May 24, 2024 • 36 mins
Hour 4 of the Friday May 24, 2024 edition of The Armstrong & Getty Replay features...
- Inflation and Scam Store Returns
- Mailbag and Chairman of Biden's Economic Council
- Passion Tax
- Health Care and Why is Inflation Still High?
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio and the George Washington
Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and Getty show.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
A couple of things.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I was fining the other day and looking out the
window and watching them load the bags, and one you said,
the reason bags can only be a certain weight is
because they don't want to hurt the people's backs who
were throwing the bags around. Looked out the new guys
like sixty five years old. Get younger people lifting the bags.
That would help. Is that some sort of union thing.
You can't fire them even if they're retirement age. Get
(00:39):
younger people to lift bags each discrimination. Yes, younger people
the lift bags. And guy was chucking him.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
He was standing there at the thing rather than walking over.
He was throwing them at least fifteen feet. Throw it
over there, bounces in the pile. Throw it over their
bounces in the pile.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I thought, there's all kinds of laptops in there, and
video games and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You don't need to throw it like that. It's weak.
Screw you, dude.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I wanted to yell out the one, hey, walk you
gus over there for whatever we're paying you don't throw
my bag.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
I sympathize when I'm picturing you actually doing that on
a flight and walking off handcuffed.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I'm going to talk to that young man. They're not
supposed to chuck him like that, are they. I'd never
seen that before. I've seen some chuck in not cool.
It made me think I want to get different bags,
like the hard sided bags.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah, or fly a different airline that was weak. All
the different baggage guys and all the different airports. You
know in the country.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Who knows I.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Regularly have expensive stuff in my in a checked bag.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I don't want thrown like that.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Speaking of consumer issues, jack Oh, back to the Jet
Blue thing. Yeah, peak demand pricing is the coming trend.
Don't like that because you're never quite sure what something's
going to cost. And the second thing is everything's a subscription,
which is including in the most chilling example.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
It's not chilling, it's annoying.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Like if you want the super good stereo upgrade in
your next car, you don't buy it, you subscribe to it.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
It's a monthly payment for the rest of your life. Yuck.
Hate that idea.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
I hope all consumers hate it so much. Goes away,
but we'll see. So I'm not going to give you
the punchline. I'm just going to read part of this
from the Wall Street Journal, of all places, and then
just wait for Jack's head to explode.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
What's wrong with the economy? It's you, not the data.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Many Americans believe that the economy and their finances are
worse than they really are, and then they go into
some pole numbers like pole Swing States. Seventy four percenter
respondents said inflation has moved in the wrong direction in
the past year. This assessment, which holds across all seven states,
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Moved in the wrong Okay.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
This assessment, which holds across all seven states, is startling, sobering,
and simply not true. I'm not stating an opinion. This
isn't something on which reasonable people can disagree. We can
say unambiguously that inflation has moved in the right direction
in the past year. Okay, so what though, when it
comes to the economy, the average person thinks inflation went up.
(03:18):
Yet when it comes to the economy, the vibes are
at war with the facts, and the vibes are winning,
which is bad for Biden needs mentions. It's tempting to
chalk this up to a misunderstanding. Lower inflation means the
level of prices is still rising, just more slowly than before.
All right, look, we got to convene a major summit
with the major media, leading dictionary makers, the Federal Reserve,
(03:40):
the Surgeon General, joint chiefs.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I don't care.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Whatever world's sexiest albino, get him involved, exactly, whatever it takes. Look,
oh eggheads, oh pontificators on high.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
When people say inflation, they mean prices.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
And if inflation was nine percent last year and it's
eight percent this year, yes, according to you, inflation is
moving in the right direction. That's not the way anybody
thinks about it, except PhDs and economics.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I guess, just get it through your head.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
I can't buy as much as I could two years ago.
In fact, I can buy less than I could last year,
And I can't do stuff I used to like to
do because I don't have enough money and I used
to So that the eight percent is now three and
a half percent, it's meaningless to consumers. It's so odd
that they would devote as many words to explaining to
people no, no, no, inflation is better.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
I think it's as simple as are most people shocked
at the price of things. If you're shocked at the
price of things, you feel bad about. It doesn't matter
the rate of whatever month to month or anything like that.
Just if I pick up something at the store or
get a bill somewhere and I'm shocked at the price.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
It's gonna make me feel bad.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Speaking of which, the very same publication, The Wall Street Journal,
not far below that story, has this story how far
one hundred dollars goes at the grocery store. After five
years of food inflation from beef tomato, consumers continue to
spend more to buy less, and they go into you know,
(05:20):
in twenty nineteen, it costs you two thirty six for
a dozen eggs, and then that's up a dollar forty
eight over those few years. And they go into potato
chips and lettuce and milk and oat milk and oat milk,
you know, ground beef, and flour and crackers and dish
(05:42):
soap and water and peanut butter and sody pop and
pasta and butter and grapes, and there's an enormous list
right chicken breasts.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
It's gone up a lot.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
People mean when they say inflation, they don't mean the
rate of inflation. They're not come carrying the race this
year to the rate last year, the rate of growth.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
They're just seeing higher prices, right obviously. And I'm still
shocked at prices, so I'm not there yet. I don't
know how long it takes for people to get over
the emotional shock of prices. I don't know. I was
too young in the early eighties the last time we
went through this. I don't know how long it takes
you to get settled into the new price of things.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I guess we'll find out.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
I know.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
I had one babysitter ask for a raise the other day,
and I thought, geez, when did I hire you at
this rate? It's like four years ago, And so I
got up my inflation calculator app. Everybody should have an
inflation calculator app.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
Man.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
That'll give you some real news about a lot of things,
your salary, the price of your all kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
But anyway, I forget that, yes, she's going backwards several.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Dollars and the amount of time, the few years that
I've hired her, just in a couple of years. She
needs a raise just to get back to where she
was letting alone in the fact that she's good and dependable.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
And so some economists would say, do you think inflation's bad?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
And she say yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
He say you're wrong, You're wrong, right there, you idiot?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Right?
Speaker 4 (07:10):
What the heck is it with you people? All right,
here's an unanswerable question. How dishonest does a person need
to be for you to think they're a dishonest person?
Do they have to be honest one hundred percent of
the time about everything? White lies are excusable. No, you
don't look fat in those jeans, for instance, you look
like a hog. Oh you many? Oh, I suggest you
(07:32):
don't say that. But what about uh, what about popping
a couple of grapes in your mouth at the grocery store.
That's a certain sort of person. I mean, that's not much,
but I would not do that.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Well, my, my, uh, I have.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
A friend who does that, and he feels because he
feels like the grocery stores are overcharging places, and that's
how I get them back, so he steals from them. Yeah, okay,
I just I was wondering, having all already read the
information I'm about to share with you, I wonder what
percentage of people are actually pretty much just dishonest. All
they respond to is incentives and disincentives. They don't follow
(08:12):
rules and refrain from dishonesty because of a moral restraint.
