December 19, 2025 • 45 mins
Jesse Kelly tackles the affordability crisis crushing millions of Americans: homes that now take 40-50% of income just for a mortgage (when our parents paid 25%), rents in many cities eating over half of young people’s paychecks, groceries still 25-30% higher than four years ago, and wages that haven’t kept pace in decades. How does America proceed?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Okay, so let's have what may be a little bit
of a sober talk, but I think it's an important
talk about politics, nations in general. Standard of living is
a real thing that you're well aware of, obviously, but
standard of living is a real thing. What does that mean?
Standard of living? Well? How much food can you afford?
(00:33):
Can you feed yourself? Can you house yourself? Can you
clothe yourself? These are things that These are obviously the
basics that matter to people, But it's more than that.
Human beings. We're not just set economic pieces. We have thoughts, feelings, desires.
We want to do fun things too, And you know what,
there's nothing wrong with that. You want to be able
to throw your family in the car and drive down
(00:54):
to the movies. If Hollywood actually puts out something that's
not weird and gay, of course you do perfectly natural.
The problem we have right now is we remember better days.
We remember the year twenty nineteen, because it's not ancient history.
We remember the days when you could afford to go
(01:16):
to Red Lobster on a Friday night and maybe a
movie afterwards, when that wasn't a three hundred dollars affair.
And the truth is that most people out there, the
people we share a society with, they're not political animals
like we are. They don't know all the things we
know about inflation and money printing and taxes and regulations
(01:37):
that don't most people don't know that most people know.
Oh my goodness, I just tried to buy a plane
ticket to go see my mom. I go every year
for Christmas, and that's three times what we were paying before.
Right now, the American people are watching their standard of
living go down because they can't afford anything. It certainly
(02:00):
not what they used to be able to afford. President
Trump gave a national address it was a little bit
of it.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I inherited a mess, and I'm fixing it. When I
took office, inflation was the worst in forty eight years,
and some would say in the history of our country,
which caused prices to be higher than ever before, making
life unaffordable for millions and millions of Americans. This happened
during a Democrat administration, and it's when we first began
(02:30):
hearing the word affordability.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Okay, it is true that Democrats, because they're communists who
don't care about you, made everything worse. They certainly made
inflation so much worse. But if we're going to be
honest here, if we're going to be adults, that's not
the moment inflation got out of control. The moment inflation
got completely out of control was this moment.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
We were announcing guidelines for every American to follow over
the next fifteen days as we combat the virus seats
and every one of us has a critical role to
play in stopping the spread and transmission of the virus.
We did this today, and this was done by a
lot of very talented people, some of whom are standing
(03:20):
with me.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I hate to be the dead horse, but if we're
gonna be honest, let's be honest, and we're gonna have
this talk so we don't ever make this mistake again.
You don't ever force your economy to stop. Yet there
may be things that force parts of your economy to stop.
There's no question about it. If there is a huge plague,
(03:46):
parts of your economy are gonna stop. If there's a
huge war, there are things that are going to cause
parts of your economy to stop. But that's drastically different
than governments, federal, state, and local, pointing a finger at
their economy and saying stop nobody go to work, close
(04:08):
your doors, lock yourself in your home. Uh, but you
can go get liquor, but stay at home. Watch Netflix. Stop.
But what about money? Don't worry, We're just going to
print seven trillion dollars, eight trillion dollars. Oh you' worried
about your finances, Well, we'll pass a trillion to other
spending bill and send you a check. That was the
(04:31):
moment life became unaffordable for so many people. Why are
we sitting here right now and we're looking at record
credit card debt, record credit card debt across the country
because people are trying, understandably trying, maybe this is you
to maintain some semblance of the standard of living they
had like yesterday. But the truth is, the hard truth
(04:56):
is that's not coming back, and they're not even trying
to bring it back. Wrap your mind around this. The
Federal Reserve, it's kind of there. This inflation deflation thing
is kind of their baby, right. The Federal Reserve has
openly stated that their goal for inflation is two percent.
(05:19):
Wait a minute, what that's not zero, that's not negative one.
They're not even attempting to bring prices back down. They're
never coming back down. And this is going to plague
politicians and their popularity for years to come, because people
remember when it didn't cost one hundred and twenty five
(05:41):
dollars to go to the movies with a popcorn and
a coke for the kids. People remember. I'm sure you remember.
I remember. I'm angry about it. I am angry that
you've watched your standard of living go down. I'm angry
that politicians did that to us. Let's talk a bit
about the reasons. We're going to talk to Jeffrey Tucker,
Tiana Lo. Sure, we have a pack show tonight. We'll
(06:02):
be back. I like companies that hire Americans. It's become
almost an obsession of mine. I'll get on the website,
but I'm thinking about buying something, and I want to
see you. Do you hire Americans? You know all these
(06:25):
call centers. You know why they put them overseas, right,
it's cheaper. I don't care about Americans or American jobs.
You go hire click click at some dump where they
don't even have toilets, and you pay them nothing. And
that's the reason you're on the phone. What I don't
and he can't understand you. It's the nightmare at Puretalk,
the American cell phone company. They hire Americans who speak English,
(06:48):
and they're actually pleasant. Switch from Verizon, switch from AT
and T, switch from T Mobile. Switch to the company
that cares enough about this country to hire Americans. They'll
charge you less. They're on the same tower. Be pro American,
all right, Puretalk dot Com, Slash Jesse TV. The far
(07:16):
reaching consequences of what we're doing to try to stop
the spread of this virus, maybe they're necessary, maybe they're not.
But we are talking about massive, massive economic losses coming.
And that's just that's just the truth. We are going
to be feeling this for not just you know, the
coming months, for years. No, we're not going to be
(07:36):
in lockdown for years, but the economic impact of this
is going to be. It's going to be something I
had so much hair back then. Also, there weren't enough
of us screaming that. But one of the people who
most definitely was was Jeffrey Tucker, of course, founder of
Brownstone Institute, author of the new wonderful book Spirits of America.
(08:00):
But he knows, Jeffrey, Jeffrey. I mean, obviously it's evident
all around us. Still, the impacts of that lockdown. It's
it's awful. It hasn't gone away. No one wants to
own up to the fact that the reason everything's twenty
five percent more expensive is because we shut down the
country for a chess cool. No one wants to just
address that back.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Yeah, and inflation is still ongoing. The President said inflation
is gone or it's over or something like that, but
it's not true. Inflation just once again clocked in a
two point seven, which is still above even the historical average,
and it still means prices are going up. Prices they
are not going back to where they were. You say
(08:42):
twenty five percent, maybe thirty percent. For some goods, it's
one hundred percent. You know, the trauma is hitting us
now in twenty twenty five because people weren't out shopping
for all the things they've been buying this year, and
they get sticker shock every time they leave their house
and then try into any kind of retail outlet and
(09:02):
look at the price of anything. It's just shocking, whether
it's clothing or household appliances or cars or food or whatever.
And people are mad about it, and it does no good.
Just pretend like this is not going on or it's
the problem is going away. I'm worried actually that we're
on an upswing. Yes it was down from last month
(09:24):
figure of three percent, but we look at it since February,
we've seen an upward march pretty unrelentingly. And now with
the urge for the Fed to lower rates even more,
you get another push of upward momentum. And then you've
got the trade issues, which means fewer dollars leaving this
(09:45):
country to buy goods and services from abroad and more
dollars stayed at home. That increases the velocity of money,
which drives up inflation further. So, you know, are we
headed to a second wave? I sure hope not, but
there's a lot of things baked into this that look
like we might be. And as I've been screaming now
(10:05):
for five years, it's all a consequence of the COVID response.
Somebody had to print the money to make it look
as if you can shut down an economy and still survive.
And that's what they did. They printed you know, whatever
it is. You know, five six, seven, eight trillion dollars.
Congress spent about the same amount of money. We pretended
(10:27):
to be prosperous for a year, until two years later
that prosperity is wiped out by a devalued dollar. It's
the stupidest, you know, the most ridiculous monetary policy in
the history of humanity, and we did it right here,
and even today nobody talks about it.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Jeffrey, it's kind of a long question. I don't generally
like doing this, but here's what I see a potential
issue being for not just Trump, for every future president.
COVID wasn't that long ag go. Therefore, people remember when
they were paying twenty five percent less one hundred percent less.
It's still fresh in their minds. And now doesn't matter
(11:09):
who you are, Republican, Democrat, what you pass, people are
going to remember for a while that prices used to
be this, and you said you were going to get
them back to this. But they're not going back to this.
