It's a Numbers Game: Oren Cass on Financialization—How Wall Street “Grifts” the Real Economy

Summary

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The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Episode: It's a Numbers Game: Oren Cass on Financialization—How Wall Street “Grifts” the Real Economy
Date: February 18, 2026
Host: Ryan Gradusky (guest-host for "A Numbers Game" segment)
Guest: Oren Cass, Chief Economist and Founder of American Compass

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Episode Overview

This episode focuses on the concept of "financialization" in the U.S. economy—how Wall Street and the broader financial sector have shifted away from productive investment, extracting value from the "real economy" in ways that harm long-term growth, job quality, and public trust in capitalism itself. Ryan Gradusky interviews Oren Cass, whose recent New York Times op-ed calls financialization a “grift.” Together, they explore the mechanics of financialization, its effects on innovation, employment, and societal wellbeing, and why Cass believes it undermines both conservative values and effective capitalism.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Definition and Understanding of Financialization

• What Is Financialization?
  Oren Cass defines it as the "shift in the orientation of the economy toward financial transactions as ends unto themselves"—where financial activities become more focused on trading, speculation, and fee generation, rather than productive investment in actual businesses (15:25).

  “Financial markets…have exploded as a share of GDP…not because they’re deploying capital productively…[but] more lives almost parasitically off of the real economy, treating operating businesses as financial assets and trying to extract value.”
  —Oren Cass (16:00)

• Growth of the Financial Sector
  Cass notes that finance is now the largest sector for corporate profits, drawing top talent and resources away from productive fields.

2. Talent and “Brain Drain”

• Financial incentives pull America's brightest (including engineers) into finance, at the cost of sectors like medicine and engineering (17:55).

  “Both, just descriptively, it is true that the financial rewards are higher…It’s not just top business schools—it’s also where engineers are going.”
  —Oren Cass (18:02)

3. Moral Arbitrage and Financialization in Everyday Life

• Moral Arbitrage:
  Financial firms target sectors not traditionally run for profit—like youth sports, nursing homes, or veterinary practices—to extract additional value (19:47).

  “You’re basically looking for businesses...that you wouldn’t want to see run just for maximum profit...if we buy up these things and run them for maximum profit, we can sell them for more.”
  —Oren Cass (19:50)

• Examples:

  • Family spending spikes in youth sports due to financial sector investments (20:25)
  • Soaring costs and profit-seeking in nursing home care (21:05)

4. Impact on the Real Economy and Society

• Resource Misallocation and Competitiveness
  Financialization diverts capital from long-term, risky, asset-intensive investments (e.g., manufacturing, infrastructure) towards high-return financial trading, undermining America’s global economic leadership (24:15, 26:52).

  “You have a mental model that says, whatever is most profitable is best…You have much less investment in those really important industries.”
  —Oren Cass (25:02)

• Innovation and China Comparison:
  While America remains innovative in some areas (AI, biotech), Cass notes that China now leads commercially in most “frontier technologies” (26:52).

  “If you look at who is actually leading in what it defines as frontier technologies…the U.S. used to lead in all of them…China now leads in virtually all of them.”
  —Oren Cass (27:02)

5. Employment: Quantity vs. Quality

• Financialization doesn’t reduce the number of jobs but hurts their quality—wages, job satisfaction, the ability to support a family (28:54).

  “The question is, what kind of jobs are they? …the quality of their conditions, what they’re being paid, improving? …the answer is no, not even a little.”
  —Oren Cass (29:13)

6. Critiques from the “Old Right” and Market Fundamentalism

• Cass argues traditional right-of-center economic commentators dismiss critiques of financialization by reflexively defending all market outcomes as “good,” rather than engaging substantively (32:23–34:32).

  “The arguments … tend to be, ‘You’re stupid and don’t understand anything…markets work and profit equals value. Therefore anyone saying anything else must be wrong—QED, end of story.’”
  —Oren Cass (32:23)

• “Market Fundamentalism”:
  Cass compares rigid defenses of financial markets to a religion:

  “Market fundamentalism…relies on strict adherence to a set of dogma…not intended to fit well with the modern world.”
  —Oren Cass (36:50)

7. Conservative Principles and a Better Way Forward

• Cass argues for a pragmatic, prudential conservatism that acknowledges problems in the system rather than denying them (42:09, 44:08).

  “It’s important to apply conservative principles to the world as it is…There’s a tremendous amount of constructive work to be done…just being willing to try to look clearly at…the actual challenges we have.”
  —Oren Cass (42:09–44:08)

8. Financialization’s Threat to Capitalism's Public Perception

• Per Cass, many Americans lose faith in capitalism seeing unproductive, extractive Wall Street profits, fueling anti-capitalist sentiment (45:13).

  “If you are doing lots of stuff and making lots of money in ways that are not productive, people are going to look at that and say, wait a minute, this system isn’t working.”
  —Oren Cass (45:13)

• Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists:
  Cass stresses that profit without value-creation damages the system’s legitimacy:

  “There is nothing worse for capitalism than standing up and saying, my high-frequency trading hedge fund is capitalism.”
  —Oren Cass (45:37)

9. AI, Bubbles, and Speculation

• The current AI investment surge is like the dot-com bubble: likely to yield some transformative winners, but most are speculative bets with negative broader effects if too intertwined with the real economy (49:57–53:58).

  “Where you do have an important new technology…lots of entrepreneurs placing lots of bets…A whole bunch of stuff ends up not working out…and some of it does.”
  —Oren Cass (50:10) “What concerns me more…is increasingly circular behavior—passing things around in a circle.”
  —Oren Cass (52:34)

• The risk is systemic only if bubbles in AI and finance become entangled in core banking or retirement funds; currently, we’re at a speculative stage, similar to the 1990s/early 2000s dot-com era.

