July 8, 2025 • 21 mins
LISTEN and SUBSCRIBE on:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watchdog-on-wall-street-with-chris-markowski/id570687608
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PtgPvJvqc2gkpGIkNMR5i
WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:
https://www.youtube.com/@WatchdogOnWallstreet/featured
From Santorini to the South Shore, the signs are clear: the middle class is tapped out.
In this episode of Watchdog on Wall Street:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watchdog-on-wall-street-with-chris-markowski/id570687608
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PtgPvJvqc2gkpGIkNMR5i
WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:
https://www.youtube.com/@WatchdogOnWallstreet/featured
From Santorini to the South Shore, the signs are clear: the middle class is tapped out.
In this episode of Watchdog on Wall Street:
- What the road trip revealed about real estate, recession, and rising resentment
- Why Americans—and Europeans—feel stuck, overtaxed, and locked out of prosperity
- How investor-owned housing, student debt, and fake capitalism are rigging the system
- Why young people are rejecting capitalism—and what we actually have instead
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it will have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Lessons from the Watchdog road Trip. Yeah, I'm back, and
I'm sure many of you realize that whether you're watching
on the YouTube or you're listening on whatever platform, obviously
the sound quality has improved again. When I go on
the road, Yes, I still work. I call him working vacations.
They are what they are. You own your own business,
(00:38):
you got your own time. You're never truly truly checking
yourself out on vacation. But that's okay. I don't mind
it at all. I love to travel. I do. It
is something that I really really enjoy. I was gone
for about a month to six different places here in
(00:59):
the United States, over in Europe as well. I'm not
a cruise guy. Not a cruise guy. I can't sit
on a boat again. There's a great comedy bit by
Bill Burr. Just just put into YouTube. Put in Bill
Burr cruises. It's hilarious. Not for me. I like, I
(01:21):
like going to new places I like talking to people.
I like experiencing other cultures. I like to learn from others.
It's to me, it's it's one of the best things
about going on vacation. Talking with the people there, whether
the people that are taking you in a cab, with
(01:42):
the people working at whatever hotel you're working at, restaurants,
people in stores. You can learn a lot about the world.
So again, I'm an enormous fan of you know, I was.
I mean, the late great Anthony Bourdain and his programs.
Stand Tucci is doing a really good job. I think
(02:03):
that those those shows are great. I think they encourage
people to get out and see the world and experience
other cultures. There's a line that, uh, I'm constantly reminded of.
One of the podcasts that I listened to is done
by this father, Mike Schmidz, and he always calls upon
(02:23):
a line by mother Teresa. It says that, in essence,
you know, we have all the problems in the worlds
because we fail to understand that we all belong to
one another. And I always try to keep that in mind.
You know, whether I'm watching people at an airport, whatever
it may be, but certain things might annoy you got
(02:46):
to say it, remind yourself, you know, we got we
all belong to one another. Well, anyway, neither here nor there.
Let's let's let's get into the the entire road trip,
shall we? First and foremost New York. So up in
New York. Yeah, I got to see a great concert
with Dave Matthews. Concert Jones Beach, one of my favorite
places to see a show, was fantastic. But also I
(03:09):
got to lay the land on how business was doing. Now.
Long Island is a pretty popular spot in the summer
for people to go on vacations, especially going out east.
You have a north shore, you have the south shore.
SouthShore tends to be a little bit more of the
(03:30):
upper upper upper upper upper cross super big money types.
North shores catching up, Bolt shores down down big, I
mean down, enormous people not renting properties out, restaurants are down.
Traffic is down across the board. Again, talking to people
(03:55):
that I know that have rentals, you know, people are
just nervous, nervous about the future. They're holding out. They're
not they're not doing this and that's splurging like they
used to, which again I found pretty fascinating. But anyway,
(04:15):
moved on, was over in Europe, and same thing. Same
thing in areas that I traveled to, which are pretty
much hotspots. A couple of them, A couple were off
the beat and track, few of them were off the
beat track I had start off. I started off in Santorini,
(04:37):
had an event there that I had to go to
talk to the people at ran a hotel that we
stayed at. Wonderful place, absolutely beautiful, up on a cliff.
Love it again with one of the great spots to
go to in the world, truly beautiful. Down forty percent.
