May 13, 2024 • 35 mins
Hour 4 of A&G features...
- Cohen testifies...
- The falling birth rate...
- The Pink Tax!!!...
- Final Thoughts.
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the George Washington
Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Before her testimony, Stormy Daniels agreed not to describe Trump's
genitalia in court after she was offered hush money by
the jury. So Michael Cohen is testifying today, and he
actually has information relevant to the case as opposed to
Stormy Daniels who did not. But some of the testimony
(00:36):
already today. Cohen so he had to pay Stormy Daniels
one hundred and thirty thousand dollars to sign the non
disclosure thing, which by the way, is legal. He borrowed
against his home line of equity with his own money
to pay her, and then.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Trump paid him back. Is apparently the way it happened.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Right, is odd to say the least. What has become
clear to me in reading some more about Cohen and
the testimony and all, which I expect will be rendered
completely irrelevant when they try to bring the case home.
But is he was he was worshipful of Trump, he
would do anything for the guy, and and just he
(01:22):
was he was the most loyal of sidekicks. And then
he felt like Trump just kicked him to the curb
when it was convenience. So he's humiliated, disappointed. Remember he
thought he might even be the Attorney general. Well see,
but that's a different that's a different thing to me.
I mean, being loyal and worshipful of the guy is
one thing that could happen with a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
But thinking you're attorney general material, you're a nut.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Yeah, oh yeah, I would agree. I'm not trying to
cast him as some sort of sage. I think there's
a lot going on here, including a guy who's not
tearle bright, is bright enough to pass the bar in
New York State.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
He's one of those people that looks dumb and is dumb.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Yeah, so yeah, and uh morally flexible, and he worshiped
Trump and did Trump's dirty work and thought he was
a treasured part of the Trump family in essence, and
then got kicked to the curbs. So there's there's a
lot here. It's really quite the drama. Again, it's all
going to be completely irrelevant when Alvin Bragg, did you
(02:29):
clip thirty seven here? Michael, Come on, Alvin Bragg, you
remember him here from New.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
York where I'm being forced to endure a Biden show trial,
all done.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
By Biden, carried out by radical Democrat district attorney. You
know he is fat Alvin.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I don't know how this would strike me as a
juror or who in theory hasn't followed this case like
this is all new information to me in theory. H
If Cohen takes the stand and the.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Defense makes it clear.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
One that he hates Trump, absolutely hates him, and his
biggest goal in life right now is to make sure
Trump goes to jail. And they've got all kinds of
tweets and texting. He wrote about it in his memoir. Boy,
if you write his memoir, you do not value your
time on Earth. But so they can make it, they
can make it easily clear that Trump hates I mean
that Cohen hates Trump. And then you get to trot
(03:29):
out the fact that he's lied to jury's multiple times
in his life.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
He sat in a chair just.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Like this and flat out lied to the point that
he's gone to prison. So between those two things, why
would I believe him?
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Oh? Well, and I failed to finish my point because
I wanted Michael to play the fat Alvin Cliput fat
It's all going to be irrelevant because when Bragg and
his people try to bring it all home, how this misdemeanor,
which should have had the statute of limitations run out
except for COVID piled on this misdemeanor effects stakes the law,
which the federal flaw fraud and blah blah. When he
(04:03):
tries to string all that together and get a guilty verdict,
I think the jury's gonna laugh him out of court.
I've been wrong before. I could be wrong here, but
I doubt it. So yeah, I think all of this
is a ridiculous exercise.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So Trump calling Alvin Bragg fat at the rally the
other night. Then he had the crowd chanting fat pig,
fat pig about Chris Christie. And has there ever been
anybody in history as fat as Donald Trump? Trying to
get over on the calling other people fat thing, You know,
he is.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Fat.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Trump doesn't present fat though, only when he's in his
golf outfit, in a suit.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
He just you don't.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
You don't look at him and see there's a giant fag.
When he's in his golf outfit, he looks like just
a fat guy, and.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
You don't tend to show your weight gain on your face.
You can disguise it with clothing, especially as a dude. Yeah,
but he's not that much thinner than Chris Christie. Really, No,
he's a big dude. Christy's just more obvious rotund.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Not that any of this is relevant to your character
or political position.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Anyway, or really to anything, really to anything.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
And yet Trump.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Delights in bringing it up because he's a third grade bully.
He's right about the border, he's right about China, and
he's a third grade bully. And the crowd chance fat pig,
fat pig. So I'm not sure we even have time
for this. We talked about this during hour one of
the show, and it is clearly the biggest story in
maybe human history. This is certainly in your top several.
(05:32):
This is perfectly defense.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
You can defend this very well by calling this the
biggest story in world history.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I think. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
The headline Wall Street Journal suddenly there aren't enough babies.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
The whole world is alarmed.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Birth rates are falling fast across countries, and the economic, social,
and geopolitical consequences could be unthinkable. And this is not
just the developed West. In South Korea, as we've discussed,
in Japan. Sometime very soon, the global fertility rate will
(06:05):
drop below the point needed to keep population constant. It
may have already happened. Here's your key sentence. Fertility is
falling almost everywhere for women across all levels of income, education,
and labor force participation. The falling birth rates come with
huge implications for the way people live, how economies grow,
in the standing of the world's superpowers.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, I want to talk about this at depth, in depth,
so we should take a break. But this matters to
you if you have kids. I think this really matters
to you because this is going to have huge policy
ramifications over time. It's probably already starting.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
I think it's going to affect the world in myriad ways,
some of which we can and we can anticipate, many
of which we cannot.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Well, and then at some point there aren't any people,
so it's just a beers and coyotes, bears and coyotes
and bees and no people.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Give the world to the bees. That's what I say.
They're hard to work, they're organized, so that that and
other stuff on the.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Way stay here. I was just reading some commentary that somebody.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Has watched Cohen in previous trials because he's been in
a bunch of them, mostly found guilty and sent to prison.
Is that he's a real rambler and it's very difficult
to rain him in. And that's going to be the
biggest problem the prosecution has with him, is that even
though he's you know, their key witness to this whole
thing is that he just like goes off on tangents.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
So to keep him directed is going to be hard.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Huh, which could be great fun during the cross examination.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yes, I have to this gin for a couple of
days though, right, And this observer said it's going to
be difficult to keep this from becoming the Michael Cohen Show.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
For the prosecution, well it won't matter because soon all
the people will be dead. Anyway, getting back to that topic,
the world is a startling demographic milestone. We may already
have fallen below replacement rate of births globally speaking, and
it's first time ever super widespread. Oh yeah, other than
like you know, the Great flood or the meteor that
(08:16):
hit Mexico or whatever zillions of years ago. Yeah, there
were other than a couple of myriad brief when the
meteor at Mexico, there weren't any people on earth. I
believe what you want to believe, all right, anyway, that's
a good point.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
It was like hundreds of millions of years ago.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
But other than occasional blips for a pandemic, no, it's
never happened before. And some of the numbers are absolutely shocking.