10. Concluding Thoughts and Where to Find More

• Cass directs listeners to AmericanCompass.org and their online magazine, Commonplace, for thoughtful conservative approaches to economic reform (54:07).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On financialization as a “grift”:

  “[Wall Street] more lives almost parasitically off of the real economy…treating operating businesses that are creating products and services…as financial assets and trying to extract value out of them.”
  —Oren Cass (16:00)

• On the quality of jobs:

  “If you’re asking…do [jobs] allow you to support a family and provide middle class security?...the answer on all of those fronts is no, not even a little.”
  —Oren Cass (29:13)

• On market dogma:

  “The arguments that come back tend to just sort of be, ‘you’re stupid…everybody knows that’s not true…the markets work…end of story, move on to various insults.’”
  —Oren Cass (32:23)

• On capitalism and extractive profit:

  “You can earn a good profit by creating new value. It does not have to be a zero-sum game…the ones we’re talking about here exist because you have a financialization where people are trying to generate profit without creating anything of value.”
  —Oren Cass (47:26)

• On conservative thought:

  “Conservatism is not an ‘ism’…an ‘ism’ is an ideology…We are the antithesis to that as a thought process.”
  —Ryan Gradusky (37:45)

• On prudent conservatism:

  “There is a tremendous amount of constructive work to be done…just in being willing to try to look clearly at…challenges we have and…apply conservative principles to…do something about them.”
  —Oren Cass (44:08)

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• [15:04] — Oren Cass introduction and financialization defined
• [17:55] — Discussion on the brain drain toward Wall Street
• [19:47] — “Moral arbitrage” and the financialization of youth sports, nursing homes
• [24:15] — How financialization makes America less globally competitive
• [26:52] — U.S. vs. China in “frontier technologies”
• [28:54] — Impact of financialization on the quality (not quantity) of American jobs
• [32:23] — Cass critiques the “old right” response to financialization
• [36:50] — “Market fundamentalism” as a conservative dogma
• [42:09] — On applying conservative principles to real-world problems
• [44:08] — Constructive conservative reform and honest diagnosis
• [45:13] — Financial sector undermining faith in capitalism
• [49:57] — AI investment, bubbles, speculation, and systemic risk
• [54:07] — Where to find more from Oren Cass and American Compass

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Episode Tone and Style

• The conversation was thoughtful and accessible, with Cass providing clear explanations of complex topics and Gradusky emphasizing the importance of practical, sometimes contrarian, conservative analysis.
• Tone was pragmatic, intellectually curious, and occasionally humorous—notably in tangents comparing market dogma to religious fundamentalism and discussing the need for a “non-ism” approach in conservatism.
• The dialogue aimed to bridge academic debates and real-life impacts, making the content digestible for listeners who don’t follow finance closely.

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Useful For

• Anyone interested in understanding why Americans feel economically left behind despite positive macroeconomic numbers
• Listeners skeptical of both left-wing and right-wing economic orthodoxies
• Conservatives interested in reforming capitalism to be more resilient, productive, and broadly beneficial

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Transcript

[Ryan Gradusky]

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That's bombus.com and use code Audio Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S P500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures this.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? Business software is expensive and when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting, all linked and talking to each other. Check out odoo@o d o o dot com. That's o d o o dot com.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Gradusky. Thank you all for being here. Did you know that airlines make more profits from credit card partnerships with loyalty programs often acting as the primary driver for profitability instead of ticket sales? Now, you know, I didn't write that sentence because the way it came out, but basically airport airlines are acting more as banks than they are as airplane, as airlines, as people who fly all the time. Which would explain why certain things about air travel are not improving and other things are getting actually a lot easier. I know you're probably thinking, ryan, what on earth are you talking about? It's called financialization. It's how investment banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, cryptocurrency platforms are increasingly a larger part of our economy. And our guest today, Oren Cast, says it's a grift. He'll be on a little later to discuss before we get into financialization. And I try to, by the way, make it as easily obtainable and palpable for people with my level of intellect, which is on the lower end than, than people who are smarter than, you know, people who read the Wall Street Journal and can sit there and argue with paper themselves every day. I want to discuss what happened over the weekend with me because I went out, I'm in New Orleans, obviously, Happy Mardi Gras for those who celebrated. I'm taping on Tuesday. You know, happy Ash Wednesday. It's Lent. For all my fellow Catholics out there, if you haven't thought of something to give up, now's the time. And no meat on Fridays. But I was in Mardi Gras over the weekend in New Orleans, and I'm in the city and I run into a British friend of mine, and he's out with a bunch of Brits. And he's works in politics. He's super fun sprinting. He's, let's get, you know, lunch together. I said, okay, sure, we get lunch. Me, him and the other Brits. And one was a foreign war correspondent. And I was so fascinated by him because I'm like, what's, you know, where have you been in, you know, in conflict zones? And he was telling me how he was in Libya while Gaddafi was being overthrown. Actually, what I did ask him, because, you know, I I sat there and said to him, what's the worst nation you've ever been to and why is it Pakistan? He did laugh at that joke. But I said, what was, you know, Libya like under the overthrow of Gaddafi? And he's talking about, you know, you know, lines of supplies falling apart and the bombings and, you know, hearing bullets whiz past his head. And then he said, this was the case, why Western countries should have intervened more and at larger lengths, at greater lengths and than they did, you know, and in the last, obviously, 15 years or 20 years since Kadab, I guess 15 years since Kadabi's been overthrown, Libya is a failed state. It's been through civil wars constantly. And I argued, no, actually, what had the west not intervened, had Gaddafi been able to destroy the rebels, which he would have done had not America started bombing his tanks, less people would have likely died than died out of Western compassionism for overthrowing a dictator in Africa. Right, because more than 30,000 died in that conflict, 15,000 died since that conflict. And it's unloaded wide levels of instability in Northern Africa. Libya, as I said, is a failed state. They're practicing slavery again. And also Europe, Europe dealt with a tremendous unstable situation because they had to deal with Gaddafi to keep, you know, hordes of Third Worlders trying to move from Africa, move from Africa to Europe away. And it was a. It was a disaster. You know, they ended up there going to Italy and then from Italy going to Britain, Germany, Sweden and the rest of the places. And they said, you know, they went back and forth and they were like, no intervention was the right way of the right plan. We should have intervened her, you know, more in Syria and Libya and Egypt and got boots on the ground. And I finally was like, who? To all these Brits, I was like, who. Who should have done this? Because I know you're not talking about the British military, which is the size of, you know, a booth at Denny's, and, like, which European countries, which. In what fantasy world? And I really like these people. So I was. I was not. This was not a fight. Like, I never spoke to him again, but I just sat there and said, was like, in what fantasy world do you believe that the old victors of World War II can get together and, you know, run a. Run a show and recolonize the entire world or spread democracy? Like, what vision and alternate reality are you living in? Because it's the US and the UK and who it's on Russia, who fought in World War II. It's not Russia who's helping us? Is it the French, the Germans, who, you know, have a miniature army? Is it Italy who has the largest standing army? I mean, best of luck winning a war when you only got the Italian military. And which groups of Muslim youths, the children of immigrants or immigrants themselves, are you going to convince to join Her Majesty's army and fight against Muslims in Libya? Like what, what lie are you telling yourself now to believe that you have the recruitment of capabilities and you haven't traded in or not had, I guess you had children, by the way, traded in like the youth of Britain for, you know, young Pakistanis who have no interest in joining Her Majesty's Army. His Majesty's Army. You know, you're more Muslims in the last decade joined ISIS than joined the British military. You're all being delusional. And I said, what you're saying is, I want Americans, I want white boys from farms in Iowa or Alabama or wherever to go service an ideology which has never proven very successful and go fight and possibly die in countries where marrying a 14 year old cousin is more encouraged than Christianity. I was like, I'm sorry, but no, like, no, you're not. You're. This is no, we would. Europe would have been better off had these situations of nation building and foreign intervention not taking place and spending a decade supporting Al Qaeda in Syria to continue a civil war against a dictator who didn't persecute Christians. I'm sorry. And then at that point, it was taking a while to get drinks. At one point, my British friend, to kind of defuse the situation, said he goes, I knew an hour or two of getting drinks, Garduski would start defending African dictators. But whatever it was, it was, it was funny and it was interesting. Then we ended up changing the conversation, but it happened. I thought it was interesting that this conversation happened. My country, my British friends, around the same time that Secretary of State Marco Rubio went over to Germany and had a lot of the same sentiments. I've criticized Rubio a lot in the past when he was a senator, especially a young senator, but this speech was phenomenal. It was. If he would have closed it by sitting there saying, and that's why I'm running for president, not only with the Europeans have clapped, but most Republicans would have clapped. He celebrated what unites Western people, Western civilization and Christianity, and that we are all kind of in this together. The speech, it speeches too long for me to play, you know, but look it up. I mean, it's like 30 minutes long, but if you have something to do. You're doing dishes. Look, listen to the Rubio speech. It is absolutely brilliant. And, and I think that it goes into a deeper conversation of who Westerners, those in Europe, those in America, those in the Anglo world of Australia and Canada, who we are, because for so long we have been beaten down that our connection is some kind of disgusting dark history rather than its glorious moments. And our glorious moments haven't just come in the shape of, you know, promoting liberty to some third world country. Our glorious moments have been achieving freedom, prosperity, expanding the Christian ideology in our own countries. Right. No one looks at Notre Dame Cathedral and things think of all the money that could have gone to, you know, roads in Libya had we sat there and not built this cathedral over again. No, we celebrate our own culture and what makes it. It creates the basic tenants of our civilization. Anyway, it's, the Rubio speech is fabulous. And the conversation was happening around the same time, so reminding me that. And I was like, you know what, let me bring it up to my audience because I, and I have European listeners. But like, this is such an important point that needs to be really thought about currently when it comes to what unites us and why we should not be ashamed of what has united us, why we should not be ashamed of our collective history. And we concluded the lunch by I think, talking about Hasidic Jewish birth rates versus Amish birth rates. It was very, very, you know, it was weird, but it was great. It was great. Okay, next up is my guest Econom as Oren Cass. He's here to talk about the economy and why over financialization is bad for it. Stay tuned.