It's merely incentives and disincentives. I don't want to steal
because I will get in trouble and that will mess
up my life. I think most people are honest by
great majority. Do you I would Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
So there's a big story in a variety of publications,
including once again the Journal, that Amazon sellers are getting
hammered by a surgeon scam returns because they have such
liberal return policies. The individual sellers on Amazon are not
always Amazon. In fact, in a lot of cases, they're
not Amazon. They use Amazon as a clearinghouse, a way
(08:56):
to connect with buyers. You probably knew that already. But
there's an enormous surge and you buy a Coach wallet
and you return some no name dupe, or you buy
Nike football cleats and say, hey, these cleats didn't work,
or I kept slipping and falling on my hind in
or whatever, and you return flip flops. What But Amazon
(09:18):
is so a we want to make the customer happy
and be so haphazard and unresponsive to small sellers saying, hey,
I'm getting flooded with these fake returns. You got to
do something about this. Here's the guy's name, the address, whatever,
they're stealing from us. And they, of course Amazon says,
(09:39):
we make it a priority to blah blah, but we
have no tolerance for fraudulent returns. But all these sellers
are saying, well, maybe you say you don't have tolerance,
but I'm losing my shirt over here.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Well, it doesn't take a very high percentage of scumbags
who are willing to do that to muck up the works.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Obviously, that's true.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
About fourteen percent of returns last year were fraudulent, accounting
for one hundred and one billion dollars in overall loss
one hundred one.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Billion dollars, fourteen percent of returns. And I wonder what
percentage of I mean, how many people made up that
fourteen percent.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
I doubt somebody just does that scam runs and says, oh,
I've stolen enough, right exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
I'm sure it's an ongoing thing for certain people.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
That's why I like the Social credit score for that
sort of thing that is becoming more popular, and I
want it all tied together as long as the government
doesn't get its hands on it and use it for
those reasons. But I love the fact that the idea
of Costco, Best Buy, Amazon, everybody having your return information
and knowing, okay, you're the kind of person that, like
twice in your lifetime, has returned something. If you return something,
(10:41):
you mean it, as opposed to you return everything. You
wear it, you bring it back, return it and take
advantage of us. You know.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
When you first said social credit score, of course my
mind goes immediately to the communist Chinese in their horrific system.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
But yeah, I see what you mean. It's like your
credit rating. Yeah, I have that.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Like this happened just the other day with DoorDash. So
I ordered food. I ordered two meals from door dashing.
I got one of them. I contacted door dash and said, hey,
I only got one of my meals, and they they
went through my door dash history, which is long, look
at me. Uh and and I spent a lot of
money a lot of door dashing, and I have a
record of not doing that before. So they were they've
(11:16):
been over backwards. They immediately credit me blah blah blah blah.
I like keeping track of people, whether or not you're
the scumbag type or not, so it doesn't ruin it
for everybody.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
It might work. Final Notice. Barber sells household items, but
has received TV cable boxes and used bars of soap
as for returns. Jess sells out a coffee. If you're
sending a used bar.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Soap back, I guess, so there's weight.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Why not just put a note in there and says
I'm stealing from you If you send.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Back a used bar of soap, I don't. Is it
a prank?
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Jess, who sells outdoor coffee products like a travel French press,
has gotten back Christmas ornaments and toy planes. Kevin, also
an Amazon seller, received used dog nail trimmer for what
should have been human nail clippers. On and on, all right,
order a pair of football clead send back the flip flops.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
This didn't work at all.
Speaker 5 (12:11):
Armstrong, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty The Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Show all sorts of great stuff. Here's your Freedom Woman.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Quote of the day sent along by Jeff and hogs Nippole,
Tennessee from Maximilian robes Pierre, one of the leading figures
of the French Revolution. Keeping in mind that my two
older kids once made my younger kid cry by repeatedly calling.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Her robe spear.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
She was in the defense of my older kids, as
the youngest and very very cute and bright. She was
quite convinced that the world, you know, orbited around her,
that she was the center of the universe.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
And they decided to take her down a peg, which is,
you know, kind of useful in life sometimes.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
But I made them stop referring to her as the
brutal fist of the French Revolution.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
I always wonder, for only children, how that how you
survive not having that some better than others, because if
your parents are saying, oh, that's a great drawing, and
there's no brothers and sisters, say that sucks, that's stupid. Yeah, yeah,
which is what brothers and sisters do.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Or brothers and sisters who are just better at drawing.
Oh right, yeah, yeah, better at something else? Right?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, anyway, moving along. Oh, I'm sorry I didn't give
you the quote.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the
secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
True at railbag and ropes here did lead to French revolution.
Then it turned on him and they beheaded him.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So it goes with revolutionaries. Kids. See, it's not freedom
if we have to work.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
Chris and san Diego writes, every college Marxist believes that
in the socialist utopia she will be a philosopher or
a poet, not the third shift digger at the lithium
and cobalt mine.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Right, right, exactly, that is exactly right. Yeah, well, let's see.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Burbank Luke writes about those matching pup tents. The White
House feels if we can just get through the end
of the college semester, the protests will end or peter out.
I don't think they understand the nature of nor the
drive behind these protests at all. Have they forgotten the
summer of love? Well, I would suggest that's a very
different thing too. Oh, he says, ps. I have a
workaround for the passion tax. I will tell our CEO
(14:42):
I have no passion for my job. I better get
a raise.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
A it's a good one. We got to talk about
that later, the passion tax. If you didn't hear us
talking about that least week, I've never heard of it before.
But it's a concept.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
What an odd notion.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Joe from Dayton says, guys appreciated Joe's point, thank you
about Trump's potential imprisonment in comparing it to the MLK jailing.
How does all of this compare with Hitler's jail time
from the Beer Hull push resulting in massive popularity and
a pos book? Matin Kampf min Comf is a pos
book both in terms of its content and the writing. Joe, Yeah, well, yeah,
(15:19):
it's it's the same, just to you know, the nickel
version of it is if you can say, oh, you're
into the cause, I went to jail for the cause,
it's it's it's a different level. You go from the
silver level to the gold level. Yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Now, Martin Luther King Junior had a a righteous cause, obviously,
which helps. But was he strengthened or weakened by being
thrown in jail? Obviously strengthened.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Sure, Yeah, the righteousness of the cause really doesn't enter
into it if you're analyzing methods of movements and personalities
and that sort of thing. Let's see, uh oh oh,
this is so good, guys. A couple of years ago,
Kanye had his anti Semitic meltdown. Then Dave Chappelle went
on SNL to make fun of Kanye, but also made
(16:07):
some jokes about Jews. You read a couple of my
emails from a Jewish perspective. At the time, I mentioned
I fully supported Chappelle's right to speech and could laugh
at his jokes.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Well.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
At the same time, I had some resentment because no
other minority group is expected to tolerate offensive views or
jokes about them. I mentioned that Jews can take pride
in actually meeting that expectation, bitter as it might be,
and also that we can be proud of not allowing
millennia of oppression to change our decent values, and for
not using victimhood as an excuse for DKA or justification
(16:36):
for entitlement. The college cride bullies could learn a thing
or two from us. I bring all this up again
now because all those comments still apply, even though the
double standards are being stretched to a grotesque extreme by
college students and their administrators, the media, and even the
US government. Thanks for all your great discussions about this.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
You're welcome.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
When we got suspended that one time and nearly fired
wasn't that because didn't I threaten to draw a picture
of Muhammed or I did or something that's correct.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Well, yeah, but our insane producer put out a press
release that we were going to have listeners draw pictures.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I can't remember, and it.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Was allegedly the press release that got us suspended because
it's got to go through channel.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
But anyway, that dynamic exists, as we all know, the
draw picture of Muhammad. Oh, lose your job, get fired
from your position, whatever right you're doing. It's a horror
But make end threaten to murder Jews?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
You know?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Free speech? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's It's sick and.