The global birth rate in nineteen fifty was four point
eighty six births per.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Woman, live births per woman.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
It actually went a little higher, was five in nineteen
sixty three. I think this is it's gone from five
to two point three in twenty twenty one. That's the
unst and they think last year it may well have
dipped below two point two two point one depending on
(09:07):
where you live in the world, which is considered a
replacement rate. It varies because you have to have statistically
a few more kids in your more primitive countries than
the advanced West, because you have more infinite mortality.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
But so on average, women went from having five kids
to two kids in forty years, sixty years, sixty years, regardless,
that's almost exactly. That's a blip of time to go
from five to two. And why has got to be
(09:40):
the biggest question in human history.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Yeah, Obviously, this is a bit of a difficult number
to come up with an exact answer for, but some
estimates now put the number of babies each woman has
at two point one point five around the world, which
is below the traditional replacement rate of two point two
the US one point six live births per woman, way
(10:03):
below more well, it's exactly half a kid below the
replacement rate. South Korea the lowest birth rate on Earth,
zero point seventy two, one third of what it would
take to just keep the population at the same level.
It's mind blowing. It's never been observed in human history.
(10:24):
As we were discussing earlier, you know, people say, well,
that's because with climate change, this is no time to
bring a child in the world. You're an idiot and
should shut up.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
As I've been saying for years, I do not believe
for a second that it's a conscious, conscious choice people
are not having babies. There's something going on in our
genetics that has taken away our unbelievable urge to reproduce.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
I think there are certain socioeconomic factors that might have
sped it up a little bit. More women being educated,
with greater access to birth control, family planning that sort
of thing. But I mean the fact that it is
practically universal. Almost every country on Earth is something's happening.
Homost sapiens have decided, Ope, there are too many of us.
(11:10):
We need to die down the population a little bit
like other animal populations do in the wild. And I
can't name, you know, the specific species because I'm not
an expert in this, but there are various beasts that
are incredibly adaptive to all right, we need more babies fast,
like coyotes I've read about, and then when they're overpopulated,
birth rates fall.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah. I learned that about wasps when I had in
my house.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I was killing lots of wasps, and all the experts
told me, you're just creating more wasps the way you're
doing it.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, well, then what am I supposed to do?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I had a point, so that you're not having kids
and a birth rate going down and the blah blah blah.
Oh and so mathematically I should dig this up, because
I think it's one of the things Mark Stein wrote
about in his famous book America Alone. Mathematically, you might
not understand the spirally goes into so fast when you
fall below birth rate. It happens a lot faster than
(12:04):
you would think. Well, it's not I guess it's not
that hard to understand. If all the young people had
zero kids, there'd be nobody left in not that many years, right,
I mean, it wouldn't take very long, and there's nobody around.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
So it's so striking. It's happening in developing countries too. India,
you may know, surpassed China's the most populous country last year.
India's fertility rate is now below replacement rate.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Now that's surprising to me.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
So that's a different thing than what I was always
assuming it was, which was a certain level of affluence
and safety was keeping us from having kids.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
But India is not affluent and safe, not for a
lot of people.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
So they quote this one a kind of as specializing
in demographics at the University of Pennsylvania, either in a
number of different places here, but many government leaders is
seeing it as a matter of national urgency. Here's why
you oughta care that you care at all. If you're gone,
you're gone, then good luck to those who come after us.
They worry about shrinking workforces, slowing economic growth, and underfunded pensions.
(13:09):
Every you know, old age pension fund in the world
is predicated on a certain number of young workers working
and paying into those funds.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Spoiler alert, there's nothing you can do about this. I mean,
you talk about things wrong. Wrong, He's wrong, folks.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
We'll let him spin the very waby you'll being trapped in.
Then I'll jump in and explain to he's wrong. What
you can do about dropping population growth.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I put that it makes climate change seem like we're
I'll rank in the NBA draft. I mean, it's just
not something I'm thinking about.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Right, Smaller populations come with diminished global clout, not to
mention the economic stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
All these things will happen. There's just nothing you can
do about it. No, you can't do anything about the
birth rate. But you can do something about propping up
your collapsing social welfare system.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
And that's important. Milli millions of people from south of
your border, for instance, or across the world, they just
come in through the south border. I maintain that that
is why both parties are allowing it to run rampant,
with some on the right suggesting that they're trying to
stop it, but they're not really.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
I listen, some are summer sincere.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I listened to a podcast about this once, and they
are talking about the various policies that are likely to happen, or.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Just culturally socially, the way.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Things will change as it, I mean, because we're practically
they're already where people out and about spending money. There
are more people without kids than there are with kids,
and that will change things drastically. I mean, you'll have
more restaurants that we don't allow kids here because they
can make more money by having all their childless clientele. No,
(14:50):
I can go to that restaurant now, don't have to
deal with a crying kid, or or airlines or movie
theaters or whatever. Hotels could be huge for hotels and
resorts or no ds here. That's that's going to bring
in more people than you would keep out by saying
we don't allow kids.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Very soon, I think, well, and soon they'll have no
customers whatsoever. So that's great and all, but well, they
will have customers, but they'll be speaking Spanish. The drop
in birth rates in Mexico, India, China, South Korea are
just shocking. In other places like Hungary and Japan has
gone from too low to even lower than that.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
And you're not going to keep your tax breaks for
having kids when two thirds of the country doesn't have
kids and thinks it's a bad idea.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Man. Some of the stories about the countries that have
tried to do something about this are I mean, they're
they're universally failed.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Some of them have.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Tipped the scales briefly and gotten a little tiny rise
in birth rates by like a tenth of a percent,
but that's generally been temporary, and some of them have
been amazing, Like Japan's been trying like crazy. After fertility
fell to one point five in the early nineties, government
rolled out a succession of plans, including parental.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Leave, subsidized childcare.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Fertility kept falling, they introduced maternity care, being free a
stipend pain upon the birth of the child. It blipped
upward and then started declining again. There was one more. Oh,
in Hungary, Prime Minister Victor Orbond. You've heard about him right.
Last year he expanded tax benefits from others so that
(16:29):
women under the age of thirty who have a child
are exempt from paying personal income tax for life.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, don't have it.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
On top of housing and childcare subsidies, as well as
generous maternity leaves. It's risen slightly, but not enough.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
And those are probably horrible examples. Don't don't have a
kid because of a tax break? I mean that is
it's it's the it's yeah, that's not a good that's
not a good thing.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
I think it's just it's it's changing the incentives somewhat.
I don't think he could accuse a person of having
a child for the tax break. It just changes the
economic picture enough that they think, you know, we can't
have a kid, we can't afford it.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
I could see where it might affect me, like if
I had two, I might have three if I could
not pay taxes the rest of my life.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
But is it too late to sign up for that?