(04:58):
And it's because of the earthquakes. It's not it's not
because of the earthquakes by any stretch, you know. That's
not why they said people were not booking at all.
And it's not just a matter of cancelations after the
fact because of the earthquakes. It's just very slow talking
(05:19):
with people, restaurants, same thing, talking about with you know,
the drivers of the cars, you know, taking into various
different spots. The same thing. They did say. Yes, you know,
they said Americans are keeping us afloat and let me
tell you something, you know, this idea because was there
was an article so I think it was a Wall
Street journal talking about, you know, will Americans are going
(05:41):
to be treated if they're all overseas. What do you
tell again, never experienced a lick of resentment and people
ask questions, you know, what's the deal with your president
and whatnot. But they managed to separate the fact that,
you know, the government is different from the citizens because
again they live that too. They have their fair share
(06:04):
of leaders that some like, some don't like, but across
the board they always commanded to know. Americans are generous,
they're funny, they're fun to be around. And again, yeah,
you know, again, I'm at an advantage because my wife
speaks fluent Greek when we're there, But overall, really kind
of a nice experience. Again, little stories here and there.
(06:27):
It's one of the things I like. It's just like
being on land is you know, I'm trying my limited
knowledge of the Greek language trying to order ice cream
at night, and you know, guys, we like to bust
each other's stones, and you know, the Greek guys behind
the counters, you're not Greek, You're a tough And then
like you're going back and forth and just having a
(06:48):
grand old time with these people. Really you know, it
was interesting. Moved on, moved on to an area that
I've never been to in Greece, up in the Ionian Islands,
and again highly recommend it. Absolutely beautiful, beautiful, I mean
you can't even you can't describe the terrain there and
(07:10):
just how beautiful it is that the beaches are. But
was interesting there was again I'd never been there before.
The crowd that was there, you know, I look at
the license plates it's going to, you know, tourists from
different places Romania, Moldova, Bosnia, Serbia and I had to
(07:31):
meet then. I was kind of like, boy, you know, boy,
oh boy, didn't we indiscriminately bomb the hell out of
Bosnia hearstal Gmina and Serbia not too long ago. But no,
it was very very nice from there. Some of the
conversations I like speaking to two younger people when I'm
(07:52):
there basically, and again it's nothing's really changed. This has
been pretty much. It's a similar conversation I've been having
with people when I go to Europe, and it's not
just Greece but other places as well. More all around
you know, southern Europe. They're kind of almost giving up.
(08:13):
They're just stuck they don't expect. They don't expect to
really rise up in the ranks. They really don't. They're
just it's just not something that's possible to cost. What
they get paid based upon what they're paying for things
is just high and they can't really, they can't really
(08:35):
seem to work their way out of it. Salaries aren't
that that high there. My wife's cousin who went to
one of the best universities in the world. He's making
a decent salary. They're doing, you know, well in London,
but not well enough to really get ahead. Gets taxed
(08:57):
at forty five percent. They really don't like you moving
up at all. They really keep you down. And again
I talked to them about that, and I said, this
is this is where we've gotten to here in the
United States as well, and it's it's the reason why.
(09:18):
And I know I did some podcasts when I was
away in vacation with what's this day there Mandami in
New York and aok, and why do you think these
types have become so popular? But why do you think
that's the case? Our system it doesn't work. Okay, we
(09:43):
we are solely but surely going to turn ourselves into
a European style state, if we're not almost already there,
already where again, it's very, very difficult to get ahead.
(10:03):
You play by the rules, you're doing the right thing,
you're working your butt off. You go to college, you
get out, and you find yourself. You know, you find yourself.
You know, maybe you don't go crazy. You got yourself
even a little bit of student loans, a little bit
of debt. You get yourself a job. You might even
doing even more. You may be working on weekends as well,
(10:24):
trying to get ahead. And you take a look at
what the cost is for a home and you automatically
say to yourself, I'm not gonna you know, I gotta
be responsible here. I can't afford to have children. You
take a look at the demographics in southern Europe. They're
(10:48):
falling off a cliff not having kids. I can't afford
to do it. I can barely, you know, get by
as it is. And looking right now here in the
United States, okay, we got us housing market affordability is
(11:09):
it's about the worst level we're seeing in about thirty
five years. I'm going to go back to nineteen eighty five.