So every president, every political party is going to have
to face the anger of the public who wants prices
to go back down. But they won't.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
They will not go back down. And part of the
reason for that is that all the ruling class benefits
from inflation. There's also an irrational fear of lower prices.
If you can believe it. Like even Trump said this,
he said, the deflation is even worse than inflation. Oh really, Well,
we had thirty years of twenty five years of deflation
(11:49):
in the Gilded Age period, and it was gentle deflation,
and it was the most prosperous, biggest increase in American
prosperity or of any country in the history of the planet.
And it was a deflationary regime, meaning that the prices
were gradually declining. There's nothing wrong with declining prices, but
the ruling class has an irrational fear of it. So
(12:11):
I don't know. I'm worried that we are headed to
the second wave. It's a great concern. I don't know
how America would survive such a thing. I mean, even now,
what the Democrats are calling the affordability crisis is very
much real, and all all of it traces to the
(12:33):
COVID response.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Jesse.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
The other thing I wanted to mention to you in
this respect is the jobs report that came out a
couple of days ago. There was and I've not seen
any mention of this. I have an article coming out
about it today in the Epoch Times. But still even now,
the labor participation rate and the worker population ratios are
(13:00):
still much lower than they were in twenty nineteen. There's
a little bit of a recovery, but they're sinking now
even more so. You can see the COVID period just
just broke the labor markets entirely broke the spirit of
so many workers who just never went back to work.
And we're at a significantly lower level of participation even
(13:23):
in job markets than we were six years ago, and
there doesn't seem to be any fix for it. And
this effects. It's revelatory of the American work ethic which
was destroyed, the difficulty that businesses have in rehiring employees
because it's so expensive to provide all the benefits that
(13:44):
everybody's demanding to provide a high salary, and then the
ridiculously priced healthcare. So we're not even going to go
back to labor participation level of twenty nineteen anytime soon,
if ever, that's how bad it.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Is, Jeffrey, Can you expand we're actually going to come
back to that. Can you expand a little bit on
why the elites like inflation, because that can get confusing
to people who don't have private jets in a billion dollars.
What did they get out of inflation?
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Well, especially in our time, elites are very much a
live off leverage. It's a very strange thing. Ever since
zero interest rate policies began more or less quasi in
two thousand, so twenty five years ago, every high end
business and individual is leveraged up to the hilt. So
they're borrowing money on the cheap and spending it and
(14:42):
living high, right, I mean, that's just sort of the
way it works. Well, Inflation reduces the value of the
dollars and therefore reduces the burden of the deaths that
they owe, so you kind of flate away a debt gradually.
And you know, if you're looking at one hundreds of millions dollars,
billions of dollars, that's a lot of money. So inflation
(15:04):
is actually beneficial, financially beneficial for any indebted class of people.
And that's that's one way. And the biggest debtor of
all is guess what, the US government, And who's behind
the inflation, the US government. So it's a way of
pay off the debt without having to tax people, essentially,
(15:25):
is what it is. That's why it's such a scam
and why it's been practiced for thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
And the opposite of that. That's why I'm assuming they
don't want deflation. Why they fear deflation? So I've never
had somebody explain this to me properly. Why I shouldn't
want prices to go down. I would like my dollar
to go further. Why is that bad?
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Wouldn't that be great if you could save money and
actually make money by saving it, even without interest. I mean,
so that if you soked away money in your matches whatever,
and dug it out ten years later, it would be
more valuable. I mean, that's just inconceivable. So that would
promote frugality, right, and savings and long term thinking and investment,
(16:14):
in other words, all the values that built this country.
You know, that would just be that would be the
best thing ever for the American work ethic and frugality.
Would that be something if you knew for sure that
if you spend your money today you are basically losing
the money, you would otherwise sort of earn by holding
(16:35):
it for five years, because it would be more valuable
in five years.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Than it is today.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
That's an ideal world. I mean, that's how you reinforce
the bourgeois ethic. I mean, deflation is really really good
for the human spirit and reseats everything on the right kilter.
So people start saving, start being frugal, start thinking about
the future for the first time. Inflation reverses all that
It rewards present thinking, rewards indebtedness, punishes frugality, and rewards
(17:06):
spendthriftness and short term thinking. So there's a value an
issue here.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
Now.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
A lot of the fear of deflation traces to you
guessed it, the Great Depression, right, So an experience of
almost one hundred years ago, people are still spooked. Well,
a lot of economists during the Great Depression just basically
made a mistake. They thought the problem was falling prices,
whereas in fact the falling prices were probably while they
(17:38):
were in fact the solution to a more fundamental dislocation
and capital allocations that happened throughout this structural production. So
they misdiagnosed the problem. They said, oh, look, these prices
are falling.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
This is terrible.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
We have to get them back up again. This is
not a solution to the Great Depression. And so we've
misunderstood this for the better part of ninety years, and
it's still imposed the sort of deflation phobia that you
see among almost all economists and the government itself, so
they always figure you're better off with inflation than deflation.
(18:12):
I can tell you, from the average point of view
of the regular consumer, you're way better off with deflation
than inflation.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Jeffery, you mentioned obviously labor participation and why it's down,
and I guess this is one of those things that
confuses me. Granted, I understand I'm from a different generation
where I just always wanted a job. Everyone got a job.
You say, COVID broke people in this way that they
just decided, Okay, I lost my job. They took away
my job, and now I'm not going back. But how
(18:42):
do people live when they don't have a job. I'm
just so confused as how it's possible.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Well, I think the conventional answer here is living off
parents and living off welfare, right, I mean, I think
that's basically the sum of it. People can't be bothered.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
You know.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
What happened over the course of a year or more
is that the US government, combined with media and big
tech and all the other institutions that revolved, encouraged a
whole generation to stay home and stream movies and do
nothing while money poured into their bank accounts. That even
(19:18):
told people you don't have to pay your rent. If
anybody tries to kick you out of your apartment, they're
doing something bad. So it was a weird year long
experiment in telling people there's no relationship between the work
you do and the money you make. It's all a fake.
If the government wants you to have money, you will
(19:40):
make even more money, especially for the essential workers. Right,
they pretended to work at home, and then they're still
getting stimulus payments from the government. They're richer than ever
while doing absolutely nothing. So an experience like that you
just don't forget. I think that's what broke the American
work ethic. Not at all places that I was just
(20:02):
in Texas, everything seems to be more or less functioning
as far as I can tell, at least compared to
New England, where you hire somebody for a job and
you're lucky if they show up at all. I mean,
I'm serious, that's how bad it is that business people
that I know who keep trying to hire employees. I
was talking to somebody the other day. He said, well,
(20:23):
my new employee only shows up half the time. But hey,
that's better than the last two employees I heard who
never showed up at all. So that's kind of where
we are.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Yeah, no, it's really really bad. Fake job applications a
lot of times, and this is still going on. People
apply for jobs and go all the way through the
process so they can prove to the unemployment insurance agency
that they're indeed on the job market, and just case
you can't seem to find anything, you know, this is
still going on. We become a country of scammers and racketeers.
(21:03):
And again, I think there's corruption placed before, but the
COVID response just rewarded the worst aspects of human nature
and embedded that deeply in the culture, and everybody's still
broken as a result. I want to mention one other
piece of data that came out from their Job Support
the other day about which nobody's talking. Disability self reported
(21:27):
A household survey of disability is soaring. This is a
stable measure that's been used for I don't know, like
twenty years, and it's absolutely going through the roof. We
sell the largest monthly increase in the number of disabled
people we're looking at. I think thirty six million six
(21:49):
is what it comes down to, and that's about six
million more than existed in twenty nineteen. Now, are these
real disabilities tending to think they might be? And so
what would be the source of that? Well, there's ill
health that people put on twenty pounds on average during
the COVID lockdowns. There's substance abuse, people turn to the bottle,
(22:14):
to narcotics, to weed. But very crucially, a disability went
down in the six months before the release of the shot,
and then in February twenty twenty one it started soaring
and it's not stopped going up. So your guess is
(22:35):
as good as mine. But everything we know about the shots,
it doesn't look good from a safety profile, and it
turned out to be utterly inefficacious, not to mention wholly unnecessary.
So you've got a lot of disability. At least some
portion of that, if not the dominant share of those
disabilities are probably traceable to the great inoculation that was
(22:58):
going to get us out of COVID already just gets
worse and worse and worse. The ware you look into it.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Gosh it friggin does Jeffrey before we get to healthcare.