Speaker 6 (17:33):
It Armstrong, the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
We have so much to squeeze in this hour and
the whole show. Hope you can stay tuned. But man,
we ran this clip once and got so much reaction,
so many requests to hear it again.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
All right, why not?
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Jared Bernstein is the voice you're gonna hear responding to question.
He is the Chairman of the of the President's Economic
Advisory Council. He is the Chief Economic Advisor to the
President of the United States.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Joseph R. Biden, d Delaware.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And it's amazing, Michael, Like you said, they print the dollar,
so why why does the government even borrow?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Well the.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
So the I mean again, some of this stuff gets
some of the language that the some of the language
and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely
prints money, and it definitely lends that money. Which is
why the government definitely prints money, and then it lends
that money by selling bonds?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Is that what they do?
Speaker 6 (18:53):
They they.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, they they sell bonds.
Speaker 7 (18:59):
Yeah, they sell bond right, since they sell bonds and
people buy the bonds and lend.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Them the money.
Speaker 7 (19:03):
Yeah, So a lot of times, a lot of times,
at least to my year with MMT, the language and
the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing, But there
is no question that the government prints money and then
it uses that money to So yeah, I guess I'm
(19:25):
just I don't I can't really talk. I don't get it.
I don't know what they're talking about, like, because it's
like the government clearly prints money, does it all the time,
and it clearly borrows otherwise we wouldn't be having this
debt and depthist conversation. So I don't think there's anything
confusing there.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
What's his position again, he's the chairman of the Council
of Economic Advisors.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Does anybody have any questions?
Speaker 3 (19:49):
So when we first played that, and when I first
heard the first part of it, I thought, Okay, this
is a guy that's just so in the weeds and
so knowledgeable.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
He's trying to figure out how to dumb it down.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Is to coarse, but you know, just to present it
in a way that a layman can understand it.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
But then it becomes completely clear when he starts saying,
is that right? I don't know that's a good.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
That he actually doesn't know that was just bizarre. He
makes reference to MMT, which, if you're not familiar with it,
it's a modern monetary theory. It is a fringe left
AOC theory that governments can go into as much debt
as they want to just keep spending and spending because
you can always grow the economy faster than your interest payments,
(20:32):
and that gets everybody employed. It's super popular with green
new dealers. But man, it is a fringe way of
looking at But how's that going?
Speaker 3 (20:39):
An economic advisor of any kind who answers a question
like that.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
The only answer I can come up with, and I'm
not sure it's a great one, but is that he
didn't want to say, plainly, we spend more than we
take in and borrow the balance because.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
That's how we buy votes.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
We're just we're just spending money to stay in power,
and we'll have to pay it back eventually. But as
long as it doesn't happen on our watch, as long
as the disaster, the foreclosure doesn't happen on our watch.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
We don't care. I don't know if you're right, or
if you're giving him too much credit. It's possible that
he just had the right politics and so they put
him in that position and he's actually not good at
his job, like he's a major donor or something I
don't know, or tied to the right people.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I don't know. Yeah, that was that was crazy. It is.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
It's amazing. That's the second time I heard it, and
it's just as amazing. Yeah, are an expert in this,
that's your answer? Where are the adults?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
All Right? I gotta move on.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
I don't say about that. I got I want to
tease this because I'm gonna get to it later.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Elections matter, folks, Elections matter.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
This is the most election of our lifetime. This is
the most election of our lifetime.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
You can't argue with that. She literally you can't. She
might be the You're president. Don't you threaten me like that.
I'm gonna get to this later. I heard I heard
this on NPR, so I had to look up the details.
I just heard the t's on NPR. I didn't hear
them do the story. What's the cash value of being white?
(22:15):
A nobel economist has come up with it, and you're
gonna find it annoying.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I'm already annoyed. Boy, that's great.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
It gets too because we talked about this the other day.
It's similar to the I remember the name of the term,
the tax, the uh, the passion passion tax, which I
also heard about on NPR, which I've never heard of before,
but I looked it up and it's a thing. It's
the idea that the Marxists or people who don't believe
(22:49):
in capitalism or whatever, believe that if you like your job,
you're paying a passion tax and you don't even know
it because you're probably working for less than you would
work for if you didn't like your job.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Right, that's the passion tax.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
The difference between we're going a job you hate where
they'd have to pay you more, and working a job
you love where you probably put in more hours and
are willing to take less pay. That's the passion tax.
And you are being stolen from by your employer through
the passion tax, and.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
You don't even know it.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Oh No, somehow taking liking a job and turning it
into a negative, it's right, really quite an amazing feat.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
The thing about that philosophy, and I think it's more
popular than mine, is that it assumes life just happens
to you, that you're you're of always a victim, that
just life drains on you like.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Well rain not one of my better metaphors, and.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
There's nothing you can do about it except to enact
millions and millions and millions of rules to prevent anything
bad from ever happening. Whereas our philosophy, i'm sure you
share mine, is is that no, no, no, take hold
of your life and live it. Accept the bad hops
except that some people are bastards and they're gonna cheat
you and the rest of it. But you are the
(24:05):
captain of your ship. Life doesn't happen to you. You
happen a life, Go get it. There'll be set backs,
there'll be you'll be screwed. We've been screwed. Uh, but
just you know, leave that behind you and figure out. Ah,
I'm gonna move on satter. But why is our next
guy comes along trying to screw me like that? He's
gonna f what do they say, f A f O? Yes, exactly,
(24:27):
Well let's call it.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
It's of course to philosophy, fart around and find out.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Right, Come on, isn't that.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
A much more exciting way to live your life than Oh?
I really like what I do, so I think I'm
being cheated.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Passion so pathetic.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Well there's that aspect of it, and then there's just
that's factually true. Yeah, I mean if you if if
my job was gonna be digging holes all day long
instead of this, you'd.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Have to pay me a hell of a lot.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, I mean a lot, a lot before I quit
this job and start digging holes for a living point.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And with my back, you're not gonna like my productivity.
But so I'm better off with that.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Then I'm paying the passion tax because I like this job,
so I do it for less.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
But then NPR would have a featurette on how you're
getting the abuse bonus and that you are the victim
of the abuse bonus, because the whole point is to
portray everybody as a victim.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, I mean, you got to really work hard when
you start going with the passion tax and what I again,
google it. There's a lot of writing about it, a
lot of people talking about it. That Reddit thread of
anti work. I'm sure it comes up on that regularly.
This this world where you're being screwed and every which way,
including if you like your job is weird, and if.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
You like your job kind of but don't like it
a ton and you're getting paid more than you would
if you love it. But let's you're getting the neutrality kneecapping.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
That's how it works.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
You're just always a victim no matter what happens, and
so you've got to give them.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Power to fix it for you. It's the meh man handling.
