, you know

(44:49):
what? I felt bad. I'm like, okay. Sure.
AI. I'm gonna you you know? So, I
mean, this stuff's coming, and and it's gonna
markedly change,
you know, the landscape as far as a
lot of the things that are happening. So
I think the tariffs happening now,
it's not at some random time either. I
think it's happening before the advent of some

(45:10):
big changes in the next five to ten
years with regards to a lot of different
type of human work right now. It's not
all manufacturing. And,
the reasons why companies might have, as you
said, the NBA earlier, might have been saying,
you gotta do this. Remember, it was all
driven by money. Bottom line, how much they
could save, how much they could show they're
making profit, how much money for the shareholders,

(45:30):
and exporting some of this stuff to other
countries to do the work there or whatever
was cheaper.
But now there's other considerations.
And, It's like, hey. When you realize that
80% is automation and then the 20%
will be able to be humanoid robots,
then, basically, the cost is the cost of
manufacturing is the cost of raw inputs, raw
goods, and electricity.

(45:50):
And if we can manufacture electricity with solar
and backup batteries or energy storage and other
formats,
then
the cost of any good
is really just the cost of its raw
inputs. And that just it just
dramatically drops the cost. Right? So that will
have a huge increase in the quality of
life of of most the average American. We'll

(46:12):
be able to have more goods. Come full
circle then. We've come full circle because, again,
when we were talking earlier,
I mean, this whole conversation about labor and
labor costs and all this, manufacturing, you were
saying, well, who who are we gonna have
here? Who's gonna do these jobs if we
bring all this manufacturing back? And the answer
is we've answered our own question
by talking about it. The answer is a

(46:34):
lot of these manufacturing jobs won't all be
jobs
for the laborers. It'll be for the people
that are working,
producing the equipment,
programming, overseeing, and so forth. It's a different
type of job, but there's gonna be more
jobs here. And the bottom line is this
is happening whether we like it or not.
Automation is gonna continue to occur. The question
is,
why should we have things manufactured in another

(46:56):
country even if
through robots and AI,
then not do it here? Do it here.
We wanna do all of that here. We
wanna limit how much stuff has to be.
And, again, there's a cost with having to
ship stuff across the ocean to bring it
back here after it's manufactured.
We can eliminate those costs. And, again, if
we're shipping somewhere ship to. Something, it's because
we're selling it to another country.

(47:17):
So
I think we we wanna and then may
the best country win. There'll be certain things
that we don't do as well as some
other countries. It's certainly gonna be like that.
There's certain things we'll excel at and other
things we might not. And it'll balance off
in the end
because we're gonna go after the type of
things we're really good at, and other countries
will focus on what they're really good at,

(47:37):
And that will continue to evolve. The the
country that. The country's gonna call centers. They'll
have all those people learning other things and
doing other things that are hopefully gonna pay
them even more and be more valuable than
the the the opportunities they've had up until
now. Right? Yeah. We hope. Hopefully. Hopefully. AI
may take all of our jobs. It's just
a matter of time.
I think

(47:58):
the key is some of Trump's other policies.
Right?
So until now, we couldn't manufacture
because we would have to ship in all
all all of the raw materials
from abroad because mining was essentially illegal in
The US.
Right? So by enabling
or by legalizing
mining again, right, this suddenly allows

(48:21):
us to like like what we said, the
cost will be the cost of raw goods.
If we can mine those raw goods right
here and not have to ship them from
across the world and and pay profits to
other companies and other taxes to other other
countries for those, then the cost of raw
goods can drop. Right? And just as much
as Trump hates illegal immigration, like we saw
with Biden
literally paying for flights of, you know, Trento

(48:42):
or a or a or a or a
or a or a or a or a
or a terrorist to come into The United
States and other, you know, MS 13 and
who knows other. Literally pay paying for flights
of illegals to enter The United States, which
is just
incomprehensible.
For as much as Trump hates illegal immigration,
he also
loves high quality legal immigration.