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Republicans seem to be uniting behind Trump. Whatever opposition he
faced in the primaries has largely melted away, and the
trials against him keep him in the spotlight, infuriate his base,
who sees him as a martyr, and even may serve
to make him the object of some sympathy among people
in general, who believe that his prosecutors are politically motivated.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
This happens to be true in my opinion.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought
against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
From Farid Zakaria on CNN, he doesn't think the brag
case would have happened with anybody not named Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
I disagree with Freid pretty frequently, and I think he's
just dead wrong on a lot of stuff. But it
takes a intellectual honesty and b balls to come out
and say.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
That in his crowd. I salute him for that. Yeah,
I agree.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I heard somebody say the other day, and this is
I don't know why this isn't more of a thing
people making the comment that, wow, So this Stormy Daniels
trial is the only one that's going to happen. We're
going to have to defeat him politically, because we're not
we don't have Okay, So.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
If he whoa, whoa, think about what you just admit.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Right right, If he's the worst thing since Hitler and
just so obviously a horrible human being and a horrible
politician on every level, then why don't.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
You think you can beat him?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Do we have that clip on one of the big
talk shows somebody essentially said, look, if he's so evil,
why is your guy died with them? Right, And the
answer was a stammering nonsense.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
As you might guess.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
I'm not a fan of Hitler.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Socio political, breaking news, breaking news, Michael, this is important.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
I think this matters.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
The University of North Carolina one of the so called
new ivy's, as if we need new ivis. I didn't
like the old ivys, right, I wanted to get rid
of the ivs. Now you tell me we got new IV's.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
I don't want it.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
The whole concept is sickening. Yeah, shut up with that anyway.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
University of North Carolina's Board of Trustees has voted unanimously
to abolish the university's DEI department and transfer all the
funds to the campus police. It's not twenty twenty anymore.
Defund THEI, Refund the police is the winning slogan of
the day.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
That's from Chris Ruffo. Interesting there is that's.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
That is a huge wind and win rather and a
real indication of the changing in the wind what university wants.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I saw there a variety of kinds of protests across
the country with graduation happening a lot of places, which
is what the Biden crowd has been waiting for graduation
to get here, and the college kids go home, and
so then they don't. You know, you can't really have
a mass protest if the kids ain't there at the college.
But there was a lot of standing up and turning
your back on the speaker or walking out, you and
(20:21):
your friends or whatever. I saw it said, keep walking,
dumbass whatever you turned your back on the speaker, whooped
the s I saw One girl walked across, got her
diploma and then tore it up on the stage because
she's so disgusted with having a diploma from a university
who funds Israel or something.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Okay, fine, keep walking with your torn up diploma. We
don't care. It's your diploma. You can do whatever you
want with it.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
But it's symbolic about how I reject this.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
No, no, seriously, it's not like we disagree.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
We don't care. Go get a job, yeah, or don't.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Came across this headline Columbia janitor reveals secret plans left
behind by the anti Israel protesters who took over Hamilton Hall.
Columba University. Janitors were gripped with sheer terror. You were
talking about this last week how you think there's gonna
be a lawsuit coming? Sheer terror is a mob of
violent anti Israel protesters stormed Hamilton Hall and took over
(21:16):
the building. As dozens of rioters busted through the glass
and barricaded their entrances to occupy the historic building, four
janitors found themselves trapped inside and afraid, says the head janitor.
If you have masked people running through the building with
zip ties and chains, you don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
What they're gonna do.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
If they're gonna take you hostage, if you're gonna be tortured,
if you're gonna be made an example.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Well, I think that's probably gonna come out in some
sort of lawsuit. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Well, the key question to me is were they prevented
from leaving intentionally? Because that's kidnapping.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
I'm wanted to hit this just because it doesn't get
mentioned much. The Israeli Defense Forces announced the deaths of
four soldiers from the nine hundre and thirty first Infantry
Battalion on Friday, So they got practically every dude of
fighting age is in active service right now, in active
(22:17):
not inactive, fighting in service right now. Sergeant Italy Libny,
age nineteen died, Sergeant Josef Dasa age nineteen died, Sergeant
Emerus can't pronounce his name, age nineteen, and Sergeant Daniel
Levy age nineteen. Four nineteen year olds died fighting against
the scumbag nihilists that are Hamas four nineteen year olds.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Man, it's just horrifying. Yeah, that's sad. That's saying, you.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Idiot college kids with your fake plo Hamas Kafias wrapped
around your necks in your weird view of the world.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
What the hell that they've been taught since they're fourth
graders or third graders or kindergarteners in California schools, in
blue state schools and then even red state schools all
over the country where just we let it happen under
our watch. And the very few kids we've been having
getting back to that demographic discussion are our little Marxists.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Whoops, another kind of political story, and then I'll move
off of politics. Two more Indian tribes have banned Christy
Nome from their reservations. So as you may or may
not know, reservations are their own thing. They're like their
own countries, their sovereign land. And because she wrote about
(23:36):
killing the dog. I guess because they value dogs or
somehow an Indian tradition. They've said the governor is not
allowed to set foot in the reservation. I don't know
that there was any chance she was going to, but
now twenty percent of her state she's not allowed to
set foot in.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
That's uncomfortable as the governor. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
The whole small state governor thing. Haven't we learned that
virtually any ya who can get elected?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Okay, seriously, I mean, the greatest state in the Union,
California has a known jackass in the governor's mansion, so
obviously you're you're the depopulated little states they can tell.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Who knows what was in there? Oh? I know, I
got one more babbylon b headline. I wanted to hit
you with love it with Biden's stalling.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Israel announces they'll just get American weapons from the Tallyban.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Oooo.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
That's a good one.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
That is a good shot. It's subtle, but I appreciate it.
All right, So well, yeah, do we have time for this?
Not rad I don't know. I've lost my enthusiasm.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
I'd like the comment on today, a Columbia student ripped
up her diploma on stage as a form of protest,
and they response was, you can pick up your degree
from clown college later.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
I like the wood.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I like the whole clown meme that you know you're
you're a clown clown.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
I think there are times when mockery is a much
more powerful tool than trying to engage people in some
sort of serious arguments. Just don't I don't think the
angry sophomore girls deserve much of a serious argument. You know,
if they'd like to sit down and chat, I'd be
happy to outline my thoughts. But they're just clowns. They're jackasses. Hey,
speaking of girls of various ages. The whole myth of
(25:24):
the what is.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
It called the.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
I'm sorry, I wasn't ready for this. The the sexism
of prices, the price gap between men's products and women's.
Prink tax man, the pink tax. That's it, the pink tax.
I knew there was a catchy term for it. It's
it's a myth. It's ridiculous, not shockingly, but we can
explain that.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Oh, they charge more for pink razors. This was ug
black and blue razors because they hate women. Well, then
getting ripped off than by the blue raisor. It's the
same razor, it's just a different color. You're getting close.
We got that other stuff on the way still here, Hey,
(26:13):
yo yo. We'll have any of the highlights of the
Cohen testimony tomorrow on the show, and the cross examination
is not likely to start till late tomorrow or Wednesday.
They think this, and they're thinking closing arguments by the
end of the week.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
That's the best guess right now.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
Okay, okay, okay, we'll look forward to that. So on
the question of the pink tax, there's a great piece
written by Ryan Bourne, who has a new book out
he edited, which I've got to get a copy of,
The War on Prices, how popular misconceptions about inflation, price controls,
and value lead to bad policy, which sounds right up. Mail.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I love that, so I'll be reading that.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
But he goes into how it was in twenty fifteen
that the New York City Department and Consumer Affairs took
undertook a study comparing three hundred and ninety seven pair
of gendered products available in New York City, and they
came up with the idea of this pink tax, that
that women pay more for gendered products specialty products for
(27:13):
women than men do for stuff labeled for men, and
that it was evidence of a ripoff or or sexism
or something or other.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I always think of razors because you can get pink
raisors or other color raisers. Is there are there other
good examples that come to mind? Oh?
