← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
10/23/25: Amazon Replaces Workers With Robots, Yang Says To Ban Phones In School, Zohran Debate, Health Insurance Death Spiral
01:00:51
Loading summary
Transcript194 lines
- [00:00]
Crystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
Lenovo Ad Voice
Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
- [00:09]
Still using yesterday's tech Upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultra Light Ultra powerful and built for serious productivity. With Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed and AI powered performance, it keeps up with your business, not the other way around.
- [00:23]
Andrew Yang
Whoa.
- [00:23]
Lenovo Ad Voice
This thing moves.
- [00:24]
Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search@lenovo.com Lenovo Lenovo Unlock AI experience experiences with the ThinkPad X1 carbon powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create and boost productivity all on one device.
- [00:45]
IBM Ad Voice
So your AI agents, they make the team that uses them more productive, right? But if they aren't connected to other agents or your data or your existing workflows, how productive can they really make your teams? Any business can add AI agents. IBM connects your agents across your company to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.
- [01:12]
American Military University Ad Voice
Military life isn't predictable, but earning your Master's degree can be. With American Military University's 40 + flexible online master's programs, you can stay mission ready while you get market ready. Learn anywhere, anytime with an education built to keep pace steady, reliable and always accessible. Plus, military service members, veterans and their families can save up to 45% on master's tuition with AMU's special rates and grants. Learn more at AMU Apus Edu Steady.
- [01:41]
Sagar Enjeti
Through every mission hey guys, Sager and Krystal here.
- [01:44]
Crystal Ball
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
- [01:51]
Sagar Enjeti
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [01:57]
Crystal Ball
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to breakingpoints.com because become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
- [02:08]
Sagar Enjeti
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com Good morning everybody. Happy Thursday. I had to do a little bit of, I was like Thursday here. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have? Crystal?
- [02:27]
Crystal Ball
Indeed we do. Amazon. Replacing 600,000 workers with robots, that seems like a big deal. Andrew Yang is going to join us to discuss that and also his new cellular phone effort. Very interesting project that he's working on. He's also going to weigh in on the big debate last night. Zoran Curtis, Lewa and Andrew Cuomo taking to the stage once again. We got some highlights, lowlights, whatever from that. Also, Zoran went on with the guys over at Flagrant. That was very interesting as well. We've got some new really dire information about the way that health care costs are going up. So we've been covering here that if you are on the Obamacare exchanges, obviously those subsidies have been really critical. They have not been extended. So that's been a dire situation. Now we're taking a look at the employer backed health care plans as well. Those costs going up a lot too. So not good, not good at all for a lot of people out there. Israel, a lot of updates, but in particular there was a big vote in the Knesset to annex the West Bank. Well, you know, while J.D. vance was there, he had something to say about that as well. So we'll dig into that. We have another boat that was blown up. As we seem to be marching increasingly rapidly towards a regime change war in Venezuela, Sager has some thoughts about the White House. Demolition slash renovation.
- [03:41]
Sagar Enjeti
Listen, Antifa, I'm ready. Draft me.
- [03:44]
Crystal Ball
Antifa super soldier.
- [03:45]
Sagar Enjeti
Antifa super soldier, get me a blowtorch. But for the record, for the United States Secret Service, this is a joke. It's a satire.
- [03:54]
Crystal Ball
This is parody.
- [03:55]
Sagar Enjeti
It's a parody and it is satire. But you know, if somebody were to sneak me back onto the White House grounds and give me a blowtorch and, or be one of those tree hugger activists that could like chain myself to the original East Wing, I would be ready.
- [04:12]
Crystal Ball
Apparently, there's nothing left to change.
- [04:14]
Sagar Enjeti
No, it's over. No, it's this weekend. The facade remains. All right, so we have a chance. By the way, I will never be more NIMBY than I am today, but I'll outline it in the White House.
- [04:23]
Crystal Ball
So everybody can look forward to that. And I am taking a look at the whole Graham Platner tattoo Reddit gate situation. He got the tattoo covered up, everybody. We got an update there. In case you haven't seen enough of this man's shirtless body. We've got more of that for you today.
- [04:40]
Sagar Enjeti
I never wanted to know the nipple shape and size of a U.S. senate candidate. And I remain that way.
- [04:45]
Crystal Ball
Welcome to 2025.
- [04:46]
Sagar Enjeti
That is 2025.
- [04:47]
Crystal Ball
Things you never could have imagined are now on the table.
- [04:49]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, it's dark out here. Okay. All right, let's go ahead and get to AI, shall we? Let's go and put this up here on the screen. This is major news from the economy. We have Amazon now planning to Repl than half a million jobs with robots. And it sounds like it's out of a movie, except it's actually out of a press release. They say that the company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon. It is already, I think, the second largest employer in the entire United States. And they're now just openly saying they have built an army of robots which they hope to replace more than half a million jobs with and there's nothing really that you can do about it. There's no legislation, there's no politicians, nobody even really particularly cares. Amazon Automation expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States it would otherwise need just by 2027. That would save 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs and delivers to customers, which at scale is multiples of billions. Executives told the Amazon board just last year robotic animation would allow the company to continue to avoid adding its US workforce numbers and they will translate to more than 600,000 people that they do not need to hire. Amazon right now remains not only the second largest employer, one of the largest seasonal employers in the United is one of the easiest ways for lower income folks out there to be able to get some seasonal work and many of them rely on it. Famously, there was a movie, was it Nomadland, if you remember, where, you know, they showed this entire phenomenon. Now I don't think it's a good phenomenon to even have seasonal worker, but it's better than nothing. And now they're saying even that itself is gone. So this is dark. It's very, very dark stuff in terms of, as usual, you know, when they announce this stuff on press calls and then the stock goes up, that's when it gets really dystopian.
- [06:34]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, because you're rewarded as a company, you're rewarded for replacing human workers. That is the reality. And so we've covered Amazon a lot over the years. A lot. And there's a reason for that. It's because Asaga just said they are the second largest employer. And a lot of ways they have completely reshaped the labor market in the U.S. you know, they have lowered the standards both in terms of wages and safety in specifically the warehouse and logistics industry. We've of course covered the abuses of their delivery Dr. That they operate is they drive their workers until they can no longer physically do the tasks. They like to have a very high churn. Why? Because they don't want you to stick around and have to like and want higher pay or elevate to higher levels. Of management. I got plenty of issues with Walmart as well, but actually one of the things they do is they try to recruit from their own sales associates and elevate them up the chain. Amazon is the exact opposite. They have very high churn and it's by design. So what they're doing here is rather than laying off a bunch of workers, they're just going to let that normal churn run its course and not rehire. So they'll be steadily shrinking and shrinking and shrinking their workforce. 600,000 jobs, guys, that is a lot. That is a large percentage of their workforce here in the us. And here's the other thing. Once they go down this path, they are trendsetters. Not just their rivals in the space, but all sorts of companies, especially ones that work in any sort of warehousing and logistics, are going to be looking at this and learning and trying to copy whatever it is that Amazon is doing. This moment of AI job replacement, it is here and it is shocking to me how few politicians talk about it. I heard Bernie start to talk about it, but there are so many little discussion around this and meanwhile a handful of people hold all of our fates in their hands is absolutely insane.