(49:02):
So what we will see is a whole
bunch of Taiwanese
getting green cards, many of them, those gold
cards we mentioned earlier, sponsored by TSMC, which
is the largest chip manufacturer of computer chips
in the world, who until now manufactures everything
in Taiwan, who announced that they'll be investing,
I think, it's 200,000,000,000,
US in US factories. Right? So,
we will be seeing a whole bunch more

(49:24):
of highly educated, highly specialized people receiving,
you know, residency or work permits,
of of one form or another in The
US. So I think it's a balance. We
will have to, you know, train a lot
of people. We will have to import a
lot of people, but a lot of these
these a lot of the hard hardcore work,
especially anything that's dangerous, boring, or repetitive will

(49:45):
be done by humanoid robots very soon.
And yeah. So that that's what enables the
the the tariff situation right now.
I think
the fact that The US is the largest
purchaser in the world and such a large
economy
does make this, you know, minimum 10%,
tariff make sense
because we do wanna have some barrier

(50:07):
for countries who who even if there is
a free trade agreement between the countries
just for them to manufacture in The US,
just because the purchaser at the end of
the day is The US. You know? I've
been following geopolitics for a very long time,
and it always
was ironic to me
that, you know, China's
entire
economic strategy

(50:28):
is to import energy from the Persian Gulf,
namely Iran,
and nowadays Russia too, and then use that
and the the the materials they're able to
produce
and sell it
to Europe
and The US. Like, that was the purpose
of the Chinese economy. And same thing kind

(50:48):
of with Russian economy. Like, their dream was,
what's it called? Nordstrom two, right, to to
export as even more oil to Europe. Right?
So
our adversaries,
we are their greatest clients.
Right? They are dependent on us.
There's nobody else who can pay for goods

(51:08):
and services
like The US can and to a certain
degree like Europe can. Right? So they're dependent
on us, and we can
we can halt China in a moment, right,
by by cutting off,
the Malacca Straits. And, you know, if we
just borrow goods and, you know,
going we're coming from China, China's economy collapses

(51:28):
in a moment. Right? So
the fact
that
The US is such a consumer market
means we do have a lot of leverage
on these other con countries and means it
does make sense to force to have a
forcing function of these countries
to manufacture in The US because their clients
are in The US anyways, at least the
majority of the high paying clients. So it's

(51:50):
it really is a no brainer.
Another point I've seen on this is that
tariffs
end up taxing The US,
customer and not the other country.
I think what Howard Lutnick recently said is
because because of this trade imbalance,
because we are their only client, they don't
have a choice.

(52:10):
So they either eat the eat the cost
of the tariff,
or the manufacturer in The US. But if
they don't do either of those, they're they'll
just get screwed out of the market.
And I think that is definitely an interesting
point. Another interesting point
is rumor has it that Trump wants to
reduce income tax on anything below a hundred
and $50,000.
So if you replace
the additional cost added by tariffs

(52:33):
with the tax cuts enabled by the general
Trump tax cuts specifically reducing taxes on anybody
earning below a hundred and 50,000,
then you really can cause the the economy
to to spurt. And like you said, it
is a negotiating tactic. I think once countries
come to the table and start these negotiations,
there will be ways to get,

(52:54):
to kind of have very,
very good agreements with with both sides that
are that are positive in general. I think
something that that was very ironic
is that in anticipation of Trump's new tariff
platform,
Israel, the day before, announced that they're reducing
all tariffs and,
and VAT taxes on on The US down
to zero.

(53:14):
Apparently, Trump didn't get the memo because
on the
the the placard that he that he held
up during that event, it had Israel taxes
on The US Thirty Three Percent, and that's
including VAT and and tariffs and a whole
bunch of other things.
And then
and then, you know, in in return, The
US would tax them, you know, 18% or

(53:35):
something. Whereas the day before, The US announced
zero, and suddenly, it should be 10, but
that was just a kerfuffle. I know we've
been stuck on tariffs for a very long
time. We do have other other topics to
get to, but this is this is a
big one. It's it's an important topic. And
and and just one point, you know, what
Trump has been talking about, whether, again, it's
an an an over
an overstatement or exaggeration,

(53:56):
is to eliminate
income tax on those making under a 50
or a 50
or below.
There'd be no income tax. And in fact,
he, I believe, signed an executive order to,
to initiate the establishment of it of an
external
revenue service
because the idea and remember, US tax The

(54:17):
US citizens
didn't pay taxes always.
This income tax thing is
A new invention from World War. At all.
And
when we see the massive
insane amounts of money that are being wasted
on things that make no sense,
that we have I mean, there's a possibility
that after they reconcile

(54:37):
and eliminate
all the things we don't need to be
spending money on,
it may very well be
that
we won't need to be collecting income tax
from everybody.
We will probably on the higher, you know,
people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a
year or millions.
That's different.
That should make

(54:58):
the people like AOC happy where she wore
the tax the rich,
you know, dress.
You know, $12,000
dress, just to add. You want the 12,000?
Tax the rich $12,000
dress, something like that. But somehow, she's hoping
she gets exempt from taxation. But, nevertheless, bottom
line is, you know, it's kind of amusing
because,
ultimately,