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Yeah, they In fact, there was this big study that
they did with nine different UH products razors, hair care products, deodorance,
body washes, clothes.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Foot wear, phone cases is a good one. Guarantee it
happens with phone cases.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Yeah, I wonder.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
But anyway, so they they mentioned that more progressive parts
of the country ultimately passed stupid, stupid legislation against gender
price York and California in particular.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
They actually what I didn't legislation we got fast. How
moronic do you have to be to not understand this right?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Right?
Speaker 4 (28:07):
And they go into studying it and how the differences
are extremely small. Anyway, But he writes, despite all the alarm,
we now know that the pink tax is a myth,
not in the sense that the prices are incorrect.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Rather, women often willingly pay more.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
On average for products that are subtly differentiated. In other words,
The reason that women are paying more for the same
goods is not sexist discrimination, but that that the products
they prefer are often not the same. If women regarded
a pair of gendered products is perfectly substitutable, then faced
with higher products, they inevitably buy the mail or male
(28:45):
neutral variant. That would make the differential pricing strategy unprofitable
for companies, leading to price equalization.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
But that's not what happens.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Well and so, in other words, if you prefer to
have a pink rasor sitting on the soap shelf in
your shower as opposed to a blue one, as a girl,
you're willing to pay a little more, but at a
certain point you just go ahead and get the blue raisor.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Sure, yeah, yeah. And there's more to it than that,
which we'll get to in a second. But yet most
products marketed by gender were in fact highly differentiated. There
was very little overlap in the ingredients for bar soap,
body wash, deodorant, hair coloring, shampoo, and shaving cream.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
I've always earned different products.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
I've always wondered that about, particularly when they talk about
shampoo and soap. Well, girls, stuff has more, it's better.
It's simply better stuff. That's why light like a lot
of well my teenage boys, they're using more girl shampoo
because it's often better.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
The apples to apples comparison, the difference was teeny tiny.
That women pay more for different products from men's versions,
which of course they're still a liberty to buy if
they want. Isn't exactly a hard hitting story about sexist pricing,
and I'm skipping ahead here because it's rather long, But
the typical reason women pay higher prices seems to be
(30:01):
that the goods they prefer have higher marginal manufacturing and
distribution costs. Looking at five gendered product markets in detail yogurt, deodorant,
disposable razors, shampoo, and protein bars, researchers found that it
was true in all the categories except the protein bars,
that it was higher it was more expensive to manufacture
them and advertise them, partly because women's products are more
(30:27):
heavily advertised, and so you have to advertise more aggressively
to differentiate yourself and create new consumers than you do
among men's products.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Well, I'd have to think about that one for a while.
That's a complicated issue. Why do you have to advertise
more for women's products.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Because everybody does and there are more choices.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Well why did it start that way? But women care
more about the differences than guys do.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Well, women spend more on personal care items, for instance,
which is a lot of what we're talking about, than
dudes do.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
So it's a bigger market.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Therefore it draws more suppliers econ one oh one. But
to break through and get a buyer, keep a buyer,
you know, establish a habit, it's more expensive because there's
just more competition. In spite of this, and this is
this is unmistakable economic science. They point out that the
Minnesota Star Tribune, invoking the pink taxs boomed in March,
(31:22):
women's salaries are lower and their expenses are higher. That
just the facts don't enter into the public debate.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Maybe I learned about this so long ago, I don't remember.
Maybe at one point I didn't get this, but it
seems so obvious to me. I mean, just the Stanley
big dumb cup thing that's been so popular over the
last couple of months is all the proof you need
right there. Look on eBay, the pink and lavender ones
are really hard to find and really expensive because girls
(31:50):
want those more, all the blue gray black ones are
cheaper because this is not as desirable. They're exactly the
same thing, they're just a different color.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
My wife doesn't have that big dumb cup, but she
left her big cup. She drinks her iced tea out
of somewhere, and was concerned that somebody'd find it. She said,
because that's discontinued. And I said, wow, they discontinue that item.
It's a great product. And she said, no, just the
color is discontinued, so I'd have to pay like sixty
dollars to replace it. I'm thinking, Ron, don't you just
(32:20):
get a different collar, But of course I kept it
to myself.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I don't think guys care as much about color. If
razors were much cheaper and they were pink, I would
have pink razors.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I don't care well.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
And just to summarize the last part of this, they
mentioned that if you have a gender neutral product, like
gender neutral body wash, and you put it up there
and hope women will buy it, they won't. By the way,
the one that's especially formulated for women.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
By the way, we have a woman on the show,
and didn't includer in the conversation.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Everybody needs to be fired.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Everybody on this show should be fired for the fact
that Katie Green was not involved in that conversation, including Katie,
everyone on the show, all of us. I won't be
here tomorrow because I fired my site that Katie wasn't.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
How stupid are we? How stupid are we? G d stupid?
Good Lord, and you're fired too. Everybody's fired, Michael. This
is your last act. Hit your button.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Oh, it's been a good time. Almost finished. Let's get ready.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Final thoughts with Armstrong and Gooty. I'm so mad at myself.
Here's your host for final thoughts, Joe Getty.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Everybody's final thought is We're stupid.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Michael, it's your final thought. I'm stupid. No, I could
say we're okay, we're stupid.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
But I had a very nice Mother's Day and we
barbecued as a family. Actually, I'm learning to barbecue pretty well.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Jack. So I know you don't like grilling, but I don't
have any interest in it.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
I'm learning to enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
I don't want to be good at it.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
Well, good for you by stical implants is an option, Katie.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
A final thought other than we're stupid. Oh, I'm also stupid.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And over the weekend, Jackie posted a photo of yourself.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
With hair on the Twitter. Yeah it's from the year
I was born.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, well, which makes a point. We're significantly older than you.
We're gonna be talking about that in the One More
Thing podcast, so that's a good way to tease that.
With my final thought, the One More Thing podcast will
include the photos and more the reactions to the photos
and what it says about society.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
Oh really, Okay, My final thought, I guess is that
you know, the whole difference in age thing. Youth is
so fleeting, and adulthood is long, really long, unless you
get hit by a bus or something like that, or
your motors. I mean, you're an adult for decades and decades.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
It's just it's it's bloring.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Armstrong and getting wraping up an other grueling four hour workday.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
So many people to thank, so many people stupid. Go
to Armstrong and Giddy dot com. Great hot links. You
can drop us a note mail bag at armstrong a
giddy dot com.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Hope you enjoy the show that replaces us because we
fired ourselves.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
God bless America. I'm strong and getty.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Now if you have been at this amazing place for
four years and.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Still have no idea what you like?