- [08:30]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, absolutely. Let's stick actually with even within the AI labs themselves. Let's put this up here on the screen. So not only are robots coming for AI jobs, it now appears to be coming for the AI jobs themselves. So you can see Meta has cut some 600 jobs in the AI Superintelligence Division. The layoffs will, quote, affect legacy teams, but not the company's brand new lab unit. The jobs will affect the company's team's focus on artificial artificial intelligence products, infrastructure and long term AI research. By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision and each person will have a more load bearing and more scope and impact. Alexander Wang, Meta's Chief AI Officer, said so most of the affected employees will have the opportunity to, quote, be redeployed at the company. But what I think it does demonstrate to all of you is that even within the AI builders themselves, they have to grapple with. They're betting on replacing everybody. But in the immediate term there's no profit. I mean, I can't get away from ChatGPT. It's one of those where it's just so crazy when you consider the financials and listen, yes, I understand scale, I understand exponential growth, et cetera, but when.
- [09:42]
Crystal Ball
You scale up a net loss though, how does that work?
- [09:44]
Sagar Enjeti
This is what I'm trying to say so ChatGPT has a revenue of $13 billion. That's a lot of money. That's great, actually. Awesome, awesome job. Especially for a company that just launched its flagship product in 2022. But they have 1ch trillion dollars in outlays over the next decade. Now those $1 trillion in outlays are not traditional cash finance deals. We talked about this with David Dayan. They're either called round tripping or vendor finance. I prefer vendor finance because it's a long standing term that I think a lot of people can relate to, especially with the dot com bubble. And it effectively relates to. They're like, hey, we're gonna buy X amount of chips from Nvidia. Nvidia is like, okay. And that's why we'll either grant you stock or you get some portion of our company and then the two stocks simultaneously go up at the exact same time. But the problem with that is that the future revenue that's booked for Nvidia is based on a promise from ChatGPT. But no money has actually exchanged hands. But it's just based on the craze and on the expectation itself of value that both continue to rise. So there's no money that actually happened, but hundreds of billions of dollars in value have been created. This is not just Nvidia. This is major chip manufacturer in the world. OpenAI has done five or six different of these types of deal, adding several billions, I think almost a trillion dollars in market cap to many of these different companies. Again off of a $13 billion valuation. The problem with that is that if the growth stops even a little bit and you have a 50% cut down, then that's the entire S&P. 580% of the stocks gains in 2025 so far are from AI stocks. 40% come from this expected value data center construct. Think about the housing, how much it was part of the GDP back in 2006 and 2007. Home building alone was like a huge portion. Well, with the Great Recession hit and people stopped building, home boom, you know, massive hit not only to the housing stock, but also construction, labor, materials and there were all kinds of, you know, Nevada, remember, had a horrible crisis in terms of housing and a shortage that took almost a decade to recover from. That's the stuff that I worry about the most. We have the job angle. You have the fact that profit's not there. That's why Meta is cutting some of these jobs. And then you have basically Sam Altman, who is like this master dealmaker, the Wall Street Journal now officially describes him as too big to fail. Meaning if this comes down, we have to bail out. If we don't bail out, the entire economy will go down. We don't have a choice. And so we could see it.
- [12:15]
Crystal Ball
All of our eggs in this basket.
- [12:16]
Sagar Enjeti
Literally, all of our eggs in the basket. And what concerns me is it's kind of like housing. Nobody in Washington ever made a decision that we're going all in on AI. They kind of just let it happen. They were like, yeah, okay, you know, with tax incentives. And now you just. It's just like, subprime. You get to the point where, yeah, I mean, bailing out AIG is horrible. Not bailing out AIG is also horrible. So we don't know what to do. By the way, we all know which way.
- [12:40]
Crystal Ball
I actually do think that this administration decided, made an affirmative choice to go all in on AI. I mean, you remember the big announcement on inauguration, the day after Inauguration day, saying, oh, we're going to, you know, have all of this investment in AI. And that was, you know, part of why some of these tech guys flip to Trump is because, listen, the Biden administration wasn't doing a lot in terms of AI regulation, but they were doing a little bit. There was a little bit more of, like, a mindset towards, all right, let's have some safety. Let's have some guardrails in here. Again, I'm not trying to bump them up because it was also not sufficient. But the Trump administration has basically said, all right, off to the races. We're in a race with China. You guys are in a race with each other. And everybody is just throwing billions and billions of dollars at this thing, hoping that they're gonna be the one that achieves AGI fastest and achieves the market position fastest. So that is an affirmative decision that was made. I don't think it's the one that most of you all voted for. I don't think that was, like, featured heavily in the campaign trail. I don't think there was a lot of focus on that at debates. I don't think there's been any sort of, like, a national small D Democratic conversation about it. But there are a lot of elites here, and specifically these tech oligarchs who've decided that this is the path that they wanna go on. And so you've got. Their goal is to remake the social contract, to make you and your labor completely irrelevant, to free themselves from the burden of having to deal with annoying human workers and their needs, to go to the Bathroom or take a day off for their kid's birthday or school play or whatever. They want to free themselves from all of those constraints. And so you have that threat which in many ways is here. And you also have the incredible financial concentration, which I think, I mean, I don't know how you can look at this and not think it's a bubble at this point. And by the way, Mark Zuckerberg thinks it's a bubble, Jeff Bezos thinks it's a bubble. They've been talking about this openly. Now they have various cope around it. Zuckerberg says basically like, yeah, but you know that bubbles happen and then there's still a lot of innovation that comes out of it. So still a net positive thing like that's the way that they're talking about it. But with the Nvidia thing specifically, you know, if the demand for these chips is really so high and so extraordinary, why do they need to round trip these funds? Why do they need to subsidize the purchase of their own chips? That alone should make you question some of the storytelling that is coming out of this industry. So I don't know, there are many different potential perils here and very hard for me to see how we get out of this thing without some very ugly consequences.
- [15:16]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, let's go ahead and put this next one, please, up on the screen. I thought it was really interesting. A summary of Andre Karpathy who is, you know, he was a previously the director of AI over at Tesla and he now has appeared on a podcast and this was a summary of some of the points that he makes. He says, quote LLMs don't work yet. They don't have enough intelligence, they're not multimodal enough. Two, when you boot them up, they start from zero. They have no distillation phrase. There's no process where that happens. Get analyzed and written back into weights. Three, when it's stored in their weights, it's only a hazy collection of the Internet. Go to the next part please, just so we can continue to read some of these. What you really see broadly from a lot of the points that they make is that they're too good at imitation, they're terrible at going off of the data. They have too much memory and not enough reasoning. They've created, quote, cortical tissue pattern learning in general, but still missing the rest of the brain. There's no hippocampus, there's no amygdala, there's no emotions. They memorize perfectly but generalize poorly. Anything truly new code that is never written before or ideas that have no template, they stumble. So even the promises of some of this are not really materializing yet. And they're being sold as some great, great innovation. That's why I thought that Sam Altman's announcement that ChatGPT will be porn, that was like the biggest signal to me. I'm like, AGI is not coming, guys. Like the real AGI, it's not happening. Really what it is is they recreated the Internet. ChatGPT started its new browser. I don't know if you saw this yesterday, where you can download. What do you think you do that for? It's like Google Hoover up all the data, make sure that you replace it and then what? You make sure you spend time on the goddamn platform as possible. So we can sell you advertising, so we can have you addicted to pornography and we can run your entire life from GCAL to everything. It's just an ad supported business. That's not the same thing that was sold to the public about, we're gonna create a new brain that's gonna cure cancer. It's like, no, you just have porn. Okay? I mean, that's exactly what happened with the original Internet. So I'm feeling very bleak this morning. I do think the job replacement could come, the robot stuff, because that's about rote labor and automation. But the real promises of, oh, we're gonna do that, we're gonna create all these amazing new products. I don't see it, I don't see it on the horizon.