I'm kind of meh about my job.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
But oh you're the victim of the man handling.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
That is hilarious. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
If you're not paying the passion tax by liking your job, yeah, right,
and you go in on the weekend and work more
because you know you'd actually do this in your free time.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You like your job so much. That's the passion tax,
you know.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
I was just going to say, the number of people
who see life the way you do, my friends and
we do, is way, way, way, way, way more than
you would think, given media and education and entertainment, which
are the three headed monster of passivism and progressivism. You're right,
your way of looking at the world is right. Be
(26:56):
proud of it, be an advocate for it strongly. It
was I was taking in some lefty media just to
figure out what arguments I'm going up against today, and
I heard back to back NPR portraying the College anti
Israel protests as a ground swell of the true feeling
of millions of Americans.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
I got pulling on that. That would show that's not true. Oh,
it's utterly false. It's fictional.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
The Armstrong and Getty Show or jahn Mor Show podcasts
and Our Hot Lakes see Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
So, speaking of money changing hands, a couple of really
interesting economic notes for you. First of all, two main
reasons inflation is still high. One rents and two hospital costs.
Hospital prices jump seven point seven percent last month from
a year year ago, the highest increase in any months
(28:02):
since October of twenty ten, according to the Labor Department,
they go into a bunch of different procedures that are
significantly more expensive than they were a year ago. And then,
like anything any topic discussing the US healthcare system, they're
like three or four sub conversations. You have to bring
enlightenment to the topic. Our healthcare system could not be
any more screwed up than it is. I don't think,
(28:24):
of course, having said that, they'll reach new heights of
being screwed up between artificial and fictional government compensation rates
for Medicare and Medicaid, hospital monopolies in a lot of cities,
a lot of regions, and then.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
The way insurance companies work, which I've never understood and
I understand less now. Like I was in the emergency
room when we could go today for my motorcycle wreck,
I got a bill for two thousand dollars and it's
set on there. The insurance company hasn't I forget the
word they use, but hasn't looked at all of this yet.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
You're threatening me with collections if I don't pay by
this date, when's the insurance company taken What do they cover?
Speaker 2 (29:08):
What do they not cover?
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Are they just doing that thing where they hope you'll
pay for it before they cover it? Do I have
to hire a lawyer to figure out what is actually
supposed to be covered or not.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
What you're supposed to do, right, And keep in mind,
if you have insurance, you are paying artificially inflated rates
to pay for the government composition folks and people without
insurance at all.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
And then everybody kept asking me why I didn't take
an ambulance as opposed to limping into a guy's uber
and bleeding all over his seat in his poor Toyota Camry,
which it was nice of him to do, because the
last time I took an ambulance an eighth of a
mile for my gullbladder, it cost me three thousand dollars
cash because that's not covered by insurance. Three thousand dollars. Wow,
(29:55):
I don't know what this would have been. It was
a lot further away. That's so I'll never take it
an ambul and again. And let's I think I'm gonna die.
You can take a private jet from your house to
the hospital for about that night.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
So they do mention that health insurers are paying for
soaring wages for workers and other nurses rather than other workers.
Hiring and openings in healthcare remain strong even as unemployment
in other industries is slowed down.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
Also this We mentioned earlier that The New York Times
had an article about inflation, and the number one comment,
which was liked by eleven and forty out of the
eleven and eighty people who didn't commented, was that the
New York Times really needs to get off it's button
do some journalism about how companies are gouging us and
(30:40):
how there are artificially raising prices. Well, the Wall Street
Journal has a great piece on the title is why
is inflation so stubborn? Ask your local small business? The
number of small business businesses in America that are contemplating
raising prices is the highest they have ever observed. And
they go into a bonch of small businesses whose costs
(31:03):
from corrugated paper, from a box business, to all sorts
of people are talking about labor costs a bunch of
different inputs. Here's a roofer who hasn't raised prices in
a decade and now is going to have to raise
them twenty percent. Just their costs are killing them. The
aluminum used for curtain tracks now costs a buck thirty
(31:26):
one a foot. That's up about twenty percent from a
year ago.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Today. They just have a bunch of different examples of it.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And then this, I thought, on a semi similar topic,
Jack and I have relationships with a couple of fairly
large companies and a couple of little LLCs that are,
you know, have roughly the revenue of your local baseball
card shop. But so the idea that we're some sort
of corporate titans is just not true.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
I look like you don't, but I thought this was great.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Phil Graham, the old Senator, and Mike Solon, whose name
I don't recognize, but they wrote this piece for the
Wall Street Journal about how Biden and company are going
to hammer hard the idea of we've got to raise
taxes on corporations, and they quote a bunch of different
speeches where they've said that sort of thing. Obama was
big on it too, and how during the Trump tax cuts,
(32:26):
the permanent part there are some temporary stuff. Some permanent
part was it was a corporate tax rates, which get
a lot less attention than individual income tax rates because
only because and I quote, Americans don't understand that corporations
don't pay taxes. What what? It's one of the main
campaign names of the Democrats, that corporations have to pay
(32:47):
higher taxes.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
You're trying to tell me they don't pay taxes all.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
A corporate entity is a pass through legal structure, a
piece of paper in some Delaware filing cabinet, as Mitt
Romney tried to tell people corporations are people, and he
was mocked.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Of course, proper people, my friend, And that was endlessly mocked.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
So when the corporate tax rate increases, corporations try to
pass the cost on to consumers. To the degree that
the entire cost of the tax increase can't be passed
on to consumers, those costs are born by employees and investors.
Most economic studies can see that fifty or concluded that
fifty to seventy percent of a corporate tax increase not
passed on in higher prices is born by workers, while
(33:28):
thirty to fifty percent is born by investors. If you consume,
and we all do you pay the corporate tax? If
you consume and your work for a corporation. You pay
the corporate tax twice if you consume work and invest
your retirement funds in stocks.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
All good point, The corporate tax hits you three times. Wow,
I'd never thought about that third one. Yeah, here's where
it really hits home.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Democrats call up the image of the greedy robber baron
as a personification of big corporations. But when you pull
back the curtain, it isn't the wizard or robber baron
you see, but yourself as consumer, worker, and pensioner. Many
Americans don't pay individual income taxes, but all Americans pay
corporate taxes. In fact, a recent Treasury study confirmed that
(34:14):
about ninety three million families, about forty nine percent of
all American families, pay more in corporate taxes than they
do in individual income taxes. And they go into a
little detail on how that's true. But here's the part
I wanted to hit.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
And that's not hard to believe, given the fact that
half the country pays no federal income taxes. So the
stoddig market certainly had you never looked at it that way,
and that's very interesting.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
The stock market surged in twenty seventeen in anticipation of
the tax cuts, and in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, in
response to them, who owns American corporations? According to Tax
tax Notes, which is a nonprofit, non partisan blah blah blah,
seventy two percent of all domestically held stocks are owned
by pension plans, four oh one k's individual retirement accounts
(35:00):
and charitable organizations are held by life insurance companies to
fund annuities and death benefits.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
What's that percentage?
Speaker 4 (35:06):
Seventy two percent Wow, of all domestically health stocks are
retirement funds essentially. So when the Democrats draw this cartoon
of the fat cat, who's going to be taxed?
Speaker 2 (35:21):
That's you man, look in the mirror. And as I
mentioned a week or so ago, this is an underreported story.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
The Trump tax cuts of twenty seventeen expire in twenty five.