Nineteen eighty five, the median household income. Median household income
in the United States was twenty three thousand, six hundred
and twenty dollars. The median price home was eighty three thousand,
(11:35):
two one hundred dollars. Right now, median household income in
the United States is seventy four thousand, five hundred and
eighty dollars. A median home price in the United States
is four hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars. I'll just
(11:59):
go back five. Median US home buyer housing payment in
January of twenty twenty was one thousand, five hundred and
five dollars. It's twenty eight one hundred dollars today. This
(12:19):
pisses people off, It really does. And listen, Okay, I
work my tailoff. I work my tailoff when I got started.
The BS line right now is to stop going to
Starbucks and everything is going to be okay. Is just
that it's BS. It's BS, the powers that be, the
(12:44):
fools on CNBC all these things. They keep telling you
that everything is awesome. The economy is great, the economy
is fantastic. It's not fantastic. When young people feel like
they cannot get ahead, that's a problem. And nobody's doing
(13:05):
a damn thing about it. Nothing. You know, you could
easily easily handle some of these issues you have with
these big fun companies buying up all these US homes
and outbidding people. You could you can handle that through
(13:26):
property taxes in a heartbeat, if you wanted to just say, hey, listen, okay,
if you are a owner occupied home, okay, you guess
what your owner occupied home. Or you can even say
you can have a second home, vacation home, if you
have a lake house or something like that. You know,
(13:47):
you pay no property taxes or next to nothing. And
all of the investment companies out there, you have got
to bear the brunt. And you raise that up. They're
not gonna be able to afford to rent them. They're
not gonna be able to do They're gonna have sell. They're
gonna have to liquid date and prices will come down.
(14:08):
It is a major issue. Between twenty twenty and twenty
twenty three, the share of homes bought by investors averaged
eighteen point five percent. Twenty seven percent of all homes
sold in the first three months of the year were
bought by investors. Again, problem, it's a problem, and this
(14:40):
is why you're having this. You know, wow, gee, that
socialism things sounds pretty great. When you back people into
corner or you know, people play and they do the
right thing and they follow the rules, and again they
can't have a difficult time getting their way out of
the situation that mom and or not helping them out,
(15:04):
you're gonna get this type of blowback. You know, Listen,
no taxes on tips. You think that's going to solve
this problem? You think, and I have all four extending
the tax cuts from twenty sixteen, you think that it's
(15:26):
going to really solve this problem. I don't. I don't. Again,
you know, something needs to be worked out again. You
talk about the massive amount of student loan debt, and
(15:51):
I get the argument from some kids out there they
feel like that they were duped. Now again, that might be,
you know, a bit of a stretch, but you're you're
you're basically you're you're keeping this entire generation. They're going
to be in debt service with this. I don't know
(16:13):
what the answer is. I don't know how to get
them out of it. I don't know what it means
for the economy moving forward. We're simply not going to
people are not going to have killed children because they're
not going to be able to afford it. And again
we're going to end up like again like southern Europe,
and again there's going to be political blowback unless this changes.
(16:38):
These are the things that quite frankly need to be
dealt with at this point in time. Hey, what are
the arguments We're going to open up all these federal
lands to build more houses. It's people, you just you
just don't say, here you go, here's land, build homes.
You have to have jobs around those homes. It's it's
an entire infrastructure, and it takes decades. I used to
(17:02):
live again in a Master, the Master Playing Community. I
got in there when it was open I think for
about eight to ten years. This is going back to
two thousand and two, two thousand and three and again
now you can't even recognize it. It's massive. I mean
(17:23):
it's massive. It's huge here. I mean it just it
keeps growing. But there's businesses there, and they did it
the right way. They did it little by little. You
can't just say here we go, here we go. I
got some parcel land here in Utah and all of
a sudden, up yep, everybody's gonna come running. No, it's
gonna end up happening. Is it's going to be, you know,
(17:44):
one of those Yellowstone situations are gonna end up building
homes for wealthy people. We've got disconnects here in this country,
and the disconnects and the problems we have all stem
from government and the decisions that we've made. It's natural.
