An Unfiltered Conversation With Ben Shapiro: The Trump Economy, Corruption, and Fake News

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Iced Coffee Hour" Featuring Ben Shapiro

Episode Title: An Unfiltered Conversation With Ben Shapiro: The Trump Economy, Corruption, and Fake News
Release Date: November 3, 2024
Hosts: Graham Stephan & Jack Selby
Guest: Ben Shapiro

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1. Economic Philosophy and Wealth Inequality

Ben Shapiro opens the discussion by emphasizing individual responsibility as the cornerstone of economic success. He challenges the prevalent narrative of wealth inequality, asserting that success is primarily a result of personal decisions rather than systemic exploitation.

• Key Points:

  • Individual Accountability: Shapiro argues that failures in a free market are typically due to poor personal decisions. Success comes from learning from mistakes and making better choices subsequently.
  • Critique of Wealth Inequality: He dismisses wealth inequality as a misleading concept, contending that the wealthy achieve their status through merit and innovation, not by disadvantaging others.

• Notable Quote:
  “The mark of an economically successful individual is somebody who fails and looks in the mirror and says, what did I do wrong?”
  [00:39]

2. Political Opinions on Kamala Harris and Democratic Party Strategies

Shapiro provides a candid analysis of Vice President Kamala Harris, highlighting both his critiques and limited appreciations. He further delves into the Democratic Party's strategic maneuvers, particularly their handling of Joe Biden's presidency and the selection of Kamala Harris as the vice-presidential candidate.

• Key Points:

  • Assessment of Kamala Harris: He appreciates that Harris did not run a racially charged campaign but criticizes her for lacking empathy and intelligence.
  • Democratic Party Machine: Shapiro describes the Democratic Party as a highly organized machine led by prominent figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. He accuses them of manipulating primary outcomes to favor Joe Biden.
  • Media Collaboration: He points out the alliance between the Democratic apparatus and legacy media in shaping public perception.

• Notable Quote:
  “The Democratic Party is run professionally. They run it like a professional team.”
  [04:24]

3. Financial Literacy and Economic Education

Highlighting the widespread financial illiteracy in America, Shapiro critiques political figures who lack fundamental financial knowledge, using Tim Walz (likely referencing a political figure) as an example. He underscores the importance of understanding the stock market, real estate, and entrepreneurship for personal economic growth.

• Key Points:

  • Critique of Candidates: Shapiro condemns political candidates who do not engage in investments or understand basic financial mechanisms.
  • Importance of Financial Education: He stresses that economic progress stems from innovation and entrepreneurship, which require a solid understanding of financial principles.

• Notable Quote:
  “The single most important thing you can do in your life is make good individual decisions.”
  [01:07]

4. Drug Crisis and Fentanyl

The conversation shifts to the ongoing drug crisis in America, with a particular focus on fentanyl. Shapiro discusses the complexities of drug legalization versus regulation and highlights the devastating impact of fentanyl-laced substances.

• Key Points:

  • Fentanyl Overdoses: He cites alarming statistics, mentioning that 116,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdoses last year.
  • Border Control Issues: Shapiro narrates his experience with Border Patrol, detailing how drug cartels exploit border vulnerabilities to smuggle fentanyl.
  • Regulation vs. Legalization: He argues against the full legalization of drugs, pointing out that regulation has not curbed illegal sales and often leads to more potent and dangerous drug variants.

• Notable Quote:
  “116,000 Americans died of fentanyl overdose last year, and it was really fentanyl poisoning.”
  [15:39]

5. Role of Government and Social Connectedness

Shapiro critiques the expansive role of the federal government, advocating for decentralization and increased local governance. He links economic well-being to social connectedness, arguing that community bonds are essential for personal and societal happiness.

• Key Points:

  • Federalism: He supports delegating more power to state and local governments, allowing communities to set their own rules based on homogeneity and shared values.
  • Social Fabric: Shapiro emphasizes that strong community ties, often fostered by institutions like churches, play a crucial role in individual happiness and economic success.
  • Government Overreach: He warns against the federal government taking over roles traditionally managed by communities, leading to social disconnection and diminished personal responsibility.

• Notable Quotes:
  “Social fabric tends to come from the connections and roles that you play in your life.”
  [32:00]
  “The government wasn't built to do things. It was built to stop things.”
  [47:44]

6. Media Manipulation and Fake News

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to discussing media bias and manipulation, particularly targeting right-wing content. Shapiro recounts his experience with the New York Times, accusing them of labeling his statements as "election misinformation" to demonetize his YouTube presence.

• Key Points:

  • New York Times Incident: Shapiro describes how the NYT reached out to him and other right-leaning individuals to question their monetization on platforms like YouTube based on claims of misinformation.
  • Media Bias: He argues that mainstream media collaborates with left-wing organizations like Media Matters to suppress conservative voices and narratives.
  • Platform Control: Shapiro stresses the importance of directing audiences to their own platforms to avoid censorship and maintain control over their content.