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[Jacob Goldstein]

Is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? Business software is expensive and when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting. All linked and talking to each other. Check out [e-mail] that's O-O-O.com Pro drivers.

[Oren Cass]

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[Ryan Gradusky]

Oren Cass is the chief economist and founder of American Compass. It's a think tank in Washington. Thank you for being here, Oren.

[Oren Cass]

Oh, thanks for having me.

[Ryan Gradusky]

So, like many people who read the sunny New York Times, I was very interested in your op ed from two Sundays ago about the financialization of the economy and how it's a grift really hurting both capitalism and the overall country. Can you start by just explaining what financialization is?

[Oren Cass]

Yeah, that's an important place to start. We were well into the editing. We were well into the editing before someone was like, we don't actually have a definition of financialization in the piece. That's a good point. You know, there are sort of technical academic definitions of it, but I think generally what it means and what I have in mind when I use it is it is a shift in the orientation of the economy toward financial transactions as ends unto themselves. Because I Think it's important to say, like, I think financial markets are incredibly important. I am here because I think capitalism is a very good economic system. I think we need financial markets. I think we need people who bring capital together and deploy it, and they are entitled to a good return on investment when they do. What we have seen in the US in recent decades, though, is something very different, which is that financial markets and the financial sector have exploded as a share of gdp. They're now the largest source of corporate profits by sector. They attract a lot of the top talent from business schools. And yet that's not because they are doing ever more of that important thing of deploying capital productively. In fact, productive deployment of capital has been going down. And so what you're seeing instead is this industry that, that sort of more lives almost parasitically off of the real economy, taking those real operating businesses that, that are creating products and services of value, creating good jobs for Americans and just treating them as financial assets and trying to figure out how to extract value out of them, trying to figure out how to trade stuff around in circles, to speculate, to generate fees and profits in the financial market totally unrelated to anything productive happening in the real world.

[Ryan Gradusky]

And something I've noticed recently, I mean, I think we're around the same age, so it's not recently, but it's people who were college graduates when I, when I was supposed to be going to college like 15 years ago, is that a lot of people who had the brains to become engineers or doctors went into the financial sector because you can make a lot of money in a relatively quick time. Do you think that there is a brain drain of sorts where other, you know, we can't say why are we graduating more engineers, why am I graduating more doctors? And because the financial incentives to work in finance are so overwhelming compared to those other fields.

[Oren Cass]

Oh, that's, that's absolutely the case. Both, just descriptively, it is true that the financial rewards are higher and, and you can see it in where people choose to go. And it's, it's not just that this is where people from top business schools are going first and foremost, it's also where engineers are going. And so you look at, you know, places like mit, you look at people who are even pursuing education and degrees in technical, scientific, engineering fields even, they are much more so than in the past than heading to Wall Street. And I think it's important to say, you know this. There's nothing, well, on the fringes, there may be illegal things going on, but, but the core Problem here isn't illegality. Right. It's, it's not a scam where people are being sort of, you know, ripped off and lied to. It's a, a system that we have set up and blessed and promoted where these are the places where the biggest returns are. And we just can't expect capitalism to work well if the best way to pursue profit is to either, you know, offshore stuff that, that is here, or go work on Wall street and find ways to buy it and sell it and trade it around in a circle.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Right. And the crazy thing for me is a while ago I had a relative who's got young boys tell me that the financial sector was investing in youth sports, and I kind of didn't believe him. But then it was brought up in your article, and I read more about it. How is, how is the financialization economy working in the sense that, like, Wall street would never get involved in, like, youth travel sports, but there's a lot of money to be made almost everywhere. So they're getting to places in the economy that you or I would not think of and definitely wouldn't be there 15 years ago.