(55:19):
what Trump is proposing exactly is to do
that. Well but the money is not gonna
be enough
coming from income tax on the rich. It's
gonna be coming from business tax because there's
gonna be so much more development in business
in The United States, economic development,
and
from,
again, taxes that come from trade with other
countries, which is the way a lot of

(55:40):
countries generate,
you know,
money for themselves. So we're we're really not
doing anything I mean, it sounds so outlandish,
but it's not outlandish. And what we're we're
talking about is what everyone else is kinda
doing, and the goal
to just do the We're Trump is returning
half of what other countries have on The
US.
Right?
So it sounds outlandish, but he's only doing

(56:02):
half
of the tariffs and that that other countries
are are are currently imposing on The US.
And even this is mostly as a negotiating
tool, I think, to get to a much
better
much better kind of,
deal. I know you wanted to discuss health.
Let's try and make it sure, but what
what what topic did you have top in
mind? I mean, you know, we wanna include
a little bit of health.

(56:23):
I mean, maybe just to kinda
have some dialogue about the things that are
going on now. I mean, without a doubt,
tied in with the, you know, the second,
Trump term. You know, there's a lot of
interesting things going on as far as who's
in what different departments.
And,
probably,

(56:44):
this is definitely a big talk talk of
the town right there. And for anybody not
watching, Joe just put on his head a
what looks like a MAGA shirt, but it's
not MAGA. It's Maha making sure they're healthy
again. Yeah. It's a Kennedy hat. It's, this
one happens to be red. I have a
green one too.
So this one's a MAHA, with an h
hat. It's a make America

(57:05):
healthy again hat.
And, you know, depending regardless of what anyone's
opinion is of
RFK junior,
I'm not sure that I would have voted
for him to be president, but
I think in the role that he's in
now
is,
is frankly
perfect role for him. He's the only politician

(57:26):
I've ever heard who had an interest
in actually,
discussing openly and forcefully
the realities
of the state of our health situation, our
health care, and the health of The US
citizen and the people living here. I mean,
we used to be one of the healthiest
countries in the world. We are now one
of the sickest. Really?

(57:47):
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, listen. It doesn't take Well, it's
more healthy than other countries.
Oh, listen. We're we're sick. We have almost
everyone. No. No. That I'm not arguing about.
I I know that we're very sick now,
but I'm saying, what made us in the
past more healthy than other kind? I think
we were just a lot healthier than we
are now, probably more or less same as
other countries. You know, economic advantage for the

(58:08):
most part in this country. Better than more
food. We had access to a lot more
things, quality food, water, housing, and things that
many countries
don't have. You know? I mean, that's just
the reality.
If you look at
photographs that you can you can, you know,
go online and look for pictures of people
from, you know, Chicago, New York, Miami Beach

(58:28):
in the nineteen
fifties, sixties, and seventies.
You don't see people who are obese. Everyone
looks
pretty healthy, pretty buff, frankly.
And
something changed. So we know something has changed.
And, ultimately,
it's not that when I was a kid,
you know, my parents didn't have dessert once
in a while. It's not that. Okay?

(58:50):
Unfortunately, in medicine, there's been this sort of
thing where the physicians are trained to
basically think and believe and say that if,
listen, someone's coming in and they're kinda chubby,
it's probably because they eat too much and
don't exercise a lot. So the the prescriptions
for more exercise
and eating less,
and, you know, frankly, that hasn't worked.
For decades, it hasn't worked. The population's gotten

(59:12):
only more obese and sicker.
You know, either
someone you know,
someone in your family's got type two diabetes
or is on the road to being a
type two diabetic.
When I was in training as a paramedic,
when I worked in heart surgery, when I
had did my undergrad
in exercise science, I mean,
there was type one diabetes, which you're born

(59:34):
typically
or you have an inability
to produce insulin.
The beta cells in your pancreas just can't
produce insulin,
and you're diabetic.
Great.
You take insulin. Guess what?
And that's a great thing that we have
that to be able to give insulin to
the individuals who aren't producing enough. But then

(59:54):
there were type two diabetics.
Not that they didn't produce enough insulin.
They just their bodies weren't responding to the
insulin. And this typically was seen only and
exclusively in adults who were,
you know,
perhaps not having the best diet. So it
was called adult onset diabetes.
Type one,

(01:00:16):
juvenile onset. Type two, adult onset. We can't
call it that anymore because there's so many
kids even in grade school now that have
type two diabetes
or are prediabetic
or
somewhere on the on the road to becoming
diabetic in elementary school. It's shocking.
Okay. So we have to even change the
terminology,
and we can't call it adult onset diabetes