It's natural while the kids are pushing back against capitalism
(18:06):
because they don't know what capitalism is. Over the next
few days, next two weeks, also on the radio show,
I'm going to be delving into this. It's again, it's
it's a problem. It's a problem. We actually think we're
running a capitalist system here in the United States when
we're not. We're not. We're not running a capitalist system.
(18:32):
You know, it's funny. I get a phone call. Let
me give you an example why. I get a phone call
from my son yesterday. Man, and he's always he's got
you coming up with ideas for businesses. And I love
the fact that he's doing that. He said, Dad, can
I throw something by you? And he's like, I'm riding
He's like, I'm riding in an uber with some of
(18:54):
my friends or there were you know, again, he's visiting
some of his friends on Long Island before he starts job,
just graduated from college. And you know, we asked the guy.
We asked the guy, the Uber driver. You know, the
bill for the Uber was forty something bucks. How much
money he keeps? And you know, he told him fifteen dollars.
(19:16):
And my son asked, well, howoud if I started a
ride sharing company where the drivers would pay, like, you know,
fifty dollars a month, and then they get to keep everything,
everything that they got, as far as the payment and
the tips and everything goes along with it. I said, see,
it's a great idea, but that works in a free market,
(19:38):
works at a free market. If you don't think that,
you know, both Uber and Lyft have managed to establish
And I said, look it up. Look at the regulations
that are involved with trying to start a new ride
sharing service under that model. I can almost guarantee you
the laws and regulations would make it impossible because guess
(19:59):
what Uber lifts, you know, helped write the regulations by
donating money to the right people to box competition out
in the same way. And I explained to him the
same way after the financial crisis two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine. Oh, we had DoD Frank and
what do we do. We made the bank's utilities too
big to fail. They put thousands of banks, smaller banks
(20:24):
all around the country out of business because they can
no longer afford to keep up with the regulations. Same
thing held true after the dot com collapse you put
in it was Sarbines Oxley. At that point in time,
all these small investment banks poof, They're gone. They can
no longer afford to stay in business. That's not that's
not capitalism. And I was, you know, basically I told him,
(20:44):
I said, I explained this before. It's a regulatory capture.
And that's that's the world we live in at this
point in time. And again I'll delve into this. We're
going to talk about the problem with zombies and the
innabilly to fail in this country and cheat money, uh,
in a myriad of things over the next next several
(21:06):
weeks here on the program. Other than that, it was
a great Watchdog road trip, but it's it's always nice
to come home. Watchdog on Wall Street, dot Com
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it will have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Lessons from the Watchdog road Trip. Yeah, I'm back, and
I'm sure many of you realize that whether you're watching
on the YouTube or you're listening on whatever platform, obviously
the sound quality has improved again. When I go on
the road, Yes, I still work. I call him working vacations.
They are what they are. You own your own business,
(00:38):
you got your own time. You're never truly truly checking
yourself out on vacation. But that's okay. I don't mind
it at all. I love to travel. I do. It
is something that I really really enjoy. I was gone
for about a month to six different places here in
(00:59):
the United States, over in Europe as well. I'm not
a cruise guy. Not a cruise guy. I can't sit
on a boat again. There's a great comedy bit by
Bill Burr. Just just put into YouTube. Put in Bill
Burr cruises. It's hilarious. Not for me. I like, I
(01:21):
like going to new places I like talking to people.
I like experiencing other cultures. I like to learn from others.
It's to me, it's it's one of the best things
about going on vacation. Talking with the people there, whether
the people that are taking you in a cab, with
(01:42):
the people working at whatever hotel you're working at, restaurants,
people in stores. You can learn a lot about the world.
So again, I'm an enormous fan of you know, I was.
I mean, the late great Anthony Bourdain and his programs.
Stand Tucci is doing a really good job. I think
(02:03):
that those those shows are great. I think they encourage
people to get out and see the world and experience
other cultures. There's a line that, uh, I'm constantly reminded of.
One of the podcasts that I listened to is done
by this father, Mike Schmidz, and he always calls upon
(02:23):
a line by mother Teresa. It says that, in essence,
you know, we have all the problems in the worlds
because we fail to understand that we all belong to
one another. And I always try to keep that in mind.
You know, whether I'm watching people at an airport, whatever
it may be, but certain things might annoy you got
(02:46):
to say it, remind yourself, you know, we got we
all belong to one another. Well, anyway, neither here nor there.