[Oren Cass]

Yeah, that's. That's exactly right. And it's a phenomenon that I call moral arbitrage. You know, the, the idea of arbitrage generally is, is particularly in financial markets, you go find things that you can buy at a lower price from one place and sell at a higher price in another. And what's going on with moral arbitrage is you're basically looking for businesses, industries that have not typically been run for maximum profit, that you wouldn't want to see run just for maximum profit. And you're saying, hey, if we buy up a bunch of these things based on what they're worth, not run for maximum profit, and then run them for maximum profit, we can sell them for more.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Yeah, and travel sports. So, like, if your kid's a travel hockey player at 12 years old, the chance of going to the NHL are very minimal, but parents will spend, instead of 3,000 a year, $10,000 a year is what you're saying.

[Oren Cass]

Right. And it's, you know, you see it also in a lot of health fields, so not just hospitals and doctor's offices, but then nursing homes, then veterinarian practices. A fascinating recent one is, you know, services for volunteer fire department. Right there. There are all sorts of places where you can find people who've been running good businesses, making a good living, but not squeezing everybody as hard as they can and say, well, I bet we could generate More profit if we squeeze everybody as hard as we can.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Yeah, and, yeah, and, yeah. And you put a lot of family, I know of my own grandparents, when they got dementia and they were too sick to be on their own, it was, I mean, like, I think 12,000amonth to put them in a nursing home that was anywhere half decent and, or a facility to take care of them and is, I mean, the, the elderly care for, I mean, people are living longer, but elderly care for people who are not like on death, on their deathbed, but just too old to live on their own is wildly expensive.

[Oren Cass]

Yeah, no, that's right. And, and I think there's, you know, it's important to say, like there's a, a very difficult policy and societal problem here, completely independent of Wall Street. Right. About how do we want to go about supporting those folks, making sure they have good care, making sure it's affordable for families. And those would be challenges whether Wall street got involved or not. What's so remarkable and what kind of makes this, I think, sort of a flashing red light on our economy's dashboard is that you basically have a situation where in no rational sort of objective analysis would you say, hey, you know, where like the most money, like the best place to go really make a lot of money is like nursing home care. Right. And so if that's what people now think is the case, something has clearly broken down. And, you know, part of the problem is we have a kind of ideology. Certainly it's an issue on the right of center. It's an issue in the field of economics with folks who work in these, in, on Wall street, in these financial firms. There's this idea that if you've generated a profit, you must have created something of value. So if I buy up the nursing home, squeeze it for efficiency, maybe at the cost of worse patient outcomes and whatever else, and therefore generate higher cash flows and can sell it at a profit. There is a very strong line of thinking that says, but that profit signals I've done something good and I can therefore declare this to be success and we should therefore want more of this to happen and we can all feel good about it when, when, when that is simply, there is no support for that either in, in, you know, the idea of ideas of Adam Smith or anybody else about capitalism, nor does it align in any way with, with common sense.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Well, it's also extremely politically unpopular. And I know you worked for him or you were helping on his campaign with Mitt Romney, but his career definitely haunted him in a lot of places. The fact that they accused him and I don't know if it's true or not, but the accusations always where he would fire people, strip it down to, you know, the bare minimum and sell them businesses and it def extremely unpopular voters. So I read. So after reading your great op ed, very interesting and thought provoking, I read a lot of criticism from, from the usual suspects, right? National Review, Manhattan Institute, the Wall Street Journal and I wanted to ask questions that they were posing that I thought was interesting. Right. So how does financialization actually make the American economy less competitive than other economies? If we're such a thriving economy, how does financialization make us less competitive?

[Oren Cass]

Well, ultimately because it misallocates resources and part of that is it misallocates capital. So something that you see is it is much harder to get capital investment into long term, risky, asset intensive activities when you can get a higher return starting a hedge fund or trading crypto or whatever else. And so you know, we have seen.

[Ryan Gradusky]

A lot less in a bubble that doesn't it so that, yeah, I saw, I saw an AI mattress for sale and I literally was like, oh, this entire thing is fake.

[Oren Cass]

Yeah, like, I mean, so that, you know, there's a really interesting discussion to be had about how AI connects to all of this because one thing people are now realizing is look, we went to this entirely asset light software driven model. Software is going to eat the world, as you know, the saying went. And that's where all the returns are going to be now as the big tech companies are finding, wait a minute. Our success in what we want to do is actually dependent on a, on a robust physical layer in the economy. Oops, we don't have that anymore. So whether it's, you know, we don't have the ability to build out energy production rapidly, we don't have the gas turbines, we gave up on nuclear power, we can't make the transformers to expand the grid all the way to. We can't make the chips. Right? Because we said, well we'll just design chips, someone else can make them. And so at every step where you have, first of all, where you have a mental model that says, well whatever is most profitable is best, you're going to see. And we have seen much less investment in those really important industries that might not be the most attractive things in all cases to invest in at first glance, but are critically important, you know, to national security and resilience, to growth and innovation and all of these things. And so when, when you have a high degree of financialization, I think you, you both have the problem of sort of people are just looking at how do I get them, what gets me the most cash quickest. And you then have a problem that a lot of the best people who could be building new stuff are instead working on the question of what gets the most cash the quickest.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Okay, so America is though, the most innovative economy on the planet. Are you suggesting that we be more innovative if this didn't exist the way it is? It's like holding back from greater prosperity. Is that your argument? Because we are very innovative as an economy and as a country.

[Oren Cass]

We are very innovative in certain areas. So, you know, one study that it's one of these ones where it's kind of so arresting that now everybody cites it. And it's by no, by no means a perfect study, but I think gets at the point, if you look at who is actually leading in front what it defines as frontier technologies. The US used to be leading in virtually all of them, 60 or 70 different technologies. China now leads in virtually all of them. So yes, we do still lead in designing frontier artificial intelligence models. We do lead in some stuff in biotech. But if you're asking who is actually leading, whether it's in electric vehicles, whether it's in shipbuilding, whether it's in drones, whether it's in actually producing semiconductors, whether it's in pick your field, there actually aren't nearly as many places where the US at least commercially, is leading. And I think that's a really important distinction because certainly our universities, you know, at the basic research level are still generating a lot of the most important knowledge. But that almost underscores the problem. It's at that translation from idea to actual commercialized business that we no longer have the focus, the talent, the capacity to do the commercialization, the scaling, all of that stuff. And one piece of that is the financialization. And of course the other piece of that is the globalization, where we said it doesn't matter where that stuff happens. And a lot of other countries said actually it matters a lot where that happens. We'll take it.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Yeah.