(01:00:38):
anymore.
So the reality is, you know,
something has changed, and there really weren't any
politicians who are willing
or courageous enough or what have you to
really make a big deal out of this.
And a lot of people joke because, you
know, Trump likes his McDonald's burgers and
Diet Cokes, neither of which I'd recommend people

(01:00:58):
have as a regular diet. But if you
look at Trump lately, I don't know if
anyone's noticed, he's lost a lot of weight.
I think it's, like, 30 pounds.
Yeah.
Look. Look at pictures. Look at videos from
him the last, you know, couple of months
and look at them from the last term.
He's lost
a a sizable amount of weight. That's number
one. Number maybe it's because he's hanging around
RFK Jr lately. Yeah. And they're doing some

(01:01:19):
things that are actually Although I have to
say that picture of RFK
Jr eating a hamburger in air force one,
you can see that if the face he
had there was, like, he knew he was
being caught red hand.
Well, at least he at least he was
being polite when someone offers you food, you
know, you kinda like Yeah. And it was
after a long day of of events, and
they're having, like, it was all the, the

(01:01:41):
rallies.
Everybody was hungry. They're on the plane. That
was the the food that was served. I'm
not blaming him or anything. It's just the
look on his face is I I I
love him. Like, look. Look. Look what he
did. But, you know, look. At the end
of the day, bottom line is
it's not about people excluding all foods that
they like, but, I mean, there's something totally
wrong in our food system. So the problem

(01:02:01):
is everything is ultra processed, seed oils, which
people will tell you, oh, it's there's nothing
wrong with them.
I'm pretty sure everything, you know, everything I
could I could muster to try to have
my understanding of all the scientists and doctors
that are actually studying this, there's a problem.
We weren't consuming these things previously, and now
everyone's sick. Yeah. The high processed processed oils
are poison. I like, you mentioned earlier, you

(01:02:23):
know, my your parents used to have a
a dessert every once in a while. And
it's like, yes. They had a dessert containing
sugar.
They did not have desserts containing
high something high highly processed, you know, high
fructose corn syrup. Right?
So here's an example. K. US crops. What
are the two biggest crops in The US?
Soybeans?

(01:02:44):
Corn. Corn. Corn's the biggest.
K. We have motor fuel with with, you
know, corn, but we use corn in so
many foods and
in everywhere. So we have corn syrup, the
high fructose corn syrup, any kind of plant
sugar.
So it's it's it's natural.
It's from the earth. It's natural. Also is

(01:03:04):
hemlock. I don't recommend, you know, having hemlock.
Basically,
fructose,
when you look at table sugar, okay, with
a little packet of sugar, let's say, it's
more or less half fructose
and half glucose. The fructose is the more
addictive part,
and it it does a number on your
liver if you take enough of it over
a long period of time. That's another thing

(01:03:24):
we're seeing in children now too where we
have kids,
again, elementary aged kids and elementary school kids
who have
fatty liver disease.
Again, livers that in the past,
doctors will tell you they never saw it
in the pediatric population. You'd see this in
adults
who are alcoholics.
That's it. They even have a name for

(01:03:45):
this now. It's nonalcoholic
fatty liver disease.
It's basically because
these
basically, the plant sugar, the fructose, chemically looks
like like an alcohol. It's detoxified in the
liver just like alcohol. The kids are eating
so much of this fructose
that, ultimately,
they're destroying their livers at a can be

(01:04:06):
alcoholics.
They're not without drinking alcohol, but it's doing
the same the damage is being caused to
young children.
So, I mean, I really feel for the
youngest
of of of our of our country
who, you know, from birth, they're I mean,
don't get me started on what they even
put in, you know, in baby formula.

(01:04:26):
K? Yeah. Baby formula is one example. The
other is if you're on life support in
the hospital
It's basically unhealthy oils and fat because If
you're in the hospital
getting nutrition
given to you because you're incubated near in
the ICU,
look at what's in there. High fructose corn
syrup. It has it has seed oils. Anyways,
my point being, there's so much going on.

(01:04:48):
I find it interesting. That's why I wanna
include this as we as we have, you
know, our podcast. There needs to be
everyone needs to do their part
to at
least bring to the discussion
the idea that something's going wrong,
and we have to all try to understand
what we can do individually
to ask the right questions.