- [17:22]
Crystal Ball
I hope it fails. Personally, I do, I hope it fails because I mean, I'm very concerned. Listen, like Sagar said, even with where they've gotten now, we're already seeing job replacement. But it could be worse. It could be a lot worse. And so there's that aspect, there's the water and energy aspect and then there's the potential like most dystopian scenarios of which yeah, I am genuinely concerned about. And by the way, the guys who are involved in this stuff are concerned about. They've just decided like, well, maybe if I'm the one that develops it, I can do it in a safe way and my competitors are doing it anyway, so it's not like me staying out of the race. And I'm thinking specifically of Elon Musk, who really had a lot of safety concerns to start with and then realized like, well, I guess everybody else is doing it, so I'm just gonna get in there and make mine anti woke and I guess that'll fix everything. They are concerned about the most dire scenarios as well. So I think the best case scenario is that they never achieve AGI, that it ends up just being sort of like a glorified Google search the way it is and an ability for you to make your own personalized customized porn or whatever. And that. That's where it stops. To me, that is the most hopeful possible scenario and it's still not a great one.
- [18:36]
Sagar Enjeti
So yeah, I don't think it's hopeful because that just means AI centered and at degenerate activity already on the Internet and amplifying it and making it.
- [18:44]
Crystal Ball
I'm not saying it's good, Sagar.
- [18:45]
Sagar Enjeti
Oh, okay.
- [18:46]
Crystal Ball
I'm just saying it's better than the alternative.
- [18:48]
Sagar Enjeti
I see what you're saying.
- [18:48]
Crystal Ball
I don't want it to go further than it already has.
- [18:50]
Sagar Enjeti
We have Andrew Yang standing by to weigh in. OG friend of the show. Let's get to it.
- [18:56]
Lenovo Ad Voice
Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
- [19:00]
Still using yesterday's tech upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 carbon ultralight, ultra powerful and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed and AI powered performance that keeps up with your business, not the other way around.
- [19:14]
Whoa, this thing moves.
- [19:16]
Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search@lenovo.com Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 carbon powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create and boost productivity all on one device.
- [19:34]
American Military University Ad Voice
Military life isn't predictable, but earning your Master's degree can be. With American Military University's 40 + flexible online master's programs, you can stay mission ready while you get market ready. Learn anywhere, anytime with an education built to keep pace, steady, reliable and always accessible. Plus, military service members, veterans and their families can save up to 45% on master's tuition with AMU's special rates and grants. Learn more at AMU Apus edu steady through every mission.
- [20:06]
IBM Ad Voice
So your AI agents, they make the team that uses them more productive, right? But if they aren't connected to other agents or your data or your existing workflows, how productive can they really make your teams? Any business can add AI agents. IBM connects your agents across your company to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.
- [20:36]
Sagar Enjeti
We just talked a lot about AI, but now we're going to talk about smartphones. And Andrew Yang, a great friend, maybe the foundational friend of the show, True, is going to join us.
- [20:44]
Crystal Ball
Bedrock. Bedrock Friend of the show Andrew Yang.
- [20:47]
Sagar Enjeti
You have a new project out that you're advertising. It's great to see you, my friend. But first let's play your announcement, and then we're gonna get your reaction. Let's take a listen.
- [20:56]
Andrew Yang
Listen, our phones are amazing, but they're taking something from us. Our time, our focus, the moments that matter most. Have a great day.
- [21:05]
Crystal Ball
Serious.
- [21:06]
Andrew Yang
Put your phone down. Watch where you're going. Look up.
- [21:09]
Sagar Enjeti
Hey, guys, just left the West Village. I'm on the highlight.
- [21:12]
Crystal Ball
Oh, hello. Yay.
- [21:15]
IBM Ad Voice
Wait.
- [21:16]
Andrew Yang
Put your phone down. You hear the scroll at a ball at Noble, we don't want you addicted to your phone. We want you to live more. That's why we'll pay you to use your phone less. So for heaven's sake, please do yourself a favor and put your phone down.
- [21:35]
Sagar Enjeti
All right, Andrew, So what is this project about?
- [21:39]
Andrew Yang
Sager? I've noticed that Americans are miserable and we're miserable for a couple big reasons. Number one, we're not saving enough money. We're paying Verizon AT&T twice as much as people in other countries pay for their wireless services. I was paying Verizon 140amonth. Now I'm down to about 46amonth. And then the second is that we're being bombarded by these negative emotions through what Hasan Minhaj calls our rectangles of sadness, our cell phones. And so I thought, well, geez, if we can solve those two problems, we'd go a very long way. And folks who follow me know that I'm deeply concerned about polarization, and that's a lot of it through social media and our smartphone. So Noble Mobile, the first carrier that will actually pay you if you use your phone a little bit less. It's $50 for unlimited. But if you use a little bit less, data will give you up to 20 bucks cash back every month and then pay 5 and a half percent interest on any savings. So your phone plan becomes your friendly angel, nudging you to doom. Scroll a little bit less.
- [22:43]
Sagar Enjeti
All right, I kind of like it. I like it.
- [22:45]
Crystal Ball
So this comes at a moment when there's obviously heated debate over screen time and cell phones in schools. There's actually a little bit of new research out that I wanted to get your reaction to with regard to the school cell phone bans, which my kids public schools just implemented last year. So this is the second year where we've had a cell phone ban. They're very posed. I'm very supportive. Can put this up on the screen. So schools banned phones saw surprising results beyond fewer distractions. And what they found is that initially there Was an adjustment period, disciplinary issues, spikes because kids were getting in trouble for having their phones and using their phones when they weren't supposed to be. But they said by the second year suspension rates returned to normal and test scores actually rose significantly. According to the researchers, student scores in the school district notably increased by about 2 to 3 percentiles in the second year of the ban compared to the year before the ban. So what do you make of this study and do those sorts of results surprise the age you Crystal I'm so.
- [23:41]
Andrew Yang
Glad that you're trying to get smartphones out of your your kids middle school or junior high. I'm friends with Jonathan Height who obviously has made history with the anxious generation. And any parent knows I'm a parent. We used to think that the Internet and these phones would help your kids learn. But the truth is it's shortening their attention span. It's making it harder to retain new information because they just think they can get it from the Internet at all times. So if you circumscribe smartphone use, your kid reads more, gets smarter. Not surprised at all and thrilled that so many schools are making this move. They're finding astounding results generally within one or two years.
- [24:22]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. One of the things that we looked at not only with the studies is that there has been a bifurcation in my opinion Andrew, which I'm a little worried about. I think higher income parents are pretty aware of this dynamic. People who are a little bit more neurotic, private schools and others are taking charge. But I haven't yet yet seen it in terms of the statistics. It does look like it's still widespread use of iPad smartphone as well at the lower levels and of ages. So what is the way societally to attack this problem? Is state regulation the only answer as some states are currently saying, saying they're banning it statewide in all schools.
- [24:56]
Andrew Yang
What's fun Sagar is that someone called this the last bipartisan issue because parents that are conservative and parents that are liberal are both freaked out about what these devices are doing to our kids brains. 39 states red and blue have moved to get smartphones out of schools. And I think it's going to keep going up. I mean you might get to all 50 and imagine that in this day and age where you have literally a shutdown Congress and the states are just making this happen because so many families can see it every day. I'm a parent and we all feel outgunned by these screens.
- [25:32]
Crystal Ball
Andrew, I wanted to get a little bit of your reaction too to the discussion we were just having on AI because, I mean, these are separate but obviously incredibly related issues. And I just want to know your sense of where things are heading and what the solution is. Because on the one hand, you have Amazon announcing they're going to replace 600,000 workers with robots, which, hey, is something you've been sounding the alarm about for a few years now at this point. On the other hand, you see some people coming out and say, you know what? AI is not really living up to the promise. It's certainly not living up to its financial expectations at this point. These LLMs still really clunky. Even I played around with Sora still has a lot of limitations. So what do you think of this tech, where it's going and how we should be thinking of it as society.