[Oren Cass]

And so that's where it is now.

[Ryan Gradusky]

People who generally hate the United States were jumping at it. The other thing that was brought up was that, you know, all histor compared to historic numbers, our unemployment rate is relatively low. Has financialization economy affected employment in any way?

[Oren Cass]

So I, I think what financialization affects is, is the quality and productivity of jobs, not, not the quantity of jobs. And you know, there's sort of a formal way to make this point that you know, what people would say is basically it's our monetary policy that determines the unemployment rate, right? You can, you can always kind of reduce interest rates and heat up the economy and get more jobs created. But the question is, what kind of jobs are they? Is, is the productivity of the typical worker improving? Is, is the quality of their conditions, what they're being paid, improving? And that's where, before we get to the financialization piece, it's just important to say there's a real problem. There's no question that the unemployment rate is low, that there are many more jobs in the economy. But if you're asking what do those jobs pay, do they allow you to support a family and provide middle class security? Have they kept up in their wages with overall economic growth and with wages at the top, the answer on all of those fronts is no, not, not even a little. And a big part of the problem appears to be just that you haven't seen the productivity gains, that, that you have seen predictive productivity gains at the very top, but that the kinds of jobs we offer, the way that businesses operate simply isn't geared toward, you know, if you want productivity, you also have to make a lot of investment, and they're not geared towards sort of investing in creating higher quality jobs or succeeding in industries that are likely to have those kinds of jobs. And so, you know, it was funny, I think it was David Bonson maybe who raised this question, the unemployment rate. I'm quite certain my essay does not mention the unemployment rate.

[Ryan Gradusky]

No, it doesn't, no. But it was criticism I heard. And I was like, you know, I should ask him about that. I don't, you know, it's, I listen, I didn't go, I didn't get a degree in anything, but I look to people like you and others and even critics of yours and sit there and say, okay, where is the truth of why Americans feel like they are financially not getting ahead, but the markets are doing phenomenally well and there has to be something that is not talked about. And I'm a very simple person when it comes to my understanding of economics. So I like to sit there and kind of, you know, I, I try to make sure that I've covered every hole for people who hear your argument say, wow, it's really, really smart, and then hear a couple, you know, people throwing punches from us, from the other side of, of the intellectual aisle, and then they say, well, there you go, it must all be a lie. I want to sit there and, and, and that's why I was Asking about this. I know your article didn't bring it up, though.

[Oren Cass]

Yeah, it's, I mean, that dynamic, again, is a really important one and something I've been, you know, frustrated by, though admittedly not all that surprised by since the article came out is that, you know, I'll be the first to say a lot of the arguments that I'm making are, you know, highly contested. There are all sorts of arguments on all side of them. And, and so I think it would be great to have somebody come out and say, you know, look, here are, here are some of the reasons this, you know, we think this overstates the impacts of financialization. We think this thing he says is bad is actually good. Like, you know, here are studies showing this other, like that would all be great. Those would be really interesting arguments. And, and what's very frustrating about the, you know, the, the legacy right of center. What, what more increasingly calling sort of the old right.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Yeah.

[Oren Cass]

Is that I don't know if they're just not interested in doing that or that, that they're not equipped to do that, but the arguments that come back tend to just sort of be, you're stupid and you don't understand anything and everybody knows that's not true. And like a very sort of like per se, like, well, as we all know, markets work and, you know, people only pursue profit and make money if they're doing valuable things. Therefore anyone saying anything else must be wrong, like, qed, end of story, you know, move on to various insults. And it's just, you know, partly, it's just striking to me that, like, it's incredibly ineffective. I mean, like, be my guest if that's how you want to sort of approach the argument. You're, you're not persuading anyone like that. But I think it also just isn't very good for the right of center broadly and the sort of debates that we do have to have in conservatism.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Well, what it's so funny because this was actually my next question to you was while reading a lot of your critics, they were bringing up leftists, leftist leftist economists, lefty economists, not you, and dismantling their arguments, associating you with them, then dismantling their arguments. But they were not actually talking about your argument most of the time. And there were, sometimes I was reading, I was like, well, he never brought that up. And he never brought that up. And I find that as somebody who is not in, among the quote unquote traditional right. On a lot of subject matters and was always kind of out there on immigration before it was popular or foreign policy or whatnot. That is, that is always their go to thing is, hey, let's reference Nazism or World War II or the Cold War or some other argument that we're having on immigration, on Irish immigration from the 1800s. Talk about that. And then that answers any kind of criticisms to, towards whatever. And that was what a lot of people do. You find that's what people do on the, on the right to you all the time is like, hey, let's bring up what a communist said, say they both wear glasses, therefore Oren is just like a communist. And then dismiss the communist argument because it's not, it's not the same thing.

[Oren Cass]

Well, I, I think that's exactly right. And I think it gets at a much broader dynamic within the right of center. You know, not just on this financialization question where you had such an entrenched orthodoxy for so long. I think you sort of have an entire generation of, you know, commentators, researchers, publications that just got so comfortably in the habit of like, this is the set of arguments from the left of center that we rebut. And this is the, you know, this is what we're here to do. And as the world actually changed, as new arguments came forward, as new evidence came forward, as, you know, applying conservative principles to the world's problems brought up new ideas, they either just out of habit or because the muscles had atrophied so badly, don't actually seem to engage with what the new argument is. It's like, oh, like let me kind of like, you know, look through my file folders for the thing I pull out and say when somebody says something about financial markets, let me go to.

[Ryan Gradusky]

My insult cue card. And what I think was, since Trump really got elected, and I always, always, as I work in politics, I always equate this being political. And then I worked with Bill Crystal at the time of his election, so I was really comfortable. I, I say it's like a rabbi in ancient Israel, you know, 2,000 years ago, who's like walking down a road, sees Jesus resurrect from the dead and then has to make a choice. Am I going to convert to something that I see or am I going to double down in something that's not working? And that's not a perfect analogy, but that's one that so many people who, who really ran the roost and their heirs, their heir to ran the roost for decades almost without any criticisms. And it was extremely easy to silence critics. You could just take Them out of the major newspapers and they. Or the three television stations, and there you go, they're out. They. They've never been trained to really have a discussion from the right that is without. That's outside of their orthodoxy.