(01:05:09):
Okay? And, again,
go online,
read what's out there, don't believe the first
thing or second thing you read, validate it,
ask as many people as possible,
and because you wanna make sure what you're
you can't believe everything on the Internet. But
here's the flip side of it. You go
to your doctor. There's a friend of ours
who's a doctor,
okay, from New York.
He moved to Florida,

(01:05:30):
and, you know, we meet for lunch or
whatever from time to time, and we asked
him. And he went to a very reputable,
prestigious
American university for medical school. We asked him
how much
how much training did you receive in nutrition?
How many hours? How many classes? You know
what the answer was? Five
or zero or 15, something like that. Five.

(01:05:51):
For his case, zero.
Zero. And he's quite knowledgeable, but he did
it from for his own
edification.
He works out. He, you know,
he he he he's very fit, but all
of this is on his own doing. It's
not from medical training. So, you know, I
think part of the reality is that we
can't rely generally on physicians and other practitioners

(01:06:14):
to be the
the leader in
the
the health care discussion as it pertains to
nutrition.
Yeah. Half the time, your doctor is obese
himself. Right? So That's odd. In general, I
think
MDs are correctly named MDs because they are
medical doctors. And what they are trained to
do is to diagnose your symptoms

(01:06:34):
and then to give you a medication for
those symptoms.
That is it. Right?
And what we really need is to solve
the cause because every single medication somebody has
somebody takes has at least 10 side effects,
negative side effects.
And, you know, people usually ignore the side
effects,
but they are you're likely to get at
least some of them. Right? Especially if you

(01:06:56):
take take drugs for a while. So
the solution to the problem is drugs. Of
course. Of course. Of course. Of course. Of
course. Of course. Of course. Of course. Of
course. Of course. Of course. Of course. Of
course. Of course. Of course. Of course. Of
course. Of course. Of course. Of course. Of
course. Of course. Of course. Of course. Of
course. Of course. Of course. Of course.
Of
Go ahead.
Watching drug commercials. We're one of only couple
of countries that allows
pharmaceuticals to be advertised on television.
But, you know, and, you know, they they
don't advertise on TV because they expect the

(01:07:17):
consumer to run to the doctor and get
that drug. They're doing it because they're the
I believe they're the biggest,
you know, advertiser
with with that specified media, either a cable
channel or what have you, network television.
So they're not gonna wanna run stories that
go and attack
their biggest advertisers. That's really the reason they

(01:07:37):
spend all this money advertising.
But when you watch these commercials, some of
them are so hilarious
because they do all kinds of things to
distract you during the commercial when they start
reading off what their attorneys have required them
to read as disclosures and disclaimers.
So often the voice changes to a different
voice or they'll have some weird,
little creature jumping around the screen. So you're

(01:07:59):
watching that instead of reading all the things
that can happen. Up to to 2.5 times
speed so you can you can can't even
break down the word we're playing. Yeah. But
my favorite thing is getting screenshots of these,
which I have. And some of these, the
numbers that they give for efficacy or what
actual benefit you're gonna get, it's not a
lie,
but it's so misleading if you read the

(01:08:21):
fine print
on the bottom of the screen, which I
do, or if you get the product insert
and read it. So, I mean, we have
a bit of a mess going on. I'm
hopeful
that, you know,
some of the people put in
positions right now, including RFK Jr, will actually
massively change kind of what's going on,

(01:08:41):
even with our food. If you look at
some of the foods here, the food colorings
that are used, which have been suspected of
causing all kinds of problems,
They're not allowed to be used in other
countries. These much more natural
things Mhmm. Color, the fruit loops, which I
don't think I'm eating anyways. But, you know,
there's so many things happening,

(01:09:03):
for the first time, honestly, that there's perhaps
an opportunity
to turn things around with regards to our
health. And we'll talk more about it as
we go on, but I just wanted today
to kinda touch base on listen. There's things
changing. I think people need to have their
ears and eyes open.
Be an informed, you know, patient, be an
informed consumers. You know, staying healthy is super

(01:09:24):
important. There's nothing. All the rest of our
discussions,
if you're sick, if you're ill,
if you have cancer
and you're concerned
about what the outcome is gonna be,
you're not gonna care about what's happening across
the world in politics or what the tariffs
are gonna be or whatever. You know, it's
not gonna happen. I mean, that's just so
health is at the forefront. It's the most

(01:09:44):
important thing, you know, I think for all
of us. So I think we should and
as time goes on, we'll talk more about
certain,
things that perhaps are the most valuable,
to,
you know,
just staying on you know, healthy and being
able to then
have these other discussions about other things. So
I I think I'll I'll I've said enough