So whoever gets elected, you know what day one is
actually going to be. Day one is going to be
the battle begins over renewing or not or how much the.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Trump tax cut package.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
And that is going to be the biggest political story
of the year after the election, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
In the good old fashioned demagoguing of it. Oh yeah,
oh yeah, well, they're rich benefited the most.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Well, the quote unquote rich pay the majority of income taxes,
so it would be hard to design the system where
they didn't.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
But anyway, Armstrong and Getty
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio and the George Washington
Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and Getty show.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
A couple of things.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I was fining the other day and looking out the
window and watching them load the bags, and one you said,
the reason bags can only be a certain weight is
because they don't want to hurt the people's backs who
were throwing the bags around. Looked out the new guys
like sixty five years old. Get younger people lifting the bags.
That would help. Is that some sort of union thing.
You can't fire them even if they're retirement age. Get
(00:39):
younger people to lift bags each discrimination. Yes, younger people
the lift bags. And guy was chucking him.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
He was standing there at the thing rather than walking over.
He was throwing them at least fifteen feet. Throw it
over there, bounces in the pile. Throw it over their
bounces in the pile.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I thought, there's all kinds of laptops in there, and
video games and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You don't need to throw it like that. It's weak.
Screw you, dude.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I wanted to yell out the one, hey, walk you
gus over there for whatever we're paying you don't throw
my bag.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
I sympathize when I'm picturing you actually doing that on
a flight and walking off handcuffed.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I'm going to talk to that young man. They're not
supposed to chuck him like that, are they. I'd never
seen that before. I've seen some chuck in not cool.
It made me think I want to get different bags,
like the hard sided bags.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah, or fly a different airline that was weak. All
the different baggage guys and all the different airports. You
know in the country.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Who knows I.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Regularly have expensive stuff in my in a checked bag.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I don't want thrown like that.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Speaking of consumer issues, jack Oh, back to the Jet
Blue thing. Yeah, peak demand pricing is the coming trend.
Don't like that because you're never quite sure what something's
going to cost. And the second thing is everything's a subscription,
which is including in the most chilling example.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
It's not chilling, it's annoying.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Like if you want the super good stereo upgrade in
your next car, you don't buy it, you subscribe to it.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
It's a monthly payment for the rest of your life. Yuck.
Hate that idea.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
I hope all consumers hate it so much. Goes away,
but we'll see. So I'm not going to give you
the punchline. I'm just going to read part of this
from the Wall Street Journal, of all places, and then
just wait for Jack's head to explode.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
What's wrong with the economy? It's you, not the data.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Many Americans believe that the economy and their finances are
worse than they really are, and then they go into
some pole numbers like pole Swing States. Seventy four percenter
respondents said inflation has moved in the wrong direction in
the past year. This assessment, which holds across all seven states,
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Moved in the wrong Okay.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
This assessment, which holds across all seven states, is startling, sobering,
and simply not true. I'm not stating an opinion. This
isn't something on which reasonable people can disagree. We can
say unambiguously that inflation has moved in the right direction
in the past year. Okay, so what though, when it
comes to the economy, the average person thinks inflation went up.
(03:18):
Yet when it comes to the economy, the vibes are
at war with the facts, and the vibes are winning,
which is bad for Biden needs mentions. It's tempting to
chalk this up to a misunderstanding. Lower inflation means the
level of prices is still rising, just more slowly than before.
All right, look, we got to convene a major summit
with the major media, leading dictionary makers, the Federal Reserve,
(03:40):
the Surgeon General, joint chiefs.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I don't care.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Whatever world's sexiest albino, get him involved, exactly, whatever it takes. Look,
oh eggheads, oh pontificators on high.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
When people say inflation, they mean prices.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
And if inflation was nine percent last year and it's
eight percent this year, yes, according to you, inflation is
moving in the right direction. That's not the way anybody
thinks about it, except PhDs and economics.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I guess, just get it through your head.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
I can't buy as much as I could two years ago.
In fact, I can buy less than I could last year,
And I can't do stuff I used to like to
do because I don't have enough money and I used
to So that the eight percent is now three and
a half percent, it's meaningless to consumers. It's so odd
that they would devote as many words to explaining to
people no, no, no, inflation is better.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
I think it's as simple as are most people shocked
at the price of things. If you're shocked at the
price of things, you feel bad about. It doesn't matter
the rate of whatever month to month or anything like that.
Just if I pick up something at the store or
get a bill somewhere and I'm shocked at the price.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
It's gonna make me feel bad.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Speaking of which, the very same publication, The Wall Street Journal,
not far below that story, has this story how far
one hundred dollars goes at the grocery store. After five
years of food inflation from beef tomato, consumers continue to
spend more to buy less, and they go into you know,
(05:20):
in twenty nineteen, it costs you two thirty six for
a dozen eggs, and then that's up a dollar forty
eight over those few years. And they go into potato
chips and lettuce and milk and oat milk and oat milk,
you know, ground beef, and flour and crackers and dish
(05:42):
soap and water and peanut butter and sody pop and
pasta and butter and grapes, and there's an enormous list
right chicken breasts.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
It's gone up a lot.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
People mean when they say inflation, they don't mean the
rate of inflation. They're not come carrying the race this
year to the rate last year, the rate of growth.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
They're just seeing higher prices, right obviously. And I'm still
shocked at prices, so I'm not there yet. I don't
know how long it takes for people to get over
the emotional shock of prices. I don't know. I was
too young in the early eighties the last time we
went through this. I don't know how long it takes
you to get settled into the new price of things.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I guess we'll find out.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
I know.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
I had one babysitter ask for a raise the other day,
and I thought, geez, when did I hire you at
this rate? It's like four years ago, And so I
got up my inflation calculator app. Everybody should have an
inflation calculator app.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
Man.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
That'll give you some real news about a lot of things,
your salary, the price of your all kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
But anyway, I forget that, yes, she's going backwards several.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Dollars and the amount of time, the few years that
I've hired her, just in a couple of years. She
needs a raise just to get back to where she
was letting alone in the fact that she's good and dependable.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
And so some economists would say, do you think inflation's bad?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
And she say yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
He say you're wrong, You're wrong, right there, you idiot?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Right?
Speaker 4 (07:10):
What the heck is it with you people? All right,
here's an unanswerable question. How dishonest does a person need
to be for you to think they're a dishonest person?
Do they have to be honest one hundred percent of
the time about everything? White lies are excusable. No, you
don't look fat in those jeans, for instance, you look
like a hog. Oh you many? Oh, I suggest you
(07:32):
don't say that. But what about uh, what about popping
a couple of grapes in your mouth at the grocery store.
That's a certain sort of person. I mean, that's not much,
but I would not do that.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Well, my, my, uh, I have.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
A friend who does that, and he feels because he
feels like the grocery stores are overcharging places, and that's
how I get them back, so he steals from them. Yeah, okay,
I just I was wondering, having all already read the
information I'm about to share with you, I wonder what
percentage of people are actually pretty much just dishonest. All
they respond to is incentives and disincentives. They don't follow
(08:12):
rules and refrain from dishonesty because of a moral restraint.