- [26:17]
Andrew Yang
Crystal, you're totally right. I was sounding the alarm back in Iowa in 2019. Imagine standing at the truck stop saying, AI is coming back. Then folks weren't, let's say, embracing that reality, but now it is real. I wrote in a Waymo a number of weeks ago, and it was a trip the first time you get in, but then the second or third time, and I did use it multiple times, you start to get used to it. So the AI tools definitely have their problems and limitations, but they're also getting better all the time. And they are going to replace tons of warehouse workers, customer service workers, analysts, lawyers. Unfortunately, I have friends who are partners at law firms who say they're going to hire fewer associates. So both things are true. I'd say that these tools have problems, but that they're finding commercial applications that are going to do a number on, unfortunately, millions of American workers. And when I ran for president, I said, look, we need to just start putting money into people's hands. I mean, it's one reason I started Noble Mobile is like, I can't get a thousand bucks a month into your hands, but I can save you about 1000 bucks a year and get you looking up more. And that seemed like a direct approach to try and solve this problem. While I'm not president, obviously. I mean, if I were president, then you guys would be, I suppose. I don't know. I don't know what the equivalent roles.
- [27:44]
Crystal Ball
In the Yang presidency.
- [27:45]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, I was just saying, like. Yeah, but you might be Press Secretary Crystal and then Sager. You could do whatever you wanted.
- [27:50]
Sagar Enjeti
Okay. Hey, listen. Yes, I'll take that role. Yeah. Minister at large under the Yang administration.
- [27:58]
Lenovo Ad Voice
Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
- [28:02]
Still using yesterday's tech Upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultra Light Ultra powerful and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed and AI powered performance that keeps up with your business, not the other way around.
- [28:16]
Whoa, this thing moves.
- [28:18]
Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search at lenovo. Com. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 carbon powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create and boost productivity all on one device.
- [28:36]
American Military University Ad Voice
Military life isn't predictable, but earning your Master's degree can be. With American Military University's 40 + flexible online master's programs, you can stay mission ready while you get market ready. Learn anywhere, anytime with an education board built to keep pace steady, reliable and always accessible. Plus, military service members, veterans and their families can save up to 45% on master's tuition with AMU's special rates and grants. Learn more at AMU Apus Edu Steady through every mission.
- [29:09]
IBM Ad Voice
If you're waiting for your AI to turn into ROI and wondering how long you have to wait, maybe you need to do more than wait. Any business can use AI. IBM helps you use AI to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business IBM.
- [29:38]
Sagar Enjeti
Andrew, I do think while we have you though, we would love to get your reaction since you did run for mayor of New York to the current mayoral race before we get you to react to to some of the clips. What's your general assessment of the race here so far?
- [29:52]
Andrew Yang
No, I see the same things you all see. Zoran is on track to win. To me the question really is whether he gets a majority against both Cuomo and Sliwa, which I think would be very helpful for him to have a mandate to head up to Albany and say, look guys, I'm the new mayor. Let's get some stuff done. If he gets less than 50.1% in the November election, then it's going to be easier for folks to push back and say that he doesn't have as broad support. So to me he's going to be the next mayor and the question is the margin of victory.
- [30:26]
Crystal Ball
So let's take a look a little bit at they had a debate last night, so on stage you had Zoran, you had Cuomo and you had Saliwa as well and Zoran. Let's start with this one. Zoran having a good moment here knocking Cuomo for his former leadership of the State of New York. Let's take a listen them.
- [30:42]
Zoran Levitt
Shame on you. It is always a pleasure to hear Andrew Cuomo create his Own facts at every debate stage. We just had a former governor say in his own words that the city has been getting screwed by the state. Who was leading the state? It was you, Governor H. You were leading the state for screwing the city. You cut homelessness, you cut funding for the mta, you. These things, my friend.
- [31:12]
Sagar Enjeti
Four years.
- [31:14]
Andrew Yang
It's the past four years.
- [31:16]
Crystal Ball
I mean, there's a few things to say about it. First of all, he's just really good at this. Right. Second of all, he's using the fact that this guy had lots of experience as a weapon against him. Like the idea that, oh, you come in with all of this pedigree and all of this resume and that's gonna set you up, which is clearly what Cuomo thought. I mean, he thought this was a shoo in. He thought he'd barely have to show up and they would just coronate him as the next mayor of New York City. That dynamic has flipped on its head. So I wonder what you made of that moment and some of those dynamics in general.
- [31:44]
Andrew Yang
It is fascinating, Crystal, because Cuomo has sky high name id, but not all of it's positive. If you look at the numbers, there is a very deep ambivalence about Cuomo's time as governor. And so when he runs on that experience, it is something of a double edged sword that Zoran can use against him, as we saw in that clip slip. It is interesting to me as someone who is on that particular debate stage, I mean, sometimes physically, where there was a time when you kind of know people are going to come after you, you know, attacks are coming, and then you literally talk to the folks on your team, say, okay, if they come at me with this, like, what am I going to respond with? But Zoran clearly both has that, and he also has spontaneity. I mean, some of the stuff he's coming up with in the moment.
- [32:36]
Crystal Ball
Hmm.
- [32:37]
Sagar Enjeti
One of the things I'm curious for your view, Andrew, having run in the race, is that you ran in the Democratic primary. The Democratic primary base seems much more open to an outsider than let's say at the time that you ran. What happened? Why do you think that that is?
- [32:52]
Andrew Yang
No, I think these last four years have not been kind to establishment candidates or a sense that things are going well and that there's a constant recipe for someone who might represent a turning of the page. That's a stronger argument now than it was a number of years ago. And I will say I walk the streets of New York, obviously I live here and people are Very enthusiastic about Zoran. And people also talk to me about there seems to be a pro outsider sentiment in the air. And that does not bode well for Andrew Cuomo, who seems like the consummate insider because of his, you know, his ubiquity over the last number of years.
- [33:33]
Crystal Ball
So another issue that was significant at the debate was how they would approach Donald Trump. And we've got a bit of a mashup here. Cuomo talking about that and Zoran talking about it as well. Let's take a listen.
- [33:43]
Andrew Yang
Donald Trump, I believe, wants Mondami.
- [33:46]
Sagar Enjeti
That is his dream because he will.
- [33:49]
Andrew Yang
Use him politically all across the country and he will take over New York City.
- [33:53]
Zoran Levitt
Look, Donald Trump ran on three promises. He ran on creating the single largest deportation force in American history. He ran on going after his political enemies, and he ran on lowering the cost of living. If he wants to talk to me about the third piece of that agenda, I will always be ready and willing. But if he wants to talk about how to pursue the first and second piece of that agenda at the expense of New Yorkers, I will fight him every single step of the way.
- [34:16]
Crystal Ball
So, Andrew, we've already had some big Trump admin shows of force. There's a big immigration raid on Canal Street. Trump is threatening to pull any sort of funding that goes to New York City. If Zoran is a elected mayor of New York, which he very likely is going to be as not only a former Mayor o', Cana, but as a New Yorker, what are some of your concerns about this almost inevitable clash? I think that's coming between Zoran and Trump.
- [34:40]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, it's not good, Crystal, because the reality is that there are a lot of relationships and resources that you actually could use if you are the mayor of New York and you don't wanna be on the other side of a battle line with the head of the federal government. But I think this is one of the potential hazards of not just this era, but also of. And the truth is Andrew Cuomo is going to present himself also as like a Trump foil or antagonist. So I'm not sure if this is a negative case for Zoran in particular, but the Democratic base is not going to want you to work with Trump or his administration in any way, shape or form. And I do think that Trump is going to enjoy trying to stick it to whoever the mayor is if the mayor is not bending the knee. And obviously if you bend the knee to Trump in this city, then your political life as a Democrat is going to be short lived.