(01:10:05):
with regards to that, but I wanna set
the the the stage for future conversations.
And, we'll cover a lot of different topics,
I think, that are important.
A lot of firsthand, you know, opportunity
and knowledge with some
friends and family members that have been sick,
and
navigating the health care system has been
Yeah. Yeah. It's the it's the number one

(01:10:27):
way people go bankrupt in The US. It's
we'll get into it further in,
future episodes. But just to
get to a few other topics we had
on the docket really, really, really quickly because
we're we're running out of time,
which when listening to podcasts, I hate hearing
that sentence. So,

(01:10:48):
maybe this will change in the future, but
at least at the moment.
Another topic we had was the Houthis, obviously.
You know, the signal group got a lot
of attention, and we can discuss that, but
that's not really important at the moment.
What is important is that the the amount
of attacks on the Houthis have really been
ramping up.
We've recently seen two very contradicting articles on

(01:11:09):
the subject.
One
was an article claiming that The US is
basically lying or obfuscating the amount of money
they're spending on attacking the Houthis, and it's
a lot more expensive
than previously told.
And
the results
of these attacks they're claiming is basically nothing.

(01:11:30):
So we're just spending a billion dollars on
nothing, and there are no results.
So that that was one point of view,
which is obviously an interesting one.
The
other article that came out at the same
time,
contradictorily,
said that Iran has announced that they are
withdrawing
their advisers
from Houthi controlled areas. So they're basic basically

(01:11:54):
turning all of their I IRGC could Quds
Force, which are
the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,
division that's designed to sow terrorism
around the world. And they were withdrawing those
advisers from Yemen.
We saw this happen right before Bashar al
Assad ran away to Russia as Syria was
collapsing,

(01:12:14):
and that may indicate
that
Iran is pulling support for the one last,
you know,
terror group that they still have after Israel,
you know, mostly decimated Hamas and Hezbollah.
And that would be a very interesting thing.
Recently, there have been a lot of conversations
in Iran
of maybe this entire approach

(01:12:36):
of using,
these external terror groups to create, you know,
pressure on The US has failed because, you
know, thankfully, Israel
was able to save itself. And we we
can we can discuss October 7 and how
Iran's plan to destroy Israel almost succeeded. There
literally is a is a clock in the
center of Tehran,

(01:12:58):
counting down the time for the destruction of
Israel.
Khamenei, who's the supreme leader, but who's also,
like, the religious leader of all Shia Muslims
in the world,
set a firm date, I think, it's 2049
for the destruction of Israel. And they did
have a realistic plan in action to make
that happen.
Thankfully,
Sinuar jumped the gun
and attacked on October 7, which, of course,

(01:13:20):
was very horrific,
but that did cause a mix mix match
where instead of being an all out attack
for multiple multiple fronts all at once, it
was mostly just Hamas. And then later, Hezbollah
started getting involved in the Houthis and and
militias in Iraq and and Syria and stuff
like that. But now after the fact, we
are seeing
that Israel was basically able to

(01:13:42):
undo the the noose that Iran for decades
has spent tens, if not hundreds of billions
of dollars tying around its neck trying to
choke it to death with all of these
terror groups really surrounding it from every direction.
Right? We had, you know, Gaza from
the kind of the West
the Southwest of Israel. We had Hezbollah in

(01:14:02):
the North. We had
Hamas militias
in Syria. We had
Hamas was recently,
Iran has been sending spending tens of billions
on building Hamas and other terror groups in
in the West Bank as well, and Israel
has been been working to handle those too.
And we had militias shooting rockets at Israel

(01:14:25):
from Iraq too. So Israel was and then,
obviously, Iran directly attacked Israel multiple times, I
think, five times in total, something like that.
So
it was a seven front war, but, thankfully,
it was kind of out of step, and,
therefore, Israel was really able to get their
the handle on top and have decimated them.
And now internally in Iran,
there are questions saying, hey. Maybe this this

(01:14:45):
philosophy we've had,
maybe this tactic we've we've had has is
not the right tactic.
I I don't know. These are usually coming
from, like, the the hard right wings in
the Iranian government.
So they're basically saying maybe we should, you
know, develop a stronger internal force, more rockets.
I I don't know exactly what else they're
proposing,

(01:15:05):
but the fact that they're questioning their their
philosophy
of, you know, regional regional hegemony
Well, I think one of the things is,
you know, frankly,
that hasn't certainly helped them is, you know,
they're not it's not even just the attacks
on Israel. They're attacking
merchant ships that are either under British that
are owned
by British or UK

(01:15:27):
or, you know, American
companies even if they're under different flats. I
mean, ultimately,
that's that's
not helped because they're seeing as being,
you know, intrusive and dangerous
to
to merchant,
you know,
transportation.
And, ultimately,
you know, it's affecting other countries as well.