I actually want to touch on something you just brought
up about the difference between New England and Texas. You're
starting to see this, the disparity between your quality of
life in a blue state, a blue area versus a
red one. You have Californians putting up pictures paying four
or five six dollars a gallon for gas. I filled
(23:26):
up last night at two dollars and nineteen cents a
gallon on my way home from work. The truth is
that blue states appear like they're going to keep circling
the drain quickly, and you've almost got to get to
a red place to afford life.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
Yeah. I have an article called It's All Smiles in Texas.
That's the name of the article, and it says by
Jeffrey Tecker. But I haven't read the article yet. Part
of the problem is we're always reluctant to make these
regional comparisons. But I don't know. I spent three days
in Tech. I spent three days of being absolutely startled.
(24:04):
Why it's not just that the prices were lower, but
the ethic is different. I was in a drug store
and buying some nasal spear or something like that, and
the guy says at the counter says, well, sir, I
want to point out to you that this generic product
is much cheaper for more quantity. Would you like me
(24:25):
to use put that in your bag instead. I stood
there thinking, wait a minute, you just declined to sell
me a more expensive product in favor of a trooper products.
That's the most amazing thing has happened to me in years.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
I couldn't believe it. Well, yeah, what's the catch? You
know that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
The other thing I couldn't get used to in Texas
is that the drivers are still polite and when people
would talk to they would actually smile. I know from it.
At any text and listen to this is going yeah,
that's the way human beings are. Not so much in
Blue state New England. I mean, you know, the drivers
(25:07):
are rude, there's no smiles, and the idea that a
merchant would want to save you money on anything is
utterly crazy. We have two completely different cultures rising up
in Red states versus Blue states, and I don't know
how that's sustainable. It's so weird. We know the idea
of one nation, it's just it seems to be gradually vanishing.
(25:30):
And now We've got these secession of states in New
England and the coastal states that are that are have
cobbled together their own uh CDC vaccination schedule to secede
from the CDC's UH now trimmed childhood vaccination schedule. They're
(25:50):
imposing their own mandates for their own schedule. So that's
how bad it's gotten. And some states in New England
are considering even taking away the exis is this ting
religious exemptions. So it's getting worse, not better.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Speaking of health care, I got an email last night.
I can't stop thinking about it because my wife and
I we just had to read our family's health insurance
and we were a little sticker shocked. And I got
an email from a guy twenty seven thousand dollars a year.
He is paying for health insurance for him, his wife,
two kids. That is, Look, whatever the solutions are, and
(26:28):
there have to be good solutions. Someone has to come
up with one, because that's a full time job for
most people just to afford health insurance. Where is this going.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
It's unbelievable what's happening. And of course this is all
a consequence of Obamacare. What Obamacare tried to do who's
created a single pair of system through the private health
insurance markets. So they put together these defined benefits packages.
So all the packages, you know, have all sorts of
things you don't need, but as long as you have them,
might as well use them, right, And so people have
(26:59):
over used, overutilize the resource because the actuaries have not
been pricing the healthcare according to existing risk. So everybody's
pillaging everybody else and devarying as much healthcare service as
they as they can't the actuarys are looking at the
consumption of healthcare and going, well, we've got to raise premiums.
We've got to raise Premiums' got to raise the premiums
to the point at which, yeah, the family of four
(27:22):
twenty seven thousand dollars, that's pretty much where we're going
to be here or where we are within the next month,
completely unsustainable. And the other thing to mention to us
is this this is before you you actually use it.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Right.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
The deductibles on these plans can be ten, twenty, even
fifty thousand dollars, So you're still so you think you
have health insurance, that's what you pay to have the insurance, right,
that's not what you pay to use the insurance, so
it's actually much much worse. So yeah, there's no way
(27:59):
this system. And last now, Trump had this really good
idea and he said it in his Nation as National
address that instead of giving the Obamacare subsidies, it's got
what happened, just go back. Obamacare of course, blew up
all health insurance premium so Congress decided to cover that
up by sobsidizing the insurance companies and keeping the premiums. Though,
(28:24):
well that is now expiring and people seeing the reality
on the ground, which is these astronomical increases, Trump says, well, look,
why don't we give them money directly to citizens instead
of to the insurance company's. Okay, this is a brilliant suggestion,
but there's a hang up on it once you get
(28:44):
the cash, even if it is in a health savings account,
which right now you can't even get an HSA unless
you have insurance, with some exceptions, but generally that's true.
So if you get that money from the government for
your health care, you still have to go out and
buy health care. So it actually doesn't solve the problem.
(29:08):
It actually just creates a complication. So instead of government
sending money to the health insurans, they're sending it to you,
and then you send it to the health insurans. So
in other words, there's got to be other structural reforms.
We need catastrophic plans. We need to have a freer market.
Any insurance should be allowed to get into the market
or operate across state lines and offer any benefit package
(29:29):
at any price that consumers want. I'm guessing that if
you can test really healthy and that you're not going
to overtax and trim it out, get rid of dental,
get rid of mental, get up rid of all this
nonsense you don't need, and just get catastrophic you want.
You might be able to get down to a premium
(29:50):
that's low enough that actual human beings could afford. But
that's going to require dramatic structural change, and the Republicans
don't seem to be up for this. They're not seriousviously
considering cutting the insurers off. Another thing that absolutely must happen,
and I think the Republicans are getting hip to this.
We've got to untie health insurance from employment. They never
(30:13):
should have been there tied together at all, and only
came about because of the exigencies of price controls during
World War Two and we got stuck with it. But
it needs to go away completely. Like we need to
allow the employees to leave health insurance from the employer.
Employers should be allowed to drop their employees from health
(30:39):
insurance in exchange which they get, say an increase in
salary or wages. I think a lot of people would
take it. And we need to expand the availability of
health savings accounts for people who are not insured. We're
taking inches towards such solutions. For example, you can now
I think, get a health insurance health SAVIS account if
(31:05):
you have a direct crime primary care provider. Right, So
that's a slight step is not enough. We need hsas
as for every citizen, no matter what. So you can
just save money to provide your health care. Maybe you
can go out into a free marketplace and buy whatever
kind of insurance you want at any level, and it
should be priced according to your individual risk, the same
(31:32):
as your auto insurance. Right now, it's not really insurance
because that's not the way the system works. So here's
the thing, Jesse. We know the solutions. The problem is
that most in this inclusive Republicans politicians that are a
positioned to make the kind of dramatic reforms we need
are in the pay of the health insurance themselves and
(31:53):
the pharmaceutical companies that are backing this beastly hedgemond that
is pillaging about his families today.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Jeffrey, thank you for schooling us again, Sir.
Speaker 6 (32:06):
I appreciate you very much. I'm a chip man. Everybody knows.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
My wife would describe me as a chip man watching
something hanging out. I've just got a bag of chips.
I've always been this way. It's terrible. I just have
to snack on chips. But I'm forty four. I'm not
twenty four. The days of being able to drink toxic
waste and be fine are gone for me. Start to
field around the mid section. You start to feel fat
and bloated. Bandy Crisps that's your new potato chip. It's fresh,
(32:42):
three ingredients, that's it, no more seat o, garbage, potatoes, salt, tallow,
and they're fantastic. I would highly recommend the Smokehouse. My
son loves the ones that taste like Italian dressing. They
have just playing potato chips. Bandy crisps are your way.
You can eat chips guilt free. Go to vandycrisps dot
(33:05):
com slash jessetv. That saves you twenty five percent off
your first order. It's the Christmas season. Each your chips,
Enjoy your chips without being fat.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
The Democrat inflation disaster, again the worst in the history
of our country, also robbed millions of Americans of home
ownership and indeed the American dream. The yearly cost of
a typical new mortgage increased by fifteen thousand dollars under
Democrat rule. In eleven months, we've already gotten that annual
(33:44):
cost down by three thousand dollars and it's coming down
a lot lower. Wait, do you see The numbers are
going to be shocking, and mortgage payments will be coming
down even further early the new year. And you will
see this. In the new year, I will announce some
of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Okay, good, but I hope, I hope these prices come down.
Joining me now, someone who will give it to us straight,
my friend Tianna low Deshert, Columbus with the Washington Examiner. Tiana, Okay,
let's let's begin at the beginning. There's a lot of
Internet fodder out there about why housing is so expensive
and frankly unobtainable now for so many people. And I
(34:28):
know it's a long complicated answer, but the good news
is we're not restrained by time. Why is housing so
expensive now?
Speaker 5 (34:35):
Okay, Well, the thing is it's really not as complicated
as people would like to make it. It's just supply
at the margins. Yes, you know, we did have too
many illegal aliens and there are places that spend way
more money on welfare, so section he does take up
some of the supply. But on net, it is not
a demand side issue. It is a supply side issue.