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Get out, I hear you more on you hit me, Well,
take your turtle neck and get.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
They deserve our contempt. They also deserve our mockery. That's
not what I was told.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
And when it's over, it is over.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
It is over.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
That's noise, so everybody chills.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Okay, thank you everybody there.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
And on that possibly nightmare inducing notes, thank you all
very much.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Have a terrific day, Armstrong and Getty
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the George Washington
Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Before her testimony, Stormy Daniels agreed not to describe Trump's
genitalia in court after she was offered hush money by
the jury. So Michael Cohen is testifying today, and he
actually has information relevant to the case as opposed to
Stormy Daniels who did not. But some of the testimony
(00:36):
already today. Cohen so he had to pay Stormy Daniels
one hundred and thirty thousand dollars to sign the non
disclosure thing, which by the way, is legal. He borrowed
against his home line of equity with his own money
to pay her, and then.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Trump paid him back. Is apparently the way it happened.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Right, is odd to say the least. What has become
clear to me in reading some more about Cohen and
the testimony and all, which I expect will be rendered
completely irrelevant when they try to bring the case home.
But is he was he was worshipful of Trump, he
would do anything for the guy, and and just he
(01:22):
was he was the most loyal of sidekicks. And then
he felt like Trump just kicked him to the curb
when it was convenience. So he's humiliated, disappointed. Remember he
thought he might even be the Attorney general. Well see,
but that's a different that's a different thing to me.
I mean, being loyal and worshipful of the guy is
one thing that could happen with a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
But thinking you're attorney general material, you're a nut.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Yeah, oh yeah, I would agree. I'm not trying to
cast him as some sort of sage. I think there's
a lot going on here, including a guy who's not
tearle bright, is bright enough to pass the bar in
New York State.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
He's one of those people that looks dumb and is dumb.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Yeah, so yeah, and uh morally flexible, and he worshiped
Trump and did Trump's dirty work and thought he was
a treasured part of the Trump family in essence, and
then got kicked to the curbs. So there's there's a
lot here. It's really quite the drama. Again, it's all
going to be completely irrelevant when Alvin Bragg, did you
(02:29):
clip thirty seven here? Michael, Come on, Alvin Bragg, you
remember him here from New.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
York where I'm being forced to endure a Biden show trial,
all done.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
By Biden, carried out by radical Democrat district attorney. You
know he is fat Alvin.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I don't know how this would strike me as a
juror or who in theory hasn't followed this case like
this is all new information to me in theory. H
If Cohen takes the stand and the.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Defense makes it clear.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
One that he hates Trump, absolutely hates him, and his
biggest goal in life right now is to make sure
Trump goes to jail. And they've got all kinds of
tweets and texting. He wrote about it in his memoir. Boy,
if you write his memoir, you do not value your
time on Earth. But so they can make it, they
can make it easily clear that Trump hates I mean
that Cohen hates Trump. And then you get to trot
(03:29):
out the fact that he's lied to jury's multiple times
in his life.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
He sat in a chair just.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Like this and flat out lied to the point that
he's gone to prison. So between those two things, why
would I believe him?
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Oh? Well, and I failed to finish my point because
I wanted Michael to play the fat Alvin Cliput fat
It's all going to be irrelevant because when Bragg and
his people try to bring it all home, how this misdemeanor,
which should have had the statute of limitations run out
except for COVID piled on this misdemeanor effects stakes the law,
which the federal flaw fraud and blah blah. When he
(04:03):
tries to string all that together and get a guilty verdict,
I think the jury's gonna laugh him out of court.
I've been wrong before. I could be wrong here, but
I doubt it. So yeah, I think all of this
is a ridiculous exercise.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So Trump calling Alvin Bragg fat at the rally the
other night. Then he had the crowd chanting fat pig,
fat pig about Chris Christie. And has there ever been
anybody in history as fat as Donald Trump? Trying to
get over on the calling other people fat thing, You know,
he is.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Fat.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Trump doesn't present fat though, only when he's in his
golf outfit, in a suit.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
He just you don't.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
You don't look at him and see there's a giant fag.
When he's in his golf outfit, he looks like just
a fat guy, and.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
You don't tend to show your weight gain on your face.
You can disguise it with clothing, especially as a dude. Yeah,
but he's not that much thinner than Chris Christie. Really, No,
he's a big dude. Christy's just more obvious rotund.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Not that any of this is relevant to your character
or political position.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Anyway, or really to anything, really to anything.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
And yet Trump.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Delights in bringing it up because he's a third grade bully.
He's right about the border, he's right about China, and
he's a third grade bully. And the crowd chance fat pig,
fat pig. So I'm not sure we even have time
for this. We talked about this during hour one of
the show, and it is clearly the biggest story in
maybe human history. This is certainly in your top several.
(05:32):
This is perfectly defense.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
You can defend this very well by calling this the
biggest story in world history.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I think. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
The headline Wall Street Journal suddenly there aren't enough babies.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
The whole world is alarmed.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Birth rates are falling fast across countries, and the economic, social,
and geopolitical consequences could be unthinkable. And this is not
just the developed West. In South Korea, as we've discussed,
in Japan. Sometime very soon, the global fertility rate will
(06:05):
drop below the point needed to keep population constant. It
may have already happened. Here's your key sentence. Fertility is
falling almost everywhere for women across all levels of income, education,
and labor force participation. The falling birth rates come with
huge implications for the way people live, how economies grow,
in the standing of the world's superpowers.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, I want to talk about this at depth, in depth,
so we should take a break. But this matters to
you if you have kids. I think this really matters
to you because this is going to have huge policy
ramifications over time. It's probably already starting.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
I think it's going to affect the world in myriad ways,
some of which we can and we can anticipate, many
of which we cannot.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Well, and then at some point there aren't any people,
so it's just a beers and coyotes, bears and coyotes
and bees and no people.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Give the world to the bees. That's what I say.
They're hard to work, they're organized, so that that and
other stuff on the.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Way stay here. I was just reading some commentary that somebody.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Has watched Cohen in previous trials because he's been in
a bunch of them, mostly found guilty and sent to prison.
Is that he's a real rambler and it's very difficult
to rain him in. And that's going to be the
biggest problem the prosecution has with him, is that even
though he's you know, their key witness to this whole
thing is that he just like goes off on tangents.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
So to keep him directed is going to be hard.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Huh, which could be great fun during the cross examination.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yes, I have to this gin for a couple of
days though, right, And this observer said it's going to
be difficult to keep this from becoming the Michael Cohen Show.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
For the prosecution, well it won't matter because soon all
the people will be dead. Anyway, getting back to that topic,
the world is a startling demographic milestone. We may already
have fallen below replacement rate of births globally speaking, and
it's first time ever super widespread. Oh yeah, other than
like you know, the Great flood or the meteor that
(08:16):
hit Mexico or whatever zillions of years ago. Yeah, there
were other than a couple of myriad brief when the
meteor at Mexico, there weren't any people on earth. I
believe what you want to believe, all right, anyway, that's
a good point.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
It was like hundreds of millions of years ago.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
But other than occasional blips for a pandemic, no, it's
never happened before. And some of the numbers are absolutely shocking.