• Notable Quote:
  “They have an explicit desire to essentially shut down conservative media.”
  [80:08]

7. Social Media and Public Discourse

Shapiro explores the impact of social media on public discourse, highlighting how platforms like Reddit and YouTube are manipulated to amplify certain narratives while suppressing others. He discusses the challenges of maintaining open conversations in the face of algorithmic biases and coordinated misinformation campaigns.

• Key Points:

  • Bot Activity: He mentions observing suspicious upvoting patterns on Reddit, indicative of bot manipulation to promote specific political content.
  • Algorithmic Bias: Shapiro criticizes platforms for favoring left-leaning content and making it difficult for conservative voices to gain visibility.
  • Community Standards: He advocates for users to engage more directly with alternative platforms to bypass mainstream media biases.

• Notable Quote:
  “Astroturfing isn't happening is ridiculous. Of course it is.”
  [85:28]

8. Books and Recommendations

To conclude the episode, Shapiro recommends essential readings that align with his economic and philosophical views, encouraging listeners to deepen their understanding of finance and economic history.

• Recommendations:

  • "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham: A foundational text on value investing and financial strategy.
  • "The Ascent of Money" by Neil Ferguson: An extensive exploration of the history and impact of finance on global development.

• Notable Quote:
  “If you haven't read [The Intelligent Investor], it's totally worth reading.”
  [96:42]

9. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Shapiro wraps up the conversation by reiterating his commitment to fostering financial literacy and advocating for reduced government intervention. He emphasizes the importance of personal responsibility and informed decision-making in achieving economic prosperity.

• Key Points:

  • Financial Literacy: Continues to stress the need for individuals to understand financial markets and make informed investment choices.
  • Economic Outlook: Predicts economic stagnation due to overregulation and excessive government spending but remains cautiously optimistic about technological advancements like AI driving future productivity.

• Notable Quote:
  “The single most important thing you can do in your life to build wealth is to make good individual decisions.”
  [97:05]

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Overall Summary:

In this episode of "The Iced Coffee Hour," Ben Shapiro engages in a comprehensive dialogue covering a range of topics from economic responsibility and political strategies to media manipulation and the pervasive drug crisis in America. Shapiro consistently underscores the importance of personal accountability, financial literacy, and community bonds as pillars for individual and societal success. He offers a critical view of the current state of the Democratic Party, mainstream media biases, and government overreach, advocating for a decentralization of power and greater emphasis on local governance. Additionally, he addresses the complexities of the drug epidemic, particularly fentanyl, arguing against simple legalization and highlighting the need for robust border control measures. Throughout the conversation, Shapiro champions the cause of financial education, recommending pivotal literature to empower listeners with the knowledge to navigate and succeed in the economic landscape.

Transcript

[Ben Shapiro]

Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess my hundredth Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, don't. No, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited to Premium Wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two.

[Graham Stephan]

Or three times that much?

[Ben Shapiro]

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming. Here, give it a [e-mail] save whenever you're ready. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only.

[Jubilee Host]

Taxes and fees, extra Speed slower above 40 gigabytes.

[Ben Shapiro]

CD tails. All human beings, right, left, center. We all have an innate desire, and it's a bad part of us that wants to shirk responsibility and suggest that our failures are not our own.

[Graham Stephan]

Okay.

[Ben Shapiro]

The truth is, the vast majority of failure in life in a free country like the United States is probably because you made a bad decision. The mark of an economically successful individual is somebody who fails and looks in the mirror and says, what did I do wrong? So that I can fix that and then do better the next time. This kind of wealth inequality idea is shot through with the lie that the wealthy guy got rich because you're poorer than he is, that all economic growth is a factor of exploitation, and that that isn't remotely true.

[Jubilee Host]

Financial literacy is abysmal in America.

[Ben Shapiro]

Tim Walz, the current vice presidential candidate on the Democratic side, does not own real estate, does not own stock, and admitted he has no idea what venture capitalists do. He needs to know that, because the thing that makes the country better, economically speaking, is not, in fact, just wages being paid. The thing that has changed how we live is innovation and entrepreneurship. And that's a relatively recent invention. It's not that hard to make money in the United States over time, which is true when it comes to individual decision making. The single most important thing you can do in your life.

[Jubilee Host]

Ben, thank you so much for coming on the Iced coffee Hour. I know your schedule is very busy this time of year. Appreciate it.

[Ben Shapiro]

Oh, yeah, thanks for having me. It's always fun.

[Jubilee Host]

So what are two things that you like about Kamala Harris?