(34:58):
So what happened after the Great Recession? After the housing
bubble collapsed, the boomers stopped building housing for ten years.
For all the twenty tens, we were building housing at
half the rate than we were in the stagflation of
the seventies. And that's despite a population that was much larger.
Why because you had a bunch of boomers that treated
(35:20):
their homes like ascid bubbles. So, especially in blue cities
and blue areas, they made it illegal, not just you know,
for you can't come onto my property and build new housing,
but you can't build new housing on your own property right.
And it's why Texas is not having the same affordability
crisis that you're having in California, where you know, homes
(35:41):
are basically passed down like medieval fiefdoms. Now the mortgage
thing is real, and the mortgage thing is a consequence
of Bidenomics. That is a consequence of Joe Biden lighting
the US dollar on fire, inflation almost hitting the double digits.
The Federal Reserve had to respond by increasing interest rates,
and it took a long time of those of those
(36:02):
interest rates staying up pretty high, and now finally the
Fed's bringing them down a little bit. But it takes
time because the fact is we're basically dealing with a
backlog of about seven million new units. You know, just
that you have kids. The idea is that the kids
one day grow up, leave the house, hopefully, get married,
hopefully if kids are their own. So like theoretically we
(36:22):
should be needing more housing units, we didn't build them
for ten years. And so this is why President Trump
is previewing a lot of these housing initiatives because I
know that yesterday French Hill and House Republicans and the
House Financial Services Committee, they are pushing through like the
biggest housing markup in twenty years because they understand, you know,
a lot of the inflation. Trump has done a pretty
(36:45):
good job working on bringing back down to that two
percent benchmark. But that's not how housing's working. Housing, it's
just you know, the median home price was about four
to ten when Trump took office, and it stayed four ten,
and that is forty five percent higher than it was
before COVID.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Four hundred and ten grand good freaking grief, Okay, Sihanna,
I know you probably share this with me. I WinCE
a little when I think about the federal government getting
involved to fix anything at all, let alone the housing market.
But what are some things they could do? What are
they going to do? Is there anything? What's coming? And
(37:24):
should I be afraid?
Speaker 5 (37:26):
No? I mean, for the most part, this is actually
pretty good action because it's using the federal bully pulpit
to force local government out of the way. So, Houston, Florida,
these should be the national models, right, Austin and Miami
and Palm Beach, these are the national models for housing
where basically, if it's your property, you get to build
(37:47):
on it. And guess what in Austin, you have like
people who live in big rental towers and they've been
posting their notices for the year saying, oh, my rent's
going down ten percent next year. Don't need to move,
just getting a decrease. So what a lot of these
housing bills are going to do is make it so
you can have more manufactured homes. So, for instance, if
(38:08):
you have a lot, you have a two bedroom home,
but you want to buy an addition, it's way cheaper
to be able to buy sort of a premid manufactured
edition for an extra bedroom because you're having a third
kid than it is to hire a contractor to have
to do it manually. Secondarily, it's getting rid of these
bogus environmental reviews. So again I'm from California, and the
(38:29):
Coastal Commission just it's an excuse to not build anything.
And so the idea with some of the federal housing
legislation is to try and use all the money that
we're giving to these states anyway and say hey, as
a condition of getting it, you need to get rid
of some of these environmental regulations. So look, anytime the
(38:51):
federal government is trying to induce demand hard no if
they're trying to spend money on increasing supply. That's also
not good. The idea is to use if Trump wants
to use the federal government to force local Nanni state
to get out of the way. That is where we
should be on.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Board, Tianna. We are now, sadly an economy that runs
on consumer spending. You know, we're not based on hard
things like manufacturing, which are more reliable. I believe last
time I saw you'll know better than me, seventy percent
of our economy now is people spending money. People are
still spending money. That doesn't make sense because everyone tells
(39:29):
me credit card debts through the roof and everyone's poorer.
What's happening?
Speaker 5 (39:34):
Yeah, I mean we're still not seeing the real evidence
of that. Right, the Black Friday shopping was through the roof,
and that is not That is where you would expect
to see it lagging. Right, Like grocery, retail sales aren't
going to go down. People always need groceries. People aren't
going to spend less on housing because they literally can't,
as reasons we've discussed before. But if people are still
(39:56):
getting into the reason of the season and you have
the busiest holiday t travel weekends which we had. It
means that clearly things aren't slowing down quite so much.
And that's why, Jess, Really it's not all about consumer spending.
The whole reason why why markets globally are obsessed with
the concept of AI is because they understand our future
(40:18):
labor force is smaller, it's dumber, it's fatter. The only
input you can have if you don't want to just
do open borders, which don't work anyway because you don't
want to have a bunch of people who come in
and use welfare, is AI. Because it's all about productivity.
So if you know, if the Magnificent Seven, if they
(40:39):
can revolutionize our worker productivity, that's great. If it doesn't work,
the bubble burst oring for will be hillacious.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
You wrote about people buying now and paying later. If
my father was alive today, I could just see his
blood pressure going through the roof at the thought of that.
But apparently this is an I've seen people do this
on things like door Dash.
Speaker 5 (41:05):
Yeah, no, you know, I'm not Dave Ramsey. I'm not
gonna say don't use a credit card, because guess what.
Credit cards are great because they help you build credit
and credit is how unless you are unless the last
name is Trump Credits, probably how you're gonna have to
buy a home. Right, most of us try and save
up to do the twenty percent down payment, you get
a good mortgage rate, you want to get better than
they're offering now, and then you buy a home. Right this,
(41:27):
buy now, pay later. It's essentially commoditized paid a loans,
you know, loan sharking. And so this is we will
see more of this jesse if Republicans follow, you know,
this dangerous path where they want to ally with Dick
Durbin and the Democrats in order to do credit card
(41:49):
control caps. No, the whole point of a credit card
as a as a line of credit of last resort
is that it's fixed. The credit card company knows that
not every one will pay. Everyone should pay off the
balance at the end of every single month. But if
you don't pay off the end of the balance in
one month because you know, your spouse is out of
(42:09):
work for one month because they're out sick, and you
know it's a fixed amount of debt you have to
take in order to you know, pay childcare, whatever, you
aren't cut off at the knees. The buy now pay
later thing. It's it really is a house of cards,
and it's kind of this gambling economy that that it's
(42:31):
it's the people young. It makes me feel rather old
because gen Z seems to love sort of treating the
economy a little bit like it's a slot machine in
some ways quite literally. They spend a lot of money
on sports gambling. They do day trading, which defies a
lot of the rules of classic investment, which is put
in a said amount of savings and don't touch it
and then look at it maybe when you're sixty five
(42:53):
or older and actually want to retire, but you know,
buy now, pay later. As a part of it, it's
people living for the now. And this is you know again,
why housing needs to become a bigger part of the
conversation is because it's part of the American dream. For
good reason. People know they have to save up to
get that twenty percent, so it has to feel somewhat
in reach. If it doesn't feel in reach, and people
(43:15):
have nothing to say for why wouldn't you finance a pizza?
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Gool finance a pizza. I'm not gonna go full Deady
Jesse at this point in time and lose my mind.
It's just the thought of Please don't ever finance a pizza.
That's all I'm gonna say. Please don't finance the pizza. Anybody.
Your gut starts to matter more to you as you
(43:43):
get older and when you're young. At least when I
was young, I could eat anything. I could eat a
pizza with extra halopanios on it at eleven o'clock at night,
right before bed, sleep like a baby. Wake up, Feel fine?
You remember what those days were like? Those days are gone,
aren't they? It's gone. Now we have to be more
(44:04):
conscious about our gut health. My sister's the one who
told me about cowboy colostrum. So she said, ah man,
my god's it's been feeling so good. I just I
feel like I'm twenty again. So I decided, Okay, I
try it. I pour a couple of scoops in my
coffee in the morning, I have the chocolate one. I
essentially have a chocolate cup of coffee. No gut problems ever,
(44:25):
No matter what stuff is frigging miraculous. Do you want
to try some Cowboy colostrum? They have vanilla chocolate strawberry delicious.
Put it in some milk, put it a cup of coffee,
go to cowboycolostrum dot com, just use the code Jesse TV.
(44:48):
It's not that we can bring prices back to where
they were. We talked about that in the opening of
the show. We can't go back toothpaste isn't going back
in the tube. But what we most did, definitely should
be doing, is ensuring they don't keep going up, up,
up up up and spinning out of control. And what
(45:08):
we have to do is we have to stop this
idea that the federal government should should claim more control
over the various parts of the economy that are going
crazy right now. That's the exact opposite of what we
should be doing. Get these idiots out of the economy.