It's merely incentives and disincentives. I don't want to steal
because I will get in trouble and that will mess
up my life. I think most people are honest by
great majority. Do you I would Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
So there's a big story in a variety of publications,
including once again the Journal, that Amazon sellers are getting
hammered by a surgeon scam returns because they have such
liberal return policies. The individual sellers on Amazon are not
always Amazon. In fact, in a lot of cases, they're
not Amazon. They use Amazon as a clearinghouse, a way
(08:56):
to connect with buyers. You probably knew that already. But
there's an enormous surge and you buy a Coach wallet
and you return some no name dupe, or you buy
Nike football cleats and say, hey, these cleats didn't work,
or I kept slipping and falling on my hind in
or whatever, and you return flip flops. What But Amazon
(09:18):
is so a we want to make the customer happy
and be so haphazard and unresponsive to small sellers saying, hey,
I'm getting flooded with these fake returns. You got to
do something about this. Here's the guy's name, the address, whatever,
they're stealing from us. And they, of course Amazon says,
(09:39):
we make it a priority to blah blah, but we
have no tolerance for fraudulent returns. But all these sellers
are saying, well, maybe you say you don't have tolerance,
but I'm losing my shirt over here.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Well, it doesn't take a very high percentage of scumbags
who are willing to do that to muck up the works.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Obviously, that's true.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
About fourteen percent of returns last year were fraudulent, accounting
for one hundred and one billion dollars in overall loss
one hundred one.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Billion dollars, fourteen percent of returns. And I wonder what
percentage of I mean, how many people made up that
fourteen percent.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
I doubt somebody just does that scam runs and says, oh,
I've stolen enough, right exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
I'm sure it's an ongoing thing for certain people.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
That's why I like the Social credit score for that
sort of thing that is becoming more popular, and I
want it all tied together as long as the government
doesn't get its hands on it and use it for
those reasons. But I love the fact that the idea
of Costco, Best Buy, Amazon, everybody having your return information
and knowing, okay, you're the kind of person that, like
twice in your lifetime, has returned something. If you return something,
(10:41):
you mean it, as opposed to you return everything. You
wear it, you bring it back, return it and take
advantage of us. You know.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
When you first said social credit score, of course my
mind goes immediately to the communist Chinese in their horrific system.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
But yeah, I see what you mean. It's like your
credit rating. Yeah, I have that.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Like this happened just the other day with DoorDash. So
I ordered food. I ordered two meals from door dashing.
I got one of them. I contacted door dash and said, hey,
I only got one of my meals, and they they
went through my door dash history, which is long, look
at me. Uh and and I spent a lot of
money a lot of door dashing, and I have a
record of not doing that before. So they were they've
(11:16):
been over backwards. They immediately credit me blah blah blah blah.
I like keeping track of people, whether or not you're
the scumbag type or not, so it doesn't ruin it
for everybody.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
It might work. Final Notice. Barber sells household items, but
has received TV cable boxes and used bars of soap
as for returns. Jess sells out a coffee. If you're
sending a used bar.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Soap back, I guess, so there's weight.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Why not just put a note in there and says
I'm stealing from you If you send.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Back a used bar of soap, I don't. Is it
a prank?
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Jess, who sells outdoor coffee products like a travel French press,
has gotten back Christmas ornaments and toy planes. Kevin, also
an Amazon seller, received used dog nail trimmer for what
should have been human nail clippers. On and on, all right,
order a pair of football clead send back the flip flops.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
This didn't work at all.
Speaker 5 (12:11):
Armstrong, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty The Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Show all sorts of great stuff. Here's your Freedom Woman.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Quote of the day sent along by Jeff and hogs Nippole,
Tennessee from Maximilian robes Pierre, one of the leading figures
of the French Revolution. Keeping in mind that my two
older kids once made my younger kid cry by repeatedly calling.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Her robe spear.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
She was in the defense of my older kids, as
the youngest and very very cute and bright. She was
quite convinced that the world, you know, orbited around her,
that she was the center of the universe.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
And they decided to take her down a peg, which is,
you know, kind of useful in life sometimes.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
But I made them stop referring to her as the
brutal fist of the French Revolution.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
I always wonder, for only children, how that how you
survive not having that some better than others, because if
your parents are saying, oh, that's a great drawing, and
there's no brothers and sisters, say that sucks, that's stupid. Yeah, yeah,
which is what brothers and sisters do.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Or brothers and sisters who are just better at drawing.
Oh right, yeah, yeah, better at something else? Right?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, anyway, moving along. Oh, I'm sorry I didn't give
you the quote.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the
secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
True at railbag and ropes here did lead to French revolution.
Then it turned on him and they beheaded him.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So it goes with revolutionaries. Kids. See, it's not freedom
if we have to work.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
Chris and san Diego writes, every college Marxist believes that
in the socialist utopia she will be a philosopher or
a poet, not the third shift digger at the lithium
and cobalt mine.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Right, right, exactly, that is exactly right. Yeah, well, let's see.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Burbank Luke writes about those matching pup tents. The White
House feels if we can just get through the end
of the college semester, the protests will end or peter out.
I don't think they understand the nature of nor the
drive behind these protests at all. Have they forgotten the
summer of love? Well, I would suggest that's a very
different thing too. Oh, he says, ps. I have a
workaround for the passion tax. I will tell our CEO
(14:42):
I have no passion for my job. I better get
a raise.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
A it's a good one. We got to talk about
that later, the passion tax. If you didn't hear us
talking about that least week, I've never heard of it before.
But it's a concept.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
What an odd notion.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Joe from Dayton says, guys appreciated Joe's point, thank you
about Trump's potential imprisonment in comparing it to the MLK jailing.
How does all of this compare with Hitler's jail time
from the Beer Hull push resulting in massive popularity and
a pos book? Matin Kampf min Comf is a pos
book both in terms of its content and the writing. Joe, Yeah, well, yeah,
(15:19):
it's it's the same, just to you know, the nickel
version of it is if you can say, oh, you're
into the cause, I went to jail for the cause,
it's it's it's a different level. You go from the
silver level to the gold level. Yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Now, Martin Luther King Junior had a a righteous cause, obviously,
which helps. But was he strengthened or weakened by being
thrown in jail? Obviously strengthened.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Sure, Yeah, the righteousness of the cause really doesn't enter
into it if you're analyzing methods of movements and personalities
and that sort of thing. Let's see, uh oh oh,
this is so good, guys. A couple of years ago,
Kanye had his anti Semitic meltdown. Then Dave Chappelle went
on SNL to make fun of Kanye, but also made
(16:07):
some jokes about Jews. You read a couple of my
emails from a Jewish perspective. At the time, I mentioned
I fully supported Chappelle's right to speech and could laugh
at his jokes.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Well.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
At the same time, I had some resentment because no
other minority group is expected to tolerate offensive views or
jokes about them. I mentioned that Jews can take pride
in actually meeting that expectation, bitter as it might be,
and also that we can be proud of not allowing
millennia of oppression to change our decent values, and for
not using victimhood as an excuse for DKA or justification
(16:36):
for entitlement. The college cride bullies could learn a thing
or two from us. I bring all this up again
now because all those comments still apply, even though the
double standards are being stretched to a grotesque extreme by
college students and their administrators, the media, and even the
US government. Thanks for all your great discussions about this.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
You're welcome.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
When we got suspended that one time and nearly fired
wasn't that because didn't I threaten to draw a picture
of Muhammed or I did or something that's correct.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Well, yeah, but our insane producer put out a press
release that we were going to have listeners draw pictures.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I can't remember, and it.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Was allegedly the press release that got us suspended because
it's got to go through channel.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
But anyway, that dynamic exists, as we all know, the
draw picture of Muhammad. Oh, lose your job, get fired
from your position, whatever right you're doing. It's a horror
But make end threaten to murder Jews?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
You know?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Free speech? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's It's sick and.