Let's let's let's get into the the entire road trip,
shall we? First and foremost New York. So up in
New York. Yeah, I got to see a great concert
with Dave Matthews. Concert Jones Beach, one of my favorite
places to see a show, was fantastic. But also I
(03:09):
got to lay the land on how business was doing. Now.
Long Island is a pretty popular spot in the summer
for people to go on vacations, especially going out east.
You have a north shore, you have the south shore.
SouthShore tends to be a little bit more of the
(03:30):
upper upper upper upper upper cross super big money types.
North shores catching up, Bolt shores down down big, I
mean down, enormous people not renting properties out, restaurants are down.
Traffic is down across the board. Again, talking to people
(03:55):
that I know that have rentals, you know, people are
just nervous, nervous about the future. They're holding out. They're
not they're not doing this and that's splurging like they
used to, which again I found pretty fascinating. But anyway,
(04:15):
moved on, was over in Europe, and same thing. Same
thing in areas that I traveled to, which are pretty
much hotspots. A couple of them, A couple were off
the beat and track, few of them were off the
beat track I had start off. I started off in Santorini,
(04:37):
had an event there that I had to go to
talk to the people at ran a hotel that we
stayed at. Wonderful place, absolutely beautiful, up on a cliff.
Love it again with one of the great spots to
go to in the world, truly beautiful. Down forty percent.
(04:58):
And it's because of the earthquakes. It's not it's not
because of the earthquakes by any stretch, you know. That's
not why they said people were not booking at all.
And it's not just a matter of cancelations after the
fact because of the earthquakes. It's just very slow talking
(05:19):
with people, restaurants, same thing, talking about with you know,
the drivers of the cars, you know, taking into various
different spots. The same thing. They did say. Yes, you know,
they said Americans are keeping us afloat and let me
tell you something, you know, this idea because was there
was an article so I think it was a Wall
Street journal talking about, you know, will Americans are going
(05:41):
to be treated if they're all overseas. What do you
tell again, never experienced a lick of resentment and people
ask questions, you know, what's the deal with your president
and whatnot. But they managed to separate the fact that,
you know, the government is different from the citizens because
again they live that too. They have their fair share
(06:04):
of leaders that some like, some don't like, but across
the board they always commanded to know. Americans are generous,
they're funny, they're fun to be around. And again, yeah,
you know, again, I'm at an advantage because my wife
speaks fluent Greek when we're there, But overall, really kind
of a nice experience. Again, little stories here and there.
(06:27):
It's one of the things I like. It's just like
being on land is you know, I'm trying my limited
knowledge of the Greek language trying to order ice cream
at night, and you know, guys, we like to bust
each other's stones, and you know, the Greek guys behind
the counters, you're not Greek, You're a tough And then
like you're going back and forth and just having a
(06:48):
grand old time with these people. Really you know, it
was interesting. Moved on, moved on to an area that
I've never been to in Greece, up in the Ionian Islands,
and again highly recommend it. Absolutely beautiful, beautiful, I mean
you can't even you can't describe the terrain there and
(07:10):
just how beautiful it is that the beaches are. But
was interesting there was again I'd never been there before.
The crowd that was there, you know, I look at
the license plates it's going to, you know, tourists from
different places Romania, Moldova, Bosnia, Serbia and I had to
(07:31):
meet then. I was kind of like, boy, you know, boy,
oh boy, didn't we indiscriminately bomb the hell out of
Bosnia hearstal Gmina and Serbia not too long ago. But no,
it was very very nice from there. Some of the
conversations I like speaking to two younger people when I'm
(07:52):
there basically, and again it's nothing's really changed. This has
been pretty much. It's a similar conversation I've been having
with people when I go to Europe, and it's not
just Greece but other places as well. More all around
you know, southern Europe. They're kind of almost giving up.
(08:13):
They're just stuck they don't expect. They don't expect to
really rise up in the ranks. They really don't. They're
just it's just not something that's possible to cost. What
they get paid based upon what they're paying for things
is just high and they can't really, they can't really
(08:35):
seem to work their way out of it. Salaries aren't
that that high there. My wife's cousin who went to
one of the best universities in the world. He's making
a decent salary. They're doing, you know, well in London,
but not well enough to really get ahead. Gets taxed
(08:57):
at forty five percent. They really don't like you moving
up at all. They really keep you down. And again
I talked to them about that, and I said, this
is this is where we've gotten to here in the
United States as well, and it's it's the reason why.