(01:15:49):
So it's not just it's not just Israel.
So it's not just contained to a dispute
or a war
or terroristic attacks against them, But they're they're
attacking ships that are navigating waters that should
be allowed to traverse, and The United States
got more involved,
in trying to prevent that.
And, you know, I think it also didn't

(01:16:09):
help their their narrative. Now, again, with regards
to narratives, I mean, just for
if there's anyone that doesn't really pay much
attention to any of this stuff,
bottom line is, you know, Iran
obviously does things through intermediaries.
So the Houthis are an example,
it's quite numerous denials.
It's pretty clear where they're getting their orders

(01:16:31):
and their funding from.
And,
ultimately, it allows
Iran to be able to go and conduct
operations that it didn't wanna do directly.
But it's gotten to the point where,
you know, I think people are sufficiently disgusted.
I mean, they talk about October 7. My
birthday is on October 7. So I'm never

(01:16:52):
gonna ever didn't realize that. Yeah. So I'm
never gonna ever have my birthday without thinking
about what happened.
And for people that don't believe or didn't
see really exactly what happened,
I mean
The videos are all out there. Ironic
about the first of all, it's it's worth
emphasizing
what their flag says on it.
It's in green, red, and white, and it

(01:17:14):
says,
death to America, death to Israel,
glory to Islam, curse upon the Jews.
That is literally what the Houthi flag says
on it. So these are not very nice
people.
Oddly enough, their attacks on shipping
are far less damaging to Israel

(01:17:36):
than it is to Egypt because
almost all of Egypt's economy is dependent on
the Suez Canal.
And what the Houthis have caused is the
vast majority
of ships to
go around the the the cope the Cape
Cape of good faith around South Africa.
And
it just completely avoiding
the
Suez Canal completely,

(01:17:57):
and that has decimated the Egyptian economy. But
that that as well can be a conversation
for another day. I know we just have
a few minutes left. Do you wanna touch
on the,
the story we wanted to mention?
Well, the government overreach, again, that's another example.
I don't know. Is this the one in
arm? We have enough time for that? Yeah.
We do. Well, so that's a pretty quick
story. I wanted to share that funny video

(01:18:18):
that you,
If we can it's not funny. I mean,
while you said the it's not funny. I
mean, it's just it's it's No. No. Not
the video with the dog itself. Oh, the
other one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wait. Well, that's
still like yes.
So the discussion started with this video out
of Ireland where
they seized the Irish
law enforcement seized

(01:18:39):
some gentleman's dog, and they're returning the dog
back to the guy and his daughter.
And the dog's emaciated. The thing is skinny
as could be. And, you know, the the
gentleman's claiming that, you know, look at this.
My dog's almost dead. Look what you did.
You have my dog. You didn't feed it.
And, you know, ultimately,
it's not a hard sort of thing to

(01:19:00):
believe that that's what happened, that the dog
wasn't cared for properly. Right?
And
we really, the conversation we had prior to
this to this show, which ultimately, I think,
is something we can expand upon elsewhere
on on other podcasts that we have
is, you know, some
of the government overreach is getting so to
the point of lunacy. We're here. They're basically

(01:19:22):
arresting a dog and then eventually releasing it,
and the dog's almost dead. And then you
have people being arrested
in The UK for
re re you know, reposting a message online,
liking a particular post online,
or doing I mean, it's almost like the
thought police is out there. So we Yes.
So we we Right. Early nineteen eighty four.

(01:19:43):
Right. Right. It's just gotten like it's unbelievable
kind of what's happening. I mean, there's it's
like something out of Orwellian as you described
it in the past.
And, you know, it reminded me of this
episode from, Parks and Recreation,
which if I can find it, we can
add Yeah. I have it up and running,
actually. If you just allow me to share
the screen, I think it'll be very interesting.

(01:20:04):
If you can, that'd be great.
Ultimately,
this is this is the the one everybody
basically knows
where, you know, there's this talk about
essentially,
you know,
arresting everybody and why everyone is so in
this guy's country. In Barack, why everything is

(01:20:26):
great because we don't allow protesters and we
don't allow,
we don't we don't allow people to show
up late to their dentist. We have the
best patients. It's all because everything he says,
if you overcook chicken or undercook the fish
or whatever it is, you go right to
jail. Right to jail.
Hilarious.
But it's like you're taking a comp you
know, something that's supposed to be funny, and

(01:20:47):
it's gotten almost to this point now
where
countries that we've, you know, looked up to
and have been, you know,
unbelievably fair in how they govern themselves or
or,
you know,
acting in ways that are unbelievable.
The most ironic of all this, I think
that the situation with the dog happened in

(01:21:09):
Ireland, and
we
we kind of made the joke. We assumed
that it was England at the beginning,
and we kind of made the the joke
that maybe the dog had posted something wrong
online or had had had, you know,
some disinformation
in their opinion set. That is why the
dog was arrested and starved nearly to death.