The global birth rate in nineteen fifty was four point
eighty six births per.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Woman, live births per woman.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
It actually went a little higher, was five in nineteen
sixty three. I think this is it's gone from five
to two point three in twenty twenty one. That's the
unst and they think last year it may well have
dipped below two point two two point one depending on
(09:07):
where you live in the world, which is considered a
replacement rate. It varies because you have to have statistically
a few more kids in your more primitive countries than
the advanced West, because you have more infinite mortality.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
But so on average, women went from having five kids
to two kids in forty years, sixty years, sixty years, regardless,
that's almost exactly. That's a blip of time to go
from five to two. And why has got to be
(09:40):
the biggest question in human history.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Yeah, Obviously, this is a bit of a difficult number
to come up with an exact answer for, but some
estimates now put the number of babies each woman has
at two point one point five around the world, which
is below the traditional replacement rate of two point two
the US one point six live births per woman, way
(10:03):
below more well, it's exactly half a kid below the
replacement rate. South Korea the lowest birth rate on Earth,
zero point seventy two, one third of what it would
take to just keep the population at the same level.
It's mind blowing. It's never been observed in human history.
(10:24):
As we were discussing earlier, you know, people say, well,
that's because with climate change, this is no time to
bring a child in the world. You're an idiot and
should shut up.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
As I've been saying for years, I do not believe
for a second that it's a conscious, conscious choice people
are not having babies. There's something going on in our
genetics that has taken away our unbelievable urge to reproduce.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
I think there are certain socioeconomic factors that might have
sped it up a little bit. More women being educated,
with greater access to birth control, family planning that sort
of thing. But I mean the fact that it is
practically universal. Almost every country on Earth is something's happening.
Homost sapiens have decided, Ope, there are too many of us.
(11:10):
We need to die down the population a little bit
like other animal populations do in the wild. And I
can't name, you know, the specific species because I'm not
an expert in this, but there are various beasts that
are incredibly adaptive to all right, we need more babies fast,
like coyotes I've read about, and then when they're overpopulated,
birth rates fall.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah. I learned that about wasps when I had in
my house.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I was killing lots of wasps, and all the experts
told me, you're just creating more wasps the way you're
doing it.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, well, then what am I supposed to do?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I had a point, so that you're not having kids
and a birth rate going down and the blah blah blah.
Oh and so mathematically I should dig this up, because
I think it's one of the things Mark Stein wrote
about in his famous book America Alone. Mathematically, you might
not understand the spirally goes into so fast when you
fall below birth rate. It happens a lot faster than
(12:04):
you would think. Well, it's not I guess it's not
that hard to understand. If all the young people had
zero kids, there'd be nobody left in not that many years, right,
I mean, it wouldn't take very long, and there's nobody around.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
So it's so striking. It's happening in developing countries too. India,
you may know, surpassed China's the most populous country last year.
India's fertility rate is now below replacement rate.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Now that's surprising to me.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
So that's a different thing than what I was always
assuming it was, which was a certain level of affluence
and safety was keeping us from having kids.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
But India is not affluent and safe, not for a
lot of people.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
So they quote this one a kind of as specializing
in demographics at the University of Pennsylvania, either in a
number of different places here, but many government leaders is
seeing it as a matter of national urgency. Here's why
you oughta care that you care at all. If you're gone,
you're gone, then good luck to those who come after us.
They worry about shrinking workforces, slowing economic growth, and underfunded pensions.
(13:09):
Every you know, old age pension fund in the world
is predicated on a certain number of young workers working
and paying into those funds.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Spoiler alert, there's nothing you can do about this. I mean,
you talk about things wrong. Wrong, He's wrong, folks.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
We'll let him spin the very waby you'll being trapped in.
Then I'll jump in and explain to he's wrong. What
you can do about dropping population growth.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I put that it makes climate change seem like we're
I'll rank in the NBA draft. I mean, it's just
not something I'm thinking about.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Right, Smaller populations come with diminished global clout, not to
mention the economic stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
All these things will happen. There's just nothing you can
do about it. No, you can't do anything about the
birth rate. But you can do something about propping up
your collapsing social welfare system.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
And that's important. Milli millions of people from south of
your border, for instance, or across the world, they just
come in through the south border. I maintain that that
is why both parties are allowing it to run rampant,
with some on the right suggesting that they're trying to
stop it, but they're not really.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
I listen, some are summer sincere.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I listened to a podcast about this once, and they
are talking about the various policies that are likely to happen, or.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Just culturally socially, the way.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Things will change as it, I mean, because we're practically
they're already where people out and about spending money. There
are more people without kids than there are with kids,
and that will change things drastically. I mean, you'll have
more restaurants that we don't allow kids here because they
can make more money by having all their childless clientele. No,
(14:50):
I can go to that restaurant now, don't have to
deal with a crying kid, or or airlines or movie
theaters or whatever. Hotels could be huge for hotels and
resorts or no ds here. That's that's going to bring
in more people than you would keep out by saying
we don't allow kids.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Very soon, I think, well, and soon they'll have no
customers whatsoever. So that's great and all, but well, they
will have customers, but they'll be speaking Spanish. The drop
in birth rates in Mexico, India, China, South Korea are
just shocking. In other places like Hungary and Japan has
gone from too low to even lower than that.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
And you're not going to keep your tax breaks for
having kids when two thirds of the country doesn't have
kids and thinks it's a bad idea.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Man. Some of the stories about the countries that have
tried to do something about this are I mean, they're
they're universally failed.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Some of them have.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Tipped the scales briefly and gotten a little tiny rise
in birth rates by like a tenth of a percent,
but that's generally been temporary, and some of them have
been amazing, Like Japan's been trying like crazy. After fertility
fell to one point five in the early nineties, government
rolled out a succession of plans, including parental.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Leave, subsidized childcare.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Fertility kept falling, they introduced maternity care, being free a
stipend pain upon the birth of the child. It blipped
upward and then started declining again. There was one more. Oh,
in Hungary, Prime Minister Victor Orbond. You've heard about him right.
Last year he expanded tax benefits from others so that
(16:29):
women under the age of thirty who have a child
are exempt from paying personal income tax for life.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, don't have it.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
On top of housing and childcare subsidies, as well as
generous maternity leaves. It's risen slightly, but not enough.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
And those are probably horrible examples. Don't don't have a
kid because of a tax break? I mean that is
it's it's the it's yeah, that's not a good that's
not a good thing.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
I think it's just it's it's changing the incentives somewhat.
I don't think he could accuse a person of having
a child for the tax break. It just changes the
economic picture enough that they think, you know, we can't
have a kid, we can't afford it.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
I could see where it might affect me, like if
I had two, I might have three if I could
not pay taxes the rest of my life.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
But is it too late to sign up for that?