- [35:37]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, totally. Agree.
- [35:39]
Crystal Ball
One more for you, Andrew. Let's take a look. Zoron was on with the guys over at Flagrant. Had a fun moment. I don't know if you were aware of the whole bench press situation with Zoron. Looked like he. What was the amount of weight that he was trying to best bench press? 135. I guess it didn't work out all that well. In any case, they were joking around about it on the podcast. Podcast. Let's take a look at that.
- [35:58]
Andrew Yang
Joey, bring in the bench press because he has.
- [36:03]
Sagar Enjeti
Bench.
- [36:04]
Zoran Levitt
Every year I'm going to do £1 more. Let's go.
- [36:07]
Andrew Yang
Next year.
- [36:07]
Zoran Levitt
136.
- [36:08]
Andrew Yang
Let's go.
- [36:10]
Sagar Enjeti
I was like, you up, dude?
- [36:13]
Zoran Levitt
Let me tell you shouldn't have done it. I knew I up when I said, you think I thought. You think I thought I was going to kill it. I knew there was a problem and.
- [36:25]
Andrew Yang
This guy was like, you got to do it.
- [36:28]
Zoran Levitt
You got to do it. Like, I, I really don't.
- [36:30]
Sagar Enjeti
You should have put the big 10 pound weights on.
- [36:32]
American Military University Ad Voice
You know, them big 10 pound weights.
- [36:35]
Sagar Enjeti
Now you got it.
- [36:36]
Zoran Levitt
I was trying to, but next year. 136.
- [36:37]
Crystal Ball
Okay.
- [36:41]
Zoran Levitt
Promises I can keep. 136. 136. You didn't keep 135.
- [36:48]
Sagar Enjeti
He's gonna get there. He's gonna.
- [36:50]
Zoran Levitt
From the edit promise.
- [36:51]
Sagar Enjeti
136, the Zoron challenge.
- [36:53]
Crystal Ball
I mean, I think there's. There's a lot to me that's interesting about this, but. But I mean, it's crazy to me, Andrew, like, the dream is always to change the electorate and bring out more young people and be able to appeal. Now the conversation. How do we appeal to young men? And here you have a candidate who does it right. He's charismatic. He built this grassroots movement, started at 1% in the polls, skyrockets and destroys. Andrew Cuomo is able to go on these podcasts that there's all this handwriting. Oh, my God. Democrats can't go on these podcasts anymore. Is able to do it, make fun of himself, be very charming, et cetera, etc, and you still have Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and others who refuse to endorse this man who is the Democratic nominee and is probably the most interesting and charismatic figure that you have in the entire party. Like, is this self sabotage? What is going on here? How is this in any way sensible?
- [37:46]
Andrew Yang
I have to admit I was fascinated by the entire bench press thing. I don't know. And I'm thrilled he had a sense of humor about it because because when you're a candidate, people are constantly putting pressure on you to do things. And sometimes you're just like, oh, no, I really don't want to do this. But it's almost impossible to say, I don't want to do this, because then you seem like a dud. And so I used to joke with my team that it's like the Presidential Olympics, where you just do whatever the event is, whether it's like corn dog eating or, you know, or like, feats of strength or whatever the heck it is. And so when Zorin was in that situation, I was like, oh, my God, I've been there. Like, I've been in front of that bench, figuratively speaking. I mean, heck, when I ran for mayor, they were like, I was at a gym and then they, like, challenged me to do pull ups. And then you can't not do them because you're like, oh, God, like, you know, I don't want to sit.
- [38:43]
Sagar Enjeti
What'd you get? What did you do?
- [38:44]
Andrew Yang
And that's the question. Zaire. And I was like, how many effing pull ups am I going to be able to do?
- [38:49]
Sagar Enjeti
Because I didn't. I think you could do one. That's.
- [38:51]
Andrew Yang
I don't know. But then you also get adrenaline in you because they're filming it.
- [38:55]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, right.
- [38:57]
Andrew Yang
So I felt Zoran's pain deeply. And benching is something that, like, you either are experienced in doing or you're not. It's like, if you're like a normal person who is not bench pressed a lot, then it's gonna be really hard to bench press, like, you know, 135. And people may like, oh, 135. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, anyway, I mean, Sagar, you probably can relate to this, but it's like when the first time you go to the gym, you can't bench press anything.
- [39:24]
Sagar Enjeti
No, nothing.
- [39:24]
Andrew Yang
And then eventually, if you do it for a while, they're pretty much guys who bench and guys who don't bench. And asking a guy who doesn't bench to bench is very, very bad look for that guy. So I felt Zoran's pain because it's like, oh, my God. Like, he had no choice but to say yes. But I'm just thrilled that he has a sense of humor about it and that he can joke about it. To your point, Crystal, it's like, that's what people want. You know, the word that gets bandied around a lot is authenticity. And the disease is like, you literally have consultants being like, how do we get authenticity. So if you have a candidate who has it, then you have a candidate who has it. And to your point, that's very, very powerful in 2025.
- [40:03]
Crystal Ball
It's very powerful. And it's again insane that Democratic leadership wants to sandbag this guy and refuses to endorse again the Democratic nominee. And it's, I guess, you know, low key, holding out for the guy who was accused of sexual assault by 13 different women and had to resign, a disgrace and killed old people in nursing homes, et cetera.
- [40:23]
Andrew Yang
I mean, it is the party primary. You guys know that I'm for opening up the primaries, but to me this means that they're really like flavors of Dems in New York. And so the pitch I'd make is like, look like that your problem is that you probably should be different parties is what you know. But totally agree with the fact that look, you know, like this guy is super talented and before this primary and this season, you would have been trying to dream up someone like him.
- [40:55]
Sagar Enjeti
There you go. Thank you very much, Andrew. We appreciate your analysis, man.
- [40:57]
Crystal Ball
Great to see you, Andrew.
- [40:59]
Andrew Yang
Great seeing you guys. Let me and check out Noble Mobile for the two of you. I don't know who you're using right now, but we could definitely save you some money.
- [41:07]
Sagar Enjeti
And maybe there's no free wi fi on an airplane. It's game over, bro. Right. See you later.
- [41:13]
Andrew Yang
Bye guys.
- [41:15]
Lenovo Ad Voice
Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
- [41:19]
Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 carbon ultra light. Ultra powerful and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors. Blazing speed and AI powered performance that keeps up with your business, not the other way around.
- [41:34]
Whoa, this thing moves.
- [41:35]
Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech surface search@lenovo.com Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 carbon. Powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create and boost productivity all on one device.
- [41:53]
American Military University Ad Voice
Military life isn't predictable, but earning your Master's degree can be. With American Military University's 40 + flexible online master's programs, you can stay mission ready while you get market ready. Learn anywhere, anytime with an education built to keep pace. Steady, reliable and always accessible. Plus military service members, veterans and their families can save up to 45% on master's tuition with AMU's special rates and grants. Learn more at AMU Apus Edu. Steady through every mission.
- [42:25]
IBM Ad Voice
So your AI agents, they make the team that uses them more productive, right?
- [42:30]
Andrew Yang
Right.
- [42:31]
IBM Ad Voice
But if they aren't connected to other Agents or your data or your existing workflows. How productive can they really make your teams? Any business can add AI agents. IBM connects your agents across your company to change how you do business. Let's create Smile to Business IBM.