(01:21:30):
And that really caused us to,
to remember this this really funny episode of
Parks and Recreation. It's just a minute long,
but I'll go ahead and I'll share it
right now.
Let me know if you can see it.
Wait.
This is outrageous.
Where are the
Sorry. I tend to have my YouTube on
it. This is this is basically the the
the the setup is that they're having, like,

(01:21:51):
a town hall type of thing and people
are there, and, of course, people objecting to
what's being said.
And,
and, of course, I guess, in some countries,
you can't have people come in and protest
or object. Yeah. We'll we'll see that right
now. Right. So that's the gist of it.
Dom Edgemont, you're holding coffee.
This is outrageous.
Where are the armed men who come in

(01:22:11):
to take the protesters away? Where are they?
This kind of behavior
is never tolerating in Boracua.
You shout like that, they they put you
in jail
right away.
No trial, no no nothing. Journalists, we have
a special jail for journalists.
You are stealing, write to jail. You're playing
music too loud, write to jail right away.
You're driving too fast, jail. Slow, jail. You're

(01:22:33):
charging too high prices for, sweaters,
glasses, you write to jail. You undercook fish,
believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken,
also jail. Undercook, overcook. You make an appointment
with a dentist and you don't show up,
believe it or not, jail, right away. We
have the best patients in the world
because of jail.

(01:22:53):
This is so hysterical. I'm I'm just rolling
with laughter.
But it unfortunately, what's very sad is this
is what's become
of many countries, especially in Europe, notably The
UK, but many other countries,
Canada to a certain degree, and under the
Biden administration, the US as well, unfortunately.
The craziest craziest part

(01:23:15):
is that recently, in order to make room
in UK jails for thought criminals,
right, for people who share disinformation
or misinformation, which is just information that the
UK government dislikes,
there was a lack of room in jails
for them. And surprisingly,
they're able to get sentenced remarkably

(01:23:36):
fast, you know, time periods. Usually, it takes
people, you know, months and months or years
before they actually see a judge and and
actually have trial. But But for some reason,
if you post something
that the UK government does not like,
your trial happens within a few days, and
your
your jail sentence could be easily a few
years. So The UK now had a problem

(01:23:56):
that they're running out of space in jails
to house all of these horrific, horrific thought
criminals.
So what they did
is they decided to free from jail,
you know, just early pardon a whole bunch
of,
prisoners,
Mostly of actual
of actual criminals.

(01:24:17):
Mostly not the actual criminals. Run free, and
we'll have these people who had some random
thought or they posted something. Let's make sure
we make room for them. For raping children
early in order to make room for thought
police. And when you see that, you just
realize
how corrupt,
and upside down, unfortunately, some places have become.
And that's one of the reasons why why

(01:24:37):
we started this this podcast, to be honest.
So
Well,
listen. Bottom line is we can't control what's
happening
here or all over the world other than
by voting here and, you know, talking about
the things we talk about. And, again, we
don't know all the answers, but we certainly
wanna ask some questions
and bring up things that I think everyone

(01:24:58):
needs to be thinking about. And, you know,
things that happen halfway across the world do
affect us. I mean, whether we believe it
or not.
Especially when it's happening with the aid of
our US tax dollars through USAID. Because what
USAID has been funding, and if people think
that it's an aid organization,
it stands for international development, which has nothing
to do with aid. US. Never want anything

(01:25:20):
to do with aid. It all it is
is is basically,
supposedly soft power, but like we said, jeans
and and rock and roll in Hollywood is
is soft power. The hamburger and McDonald's is
soft power.
In reality, what they've been doing is funding
these radicals,
radicals using our taxpayers.
And, yeah, that, thankfully,
it seems like it's been coming to an
end. And on that note, I think it's

(01:25:42):
our time to come to a come to
an end too.
Absolutely. Well, just for this time, we'll be
back again.
Yep. So thank you everybody for joining and
listening in. We definitely enjoyed this conversation, and
we hope you did too.
Alright, Joseph. See you next time. Bye y'all.
Next time. Bye.