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Republicans seem to be uniting behind Trump. Whatever opposition he
faced in the primaries has largely melted away, and the
trials against him keep him in the spotlight, infuriate his base,
who sees him as a martyr, and even may serve
to make him the object of some sympathy among people
in general, who believe that his prosecutors are politically motivated.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
This happens to be true in my opinion.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought
against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
From Farid Zakaria on CNN, he doesn't think the brag
case would have happened with anybody not named Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
I disagree with Freid pretty frequently, and I think he's
just dead wrong on a lot of stuff. But it
takes a intellectual honesty and b balls to come out
and say.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
That in his crowd. I salute him for that. Yeah,
I agree.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I heard somebody say the other day, and this is
I don't know why this isn't more of a thing
people making the comment that, wow, So this Stormy Daniels
trial is the only one that's going to happen. We're
going to have to defeat him politically, because we're not
we don't have Okay, So.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
If he whoa, whoa, think about what you just admit.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Right right, If he's the worst thing since Hitler and
just so obviously a horrible human being and a horrible
politician on every level, then why don't.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
You think you can beat him?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Do we have that clip on one of the big
talk shows somebody essentially said, look, if he's so evil,
why is your guy died with them? Right, And the
answer was a stammering nonsense.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
As you might guess.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
I'm not a fan of Hitler.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Socio political, breaking news, breaking news, Michael, this is important.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
I think this matters.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
The University of North Carolina one of the so called
new ivy's, as if we need new ivis. I didn't
like the old ivys, right, I wanted to get rid
of the ivs. Now you tell me we got new IV's.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
I don't want it.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
The whole concept is sickening. Yeah, shut up with that anyway.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
University of North Carolina's Board of Trustees has voted unanimously
to abolish the university's DEI department and transfer all the
funds to the campus police. It's not twenty twenty anymore.
Defund THEI, Refund the police is the winning slogan of
the day.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
That's from Chris Ruffo. Interesting there is that's.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
That is a huge wind and win rather and a
real indication of the changing in the wind what university wants.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I saw there a variety of kinds of protests across
the country with graduation happening a lot of places, which
is what the Biden crowd has been waiting for graduation
to get here, and the college kids go home, and
so then they don't. You know, you can't really have
a mass protest if the kids ain't there at the college.
But there was a lot of standing up and turning
your back on the speaker or walking out, you and
(20:21):
your friends or whatever. I saw it said, keep walking,
dumbass whatever you turned your back on the speaker, whooped
the s I saw One girl walked across, got her
diploma and then tore it up on the stage because
she's so disgusted with having a diploma from a university
who funds Israel or something.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Okay, fine, keep walking with your torn up diploma. We
don't care. It's your diploma. You can do whatever you
want with it.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
But it's symbolic about how I reject this.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
No, no, seriously, it's not like we disagree.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
We don't care. Go get a job, yeah, or don't.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Came across this headline Columbia janitor reveals secret plans left
behind by the anti Israel protesters who took over Hamilton Hall.
Columba University. Janitors were gripped with sheer terror. You were
talking about this last week how you think there's gonna
be a lawsuit coming? Sheer terror is a mob of
violent anti Israel protesters stormed Hamilton Hall and took over
(21:16):
the building. As dozens of rioters busted through the glass
and barricaded their entrances to occupy the historic building, four
janitors found themselves trapped inside and afraid, says the head janitor.
If you have masked people running through the building with
zip ties and chains, you don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
What they're gonna do.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
If they're gonna take you hostage, if you're gonna be tortured,
if you're gonna be made an example.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Well, I think that's probably gonna come out in some
sort of lawsuit. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Well, the key question to me is were they prevented
from leaving intentionally? Because that's kidnapping.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
I'm wanted to hit this just because it doesn't get
mentioned much. The Israeli Defense Forces announced the deaths of
four soldiers from the nine hundre and thirty first Infantry
Battalion on Friday, So they got practically every dude of
fighting age is in active service right now, in active
(22:17):
not inactive, fighting in service right now. Sergeant Italy Libny,
age nineteen died, Sergeant Josef Dasa age nineteen died, Sergeant
Emerus can't pronounce his name, age nineteen, and Sergeant Daniel
Levy age nineteen. Four nineteen year olds died fighting against
the scumbag nihilists that are Hamas four nineteen year olds.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Man, it's just horrifying. Yeah, that's sad. That's saying, you.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Idiot college kids with your fake plo Hamas Kafias wrapped
around your necks in your weird view of the world.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
What the hell that they've been taught since they're fourth
graders or third graders or kindergarteners in California schools, in
blue state schools and then even red state schools all
over the country where just we let it happen under
our watch. And the very few kids we've been having
getting back to that demographic discussion are our little Marxists.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Whoops, another kind of political story, and then I'll move
off of politics. Two more Indian tribes have banned Christy
Nome from their reservations. So as you may or may
not know, reservations are their own thing. They're like their
own countries, their sovereign land. And because she wrote about
(23:36):
killing the dog. I guess because they value dogs or
somehow an Indian tradition. They've said the governor is not
allowed to set foot in the reservation. I don't know
that there was any chance she was going to, but
now twenty percent of her state she's not allowed to
set foot in.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
That's uncomfortable as the governor. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
The whole small state governor thing. Haven't we learned that
virtually any ya who can get elected?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Okay, seriously, I mean, the greatest state in the Union,
California has a known jackass in the governor's mansion, so
obviously you're you're the depopulated little states they can tell.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Who knows what was in there? Oh? I know, I
got one more babbylon b headline. I wanted to hit
you with love it with Biden's stalling.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Israel announces they'll just get American weapons from the Tallyban.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Oooo.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
That's a good one.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
That is a good shot. It's subtle, but I appreciate it.
All right, So well, yeah, do we have time for this?
Not rad I don't know. I've lost my enthusiasm.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
I'd like the comment on today, a Columbia student ripped
up her diploma on stage as a form of protest,
and they response was, you can pick up your degree
from clown college later.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
I like the wood.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I like the whole clown meme that you know you're
you're a clown clown.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
I think there are times when mockery is a much
more powerful tool than trying to engage people in some
sort of serious arguments. Just don't I don't think the
angry sophomore girls deserve much of a serious argument. You know,
if they'd like to sit down and chat, I'd be
happy to outline my thoughts. But they're just clowns. They're jackasses. Hey,
speaking of girls of various ages. The whole myth of
(25:24):
the what is.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
It called the.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
I'm sorry, I wasn't ready for this. The the sexism
of prices, the price gap between men's products and women's.
Prink tax man, the pink tax. That's it, the pink tax.
I knew there was a catchy term for it. It's
it's a myth. It's ridiculous, not shockingly, but we can
explain that.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Oh, they charge more for pink razors. This was ug
black and blue razors because they hate women. Well, then
getting ripped off than by the blue raisor. It's the
same razor, it's just a different color. You're getting close.
We got that other stuff on the way still here, Hey,
(26:13):
yo yo. We'll have any of the highlights of the
Cohen testimony tomorrow on the show, and the cross examination
is not likely to start till late tomorrow or Wednesday.
They think this, and they're thinking closing arguments by the
end of the week.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
That's the best guess right now.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
Okay, okay, okay, we'll look forward to that. So on
the question of the pink tax, there's a great piece
written by Ryan Bourne, who has a new book out
he edited, which I've got to get a copy of,
The War on Prices, how popular misconceptions about inflation, price controls,
and value lead to bad policy, which sounds right up. Mail.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I love that, so I'll be reading that.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
But he goes into how it was in twenty fifteen
that the New York City Department and Consumer Affairs took
undertook a study comparing three hundred and ninety seven pair
of gendered products available in New York City, and they
came up with the idea of this pink tax, that
that women pay more for gendered products specialty products for
(27:13):
women than men do for stuff labeled for men, and
that it was evidence of a ripoff or or sexism
or something or other.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I always think of razors because you can get pink
raisors or other color raisers. Is there are there other
good examples that come to mind? Oh?