[Oren Cass]

Yeah, I. I guess I could poke a couple of holes in. In this specific analogy.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Analogy, but just the one I've made.

[Oren Cass]

But I'm actually glad you went to the religious context because, you know, I often refer to a lot of this opposition as market fundamentalism, which, you know, in some senses obviously doesn't have a great connotation. But I, I mean, in a very sort of precise, descriptive sense, like a fundamentalism is a type of ideology that. That relies on kind of very strict adherence to a sort of absolute, absolute set of dogma structured typically in. In a way that. That does not intentionally. Does not fit all that well with the modern world that is designed to create a kind of privileged class of interpreters that sort of get to say in all cases what is right and what is wrong. And by the way, that is typically premised on a, you know, at least accidental, maybe intentional misinterpretation of the. Of the original texts.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Right. And, you know, it's so funny. Sorry to cut you off, but Buchanan always used to tell me when. When I was doing. I did his. I did a show for a while. Buchanan would say conservatism is not an ism. He's like, we should never add the ism to it because it's an antithesis to cons, to an ism. And ism is an ideology. Libertarianism, socialism, communism, they are a political religion. We are the antithesis to that as a thought process. So you just brought that up and it just kind of had a flashback and it was very profound for me at the time. And a lot of it comes from his readings from like, you know, Russell Kirk and others before him. But he said, if something doesn't work, we don't have a religious doctrine or a political religion to sit there and say, these must affiliate all of the solutions. You know, ours is much looser than that strict ideology of like libertarianism or socialism.

[Oren Cass]

Yeah, no, I think that's actually right. You know, I wouldn't describe it as. As looser so much as just more pragmatic. And, you know, this is saying that going all the way to Burke sort of the, the emphasis on prudentialism was. Was so important. And I, I think you're right. It's partly. If it's not working, like, you don't have to keep Doing it. It's. It's also sort of the flip side of that, which is that just because something was true at one time doesn't mean it is true for all times in all places. And you brought this up. A great example is like, in these immigration discussions where it's like, well, let me tell you how we approach the Irish potato famine. It's like, that is absolutely true. And there are many strains of thought that would say, like, that established some principle for all times that we can apply perfectly in the situation. But that is obviously not conservative. The conservative thing to do would be to say, okay, well, what were the circumstances? You know, why did that make sense in those circumstances? What are the circumstances today? Let's, you know, maybe it turns out that we should.

[Ryan Gradusky]

The.

[Oren Cass]

The same reasoning holds, but it certainly doesn't hold automatically. Right.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Why are Somalians and Irish not the same? And why is 2025 and 1865 not the same? Yeah, that's a great point.

[Oren Cass]

Right. There's just a lot different. And I think the other thing that, you know, the. The phrase preaching to the choir sometimes gets. Gets overused because, like, there's nothing wrong with preaching to the choir, right? Like, if, you know, if you have National Review, and National Review has an audience that sort of has a particular point of view and it wants to sort of equip them with the best arguments for advancing that point of view. Like, that's an extremely legitimate function in our political system. The problem is that what a lot of these entities are increasingly doing is not so much sort of preaching to the choir as like, policing who can come into the church. Right. It's much more intended to say, like, you are in the right place here, like, the people outside are bad and like, like, please don't get up and go, like, by. For, by the way, what is like, unfortunately for them, a kind of rapidly dwindling congregation. It is a sort of ideological enforcement mechanism more than anything that I think you see really comes out in some of the responses to this financialization piece where there really isn't even an attempt at, you know, let us equip you with reasoned arguments. And it's just. Let us sort of remind you of the dogma and assure you that anybody saying anything else must, you know, is. Is a crazy person sort of.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Also, what you're calling for and what you're prescribing is not extraordinarily radical. You are not saying the conservative case for abolishing property rights. I mean, this is not. And there were National Review. We so famously always publish like the conservative case for. And it was some liberal position.

[Oren Cass]

Yeah.

[Ryan Gradusky]

I have a very odd question for you and if you don't have an answer, it's totally fine. I just thought of it. But what, like, you're a founder of American Compass. What guides you in terms of saying, like, here is something that's going on in our country that my political brethren have not looked at that solution from this angle. We have not examined the economy from this perspective or this thing from this perspective. Do you have a certain like, starting point that you usually go to when examining big issues and say this, this group is not being looked at properly?

[Oren Cass]

Yeah, I think I start from what I at least would define as conservative principles. And of course there's a never ending debate about even, you know, what, what conservative principles are. But, but I think, you know, they start from, as we were talking about that prudentialism, you know, I think they start from a skepticism of broad issues at, you know, broad efforts at social engineering, a preference for limited government, a recognition in all of the failings of human nature and a belief that you probably can't change those all that much and so on. You know, we could enumerate all of the things, but then I think it's very important to apply those to the world as it is. You know, one thing that I think the right of center has gone astray on and the left of center has its parallel version of this, is trying to argue about diagnosis and what even is or is not a problem for fear that if you acknowledge some problem, then somehow you have to kind of grant the other side its preferred solution. And so, you know, on a lot of these economic questions, it seems to me that, that conservatives, because they were so committed to this kind of market fundamentalism and not just limited government, but, you know, drown government in a bathtub kind of mindset, has tried so hard to make the case that everything is great and therefore there is no need to do anything. And you know, you see this on specific issues. Like I used to do a lot of work on climate change where it was like, like, well, if we admit that climate change is a problem, then we're going to get the Green New Deal. So like, let's stand our ground on like climate change isn't exist, you know, doesn't exist or, or won't cause any problems. Which by the way, in addition to not being especially honest in most cases is just like not the right ground to be fighting on if, if you want to win, because then once you lose that argument, then truly all that is left is, is the other side's idea.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Right.

[Oren Cass]

I think you've seen that on a lot of these core economic issues where there is so much effort made to sort of find a way to show in the data that in fact everyone is doing great for fear that, you know, or that our financial markets are working well and all of the outcomes are really efficient for fear that if you admit that there's a problem there, like, well, then you just, then you get Marxism or whatever. And so I think it's. There is a tremendous amount of constructive work to be done on the right of center just in being willing to try to look clearly at, at the actual challenges we have and then say, well, once we understand those, good. Now let's talk about how we would apply conservative principles to trying to do something about them.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Would you say, I mean, a lot of people on the right say that college and the media and social media brainwash people against capitalism. Would you say that the financial sector is turning capitalists against people against capitalism them the way it, not the principle, but the way it's being done?

