C (41:43)
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All right, let's get back into the show. I think so. I, I think one of the things that is in common with both of these policies with the, the tariff dividend and, and, and the 50 year mortgage is that both of them are acts of desperation. They're, they're, you know, look, trying to give people a $2,000 check is going shit. I know I'm tanking in the polls and I know I'm losing popularity, but at least I could come, I could get some more people to vote for the Republicans in the midterm if we just send him a check. Now obviously this will lead to disaster. It will make the country worse off. Right, right, it will make the country worse off, as it always does. But in the short term, I might be able to get through the midterms and then this scheme with the 50 year mortgage is essentially going, well, look, we've had a real problem here. It's like the game of musical chairs is running out. There's less and less chairs and when the music stops, we might be, you know, the prices are going up and up and the interest rates have been going up and monthly payments are getting more and more unaffordable. And so what happens is that if you spread the money you're borrowing over 50 years rather than 30 years, you save a couple hundred bucks a month on, on, you know, your, your mortgage payments. And so in the shortest of short runs, that is better for somebody. Right now in the long run, you're paying like almost twice as much interest to the bank. So like if you run the numbers, like if, if you take out like a $500,000 loan and you could look at like what you end up paying, the 30 year life of a mortgage or you look at what you'd end up paying on the 50 year life. It's like hundreds of thousands of dollars extra that are going to the bank. So obviously pretty good deal for the big banks, which is so weird because that always seems to be the case. Every government policy always seems to be really good for the big banks, which is always a real puzzle to put together. But so now look, it is true that like you can make creative arguments with all this stuff. So you could say that even though somebody is going to, let's say somebody is going to pay more money in interest to the Big banks over this thing, okay? They're saving money every month. And so you could argue like if they took that money they were saving every month and they invested that money, then maybe they could make up the difference or something like that. By the way, still a pretty good deal for the banks. You got to go gamble your money to see if you can make that. They're guaranteed that they get way more money or they can come foreclose on your house. Still seems like a pretty good deal for them. Not such a great deal for you. But then I guess the bigger point of all of this, Rob, is that it. It's just got a feel of like, like student loan forgiveness type thing. I mean, what. You're not even kind of addressing the core of the problem here. And you know, the core of the problem here is that it's, everything's getting too expensive. The currency debasement is catching up. You know, the, the essence of the problem here really is robust, that we, simple as it is, right, we have a government that is so big we can't afford it. We can't afford the size of government that we have. This is not overly complicated. It's for pretty obvious reasons. You know, you, you can only tax so much. There's, there's, you know, even if you raise tax rates to, to 90%, you know, you're not going to get that much different revenue. It just, it affects behavior. People don't produce that much more when they're at getting taxed at 90%. So you can only tax so much, and then you can actually only borrow so much, and then you start printing the money. And that's the only way to have a government this big is to have constant currency debasement. They can call these fancy words like monetary policy or quantitative easing, but it is no different. It is really no different than like ancient Rome diluting their gold coins, just making your money worth less. And as that happens, the money doesn't go as far, so things become more and more expensive. And that's what's destroying the middle class. It's what's destroying the young. What is it that's so big about this government? Well, it's basically two categories. Well, I mean, interest on the debt now is becoming a really big category itself, but it is the military and the entitlements. We've, we're dead set on being a world empire, which is illegal. It is not what we're supposed to be, and it's not what the American people have ever decided to be. And then we have these giant entitlement programs that are huge transfers of wealth from the young to the old, from a poorer group to a wealthier group there. And both of them are indefensible and inexcusable. But the problem is no one, including President Trump, has the fucking balls to even mention that. That's the problem. None of them have the fucking balls to say it. Because you know what, if you say, hey, we might have to look at some Social Security cuts, old people don't like that. And you know, old people, Rob, they tend to vote Republican and they tend to vote in real high numbers. You say you're going to get rid of their Medicare. Old people don't really like that and they vote in high numbers and they vote for Republicans. So it's not politically expedient for Donald Trump to ever mention anything about entitlements. And also he, you know, there's a whole bunch of weapons contractors and the whole establishment is the war party. So he goes, no, we'll have a trillion dollar budget. That's what I call for a trillion dollar Pentagon budget and will never touch the entitlements. And then you're left in a position where all you have are these harebrained schemes like this because you can't get to the fundamental problem, which is that the prices are getting crazy expensive. It's just like college. You, I talked to, I talked about my father in law about this. He, he bought his first house in the 70s and it was like, I think it was like around two years income, you know, like he was, he was, he started having kids young. So I think he bought his first house around 22, 23 years old. This is in the 1970s. It's not, you know, ancient history, although it feels like it. I think he was making like 16 grand a year and he bought a house for like 30 grand. Now he did take out a mortgage. He didn't buy it in cash, but, but you know, when you talk, you're talking about a mortgage that's a few thousand dollars, you know what I mean? Like, it's not like that, that big of a thing and it's just like, but he could buy a house young in his life. You know, I heard it was interesting today. I saw on the Ron Paul Liberty Report shout out to the goat, Ron Paul and, and Dan McAdams. Ron Paul was talking about how his father bought a house for cash in the middle of the Great Depression. And he goes, you know, not like it was, he goes, it wasn't like a mansion, but he goes, it's a nice house, a nice lawn, nice little property. He bought it in the middle of the Great Depression for cash. You know, it's like we, we take it. Much like with college, you just take it as a given that this thing costs $200,000 a year. But like why the hell does it, why should it, why do we have to go into a 30 yet, let alone a 50 year mortgage to purchase a house? Like it wasn't written in the stars that that's the way this has to be. It's, it's all over this monetary policy and other government interventions. And so like the, the thing is that there's no reason right now, Rob, the average age of a first time homebuyer is 40, 40 years old. Now. There's no reason why it has to be like that. Especially when you think about how much richer we are right now than in the Great Depression again, on every level, how much easier we can build homes, how much better we can build homes, how much like how much better we do everything now compared to the Great Depression. But you could buy it for cash then and now you got to be a debt slave to the bank for life. That is crazy, okay? And there's no reason why it has to be like that. It simply doesn't. This is all just a government policy, but they're unwilling to address the root cause here. And so instead all they can do is try to come up with these schemes that will obviously make the problem worse long term, but might get you through a midterm election. It's really, it's really pathetic.