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Yeah, they In fact, there was this big study that
they did with nine different UH products razors, hair care products, deodorance,
body washes, clothes.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Foot wear, phone cases is a good one. Guarantee it
happens with phone cases.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Yeah, I wonder.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
But anyway, so they they mentioned that more progressive parts
of the country ultimately passed stupid, stupid legislation against gender
price York and California in particular.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
They actually what I didn't legislation we got fast. How
moronic do you have to be to not understand this right?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Right?
Speaker 4 (28:07):
And they go into studying it and how the differences
are extremely small. Anyway, But he writes, despite all the alarm,
we now know that the pink tax is a myth,
not in the sense that the prices are incorrect.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Rather, women often willingly pay more.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
On average for products that are subtly differentiated. In other words,
The reason that women are paying more for the same
goods is not sexist discrimination, but that that the products
they prefer are often not the same. If women regarded
a pair of gendered products is perfectly substitutable, then faced
with higher products, they inevitably buy the mail or male
(28:45):
neutral variant. That would make the differential pricing strategy unprofitable
for companies, leading to price equalization.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
But that's not what happens.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Well and so, in other words, if you prefer to
have a pink rasor sitting on the soap shelf in
your shower as opposed to a blue one, as a girl,
you're willing to pay a little more, but at a
certain point you just go ahead and get the blue raisor.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Sure, yeah, yeah. And there's more to it than that,
which we'll get to in a second. But yet most
products marketed by gender were in fact highly differentiated. There
was very little overlap in the ingredients for bar soap,
body wash, deodorant, hair coloring, shampoo, and shaving cream.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
I've always earned different products.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
I've always wondered that about, particularly when they talk about
shampoo and soap. Well, girls, stuff has more, it's better.
It's simply better stuff. That's why light like a lot
of well my teenage boys, they're using more girl shampoo
because it's often better.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
The apples to apples comparison, the difference was teeny tiny.
That women pay more for different products from men's versions,
which of course they're still a liberty to buy if
they want. Isn't exactly a hard hitting story about sexist pricing,
and I'm skipping ahead here because it's rather long, But
the typical reason women pay higher prices seems to be
(30:01):
that the goods they prefer have higher marginal manufacturing and
distribution costs. Looking at five gendered product markets in detail yogurt, deodorant,
disposable razors, shampoo, and protein bars, researchers found that it
was true in all the categories except the protein bars,
that it was higher it was more expensive to manufacture
them and advertise them, partly because women's products are more
(30:27):
heavily advertised, and so you have to advertise more aggressively
to differentiate yourself and create new consumers than you do
among men's products.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Well, I'd have to think about that one for a while.
That's a complicated issue. Why do you have to advertise
more for women's products.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Because everybody does and there are more choices.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Well why did it start that way? But women care
more about the differences than guys do.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Well, women spend more on personal care items, for instance,
which is a lot of what we're talking about, than
dudes do.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
So it's a bigger market.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Therefore it draws more suppliers econ one oh one. But
to break through and get a buyer, keep a buyer,
you know, establish a habit, it's more expensive because there's
just more competition. In spite of this, and this is
this is unmistakable economic science. They point out that the
Minnesota Star Tribune, invoking the pink taxs boomed in March,
(31:22):
women's salaries are lower and their expenses are higher. That
just the facts don't enter into the public debate.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Maybe I learned about this so long ago, I don't remember.
Maybe at one point I didn't get this, but it
seems so obvious to me. I mean, just the Stanley
big dumb cup thing that's been so popular over the
last couple of months is all the proof you need
right there. Look on eBay, the pink and lavender ones
are really hard to find and really expensive because girls
(31:50):
want those more, all the blue gray black ones are
cheaper because this is not as desirable. They're exactly the
same thing, they're just a different color.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
My wife doesn't have that big dumb cup, but she
left her big cup. She drinks her iced tea out
of somewhere, and was concerned that somebody'd find it. She said,
because that's discontinued. And I said, wow, they discontinue that item.
It's a great product. And she said, no, just the
color is discontinued, so I'd have to pay like sixty
dollars to replace it. I'm thinking, Ron, don't you just
(32:20):
get a different collar, But of course I kept it
to myself.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I don't think guys care as much about color. If
razors were much cheaper and they were pink, I would
have pink razors.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I don't care well.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
And just to summarize the last part of this, they
mentioned that if you have a gender neutral product, like
gender neutral body wash, and you put it up there
and hope women will buy it, they won't. By the way,
the one that's especially formulated for women.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
By the way, we have a woman on the show,
and didn't includer in the conversation.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Everybody needs to be fired.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Everybody on this show should be fired for the fact
that Katie Green was not involved in that conversation, including Katie,
everyone on the show, all of us. I won't be
here tomorrow because I fired my site that Katie wasn't.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
How stupid are we? How stupid are we? G d stupid?
Good Lord, and you're fired too. Everybody's fired, Michael. This
is your last act. Hit your button.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Oh, it's been a good time. Almost finished. Let's get ready.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Final thoughts with Armstrong and Gooty. I'm so mad at myself.
Here's your host for final thoughts, Joe Getty.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Everybody's final thought is We're stupid.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Michael, it's your final thought. I'm stupid. No, I could
say we're okay, we're stupid.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
But I had a very nice Mother's Day and we
barbecued as a family. Actually, I'm learning to barbecue pretty well.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Jack. So I know you don't like grilling, but I don't
have any interest in it.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
I'm learning to enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
I don't want to be good at it.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
Well, good for you by stical implants is an option, Katie.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
A final thought other than we're stupid. Oh, I'm also stupid.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And over the weekend, Jackie posted a photo of yourself.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
With hair on the Twitter. Yeah it's from the year
I was born.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, well, which makes a point. We're significantly older than you.
We're gonna be talking about that in the One More
Thing podcast, so that's a good way to tease that.
With my final thought, the One More Thing podcast will
include the photos and more the reactions to the photos
and what it says about society.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
Oh really, Okay, My final thought, I guess is that
you know, the whole difference in age thing. Youth is
so fleeting, and adulthood is long, really long, unless you
get hit by a bus or something like that, or
your motors. I mean, you're an adult for decades and decades.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
It's just it's it's bloring.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Armstrong and getting wraping up an other grueling four hour workday.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
So many people to thank, so many people stupid. Go
to Armstrong and Giddy dot com. Great hot links. You
can drop us a note mail bag at armstrong a
giddy dot com.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Hope you enjoy the show that replaces us because we
fired ourselves.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
God bless America. I'm strong and getty.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Now if you have been at this amazing place for
four years and.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Still have no idea what you like?
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Get out, I hear you more on you hit me, Well,
take your turtle neck and get.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
They deserve our contempt. They also deserve our mockery. That's
not what I was told.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
And when it's over, it is over.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
It is over.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
That's noise, so everybody chills.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Okay, thank you everybody there.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
And on that possibly nightmare inducing notes, thank you all
very much.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Have a terrific day, Armstrong and Getty
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