So maybe we can afford red lobster again. All right,
(45:30):
all right, we'll do it again.
Okay, so let's have what may be a little bit
of a sober talk, but I think it's an important
talk about politics, nations in general. Standard of living is
a real thing that you're well aware of, obviously, but
standard of living is a real thing. What does that mean?
Standard of living? Well? How much food can you afford?
(00:33):
Can you feed yourself? Can you house yourself? Can you
clothe yourself? These are things that These are obviously the
basics that matter to people, But it's more than that.
Human beings. We're not just set economic pieces. We have thoughts, feelings, desires.
We want to do fun things too, And you know what,
there's nothing wrong with that. You want to be able
to throw your family in the car and drive down
(00:54):
to the movies. If Hollywood actually puts out something that's
not weird and gay, of course you do perfectly natural.
The problem we have right now is we remember better days.
We remember the year twenty nineteen, because it's not ancient history.
We remember the days when you could afford to go
(01:16):
to Red Lobster on a Friday night and maybe a
movie afterwards, when that wasn't a three hundred dollars affair.
And the truth is that most people out there, the
people we share a society with, they're not political animals
like we are. They don't know all the things we
know about inflation and money printing and taxes and regulations
(01:37):
that don't most people don't know that most people know.
Oh my goodness, I just tried to buy a plane
ticket to go see my mom. I go every year
for Christmas, and that's three times what we were paying before.
Right now, the American people are watching their standard of
living go down because they can't afford anything. It certainly
(02:00):
not what they used to be able to afford. President
Trump gave a national address it was a little bit
of it.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I inherited a mess, and I'm fixing it. When I
took office, inflation was the worst in forty eight years,
and some would say in the history of our country,
which caused prices to be higher than ever before, making
life unaffordable for millions and millions of Americans. This happened
during a Democrat administration, and it's when we first began
(02:30):
hearing the word affordability.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Okay, it is true that Democrats, because they're communists who
don't care about you, made everything worse. They certainly made
inflation so much worse. But if we're going to be
honest here, if we're going to be adults, that's not
the moment inflation got out of control. The moment inflation
got completely out of control was this moment.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
We were announcing guidelines for every American to follow over
the next fifteen days as we combat the virus seats
and every one of us has a critical role to
play in stopping the spread and transmission of the virus.
We did this today, and this was done by a
lot of very talented people, some of whom are standing
(03:20):
with me.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I hate to be the dead horse, but if we're
gonna be honest, let's be honest, and we're gonna have
this talk so we don't ever make this mistake again.
You don't ever force your economy to stop. Yet there
may be things that force parts of your economy to stop.
There's no question about it. If there is a huge plague,
(03:46):
parts of your economy are gonna stop. If there's a
huge war, there are things that are going to cause
parts of your economy to stop. But that's drastically different
than governments, federal, state, and local, pointing a finger at
their economy and saying stop nobody go to work, close
(04:08):
your doors, lock yourself in your home. Uh, but you
can go get liquor, but stay at home. Watch Netflix. Stop.
But what about money? Don't worry, We're just going to
print seven trillion dollars, eight trillion dollars. Oh you' worried
about your finances, Well, we'll pass a trillion to other
spending bill and send you a check. That was the
(04:31):
moment life became unaffordable for so many people. Why are
we sitting here right now and we're looking at record
credit card debt, record credit card debt across the country
because people are trying, understandably trying, maybe this is you
to maintain some semblance of the standard of living they
had like yesterday. But the truth is, the hard truth
(04:56):
is that's not coming back, and they're not even trying
to bring it back. Wrap your mind around this. The
Federal Reserve, it's kind of there. This inflation deflation thing
is kind of their baby, right. The Federal Reserve has
openly stated that their goal for inflation is two percent.
(05:19):
Wait a minute, what that's not zero, that's not negative one.
They're not even attempting to bring prices back down. They're
never coming back down. And this is going to plague
politicians and their popularity for years to come, because people
remember when it didn't cost one hundred and twenty five
(05:41):
dollars to go to the movies with a popcorn and
a coke for the kids. People remember. I'm sure you remember.
I remember. I'm angry about it. I am angry that
you've watched your standard of living go down. I'm angry
that politicians did that to us. Let's talk a bit
about the reasons. We're going to talk to Jeffrey Tucker,
Tiana Lo. Sure, we have a pack show tonight. We'll
(06:02):
be back. I like companies that hire Americans. It's become
almost an obsession of mine. I'll get on the website,
but I'm thinking about buying something, and I want to
see you. Do you hire Americans? You know all these
(06:25):
call centers. You know why they put them overseas, right,
it's cheaper. I don't care about Americans or American jobs.
You go hire click click at some dump where they
don't even have toilets, and you pay them nothing. And
that's the reason you're on the phone. What I don't
and he can't understand you. It's the nightmare at Puretalk,
the American cell phone company. They hire Americans who speak English,
(06:48):
and they're actually pleasant. Switch from Verizon, switch from AT
and T, switch from T Mobile. Switch to the company
that cares enough about this country to hire Americans. They'll
charge you less. They're on the same tower. Be pro American,
all right, Puretalk dot Com, Slash Jesse TV. The far
(07:16):
reaching consequences of what we're doing to try to stop
the spread of this virus, maybe they're necessary, maybe they're not.
But we are talking about massive, massive economic losses coming.
And that's just that's just the truth. We are going
to be feeling this for not just you know, the
coming months, for years. No, we're not going to be
(07:36):
in lockdown for years, but the economic impact of this
is going to be. It's going to be something I
had so much hair back then. Also, there weren't enough
of us screaming that. But one of the people who
most definitely was was Jeffrey Tucker, of course, founder of
Brownstone Institute, author of the new wonderful book Spirits of America.
(08:00):
But he knows, Jeffrey, Jeffrey. I mean, obviously it's evident
all around us. Still, the impacts of that lockdown. It's
it's awful. It hasn't gone away. No one wants to
own up to the fact that the reason everything's twenty
five percent more expensive is because we shut down the
country for a chess cool. No one wants to just
address that back.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Yeah, and inflation is still ongoing. The President said inflation
is gone or it's over or something like that, but
it's not true. Inflation just once again clocked in a
two point seven, which is still above even the historical average,
and it still means prices are going up. Prices they
are not going back to where they were. You say
(08:42):
twenty five percent, maybe thirty percent. For some goods, it's
one hundred percent. You know, the trauma is hitting us
now in twenty twenty five because people weren't out shopping
for all the things they've been buying this year, and
they get sticker shock every time they leave their house
and then try into any kind of retail outlet and
(09:02):
look at the price of anything. It's just shocking, whether
it's clothing or household appliances or cars or food or whatever.
And people are mad about it, and it does no good.
Just pretend like this is not going on or it's
the problem is going away. I'm worried actually that we're
on an upswing. Yes it was down from last month
(09:24):
figure of three percent, but we look at it since February,
we've seen an upward march pretty unrelentingly. And now with
the urge for the Fed to lower rates even more,
you get another push of upward momentum. And then you've
got the trade issues, which means fewer dollars leaving this
(09:45):
country to buy goods and services from abroad and more
dollars stayed at home. That increases the velocity of money,
which drives up inflation further. So, you know, are we
headed to a second wave? I sure hope not, but
there's a lot of things baked into this that look
like we might be. And as I've been screaming now
(10:05):
for five years, it's all a consequence of the COVID response.
Somebody had to print the money to make it look
as if you can shut down an economy and still survive.
And that's what they did. They printed you know, whatever
it is. You know, five six, seven, eight trillion dollars.
Congress spent about the same amount of money. We pretended
(10:27):
to be prosperous for a year, until two years later
that prosperity is wiped out by a devalued dollar. It's
the stupidest, you know, the most ridiculous monetary policy in
the history of humanity, and we did it right here,
and even today nobody talks about it.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Jeffrey, it's kind of a long question. I don't generally
like doing this, but here's what I see a potential
issue being for not just Trump, for every future president.
COVID wasn't that long ag go. Therefore, people remember when
they were paying twenty five percent less one hundred percent less.
It's still fresh in their minds. And now doesn't matter
(11:09):
who you are, Republican, Democrat, what you pass, people are
going to remember for a while that prices used to
be this, and you said you were going to get
them back to this. But they're not going back to this.
So every president, every political party is going to have
to face the anger of the public who wants prices
to go back down. But they won't.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
They will not go back down. And part of the
reason for that is that all the ruling class benefits
from inflation. There's also an irrational fear of lower prices.