- [42:55]
Sagar Enjeti
Turning now to health care, there's been a lot on the horizon. There's talk about Obamacare subsidies that are expiring. Part of why the government is shut down right now. At least the democratic justification. But behind the picture, it's not just Obamacare. It's a genuine healthcare crisis in the US Gonna put us up here on the screen. The average cost of a family health insurance plan is now $27,000. So you can watch here, that employer and worker contribution has dramatically gone up from some $10,000 back in 2010 to 27,000 today, in addition to an increased worker contribution. And this is hurting the businesses, the smaller businesses in particular that have to increase the amount that they give in and as well as the workers who are paying large parts of these premiums. So let me just read here. This is from the Kaiser Family foundation survey. A 6% increase in healthcare just from the year before, outpacing inflation builds on two prior years of 7% gains. So you have 7, 7 and 6. The cost is rising faster than inflation and they say it will bite into employment and wage growth. That's pretty obvious statement. If health care costs go up faster than the economy in general, that means there's no money left over to go to wages, which is exactly what's happening. They are facing in some cases a 15% health insurance increase rate a year over year increase. They say that from their survey of their detailed snapshot that the family Premium has gone up 6%, worker earnings has gone up 4. Overall inflation has gone up 2.7%. Now the actual this is what I was talking to Matt Stoller about this because how is this possible? And because there's a sell here about health insurance. And even with Obamacare and all of that in the system is that when you consider where the costs are going, you should say, well, it should make sense with health care prices with hospitals. Now what I talked to Stoller about was that if you look at drug prices, hospital prices and others, there has not been that dramatic of an increase. So why is it so dramatic? And what he calls it is, let me get the exact term. Cause I really liked the way that he phrased it. He said it's corporate sludge. And so for example, he talks about how private equity and others who have taken over hospital billing, departments and they will scrap for a $1,000 increase in services because their billing fee is some $10. But at scale, that's billions and billions of dollars. The $1,000 in cost is passed along to you, the consumer. It's also passed along to the health somebody who just passes on obviously to everybody else, but it's just so that these people can make a profit. The other thing that they flag in there, which I thought was fascinating, is GLP1 drugs. So the cost of these, of semaglutide drugs is very high, obviously, because these are very profitable drug companies. Everybody wants them. So health insurance is covering them or they're finding different ways, doctors and others to negotiate. Ironically, there was a theory that all of these GLP1 drugs reduce the amount of of healthcare services in the long run because people will be less obese. But in the immediate term, it's actually driving up the price dramatically of overall health services. Yeah, I also, also, as people know, I never let the doctors off the hook here because what they talk about is that healthcare providers are now negotiating higher wages for themselves through the hospitals, and the hospitals are passing that on to the insurance. Now, it's not the doctor's fault. I get it. You guys have hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. It's not necessarily on you, but. But that financing structure, the American Medical association and the cartel of residency, which they've created artificial scarcity in so that they can all get paid more to pay off their enormous debt, is also being passed on to us. It's just like when you put it all together, from the drugs to GLP1 to hospital services, this can't last. Like $27,000 is crazy. The average family income is less than $100,000 per year. So after tax income, yeah, I understand, you know, employer contribution and all of that, et cetera, but you know, it's 27k for the workers for a family premium in addition to a 2 to $3,000 deductible, which is the normal amount that people have in savings for a rainy day, which means you're dead. Right. And then you and I are on Obamacare. I mean, I've shared this family of three. Obamacare, I think it's like nine to $10,000 per year, about $14,500 deductible. Like you're dead head if you ever get hit with something like that. Yeah, childbirth, boom. All right. Yeah, that one hurts in particular. And then think about that for all of these other people who are out there. So this is just more of A value neutral thing of like this can't go on. Like somebody has to do something about this. And Obamacare is not the answer as we are all learning because the healthcare subsidies that are expiring are making it dramatically unaffordable for every person who's actually on the planet. The only reason it works worked is because they started throwing money at the plans during COVID but before that the reason there was an uptick is cause it was crazy expensive. I think what's going to happen is a vast number of people will just go uninsured like we talked about. I was talking about with this Ryan. There was a couple who was 60 years old, they make 80k, their premiums are going to go up 18,000. I'm like, yeah, you know, if you're relatively healthy, I'm rolling the dice till Medicare for five years. That's not a good place to be. Right. If you get hit by a bus, it's not going to be good. But it's $25,000 a year in disaster insurance really worth it? Not really. Ask people in San Francisco who own home of them don't pay for earthquake insurance for this exact, exact reason. It's crazy high. Yeah, this is what happens. It's insane.
- [48:25]
Crystal Ball
And that's a really bad outcome. I don't know if you remember back during the Obamacare debates, but we talked all about this like death spiral potential. And the scenario you're sketching out is what leads to that death spiral. Because what happens is people who are younger and healthier, they say like zagres are like, I'm not paying for this. This doesn't make sense. And so the younger, healthier your participants get out of the pool, you're left with more like older people with more chronic illnesses who are much more expensive. And guess what? That means everybody's premiums go up. And then when those premiums go up, then the next layer of people who are like, you know, some relatively healthy and relatively young are like, you know what, I'm not doing this either. And then the premiums go up again. So we are facing that sort of a death spiral situation. And let's keep in mind like we're covering these people who have employer, they get health insurance through their employers. Like those are the lucky ones. And still it's unaffordable and unsustainable. And so, you know, listen, I'm long been a Medicare for all gal. Back when the Obamacare debate was happening, I was very much pushing for a public option like our healthcare system at Every level is so fucked. I mean, like you said, even just starting from the way that doctors are sharing all the expense and the debt that they have to take on. We have a shortage of doctors too, by the way. Way, you know, go and try to get an appointment at any kind of specialist or even a general practitioner, go to the hospital and try to get care. You're going to be facing a long line. We are. All these rural hospitals are going to be closing because of the big beautiful bill, quote, unquote. You have these subsidies that are going away that are going to make all of this hit home very aggressively. I was just looking at some polling. You've got four in 10Americans who say they are deeply concerned about being able to afford health insurance care and the prescriptions that they need. And what happens too when people go with. How does it work when people go without insurance? What that means is that they don't go to the doctor. So any conditions that come up, they're waiting until they are, you know, in a dire circumstance and then they go to the emergency room and then that is the most expensive care that you could possibly get. So that's how we end up. That's one of the reasons why we end up with a system where we spend more than any other country on health care and we get worse results than virtually any other developed nation because every aspect of this for profit system is broken. So, you know, the, the trajectory that we are on is fundamentally unsustainable. Someone is going to have to actually address. They're going to have to confront the insurers, they have to confront private equity equity, they're going to have to confront, confront the hospital system. Like they're going to have to radically transform this system if we are going to get out of this death spiral.
- [51:11]
Sagar Enjeti
I totally agree. And you know, before we. You don't even have to. I know you're a medical for Medicare for all person.
- [51:16]
Crystal Ball
Yeah.
- [51:16]
Sagar Enjeti
There are many countries even with universal ish healthcare Stoler. Again, enlightening me. In Japan, apparently they have tons of private insurers if you want them. But the government has a literal list. This is how much a treatment costs. Right? Right. Mri, flat rate. You can be in Kyoto, you can be in Hokkaido, wherever you are. This is how much the MRI. So there's no pharmacy. What is it? The PBMs and all these middlemen?
- [51:40]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, Price controls.
- [51:41]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, there's literal price control. You're like, this is how much.
- [51:44]
Crystal Ball
This is what it costs.
- [51:45]
Sagar Enjeti
The MRI costs.
- [51:45]
Crystal Ball
Figure it out.