[Ben Shapiro]

So I do like that she has at least titularly not run a racially tinged campaign. I think that in the late breaking sort of aspects of the campaign, she started to do some of that stuff. She's made sort of overt pitches for black men by saying, I'll give you $20,000 in forgivable loan. And that's. But she hasn't done the. You know, I'm only going to campaign to black men or Latino men or. And when asked about whether America is systemically racist, she really has avoided that. And I think that that's a good thing for the country because obviously, if America were systemically racist, she would certainly not be the candidate for President of the United States. I'm trying to think of a second quality that I like about Kamala Harris. Um, obviously her charming laugh. Uh, the.

[Graham Stephan]

It's.

[Ben Shapiro]

It's hard because I think she's such a typical politician, and I really don't like typical politicians at any level. And so I'm having a difficult time coming up with. Man, that's. That's rough. That. That. That really is. Oof. Man, it helps out the daily.

[Jubilee Host]

I mean, you guys have good business.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's kind of a backwards way to. Way to put it. But. But sure, she. She's business for us. I mean, that. That. But I could say that about literally anybody on her left. But in terms of, you know, sort of personal qualities, I don't find her to be very empathetic. I don't find her to be very compassionate. I don't find her to be particularly intelligent or convincing. So I'm. I'm having. Loyal. Like, these are the qualities I look for in humans are not the ones that. That she tends to possess for me.

[Graham Stephan]

Are there any policies that you like of hers?

[Ben Shapiro]

The problem is with her policies, I'm not sure what they are. So it depends which policy she's talking about. When she says that she wants to further fund Border Patrol. Sure, I like that. Do I believe her? Not really, since she's been the vice president for a while and she hasn't really attempted to close the bor. When she says that she's going to be harsh on terrorism, that she's going to fight America's enemies, she can say all that stuff and it sounds great, but she hasn't done any of it. Some of her stated policies probably are fine, and then many of her stated policies, I think are trash. And then I think that in practice, what she's done as vice president has been pretty negative. Now, the truth is, you could say that about a lot of politicians. I don't agree with everything that President Trump says. I don't agree with everything that President Trump does. You just have to go by the bulk of what you see in terms of record. And I tend to judge politicians more by revealed preference, meaning the thing they do than the thing that they say.

[Jubilee Host]

One thing that's kind of, I would say, making its rounds right now is the Democratic machine and who's really running the US Government. And I know you don't really like to dip into conspiracy theories, but I found it very odd how Biden was never going to step down. He was always tweeting that he's going to, you know, run and be the Democratic candidate. However, he stepped down and they put Kamala in there. People say they put her in there. Who is they?

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, I mean, they would be the top levels of the Democratic Party. So the big Democratic donors combined with Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, sort of the movers and shakers inside the Democratic Party. I mean, I can name the specific days. I mean, you're talking about donors like Jeffrey Katzenberg who are involved in pushing him out or George Clooney involved in pushing him out. These are specific human beings. So we say the Democratic machine. I don't mean that. It's sort of a miasmic, you know, cloud of Democratic, you know, agenda items. That's not really what I'm talking about. It's a very specific set of people who run a very specific party. And I will say the Democratic Party is run professionally. I mean, they run it like a professional team. And that means that they can snap into place very, very quickly in order to achieve their goals. They did this back in 2020, remember, with Bernie Sanders. So Bernie Sanders won the first couple of primaries, and he was doing really well. And then the entire Democratic machine was like, okay, Amy Klobuchar, you need to drop out. People judge. You need to drop out. And then you need to bother immediately endorse Joe Biden. James Clabburn in South Carolina was like, I'm going to endorse Joe Biden. And suddenly Biden went from being an also ran to being the nominee. And so they actually did it in 2020 in order to overcome Bernie. And they did the same thing in 2024. They looked at Biden. They said, he's not. He's non compos mentis. He's not with it. We need to get rid of him. And so what can we do to pressure him out? And they had to bring significant pressure. I would say the Democratic machine, when I refer to that, also refers to the adjunct of the Democratic machine, which is the legacy media, which shifted into Biden mode immediately after that debate and then retained that attitude toward Biden all the way until he dropped out, at which point we totally forgot about him. Has Anyone even discussed Joe Biden recently? Only when he makes some sort of big gaffe on the campaign trail. Other than that, we're supposed to ignore the fact that a senile person is the most powerful person on planet Earth, which is kind of an amazing thing. Kamala Harris is still maintaining publicly that Joe Biden is totally with it, which sort of begs the question as to why she's the nominee. Then the media have gone completely absent on that. So for weeks at a time it was like, Joe Biden cannot be the nominee, but nobody would ask the other question, question, so why can he be the president? Exactly. So they did exactly what the Democratic machine, meaning the Democratic Party upper echelon, wanted them to do, which was push Biden out of the candidacy. Don't push him out of the presidency, because if Kamala were to actually become the president, for example, then number one, it would raise questions about why she hadn't declared the 25th Amendment before. But number two, she immediately becomes responsible for everything going on in the country. As vice president, you're in this sort of weird Schrodinger space where you're both responsible for the stuff that the, that the administration does and also totally not responsible for anything because you're not the President of the United States. And she's comfortable in that space. She doesn't like being responsible for the Biden agenda, except when it suits her to be responsible for the Biden agenda.