Speaker 6 (17:33):
It Armstrong, the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
We have so much to squeeze in this hour and
the whole show. Hope you can stay tuned. But man,
we ran this clip once and got so much reaction,
so many requests to hear it again.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
All right, why not?
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Jared Bernstein is the voice you're gonna hear responding to question.
He is the Chairman of the of the President's Economic
Advisory Council. He is the Chief Economic Advisor to the
President of the United States.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Joseph R. Biden, d Delaware.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And it's amazing, Michael, Like you said, they print the dollar,
so why why does the government even borrow?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Well the.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
So the I mean again, some of this stuff gets
some of the language that the some of the language
and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely
prints money, and it definitely lends that money. Which is
why the government definitely prints money, and then it lends
that money by selling bonds?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Is that what they do?
Speaker 6 (18:53):
They they.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, they they sell bonds.
Speaker 7 (18:59):
Yeah, they sell bond right, since they sell bonds and
people buy the bonds and lend.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Them the money.
Speaker 7 (19:03):
Yeah, So a lot of times, a lot of times,
at least to my year with MMT, the language and
the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing, But there
is no question that the government prints money and then
it uses that money to So yeah, I guess I'm
(19:25):
just I don't I can't really talk. I don't get it.
I don't know what they're talking about, like, because it's
like the government clearly prints money, does it all the time,
and it clearly borrows otherwise we wouldn't be having this
debt and depthist conversation. So I don't think there's anything
confusing there.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
What's his position again, he's the chairman of the Council
of Economic Advisors.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Does anybody have any questions?
Speaker 3 (19:49):
So when we first played that, and when I first
heard the first part of it, I thought, Okay, this
is a guy that's just so in the weeds and
so knowledgeable.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
He's trying to figure out how to dumb it down.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Is to coarse, but you know, just to present it
in a way that a layman can understand it.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
But then it becomes completely clear when he starts saying,
is that right? I don't know that's a good.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
That he actually doesn't know that was just bizarre. He
makes reference to MMT, which, if you're not familiar with it,
it's a modern monetary theory. It is a fringe left
AOC theory that governments can go into as much debt
as they want to just keep spending and spending because
you can always grow the economy faster than your interest payments,
(20:32):
and that gets everybody employed. It's super popular with green
new dealers. But man, it is a fringe way of
looking at But how's that going?
Speaker 3 (20:39):
An economic advisor of any kind who answers a question
like that.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
The only answer I can come up with, and I'm
not sure it's a great one, but is that he
didn't want to say, plainly, we spend more than we
take in and borrow the balance because.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
That's how we buy votes.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
We're just we're just spending money to stay in power,
and we'll have to pay it back eventually. But as
long as it doesn't happen on our watch, as long
as the disaster, the foreclosure doesn't happen on our watch.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
We don't care. I don't know if you're right, or
if you're giving him too much credit. It's possible that
he just had the right politics and so they put
him in that position and he's actually not good at
his job, like he's a major donor or something I
don't know, or tied to the right people.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I don't know. Yeah, that was that was crazy. It is.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
It's amazing. That's the second time I heard it, and
it's just as amazing. Yeah, are an expert in this,
that's your answer? Where are the adults?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
All Right? I gotta move on.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
I don't say about that. I got I want to
tease this because I'm gonna get to it later.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Elections matter, folks, Elections matter.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
This is the most election of our lifetime. This is
the most election of our lifetime.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
You can't argue with that. She literally you can't. She
might be the You're president. Don't you threaten me like that.
I'm gonna get to this later. I heard I heard
this on NPR, so I had to look up the details.
I just heard the t's on NPR. I didn't hear
them do the story. What's the cash value of being white?
(22:15):
A nobel economist has come up with it, and you're
gonna find it annoying.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I'm already annoyed. Boy, that's great.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
It gets too because we talked about this the other day.
It's similar to the I remember the name of the term,
the tax, the uh, the passion passion tax, which I
also heard about on NPR, which I've never heard of before,
but I looked it up and it's a thing. It's
the idea that the Marxists or people who don't believe
(22:49):
in capitalism or whatever, believe that if you like your job,
you're paying a passion tax and you don't even know
it because you're probably working for less than you would
work for if you didn't like your job.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Right, that's the passion tax.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
The difference between we're going a job you hate where
they'd have to pay you more, and working a job
you love where you probably put in more hours and
are willing to take less pay. That's the passion tax.
And you are being stolen from by your employer through
the passion tax, and.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
You don't even know it.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Oh No, somehow taking liking a job and turning it
into a negative, it's right, really quite an amazing feat.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
The thing about that philosophy, and I think it's more
popular than mine, is that it assumes life just happens
to you, that you're you're of always a victim, that
just life drains on you like.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Well rain not one of my better metaphors, and.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
There's nothing you can do about it except to enact
millions and millions and millions of rules to prevent anything
bad from ever happening. Whereas our philosophy, i'm sure you
share mine, is is that no, no, no, take hold
of your life and live it. Accept the bad hops
except that some people are bastards and they're gonna cheat
you and the rest of it. But you are the
(24:05):
captain of your ship. Life doesn't happen to you. You
happen a life, Go get it. There'll be set backs,
there'll be you'll be screwed. We've been screwed. Uh, but
just you know, leave that behind you and figure out. Ah,
I'm gonna move on satter. But why is our next
guy comes along trying to screw me like that? He's
gonna f what do they say, f A f O? Yes, exactly,
(24:27):
Well let's call it.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
It's of course to philosophy, fart around and find out.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Right, Come on, isn't that.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
A much more exciting way to live your life than Oh?
I really like what I do, so I think I'm
being cheated.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Passion so pathetic.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Well there's that aspect of it, and then there's just
that's factually true. Yeah, I mean if you if if
my job was gonna be digging holes all day long
instead of this, you'd.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Have to pay me a hell of a lot.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, I mean a lot, a lot before I quit
this job and start digging holes for a living point.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And with my back, you're not gonna like my productivity.
But so I'm better off with that.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Then I'm paying the passion tax because I like this job,
so I do it for less.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
But then NPR would have a featurette on how you're
getting the abuse bonus and that you are the victim
of the abuse bonus, because the whole point is to
portray everybody as a victim.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, I mean, you got to really work hard when
you start going with the passion tax and what I again,
google it. There's a lot of writing about it, a
lot of people talking about it. That Reddit thread of
anti work. I'm sure it comes up on that regularly.
This this world where you're being screwed and every which way,
including if you like your job is weird, and if.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
You like your job kind of but don't like it
a ton and you're getting paid more than you would
if you love it. But let's you're getting the neutrality kneecapping.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
That's how it works.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
You're just always a victim no matter what happens, and
so you've got to give them.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Power to fix it for you. It's the meh man handling.
I'm kind of meh about my job.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
But oh you're the victim of the man handling.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
That is hilarious. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
If you're not paying the passion tax by liking your job, yeah, right,
and you go in on the weekend and work more
because you know you'd actually do this in your free time.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You like your job so much. That's the passion tax,
you know.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
I was just going to say, the number of people
who see life the way you do, my friends and
we do, is way, way, way, way, way more than
you would think, given media and education and entertainment, which
are the three headed monster of passivism and progressivism. You're right,
your way of looking at the world is right. Be
(26:56):
proud of it, be an advocate for it strongly. It
was I was taking in some lefty media just to
figure out what arguments I'm going up against today, and
I heard back to back NPR portraying the College anti
Israel protests as a ground swell of the true feeling
of millions of Americans.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
I got pulling on that. That would show that's not true. Oh,
it's utterly false. It's fictional.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
The Armstrong and Getty Show or jahn Mor Show podcasts
and Our Hot Lakes see Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
So, speaking of money changing hands, a couple of really
interesting economic notes for you. First of all, two main
reasons inflation is still high. One rents and two hospital costs.