(09:18):
And I know I did some podcasts when I was
away in vacation with what's this day there Mandami in
New York and aok, and why do you think these
types have become so popular? But why do you think
that's the case? Our system it doesn't work. Okay, we
(09:43):
we are solely but surely going to turn ourselves into
a European style state, if we're not almost already there,
already where again, it's very, very difficult to get ahead.
(10:03):
You play by the rules, you're doing the right thing,
you're working your butt off. You go to college, you
get out, and you find yourself. You know, you find yourself.
You know, maybe you don't go crazy. You got yourself
even a little bit of student loans, a little bit
of debt. You get yourself a job. You might even
doing even more. You may be working on weekends as well,
(10:24):
trying to get ahead. And you take a look at
what the cost is for a home and you automatically
say to yourself, I'm not gonna you know, I gotta
be responsible here. I can't afford to have children. You
take a look at the demographics in southern Europe. They're
(10:48):
falling off a cliff not having kids. I can't afford
to do it. I can barely, you know, get by
as it is. And looking right now here in the
United States, okay, we got us housing market affordability is
(11:09):
it's about the worst level we're seeing in about thirty
five years. I'm going to go back to nineteen eighty five.
Nineteen eighty five, the median household income. Median household income
in the United States was twenty three thousand, six hundred
and twenty dollars. The median price home was eighty three thousand,
(11:35):
two one hundred dollars. Right now, median household income in
the United States is seventy four thousand, five hundred and
eighty dollars. A median home price in the United States
is four hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars. I'll just
(11:59):
go back five. Median US home buyer housing payment in
January of twenty twenty was one thousand, five hundred and
five dollars. It's twenty eight one hundred dollars today. This
(12:19):
pisses people off, It really does. And listen, Okay, I
work my tailoff. I work my tailoff when I got started.
The BS line right now is to stop going to
Starbucks and everything is going to be okay. Is just
that it's BS. It's BS, the powers that be, the
(12:44):
fools on CNBC all these things. They keep telling you
that everything is awesome. The economy is great, the economy
is fantastic. It's not fantastic. When young people feel like
they cannot get ahead, that's a problem. And nobody's doing
(13:05):
a damn thing about it. Nothing. You know, you could
easily easily handle some of these issues you have with
these big fun companies buying up all these US homes
and outbidding people. You could you can handle that through
(13:26):
property taxes in a heartbeat, if you wanted to just say, hey, listen, okay,
if you are a owner occupied home, okay, you guess
what your owner occupied home. Or you can even say
you can have a second home, vacation home, if you
have a lake house or something like that. You know,
(13:47):
you pay no property taxes or next to nothing. And
all of the investment companies out there, you have got
to bear the brunt. And you raise that up. They're
not gonna be able to afford to rent them. They're
not gonna be able to do They're gonna have sell. They're
gonna have to liquid date and prices will come down.
(14:08):
It is a major issue. Between twenty twenty and twenty
twenty three, the share of homes bought by investors averaged
eighteen point five percent. Twenty seven percent of all homes
sold in the first three months of the year were
bought by investors. Again, problem, it's a problem, and this
(14:40):
is why you're having this. You know, wow, gee, that
socialism things sounds pretty great. When you back people into
corner or you know, people play and they do the
right thing and they follow the rules, and again they
can't have a difficult time getting their way out of
the situation that mom and or not helping them out,
(15:04):
you're gonna get this type of blowback. You know, Listen,
no taxes on tips. You think that's going to solve
this problem? You think, and I have all four extending
the tax cuts from twenty sixteen, you think that it's
(15:26):
going to really solve this problem. I don't. I don't. Again,
you know, something needs to be worked out again. You
talk about the massive amount of student loan debt, and
(15:51):
I get the argument from some kids out there they
feel like that they were duped. Now again, that might be,
you know, a bit of a stretch, but you're you're
you're basically you're you're keeping this entire generation. They're going
to be in debt service with this. I don't know
(16:13):
what the answer is. I don't know how to get
them out of it. I don't know what it means
for the economy moving forward. We're simply not going to
people are not going to have killed children because they're
not going to be able to afford it. And again
we're going to end up like again like southern Europe,
and again there's going to be political blowback unless this changes.