[Oren Cass]

Yeah, I think there's a huge problem there and one piece of it is in the kind of what they're doing, right? Like if you are doing lots of stuff and making lots of money in ways that are not productive, people are going to look at that and say, wait a minute, this system isn't working well and lose confidence in it or.

[Ryan Gradusky]

I can't afford the things my parents could afford.

[Oren Cass]

Well, and so that's, yeah, so that's. Then I would say is the second problem is then like also if you are operating the system and advocating for a system that in fact is going to produce bad outcomes, then people are going to turn against a system that does not deliver on what was promised. And so I think that's where, you know, I. These pieces these days end up with different titles in print and online online and so on and so forth. But one of the headlines for this New York Times piece was saving capitalism from the capitalists. Because I think there's sort of, there is nothing worse for capitalism than standing up and saying, my high frequency trading hedge fund is capitalism. Like, and what's bizarre is that I think it was Judge Glock at the Manhattan Institute wrote a piece for City Journal I read, basically doubled down on this and said, like, investors making profit is just like, that is a synonym for capitalism.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Well, he was the one I was referencing in the fact that he literally didn't even talk about your Your. I was, I said, I mean, he's a fine writer. But I was like, he's, he's taught. He's debating somebody who's not Oren Cass. He's debating Zora Mandani or somebody and saying therefore they are the same. And it's. I was just. That's, was. That's what kind of got. Because you're not. And I think this is so important for people who are like it. It's like they're fragmenting their brain saying, if you have any criticisms at all, you must be a socialist. Where you're like, there is a little more gray than you're offering.

[Oren Cass]

Although I have to say I am less offended by the, the kind of combining and confusing of positions than I am with just how bad a job they do of defending their own position.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Right.

[Oren Cass]

Like, if you are, if you think you have a better case to make for capitalism, for goodness sake, don't make it by saying this. Capitalism is just another word for investors making money. And then, and I think he concludes the piece by noting that, you know, I complained that a lot of the profit made on Wall street is, is extractive. And he responded by saying like, no, like companies extracting money. Like, like that's just what profit is. And it's like, no, that's completely wrong. You can earn a good profit by creating new value. It does not have to be a zero sum game. You only end up with extractive profits under the conditions of. Well, you can. You can end up with all sorts of extractive profits. The ones we're talking about here exist because you have a financialization where people are trying to generate profit without creating anything of value. You.

[Ryan Gradusky]

But that's. That.

[Oren Cass]

That is not the heart of the capitalist system. That is a disfigurement of it.

[Ryan Gradusky]

And there used to be, I mean, back in the 19th century. I'm not an economic historian and I'm so off topic from what I. But there. But I've read about. I read a biography of Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rogers's family, I think was from Western PA. And it used to be a thing where if you were a wealthy person in a region and you were probably going to be there generationally, it was. You felt it was your responsibility to invest only not only into your company, but your community. And then there was an upstate New York, they had the four squares where square plan where it was to improve life, the life of the employees overall. There was a bit deeper attachment to a lot of things than there are currently. I think financialization makes all those things a lot worse. I have two last questions. I know I'm so far over that I wanted to keep you, but you're so interesting and I. This is the first time you ever spoke. I have a very strange suspicion over the financialization with AI and we talked about a second second. But for every company that is being invested in that will become the next Amazon, there are like a million that are people are just passing money around to invest in in things that don't ever make profit and very rarely ever make real product. What is your position on this? On the way that like hedge funds are increasingly just buying shares to prop up businesses that I don't think we'll ever become. Google, Amazon, Palantir, what you name the successful one. There's a million pets.com version of AI going on right now, in my opinion. I mean what do I know? But that's my opinion.

[Oren Cass]

Well, I think there are a couple different issues to separate there. One is the sort of speculative bubble problem. And you know, we saw this of course with the dot com bubble, which has kind of two lessons, right? You had this new Internet technology taking off, rapidly diffusing people realized it was going to be a massive economic opportunity, was going to mint new trillion dollar businesses. And so you had people basically placing bets on all of them. And anytime that happens, a whole bunch of stuff ends up not working out. And then some of it does. Like the funny thing is, compare the value of the NASDAQ today to the NASDAQ at the very peak of the dot com bubble and you'd say actually the people buying at the top of the bubble, if they could wait long enough, were exactly right. And so that's actually something you tend to see across what you might call bubbles. Historically you see kind of rapid over investment in a sense, but it's not actually irrational and it actually provides a lot of benefits. So you even saw back in the days of wild overbuilding of railroads did not work out well for a bunch of the people who were overbuilding the railroads worked out great. For a country that then had lots of railroads. We saw that with broadband rolling out. And so I think it's fine to say that where you do have what I think is certainly an important new technology like AI, seeing lots of entrepreneurs placing lots of bets on it, knowing a lot of them aren't going to work out is a perfectly fine step in the capitalist process. One thing you worry about is just given that you know the bubble is also going to deflate at some point do you have any sort of systemic risk that. You know, one thing that was so different about the financial crisis in 2008 was it wasn't a stock market crash. It was the actual financial institutions and their solvency collapsing. And so if what you have is a whole bunch of these companies kind of pumping up and three quarters of them are going to end up worthless and that's fine. The people who invest, you know, bet on those lose money and the people who bet on the winning ones win money. There's nothing wrong with that. If you get to the point where you have banks and financial institutions and retirements and all of these things overly exposed to those bets, you get to the point where most of our stock market value is actually tied to these bets. Instead of it just being kind of one piece to the side. There's no. Yeah, that's when you have to worry about that.

[Ryan Gradusky]

And we're not there yet. You don't think.

[Oren Cass]

I don't think so. I think certainly it's important for people to understand that a large share of the run up in the stock market recently is driven by that. And that if and when that corrects the paper value of your equity holdings. Right. What your 401k says is going to be lower than it is now in all likelihood. And, but that doesn't equal. And that could even give you a recession. I mean we saw a recession after the dot com collapse. That doesn't kind of give you economic meltdown. I think, you know, what concerns me more in this space is two things. One, what you're seeing is kind of very common in bubbles is increasingly circular behavior where there isn't actually the demand necessarily in the business model for what people want to do. And so they're kind of passing things around in a circle. Nvidia invests in OpenAI, who invests in Amazon, who invests in Nvidia. I mean that's not the exact circle, but this kind of stuff, stuff. And if that then gets tied up with, you know, you have what's called the private credit market. So a lot of the data centers being built out are being financed in part by these other institutions that have borrowed a lot of their money from banks and so forth. So that's where you start to worry more about it. I think at this point we are headed for something that looks on the AI side, something that looks more like the dot com bubble than, you know, saying that looks like a financial crash crisis.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Right. Where can people go to get read more about what you do? Where I can feel go to reach American Compass. You're so smart and you're such. You put a very thought provoking pieces.