- [51:46]
Sagar Enjeti
I'm even willing to give you cost of living inflation. So it can be higher in New York City than it can be in Wichita. I'm even fine with that. But right now, the price of a drug itself is not even set. It's negotiated between the health insurance people, the pharma people, the drug people. And that's how people get priced out of, you know, their cap on the amount of prescription drug care. This is another reason why I know this is long winded, but on the Medicare point, right? This is why I'm like, I'm not willing to sign up for any. First of all, put the cultural questions aside like illegal immigration and trans. I'm saying even in the current way that we are right now about Medicare, we cannot live in a system where we allow these people to bilk the federal government. So for example, for example, I've talked about dialysis. 1% of all US federal spending is dialysis. People do not understand. Hundreds of billions of dollars spent on dialysis and end stage renal disease. That is astronomical. It is a huge percentage of all Medicare spending. Now a big part of that is people are fat. Another part of that is that a lot of people are poor. A lot of people are also irresponsible. They don't take their insulin for some reason, but at the end of the day we end up paying for it. There's also cardiac, what is it, failure, like heart failure alone. One of the most expensive phases of healthcare could be, you know, dealt, dealt with through, could be dealt with through preventative care, which obviously I support. But at the very least, like, why does nobody come in? You know, this is the whole point about Medicare negotiating prices and like, yo, if we're going to pay 1% of dialysis spending, like we're setting some prices here. If that's going to be 1% of the US federal, but that's more than we spend on like the national weather, on stuff that, you know, does a lot of things that are actually good for the country. Right. So that's why I'm like, I mean Medicare cartels, they need to be broken to the ground.
- [53:35]
Crystal Ball
Yes, like support, support that comment. I will say Medicare and Medicaid do negotiate on the price of care. They do not negotiate by and large on the drugs, which is outrageous. And Biden, they passed like, okay, we have a list of 10 drugs we're now going to negotiate on, which is so characteristic of them. Like, we'll make some progress but not nearly, you know, do what is required. But yes, that's one of, that would be one of the benefits of moving to a Medicare for all system. And I don't have, like a total philosophical objection to having the ability to, you know, if you don't want to be on Medicare to purchase a private plan or whatever for wealthy people who want to do that, you just want to make sure that the pool is large enough so that the government can benefit from having healthier people in the pool pool so you can benefit from those economies. And also. Exactly what you're saying. If you have a large Medicare pool, it makes it so you have so much more pricing, control and power in terms of controlling costs at every single level. But, yeah, I don't know, it's funny because this healthcare was really back burner during the last presidential election and nobody really remember Trump got asked about. He said he had a concept of.
- [54:39]
Sagar Enjeti
A plan, so we'll have great health care.
- [54:40]
Crystal Ball
Yeah. And I think. I don't know, I guess, I guess it's because there were so many other things going on. Kamala Harris didn't really make it a focus or an issue because she kind of was left in no man's land. You guys will recall in 2020, when she thought it was the thing to do, she signed on as a co sponsor to Bernie's Medicare for All. Then when she got pushed back from rich donors, then she ran away from that. It became a real weakness for her. In terms of the Democratic primary, you have a Biden administration that didn't. He ran on a public option. Of course, they didn't even try. Like, as soon as he got the nomination, he just stopped talking about health care altogether. It was clear he never cared about doing anything with regard to, you know, any sort of significant transformation of the system. So she really didn't raise it as an issue, and it just went unresolved. And now you can see what an incredible mess it is and how something dramatic does have to be done here at some point.
- [55:31]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, well, I hope so. I don't know because everyone says that every year and, you know, just continue.
- [55:35]
Crystal Ball
Or things will just get, you know, get worse and it'll become just like a luxury for the ultra rich.
- [55:39]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, let's stick with that because I can't tell you how much this bothered me. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. And this is, by the way, if you're a Democrat, this is why you should be mad. So Amy Klobuchar put out her example of rising Obamacare premiums. She says early retirees like Bill and Shelley will see their health insurance Premiums increase nearly 300% from $442 to $1700 per month. If Congress refuses to extend the Hands Tax Credits, that's an extra 15K a year families cannot afford. Put the article up because this is why it's so popular. Perfect. Could you not find literally anybody else than two early retirees who are. These are Gen xers in their 50s who apparently are early retired earning a six figure pension income. Now I want to be clear, I don't begrudge anybody for early retirement, but you're not exactly a sympathetic test case for why we should be paying more in ACA premiums. So this is the current messaging I signed by the same thing actually from Jeff Merkley where they find some boomers who are like right on the edge around Medicare and look, oh, these poor people are gonna have to pay more for healthcare. I'm like, yeah, you know, get a fucking job like at a certain, like, I'm sorry, I don't feel sorry for you. Whenever that family health insurance premium is going up to some $27,000 per year. Like. And actually the least sympathetic people in the world are early retirees who presumably if you're willing to retire at some 50 years old and you have $130,000 a year pension income, you're sitting on some serious assets. Assets not only your homes and your stocks. This is the issue that I find with a lot of the current messaging is that they have found like these least sympathetic test cases of elderly folks when even people who are not on Obamacare, let's say the average family of four making 110,000 less than the pension income of these early retirees, their premium is up to is some $27,000 for a family. So that's just my personal thing. And she was getting dunked up on quite a bit for this. But I'm sorry, I don't want to hear about the plight of the early retired middle class, upper middle class rich. Like that is not the sympathetic test case for who we should be thinking about.
- [57:47]
Crystal Ball
FAIR could have chosen a better example. And this is there's been multiple of these. But like what you're describing is actually not to go too like deep or philosophical or overthink it or whatever. But this is actually the core problem with neoliberalism. It is like when you have this piecemeal system where some people benefit and some people don't benefit and it's not universal, then yeah, you can create a lot of resentment against Bill and Shelley who retired early and want to be able to travel more and are about to get hit very hard with high premiums and their lifestyle is going to be curtailed. People are like, well, fuck them. I don't want to have to subsidize their lifestyle. The idea of a universal program and why Social Security is so popular, why Medicare is so popular is because. Because everyone, by and large, benefits. Everyone feels like they pay in, everyone feels like they benefit. And so it doesn't create these weird resentments which allow people to divide and conquer, because that then gets used to say, well, then we shouldn't extend the subsidies for everyone. Well, you're mostly gonna be not hurting Bill and Shelley. They're actually gonna be okay. You're mostly gonna be hurting a lot of other people who are just gonna be kicked off of health insurance because they cannot afford it, who are gonna end up with some catastrophic situation in the emergency room. And by the way, it's Pennywise and pound foolish because we're gonna end up paying at the end of the day, just for care that's wildly more expensive than it would be if they had just been in the insurance system. So that's why we need to support universal programs and not this, like, piecemeal nonsense of like, you know, Obamacare is a good example of like a neoliberal solution, which, by the way, Obamacare, which is a disaster, is still better than what we had before. You know, in key ways. It, it is significantly better than what we had before, but it's still wildly insufficient and still creates these insane incentives. And at bottom is a for profit system that has completely failed.
- [59:36]
Sagar Enjeti
The thing is, when people say that, what they mean is in the aggregate. So, yeah, it's better that more people are insured, but then everybody else's prices are higher. And that's the issue broadly, why people get mad. I take your point about universalism, but having seen how politics progress, Bill and Shelley get everything they want. Okay? Bill and Shelley are getting their property tax. Their governor of the state of Florida is comparing property tax to buying a television and renting it from Best Buy. That is the level of intellectual analysis that we have on their behalf. They get tax breaks in every state in the country, all their Social Security. Now they literally get Social Security tax free, which is crazy. So it's like you get tax free Social Security, you get free health care from the government when they eventually become 64 bottoms. The limited pocket or unlimited pockets when it comes to dialysis, end of life care, cardiac health insurance. If you are a family of four with two children, you're paying $27,000. In theory, it'd be nice if we had some sort of universal coverage, but in practicality, what it always comes back to is Bill and Shelley.
- [60:35]
Crystal Ball
And are you arguing then that the substation be extended? Like, what do you actually are. What's the point you're making?