If you can believe it. Like even Trump said this,
he said, the deflation is even worse than inflation. Oh really, Well,
we had thirty years of twenty five years of deflation
(11:49):
in the Gilded Age period, and it was gentle deflation,
and it was the most prosperous, biggest increase in American
prosperity or of any country in the history of the planet.
And it was a deflationary regime, meaning that the prices
were gradually declining. There's nothing wrong with declining prices, but
the ruling class has an irrational fear of it. So
(12:11):
I don't know. I'm worried that we are headed to
the second wave. It's a great concern. I don't know
how America would survive such a thing. I mean, even now,
what the Democrats are calling the affordability crisis is very
much real, and all all of it traces to the
(12:33):
COVID response.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Jesse.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
The other thing I wanted to mention to you in
this respect is the jobs report that came out a
couple of days ago. There was and I've not seen
any mention of this. I have an article coming out
about it today in the Epoch Times. But still even now,
the labor participation rate and the worker population ratios are
(13:00):
still much lower than they were in twenty nineteen. There's
a little bit of a recovery, but they're sinking now
even more so. You can see the COVID period just
just broke the labor markets entirely broke the spirit of
so many workers who just never went back to work.
And we're at a significantly lower level of participation even
(13:23):
in job markets than we were six years ago, and
there doesn't seem to be any fix for it. And
this effects. It's revelatory of the American work ethic which
was destroyed, the difficulty that businesses have in rehiring employees
because it's so expensive to provide all the benefits that
(13:44):
everybody's demanding to provide a high salary, and then the
ridiculously priced healthcare. So we're not even going to go
back to labor participation level of twenty nineteen anytime soon,
if ever, that's how bad it.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Is, Jeffrey, Can you expand we're actually going to come
back to that. Can you expand a little bit on
why the elites like inflation, because that can get confusing
to people who don't have private jets in a billion dollars.
What did they get out of inflation?
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Well, especially in our time, elites are very much a
live off leverage. It's a very strange thing. Ever since
zero interest rate policies began more or less quasi in
two thousand, so twenty five years ago, every high end
business and individual is leveraged up to the hilt. So
they're borrowing money on the cheap and spending it and
(14:42):
living high, right, I mean, that's just sort of the
way it works. Well, Inflation reduces the value of the
dollars and therefore reduces the burden of the deaths that
they owe, so you kind of flate away a debt gradually.
And you know, if you're looking at one hundreds of millions dollars,
billions of dollars, that's a lot of money. So inflation
(15:04):
is actually beneficial, financially beneficial for any indebted class of people.
And that's that's one way. And the biggest debtor of
all is guess what, the US government, And who's behind
the inflation, the US government. So it's a way of
pay off the debt without having to tax people, essentially,
(15:25):
is what it is. That's why it's such a scam
and why it's been practiced for thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
And the opposite of that. That's why I'm assuming they
don't want deflation. Why they fear deflation? So I've never
had somebody explain this to me properly. Why I shouldn't
want prices to go down. I would like my dollar
to go further. Why is that bad?
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Wouldn't that be great if you could save money and
actually make money by saving it, even without interest. I mean,
so that if you soked away money in your matches whatever,
and dug it out ten years later, it would be
more valuable. I mean, that's just inconceivable. So that would
promote frugality, right, and savings and long term thinking and investment,
(16:14):
in other words, all the values that built this country.
You know, that would just be that would be the
best thing ever for the American work ethic and frugality.
Would that be something if you knew for sure that
if you spend your money today you are basically losing
the money, you would otherwise sort of earn by holding
(16:35):
it for five years, because it would be more valuable
in five years.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Than it is today.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
That's an ideal world. I mean, that's how you reinforce
the bourgeois ethic. I mean, deflation is really really good
for the human spirit and reseats everything on the right kilter.
So people start saving, start being frugal, start thinking about
the future for the first time. Inflation reverses all that
It rewards present thinking, rewards indebtedness, punishes frugality, and rewards
(17:06):
spendthriftness and short term thinking. So there's a value an
issue here.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
Now.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
A lot of the fear of deflation traces to you
guessed it, the Great Depression, right, So an experience of
almost one hundred years ago, people are still spooked. Well,
a lot of economists during the Great Depression just basically
made a mistake. They thought the problem was falling prices,
whereas in fact the falling prices were probably while they
(17:38):
were in fact the solution to a more fundamental dislocation
and capital allocations that happened throughout this structural production. So
they misdiagnosed the problem. They said, oh, look, these prices
are falling.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
This is terrible.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
We have to get them back up again. This is
not a solution to the Great Depression. And so we've
misunderstood this for the better part of ninety years, and
it's still imposed the sort of deflation phobia that you
see among almost all economists and the government itself, so
they always figure you're better off with inflation than deflation.
(18:12):
I can tell you, from the average point of view
of the regular consumer, you're way better off with deflation
than inflation.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Jeffery, you mentioned obviously labor participation and why it's down,
and I guess this is one of those things that
confuses me. Granted, I understand I'm from a different generation
where I just always wanted a job. Everyone got a job.
You say, COVID broke people in this way that they
just decided, Okay, I lost my job. They took away
my job, and now I'm not going back. But how
(18:42):
do people live when they don't have a job. I'm
just so confused as how it's possible.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Well, I think the conventional answer here is living off
parents and living off welfare, right, I mean, I think
that's basically the sum of it. People can't be bothered.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
You know.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
What happened over the course of a year or more
is that the US government, combined with media and big
tech and all the other institutions that revolved, encouraged a
whole generation to stay home and stream movies and do
nothing while money poured into their bank accounts. That even
(19:18):
told people you don't have to pay your rent. If
anybody tries to kick you out of your apartment, they're
doing something bad. So it was a weird year long
experiment in telling people there's no relationship between the work
you do and the money you make. It's all a fake.
If the government wants you to have money, you will
(19:40):
make even more money, especially for the essential workers. Right,
they pretended to work at home, and then they're still
getting stimulus payments from the government. They're richer than ever
while doing absolutely nothing. So an experience like that you
just don't forget. I think that's what broke the American
work ethic. Not at all places that I was just
(20:02):
in Texas, everything seems to be more or less functioning
as far as I can tell, at least compared to
New England, where you hire somebody for a job and
you're lucky if they show up at all. I mean,
I'm serious, that's how bad it is that business people
that I know who keep trying to hire employees. I
was talking to somebody the other day. He said, well,
(20:23):
my new employee only shows up half the time. But hey,
that's better than the last two employees I heard who
never showed up at all. So that's kind of where
we are.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Yeah, no, it's really really bad. Fake job applications a
lot of times, and this is still going on. People
apply for jobs and go all the way through the
process so they can prove to the unemployment insurance agency
that they're indeed on the job market, and just case
you can't seem to find anything, you know, this is
still going on. We become a country of scammers and racketeers.
(21:03):
And again, I think there's corruption placed before, but the
COVID response just rewarded the worst aspects of human nature
and embedded that deeply in the culture, and everybody's still
broken as a result. I want to mention one other
piece of data that came out from their Job Support
the other day about which nobody's talking. Disability self reported
(21:27):
A household survey of disability is soaring. This is a
stable measure that's been used for I don't know, like
twenty years, and it's absolutely going through the roof. We
sell the largest monthly increase in the number of disabled
people we're looking at. I think thirty six million six
(21:49):
is what it comes down to, and that's about six
million more than existed in twenty nineteen. Now, are these
real disabilities tending to think they might be? And so
what would be the source of that? Well, there's ill
health that people put on twenty pounds on average during
the COVID lockdowns. There's substance abuse, people turn to the bottle,
(22:14):
to narcotics, to weed. But very crucially, a disability went
down in the six months before the release of the shot,
and then in February twenty twenty one it started soaring
and it's not stopped going up. So your guess is
(22:35):
as good as mine. But everything we know about the shots,
it doesn't look good from a safety profile, and it
turned out to be utterly inefficacious, not to mention wholly unnecessary.
So you've got a lot of disability. At least some
portion of that, if not the dominant share of those
disabilities are probably traceable to the great inoculation that was
(22:58):
going to get us out of COVID already just gets
worse and worse and worse. The ware you look into it.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Gosh it friggin does Jeffrey before we get to healthcare.
I actually want to touch on something you just brought
up about the difference between New England and Texas. You're
starting to see this, the disparity between your quality of
life in a blue state, a blue area versus a
red one. You have Californians putting up pictures paying four
or five six dollars a gallon for gas. I filled
(23:26):
up last night at two dollars and nineteen cents a
gallon on my way home from work. The truth is
that blue states appear like they're going to keep circling
the drain quickly, and you've almost got to get to
a red place to afford life.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
Yeah. I have an article called It's All Smiles in Texas.