Hospital prices jump seven point seven percent last month from
a year year ago, the highest increase in any months
(28:02):
since October of twenty ten, according to the Labor Department,
they go into a bunch of different procedures that are
significantly more expensive than they were a year ago. And then,
like anything any topic discussing the US healthcare system, they're
like three or four sub conversations. You have to bring
enlightenment to the topic. Our healthcare system could not be
any more screwed up than it is. I don't think,
(28:24):
of course, having said that, they'll reach new heights of
being screwed up between artificial and fictional government compensation rates
for Medicare and Medicaid, hospital monopolies in a lot of cities,
a lot of regions, and then.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
The way insurance companies work, which I've never understood and
I understand less now. Like I was in the emergency
room when we could go today for my motorcycle wreck,
I got a bill for two thousand dollars and it's
set on there. The insurance company hasn't I forget the
word they use, but hasn't looked at all of this yet.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
You're threatening me with collections if I don't pay by
this date, when's the insurance company taken What do they cover?
Speaker 2 (29:08):
What do they not cover?
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Are they just doing that thing where they hope you'll
pay for it before they cover it? Do I have
to hire a lawyer to figure out what is actually
supposed to be covered or not.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
What you're supposed to do, right, And keep in mind,
if you have insurance, you are paying artificially inflated rates
to pay for the government composition folks and people without
insurance at all.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
And then everybody kept asking me why I didn't take
an ambulance as opposed to limping into a guy's uber
and bleeding all over his seat in his poor Toyota Camry,
which it was nice of him to do, because the
last time I took an ambulance an eighth of a
mile for my gullbladder, it cost me three thousand dollars
cash because that's not covered by insurance. Three thousand dollars. Wow,
(29:55):
I don't know what this would have been. It was
a lot further away. That's so I'll never take it
an ambul and again. And let's I think I'm gonna die.
You can take a private jet from your house to
the hospital for about that night.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
So they do mention that health insurers are paying for
soaring wages for workers and other nurses rather than other workers.
Hiring and openings in healthcare remain strong even as unemployment
in other industries is slowed down.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
Also this We mentioned earlier that The New York Times
had an article about inflation, and the number one comment,
which was liked by eleven and forty out of the
eleven and eighty people who didn't commented, was that the
New York Times really needs to get off it's button
do some journalism about how companies are gouging us and
(30:40):
how there are artificially raising prices. Well, the Wall Street
Journal has a great piece on the title is why
is inflation so stubborn? Ask your local small business? The
number of small business businesses in America that are contemplating
raising prices is the highest they have ever observed. And
they go into a bonch of small businesses whose costs
(31:03):
from corrugated paper, from a box business, to all sorts
of people are talking about labor costs a bunch of
different inputs. Here's a roofer who hasn't raised prices in
a decade and now is going to have to raise
them twenty percent. Just their costs are killing them. The
aluminum used for curtain tracks now costs a buck thirty
(31:26):
one a foot. That's up about twenty percent from a
year ago.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Today. They just have a bunch of different examples of it.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And then this, I thought, on a semi similar topic,
Jack and I have relationships with a couple of fairly
large companies and a couple of little LLCs that are,
you know, have roughly the revenue of your local baseball
card shop. But so the idea that we're some sort
of corporate titans is just not true.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
I look like you don't, but I thought this was great.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Phil Graham, the old Senator, and Mike Solon, whose name
I don't recognize, but they wrote this piece for the
Wall Street Journal about how Biden and company are going
to hammer hard the idea of we've got to raise
taxes on corporations, and they quote a bunch of different
speeches where they've said that sort of thing. Obama was
big on it too, and how during the Trump tax cuts,
(32:26):
the permanent part there are some temporary stuff. Some permanent
part was it was a corporate tax rates, which get
a lot less attention than individual income tax rates because
only because and I quote, Americans don't understand that corporations
don't pay taxes. What what? It's one of the main
campaign names of the Democrats, that corporations have to pay
(32:47):
higher taxes.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
You're trying to tell me they don't pay taxes all.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
A corporate entity is a pass through legal structure, a
piece of paper in some Delaware filing cabinet, as Mitt
Romney tried to tell people corporations are people, and he
was mocked.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Of course, proper people, my friend, And that was endlessly mocked.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
So when the corporate tax rate increases, corporations try to
pass the cost on to consumers. To the degree that
the entire cost of the tax increase can't be passed
on to consumers, those costs are born by employees and investors.
Most economic studies can see that fifty or concluded that
fifty to seventy percent of a corporate tax increase not
passed on in higher prices is born by workers, while
(33:28):
thirty to fifty percent is born by investors. If you consume,
and we all do you pay the corporate tax? If
you consume and your work for a corporation. You pay
the corporate tax twice if you consume work and invest
your retirement funds in stocks.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
All good point, The corporate tax hits you three times. Wow,
I'd never thought about that third one. Yeah, here's where
it really hits home.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Democrats call up the image of the greedy robber baron
as a personification of big corporations. But when you pull
back the curtain, it isn't the wizard or robber baron
you see, but yourself as consumer, worker, and pensioner. Many
Americans don't pay individual income taxes, but all Americans pay
corporate taxes. In fact, a recent Treasury study confirmed that
(34:14):
about ninety three million families, about forty nine percent of
all American families, pay more in corporate taxes than they
do in individual income taxes. And they go into a
little detail on how that's true. But here's the part
I wanted to hit.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
And that's not hard to believe, given the fact that
half the country pays no federal income taxes. So the
stoddig market certainly had you never looked at it that way,
and that's very interesting.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
The stock market surged in twenty seventeen in anticipation of
the tax cuts, and in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, in
response to them, who owns American corporations? According to Tax
tax Notes, which is a nonprofit, non partisan blah blah blah,
seventy two percent of all domestically held stocks are owned
by pension plans, four oh one k's individual retirement accounts
(35:00):
and charitable organizations are held by life insurance companies to
fund annuities and death benefits.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
What's that percentage?
Speaker 4 (35:06):
Seventy two percent Wow, of all domestically health stocks are
retirement funds essentially. So when the Democrats draw this cartoon
of the fat cat, who's going to be taxed?
Speaker 2 (35:21):
That's you man, look in the mirror. And as I
mentioned a week or so ago, this is an underreported story.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
The Trump tax cuts of twenty seventeen expire in twenty five.
So whoever gets elected, you know what day one is
actually going to be. Day one is going to be
the battle begins over renewing or not or how much the.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Trump tax cut package.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
And that is going to be the biggest political story
of the year after the election, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
In the good old fashioned demagoguing of it. Oh yeah,
oh yeah, well, they're rich benefited the most.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Well, the quote unquote rich pay the majority of income taxes,
so it would be hard to design the system where
they didn't.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
But anyway, Armstrong and Getty
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
2. Start Here
A straightforward look at the day's top news in 20 minutes. Powered by ABC News. Hosted by Brad Mielke.
3. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.