- [60:42]
Sagar Enjeti
To be honest, in the interior room, from the data that I have seen, while there are families that will benefit from it, a huge portion of the benefit pool actually are boomers. Like, they're boomer retirees, people. Exactly like this. And I do, really philosophically, I'm like, man, I don't want to be subsidizing.
- [60:58]
Crystal Ball
I'm just talking about. You're talking about 15 million people who will lose their homes.
- [61:03]
Sagar Enjeti
But see, that's in the aggregate.
- [61:04]
Crystal Ball
So then let's look at the aggregate.
- [61:06]
Sagar Enjeti
Data for a lot of these early retiree types who, to be honest, again, probably paid off health care, probably paid off house, probably have decent number of stock portfolio. Yeah, it's hard to stomach whenever there's. When people who are families. But think about 27 through $30,000 in health care.
- [61:23]
Crystal Ball
But again, the fact that like. Like, it's all a mess, right? So you just want them to suffer more so that we all suffer. Like.
- [61:30]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, I think. I think they should have to pay more.
- [61:31]
Crystal Ball
The thing you're ignoring too, though, is let's say that, you know, the 15 million that. That cannot afford health insurance because the premium. Premiums hike. And it's not just boomers, and it's not just, you know, people who are not particularly sympathetic. You're talking about families, you're talking about small business. You're talking about a lot of people, right? Talking about you and your family. You know, those people get out of the system, prices are going to go up for everyone, for everyone, including the people you find sympathetic. And like I said, you're not saving money because ultimately they're gonna end up in the emergency room. You're receiving the most expensive care. So that's what I'm saying is like, they picked a poor example, sure. But this is a problem that has to be dealt with. And in the interim, the best thing we can do at the moment is extend the subsidies so that we don't have this, you know, mass sort of casualty event. And it doesn't look like that's happening. It looks like the premiums are going to go up in an astronomical way. I think it's going to be. Democrats are betting that it's going to be politically disastrous for Republicans, it may be. I don't know. I don't know how politics works any anymore. We'll see. But there's no doubt that it's gonna create pain across the board, not just for the people that you hate and have contempt for.
- [62:42]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, it's not that I have contempt, it's that they. Oh, okay, maybe I do.
- [62:47]
Crystal Ball
Yeah.
- [62:47]
Sagar Enjeti
I mean, I just. I continue to watch people who I know, who are my age have unaffordable healthcare, unaffordable housing. And then I see these people take to the CNBCs and the MSNBCs of the world lobbying for no property tax, lobbying for more free health care care, lobbying for free dialysis. I'm like, man, this is making me angry because they get every single thing that they want and a lot of the people I see struggling don't really get it. And it just seems that the system is designed for the people who are old.
- [63:12]
Crystal Ball
I would also say that just makes me mad. I would also say, though, that the precariousness is creeping up and up. Like with education being so expensive, with healthcare being so expensive, with housing being so expensive.
- [63:26]
Sagar Enjeti
You're right.
- [63:27]
Crystal Ball
Right. Boomers who were able to establish themselves in their career, go to college at a time when it was wildly less expensive, and get a house when it was much less expensive, like, they are doing better than younger generations. But that precarity with the cost of food, with the cost of energy going up, that is really creeping up. Not just ages, but in terms of also income levels.
- [63:46]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's true.
- [63:47]
Crystal Ball
You know, and so you have more and more people who you would look at their income and be like, oh, they should be fine. Who are struggling because the cost of everything. Now, are they the most empathetic case? No. But in a lot of ways, they're not in such a different boat than a lot of people that people would find to be more compelling again, which is why I think we need universal programs so that you don't have the ability to pit different, more or less sympathetic groups against each other in order to block any sort of a beneficial solution for everyone. Because if the subsidies go away, it's going to be bad for almost. Almost everyone. The ultra rich, of course they're going to be completely fine, but for people across the income spectrum, it's going to be a real problem for them and another big blow to our healthcare system.
- [64:34]
Sagar Enjeti
I don't dispute it. You're right, it's going to be bad for the health care system. I'm more thinking broadly, to be honest. I think that these people should have to pay the most. I think that if early retirees, people who are in the 60s and all, they should pay more than people who our families. I think that though, especially if you are already have your kids out of the house, paid off out, and the casualty or whatever is coming from your ability to travel. I'm like, man, I do not want to hear that when I could see people who are 25, 28, can't buy a house, not able to afford anything. I'm like, somebody eventually does have to pay for something. It can't all just be Kumbaya where they're okay and these people down at the bottom are all supposedly exactly the same. At the end of the day, if we want to talk about who the subsidies should come from, from right now, it's bottom up, quite literally from a generational level. And I think it should be, how about they lobbied dramatically against it?
- [65:24]
Crystal Ball
How about we reverse all of the tax cuts to the rich from the one big beautiful bill and we use it to pay for healthcare subsidies so that everybody can afford.
- [65:31]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, here's the irony though. Who's the rich in this country? It's old people. They're the ones who are gonna, they're the ones who are gonna lobby against it the most. Look at their overall net worth, everything.
- [65:40]
Crystal Ball
That's why it's more important to have a class analysis than an age based analysis. Because there are plenty of people who are struggling as well. I'm not, you know, in terms of accuracy, just in terms of like understanding the structure of society and who we should actually be positioning ourselves against and what sort of divides we should be striking. I don't think it's a generational war, it's a class war. Now you're right. Boomers tend to have more, you know, more wealth accumulated. Certainly the billionaire class class, it's not even like, I'm not even sure. I could say the billionaire class is disproportionately boomer, probably. But in any case, I'm thinking some.
- [66:18]
Sagar Enjeti
Of the tax guys, I was gonna.
- [66:19]
Crystal Ball
Say Elon Zuckerberg and whatever, but you know, that's the people who get their way, especially with this administration, are the oligarchs. That's who actually has the power. And so those are the people that we need to be taxing more. Those are the people whose power we need to be constraining. This goes back to the AI conversation as well.
- [66:37]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, I think that's true, but a of lot little bit limited because it's not all gonna come from them. It's like I said, I mean you have this entire state of Florida who is run by a cartel of the elderly who do everything in their power to bilk the federal government for healthcare, for bailouts every time they get hit by a hurricane and doing everything in their power on the state level to make sure that families visiting Disney have to subsidize their entire way of life and they don't have to pay a dime in property tax, in school, tax, tax and nothing as long as those people are also included in this.
- [67:08]
Crystal Ball
You want to hate on Florida, I will join you in that crusade.
- [67:10]
Sagar Enjeti
Okay, good. Great.
- [67:12]
Crystal Ball
All right. All right, let's get to Israel.
- [67:28]
Lenovo Ad Voice
Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
- [67:33]
Still using yesterday's tech Upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultra Light Ultra powerful and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed and AI powered performance that keeps up with your business, not the other way around.
- [67:47]
Whoa, this thing moves.
- [67:48]
Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search@lenovo.com Lenovo Lenovo unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 carbon powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create and boost productivity all on one device.
- [68:08]
American Military University Ad Voice
Get ready to power up your play with Nintendo Switch 2. Power up the visuals with 4K support and a bigger, more vivid screen. Power up the fun with exclusive new games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong bonanza. Nintendo Switch 2 all together anytime, anywhere. Games rated E to E10 games and systems sold separately. Compatible TV required for 4K display.
- [68:36]
Sagar Enjeti
Wednesdays on BET an all new episode of 106 in Sports from executive producers LeBron James and Maverick Carter. Ashley, Nicole Moss and Cam Newton break down top moments in sports, culture and Entertainment. Check out 106 in sports on BET and next day on BET.
- [68:53]
Crystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.