That's the name of the article, and it says by
Jeffrey Tecker. But I haven't read the article yet. Part
of the problem is we're always reluctant to make these
regional comparisons. But I don't know. I spent three days
in Tech. I spent three days of being absolutely startled.
(24:04):
Why it's not just that the prices were lower, but
the ethic is different. I was in a drug store
and buying some nasal spear or something like that, and
the guy says at the counter says, well, sir, I
want to point out to you that this generic product
is much cheaper for more quantity. Would you like me
(24:25):
to use put that in your bag instead. I stood
there thinking, wait a minute, you just declined to sell
me a more expensive product in favor of a trooper products.
That's the most amazing thing has happened to me in years.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
I couldn't believe it. Well, yeah, what's the catch? You
know that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
The other thing I couldn't get used to in Texas
is that the drivers are still polite and when people
would talk to they would actually smile. I know from it.
At any text and listen to this is going yeah,
that's the way human beings are. Not so much in
Blue state New England. I mean, you know, the drivers
(25:07):
are rude, there's no smiles, and the idea that a
merchant would want to save you money on anything is
utterly crazy. We have two completely different cultures rising up
in Red states versus Blue states, and I don't know
how that's sustainable. It's so weird. We know the idea
of one nation, it's just it seems to be gradually vanishing.
(25:30):
And now We've got these secession of states in New
England and the coastal states that are that are have
cobbled together their own uh CDC vaccination schedule to secede
from the CDC's UH now trimmed childhood vaccination schedule. They're
(25:50):
imposing their own mandates for their own schedule. So that's
how bad it's gotten. And some states in New England
are considering even taking away the exis is this ting
religious exemptions. So it's getting worse, not better.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Speaking of health care, I got an email last night.
I can't stop thinking about it because my wife and
I we just had to read our family's health insurance
and we were a little sticker shocked. And I got
an email from a guy twenty seven thousand dollars a year.
He is paying for health insurance for him, his wife,
two kids. That is, Look, whatever the solutions are, and
(26:28):
there have to be good solutions. Someone has to come
up with one, because that's a full time job for
most people just to afford health insurance. Where is this going.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
It's unbelievable what's happening. And of course this is all
a consequence of Obamacare. What Obamacare tried to do who's
created a single pair of system through the private health
insurance markets. So they put together these defined benefits packages.
So all the packages, you know, have all sorts of
things you don't need, but as long as you have them,
might as well use them, right, And so people have
(26:59):
over used, overutilize the resource because the actuaries have not
been pricing the healthcare according to existing risk. So everybody's
pillaging everybody else and devarying as much healthcare service as
they as they can't the actuarys are looking at the
consumption of healthcare and going, well, we've got to raise premiums.
We've got to raise Premiums' got to raise the premiums
to the point at which, yeah, the family of four
(27:22):
twenty seven thousand dollars, that's pretty much where we're going
to be here or where we are within the next month,
completely unsustainable. And the other thing to mention to us
is this this is before you you actually use it.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Right.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
The deductibles on these plans can be ten, twenty, even
fifty thousand dollars, So you're still so you think you
have health insurance, that's what you pay to have the insurance, right,
that's not what you pay to use the insurance, so
it's actually much much worse. So yeah, there's no way
(27:59):
this system. And last now, Trump had this really good
idea and he said it in his Nation as National
address that instead of giving the Obamacare subsidies, it's got
what happened, just go back. Obamacare of course, blew up
all health insurance premium so Congress decided to cover that
up by sobsidizing the insurance companies and keeping the premiums. Though,
(28:24):
well that is now expiring and people seeing the reality
on the ground, which is these astronomical increases, Trump says, well, look,
why don't we give them money directly to citizens instead
of to the insurance company's. Okay, this is a brilliant suggestion,
but there's a hang up on it once you get
(28:44):
the cash, even if it is in a health savings account,
which right now you can't even get an HSA unless
you have insurance, with some exceptions, but generally that's true.
So if you get that money from the government for
your health care, you still have to go out and
buy health care. So it actually doesn't solve the problem.
(29:08):
It actually just creates a complication. So instead of government
sending money to the health insurans, they're sending it to you,
and then you send it to the health insurans. So
in other words, there's got to be other structural reforms.
We need catastrophic plans. We need to have a freer market.
Any insurance should be allowed to get into the market
or operate across state lines and offer any benefit package
(29:29):
at any price that consumers want. I'm guessing that if
you can test really healthy and that you're not going
to overtax and trim it out, get rid of dental,
get rid of mental, get up rid of all this
nonsense you don't need, and just get catastrophic you want.
You might be able to get down to a premium
(29:50):
that's low enough that actual human beings could afford. But
that's going to require dramatic structural change, and the Republicans
don't seem to be up for this. They're not seriousviously
considering cutting the insurers off. Another thing that absolutely must happen,
and I think the Republicans are getting hip to this.
We've got to untie health insurance from employment. They never
(30:13):
should have been there tied together at all, and only
came about because of the exigencies of price controls during
World War Two and we got stuck with it. But
it needs to go away completely. Like we need to
allow the employees to leave health insurance from the employer.
Employers should be allowed to drop their employees from health
(30:39):
insurance in exchange which they get, say an increase in
salary or wages. I think a lot of people would
take it. And we need to expand the availability of
health savings accounts for people who are not insured. We're
taking inches towards such solutions. For example, you can now
I think, get a health insurance health SAVIS account if
(31:05):
you have a direct crime primary care provider. Right, So
that's a slight step is not enough. We need hsas
as for every citizen, no matter what. So you can
just save money to provide your health care. Maybe you
can go out into a free marketplace and buy whatever
kind of insurance you want at any level, and it
should be priced according to your individual risk, the same
(31:32):
as your auto insurance. Right now, it's not really insurance
because that's not the way the system works. So here's
the thing, Jesse. We know the solutions. The problem is
that most in this inclusive Republicans politicians that are a
positioned to make the kind of dramatic reforms we need
are in the pay of the health insurance themselves and
(31:53):
the pharmaceutical companies that are backing this beastly hedgemond that
is pillaging about his families today.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Jeffrey, thank you for schooling us again, Sir.
Speaker 6 (32:06):
I appreciate you very much. I'm a chip man. Everybody knows.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
My wife would describe me as a chip man watching
something hanging out. I've just got a bag of chips.
I've always been this way. It's terrible. I just have
to snack on chips. But I'm forty four. I'm not
twenty four. The days of being able to drink toxic
waste and be fine are gone for me. Start to
field around the mid section. You start to feel fat
and bloated. Bandy Crisps that's your new potato chip. It's fresh,
(32:42):
three ingredients, that's it, no more seat o, garbage, potatoes, salt, tallow,
and they're fantastic. I would highly recommend the Smokehouse. My
son loves the ones that taste like Italian dressing. They
have just playing potato chips. Bandy crisps are your way.
You can eat chips guilt free. Go to vandycrisps dot
(33:05):
com slash jessetv. That saves you twenty five percent off
your first order. It's the Christmas season. Each your chips,
Enjoy your chips without being fat.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
The Democrat inflation disaster, again the worst in the history
of our country, also robbed millions of Americans of home
ownership and indeed the American dream. The yearly cost of
a typical new mortgage increased by fifteen thousand dollars under
Democrat rule. In eleven months, we've already gotten that annual
(33:44):
cost down by three thousand dollars and it's coming down
a lot lower. Wait, do you see The numbers are
going to be shocking, and mortgage payments will be coming
down even further early the new year. And you will
see this. In the new year, I will announce some
of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Okay, good, but I hope, I hope these prices come down.
Joining me now, someone who will give it to us straight,
my friend Tianna low Deshert, Columbus with the Washington Examiner. Tiana, Okay,
let's let's begin at the beginning. There's a lot of
Internet fodder out there about why housing is so expensive
and frankly unobtainable now for so many people. And I
(34:28):
know it's a long complicated answer, but the good news
is we're not restrained by time. Why is housing so
expensive now?
Speaker 5 (34:35):
Okay, Well, the thing is it's really not as complicated
as people would like to make it. It's just supply
at the margins. Yes, you know, we did have too
many illegal aliens and there are places that spend way
more money on welfare, so section he does take up
some of the supply. But on net, it is not
a demand side issue. It is a supply side issue.
(34:58):
So what happened after the Great Recession? After the housing
bubble collapsed, the boomers stopped building housing for ten years.