[Oren Cass]

Oh well thank you. I appreciate that. We you know AmericanCompass.org has all of our research. We publish a magazine called Commonplace. You've written wonderful stuff. Yeah. So whether you like Ryan or you want more of this, you can [e-mail] we put out three or four good things a month. We do or excuse me, three or four things a week. We do a weekly podcast and you can always find me on xrencass.

[Ryan Gradusky]

All right. Thank you for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it.

[Oren Cass]

Yeah, this was great. Good to see you.

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[Ryan Gradusky]

Now it's time for the Ask Me Anything segment. If you want to be part of the Ask Me Anything segment, email me. Ryan numbers game podcast.com that's ryanumbers plural game podcast.com and I will get to them. First question comes from John. He says, hi Ryan, I really like your podcast. I don't really expect you to have to answer this, but since it's ask me anything I thought I'd give it a shot. Is Congressman Brandon Gill as hot in person as he appears on tv? This guy looks like Clark Kent's hotter younger brother or hotter brother. I even like his vocal fry. And I don't like vocal fries. Well, keep up the great work.

[Oren Cass]

Great question.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Great question, John. I, I do. Brandon is extremely attractive, extremely handsome, very tall. His wife is also extremely attractive, extremely, extremely pretty, very sweet, extremely sweet. I have told him a million times, by the way, to dress up like Clark Kent and with the Superman underneath it for Halloween and saying he should do them while running for Congress. So it's very funny you brought that up. I will pass along the message. But yeah, he's a very good looking guy. Okay, next up comes from Michael. Michael says, why does the Mormon Church have $100 billion in AUM and the Catholic Church is broke? It's just settlements from abuse scandals or reduced giving. Both my kids went to Catholic school and my daughter graduated from B.C. and my son from Notre Dame. I don't know what BC is. I give more to the schools than most than I do the church. Okay, well that's good. And it's, that's good that you brought that up. It's a very complicated question. First of all, the Mormon Church is obviously much smaller than the Catholic Church. And a big thing that happened to the Catholic Church over the recent decades is that when many Catholics immigrated to the United States, they built their own ethnic enclave churches. So it wouldn't be. It was considered normal that an Italian ethnic enclave church and an Irish ethnic enclave church were like blocks from each other. So there was an overabundance of churches and parishes, which I think led to extremely high cost with maintenance and keep upkeep. And that is part of the reason. It's obviously not the whole reason, but that's part of it. Secondly is the abuse scandals. I mean, the Catholic Church paid $5 billion to survivors of, of sexual assault. And in the last 20 years, I mean, that's absolutely hurt the church. And then there's the stupidity of bishops who have thought that pews, you know, butts in the pews matter no matter who they are. And having an endless supply of poor immigrants fill churches and giving less than that because they can't give as much is more important than trying to retain religiosity among communities who could give more. And Catholics have done a very poor job at, you know, giving higher amounts at church. I think the average Catholic gives about $1600 a year. The average practicing Catholic gives $1600 a year. The average price pro practicing mainline Protestant gives 2007, 50 a year. So there are fewer Catholics going to church. They're giving less for some reason. And this is maybe for my fellow Catholics out there, there was like this notion growing up that you had to give a dollar a church a week. There was no idea of tithing. Like, I was never brought up on tithing and I never hurt anyone who was. And I guess because I grew up in a poor family, like a dollar was all my grandparents could afford to give. So their children were doing it. But like, like some grew up to be multi, multi millionaires and I saw them still giving a dollar a week. That's, that always irritated me. Lastly is the immense cost from retiring priests and nuns. The health care cost for elderly people is very expensive. And we have a lot of priests and nuns and they are all getting to an age where they have to be taken care of. So all those things are, are manifesting. And the, you know, this caused 500 parishes to close since 2000 and there's a lot of mergers and the Vatican is not responsible for those things. It's not like the V will sit there. Usually they find loan money to the Vatican. The Vatican doesn't, doesn't bring money down. They're responsible for their own parishes. So yeah, all those reasons. Okay, last question for the episode. I know this was a long episode goes to Daniel. He says, I think the assassination of Charlie Kirk was a 911 type moment from mainland cons, the conservative movement. Do you remember where you were when you found out he got shot? Yes, I was working from home and I Started getting messages that there was a shooting. Like, I think it said, like, shots rung out of Charlie Kirk event, which I did not assume meant anything. I just thought that was, you know, there's shootings everywhere in America. And. And then I went to walk my dog, and I just saw a flurry of text messages saying. And one of my employees, my employee Aiden, called me and said, I think Charlie is dead. I think he was murdered. And I also. I just. You just dismissed it. I was like, that cannot possibly be true. And then I saw the video, and I talked to Buck Sexton, and Buck was talking about the veins in your neck. And he was like, if it hit this artery, he's not going to make it. And there was a lot of miscommunication. A lot of people saying that he was alive and he was making a recovery. And I remember really wanting everything to work out. I remember calling my press person who knew someone who knew him, and they said it was not looking good. I sent Andrew Culvett a text message. He said, you know, I'm praying for you guys. I know the whole world was. And then I just basically was hooked on Twitter. And Megyn Kelly, you know, broke the news to me. Anyway, I'm on. On the feed. I was watching her live feed, and she said, yeah. So I text a few people from that. You know, he was very important to the JD Vance campaign in 2022. So a lot of my colleagues on that campaign knew him well. So I started talking to them and, you know, wishing them condolences. I wasn't that close to him, but they were. So. It was pretty terrible. It was pretty terrible. That's. I remember it. Yeah. Very, very well. So. Well, way to finish up the episode on a positive note. Daniel, thank you for that message. I'm just joking. Thank you guys so much for listening. Love you all for listening. Thank you, guys. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful Ash Wednesday. And please, if you like this episode and like the show, like. And subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, wherever. Get your podcast. And Please subscribe on YouTube. It means the world to me. I will talk to you guys on Friday.

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