(16:38):
These are the things that quite frankly need to be
dealt with at this point in time. Hey, what are
the arguments We're going to open up all these federal
lands to build more houses. It's people, you just you
just don't say, here you go, here's land, build homes.
You have to have jobs around those homes. It's it's
an entire infrastructure, and it takes decades. I used to
(17:02):
live again in a Master, the Master Playing Community. I
got in there when it was open I think for
about eight to ten years. This is going back to
two thousand and two, two thousand and three and again
now you can't even recognize it. It's massive. I mean
(17:23):
it's massive. It's huge here. I mean it just it
keeps growing. But there's businesses there, and they did it
the right way. They did it little by little. You
can't just say here we go, here we go. I
got some parcel land here in Utah and all of
a sudden, up yep, everybody's gonna come running. No, it's
gonna end up happening. Is it's going to be, you know,
(17:44):
one of those Yellowstone situations are gonna end up building
homes for wealthy people. We've got disconnects here in this country,
and the disconnects and the problems we have all stem
from government and the decisions that we've made. It's natural.
It's natural while the kids are pushing back against capitalism
(18:06):
because they don't know what capitalism is. Over the next
few days, next two weeks, also on the radio show,
I'm going to be delving into this. It's again, it's
it's a problem. It's a problem. We actually think we're
running a capitalist system here in the United States when
we're not. We're not. We're not running a capitalist system.
(18:32):
You know, it's funny. I get a phone call. Let
me give you an example why. I get a phone call
from my son yesterday. Man, and he's always he's got
you coming up with ideas for businesses. And I love
the fact that he's doing that. He said, Dad, can
I throw something by you? And he's like, I'm riding
He's like, I'm riding in an uber with some of
(18:54):
my friends or there were you know, again, he's visiting
some of his friends on Long Island before he starts job,
just graduated from college. And you know, we asked the guy.
We asked the guy, the Uber driver. You know, the
bill for the Uber was forty something bucks. How much
money he keeps? And you know, he told him fifteen dollars.
(19:16):
And my son asked, well, howoud if I started a
ride sharing company where the drivers would pay, like, you know,
fifty dollars a month, and then they get to keep everything,
everything that they got, as far as the payment and
the tips and everything goes along with it. I said, see,
it's a great idea, but that works in a free market,
(19:38):
works at a free market. If you don't think that,
you know, both Uber and Lyft have managed to establish
And I said, look it up. Look at the regulations
that are involved with trying to start a new ride
sharing service under that model. I can almost guarantee you
the laws and regulations would make it impossible because guess
(19:59):
what Uber lifts, you know, helped write the regulations by
donating money to the right people to box competition out
in the same way. And I explained to him the
same way after the financial crisis two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine. Oh, we had DoD Frank and
what do we do. We made the bank's utilities too
big to fail. They put thousands of banks, smaller banks
(20:24):
all around the country out of business because they can
no longer afford to keep up with the regulations. Same
thing held true after the dot com collapse you put
in it was Sarbines Oxley. At that point in time,
all these small investment banks poof, They're gone. They can
no longer afford to stay in business. That's not that's
not capitalism. And I was, you know, basically I told him,
(20:44):
I said, I explained this before. It's a regulatory capture.
And that's that's the world we live in at this
point in time. And again I'll delve into this. We're
going to talk about the problem with zombies and the
innabilly to fail in this country and cheat money, uh,
in a myriad of things over the next next several
(21:06):
weeks here on the program. Other than that, it was
a great Watchdog road trip, but it's it's always nice
to come home. Watchdog on Wall Street, dot Com
Popular Podcasts
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.
Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders
Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders takes you back to 1983, when two teenagers were found murdered, execution-style, on a quiet Texas hill. What followed was decades of rumors, false leads, and a case that law enforcement could never seem to close. Now, veteran investigative journalist M. William Phelps reopens the file — uncovering new witnesses, hidden evidence, and a shocking web of deaths that may all be connected. Over nine gripping episodes, Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders unravels a story 42 years in the making… and asks the question: who’s really been hiding the truth?
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com