For all the twenty tens, we were building housing at
half the rate than we were in the stagflation of
the seventies. And that's despite a population that was much larger.
Why because you had a bunch of boomers that treated
(35:20):
their homes like ascid bubbles. So, especially in blue cities
and blue areas, they made it illegal, not just you know,
for you can't come onto my property and build new housing,
but you can't build new housing on your own property right.
And it's why Texas is not having the same affordability
crisis that you're having in California, where you know, homes
(35:41):
are basically passed down like medieval fiefdoms. Now the mortgage
thing is real, and the mortgage thing is a consequence
of Bidenomics. That is a consequence of Joe Biden lighting
the US dollar on fire, inflation almost hitting the double digits.
The Federal Reserve had to respond by increasing interest rates,
and it took a long time of those of those
(36:02):
interest rates staying up pretty high, and now finally the
Fed's bringing them down a little bit. But it takes
time because the fact is we're basically dealing with a
backlog of about seven million new units. You know, just
that you have kids. The idea is that the kids
one day grow up, leave the house, hopefully, get married,
hopefully if kids are their own. So like theoretically we
(36:22):
should be needing more housing units, we didn't build them
for ten years. And so this is why President Trump
is previewing a lot of these housing initiatives because I
know that yesterday French Hill and House Republicans and the
House Financial Services Committee, they are pushing through like the
biggest housing markup in twenty years because they understand, you know,
a lot of the inflation. Trump has done a pretty
(36:45):
good job working on bringing back down to that two
percent benchmark. But that's not how housing's working. Housing, it's
just you know, the median home price was about four
to ten when Trump took office, and it stayed four ten,
and that is forty five percent higher than it was
before COVID.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Four hundred and ten grand good freaking grief, Okay, Sihanna,
I know you probably share this with me. I WinCE
a little when I think about the federal government getting
involved to fix anything at all, let alone the housing market.
But what are some things they could do? What are
they going to do? Is there anything? What's coming? And
(37:24):
should I be afraid?
Speaker 5 (37:26):
No? I mean, for the most part, this is actually
pretty good action because it's using the federal bully pulpit
to force local government out of the way. So, Houston, Florida,
these should be the national models, right, Austin and Miami
and Palm Beach, these are the national models for housing
where basically, if it's your property, you get to build
(37:47):
on it. And guess what in Austin, you have like
people who live in big rental towers and they've been
posting their notices for the year saying, oh, my rent's
going down ten percent next year. Don't need to move,
just getting a decrease. So what a lot of these
housing bills are going to do is make it so
you can have more manufactured homes. So, for instance, if
(38:08):
you have a lot, you have a two bedroom home,
but you want to buy an addition, it's way cheaper
to be able to buy sort of a premid manufactured
edition for an extra bedroom because you're having a third
kid than it is to hire a contractor to have
to do it manually. Secondarily, it's getting rid of these
bogus environmental reviews. So again I'm from California, and the
(38:29):
Coastal Commission just it's an excuse to not build anything.
And so the idea with some of the federal housing
legislation is to try and use all the money that
we're giving to these states anyway and say hey, as
a condition of getting it, you need to get rid
of some of these environmental regulations. So look, anytime the
(38:51):
federal government is trying to induce demand hard no if
they're trying to spend money on increasing supply. That's also
not good. The idea is to use if Trump wants
to use the federal government to force local Nanni state
to get out of the way. That is where we
should be on.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Board, Tianna. We are now, sadly an economy that runs
on consumer spending. You know, we're not based on hard
things like manufacturing, which are more reliable. I believe last
time I saw you'll know better than me, seventy percent
of our economy now is people spending money. People are
still spending money. That doesn't make sense because everyone tells
(39:29):
me credit card debts through the roof and everyone's poorer.
What's happening?
Speaker 5 (39:34):
Yeah, I mean we're still not seeing the real evidence
of that. Right, the Black Friday shopping was through the roof,
and that is not That is where you would expect
to see it lagging. Right, Like grocery, retail sales aren't
going to go down. People always need groceries. People aren't
going to spend less on housing because they literally can't,
as reasons we've discussed before. But if people are still
(39:56):
getting into the reason of the season and you have
the busiest holiday t travel weekends which we had. It
means that clearly things aren't slowing down quite so much.
And that's why, Jess, Really it's not all about consumer spending.
The whole reason why why markets globally are obsessed with
the concept of AI is because they understand our future
(40:18):
labor force is smaller, it's dumber, it's fatter. The only
input you can have if you don't want to just
do open borders, which don't work anyway because you don't
want to have a bunch of people who come in
and use welfare, is AI. Because it's all about productivity.
So if you know, if the Magnificent Seven, if they
(40:39):
can revolutionize our worker productivity, that's great. If it doesn't work,
the bubble burst oring for will be hillacious.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
You wrote about people buying now and paying later. If
my father was alive today, I could just see his
blood pressure going through the roof at the thought of that.
But apparently this is an I've seen people do this
on things like door Dash.
Speaker 5 (41:05):
Yeah, no, you know, I'm not Dave Ramsey. I'm not
gonna say don't use a credit card, because guess what.
Credit cards are great because they help you build credit
and credit is how unless you are unless the last
name is Trump Credits, probably how you're gonna have to
buy a home. Right, most of us try and save
up to do the twenty percent down payment, you get
a good mortgage rate, you want to get better than
they're offering now, and then you buy a home. Right this,
(41:27):
buy now, pay later. It's essentially commoditized paid a loans,
you know, loan sharking. And so this is we will
see more of this jesse if Republicans follow, you know,
this dangerous path where they want to ally with Dick
Durbin and the Democrats in order to do credit card
(41:49):
control caps. No, the whole point of a credit card
as a as a line of credit of last resort
is that it's fixed. The credit card company knows that
not every one will pay. Everyone should pay off the
balance at the end of every single month. But if
you don't pay off the end of the balance in
one month because you know, your spouse is out of
(42:09):
work for one month because they're out sick, and you
know it's a fixed amount of debt you have to
take in order to you know, pay childcare, whatever, you
aren't cut off at the knees. The buy now pay
later thing. It's it really is a house of cards,
and it's kind of this gambling economy that that it's
(42:31):
it's the people young. It makes me feel rather old
because gen Z seems to love sort of treating the
economy a little bit like it's a slot machine in
some ways quite literally. They spend a lot of money
on sports gambling. They do day trading, which defies a
lot of the rules of classic investment, which is put
in a said amount of savings and don't touch it
and then look at it maybe when you're sixty five
(42:53):
or older and actually want to retire, but you know,
buy now, pay later. As a part of it, it's
people living for the now. And this is you know again,
why housing needs to become a bigger part of the
conversation is because it's part of the American dream. For
good reason. People know they have to save up to
get that twenty percent, so it has to feel somewhat
in reach. If it doesn't feel in reach, and people
(43:15):
have nothing to say for why wouldn't you finance a pizza?
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Gool finance a pizza. I'm not gonna go full Deady
Jesse at this point in time and lose my mind.
It's just the thought of Please don't ever finance a pizza.
That's all I'm gonna say. Please don't finance the pizza. Anybody.
Your gut starts to matter more to you as you
(43:43):
get older and when you're young. At least when I
was young, I could eat anything. I could eat a
pizza with extra halopanios on it at eleven o'clock at night,
right before bed, sleep like a baby. Wake up, Feel fine?
You remember what those days were like? Those days are gone,
aren't they? It's gone. Now we have to be more
(44:04):
conscious about our gut health. My sister's the one who
told me about cowboy colostrum. So she said, ah man,
my god's it's been feeling so good. I just I
feel like I'm twenty again. So I decided, Okay, I
try it. I pour a couple of scoops in my
coffee in the morning, I have the chocolate one. I
essentially have a chocolate cup of coffee. No gut problems ever,
(44:25):
No matter what stuff is frigging miraculous. Do you want
to try some Cowboy colostrum? They have vanilla chocolate strawberry delicious.
Put it in some milk, put it a cup of coffee,
go to cowboycolostrum dot com, just use the code Jesse TV.
(44:48):
It's not that we can bring prices back to where
they were. We talked about that in the opening of
the show. We can't go back toothpaste isn't going back
in the tube. But what we most did, definitely should
be doing, is ensuring they don't keep going up, up,
up up up and spinning out of control. And what
(45:08):
we have to do is we have to stop this
idea that the federal government should should claim more control
over the various parts of the economy that are going
crazy right now. That's the exact opposite of what we
should be doing. Get these idiots out of the economy.
So maybe we can afford red lobster again. All right,
(45:30):
all right, we'll do it again.
Host
Jesse Kelly
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