[Graham Stephan]

You know, the reason we ask that question is because here in the Ask coffee hour, we really do our best to be as unbiased as possible. And it seems like on the Internet they're always trying to shove some sort of agenda down your throat. Like how do you know you're actually getting the true source of information?

[Jubilee Host]

Well, that's where our sponsor, Ground News comes in. They're an independent website and app that collects news from all over the world and shows you any hidden biases in the stories that you read.

[Graham Stephan]

For every article, you get a visual breakdown showing you how many sources are reporting on it, where they fall on the political spectrum, their credibility, and whether or not they are independently owned or corporate funded.

[Jubilee Host]

They even created an entire election focused blind spot dedicated to surfacing important news missing from the right or left media bubble. Like the controversy sparked by what Trump allegedly said about a soldier's funeral.

[Graham Stephan]

In this case, ground News found 40 sources covering this, but barely any is coming from the left. The left leaning sources that do cover it continue to focus on the alleged statement. One center rated source says the soldier's own family dismissed the remarks.

[Jubilee Host]

And you can see here the Daily Wire owned by Ben Shapiro, focuses on the fact that the soldier's family said Trump did nothing but show respect to my family and the fallen soldier.

[Graham Stephan]

In our last interview with Ben Shapiro, a lot of people admitted that they had negative feelings towards him. But once they watched the podcast, their opinions changed. And that's what Ground News aims to do. Break echo chambers, spark good discussions and challenge popular narratives to find common ground.

[Jubilee Host]

And with the election just days away, staying informed is more important than ever. So go to ground. That's GR O News iced. Or scan the QR code on your screen for 50% off their top tier vantage plan.

[Graham Stephan]

That's Ground News iced. Or scan the QR code on the screen for 50% off their top tier vantage plan.

[Jubilee Host]

Once again, guys, the link is down below in the description or you can scan the QR code. They are truly an incredible resource and we feel so honored to be sponsored by them. Thank you so much to Ground News for sponsoring this episode. And back to the podcast. One thing that I found really interesting is we were talking with Patrick David yesterday and he brought up that there was a study that was conducted and it said out of 130 billionaires, 80 supported the Democratic ticket. And then I think it was 30 or 50 supported the Republican ticket. Why do you think it is that billionaires support the Democrats? Even though it has always seemed like the billionaires were wanting the tax cuts and wanting the, I mean, Republicans.

[Ben Shapiro]

Right. So I think that, you know, there has been a market shift in the approach that you've seen from, from where the billionaires come from actually makes a big difference. Tech billionaires are more likely to be in favor of Kamala Harris, sort of retail billionaires are probably more likely to be in favor of Trump. So not all billionaires are created equal. They're from different sort of strata of society. They have different backgrounds. People who are tech billionaires tend to have gone to really good universities. They tend to hang out on the coasts. If you are somebody who started Walmart, if you're the Walmart family, or if you're the family that, that owns, you know, a big grocery store chain, or if you are, you know, the Bernie Marcus and you own home. Right. Those people tend to go Republican, actually. So it kind of depends on the kind of billionaire. I wouldn't classify billionaires as kind of one class in and of themselves. And so what you really have to ask is why is it that in sort of the upper echelons of places like San Francisco, people are voting against their own economic interests in order to vote Democrat. And I think a lot of that is, is sort of virtue signaling. I think a lot of it is status symboling. That's, that's why you will see this has been a big problem in America for a long time in terms of the gap between upper income people and not as higher income people, is something that Charles Murray wrote about in a book called Coming Apart. So Charles Murray, after being, you know, I think in, in many ways slandered by, by people saying that he was a racist for his writings and all this, he wrote a book that was just about white people. And the book was about the divisions between what he termed Fishtown, which is sort of, you know, people who are lower income white people and, and people who are from upper income areas. And what he found is that people in upper income areas preached social liberalism but didn't live it. Which, which you see a lot, you see a lot of billionaires were like, yes, of course, I'm the most socially liberal person in the world. And they're all married, they all have kids, they send their kids, not public school, they do all the same things that I do with my kids. But then when they're referencing social values, they want to show all of their friends how tolerant and diverse they are. And so they sort of signal all this to everybody else and they feel that they can somehow buy the love of a public that may not like them for being rich by saying, well, yeah, sure, I'm rich, but look how, look how generous I am. I'm voting for the party that's willing to tax me at an exorbitant rate, which of course is a very silly way to do that. I mean, if you want to give more money, get more money, I mean, you get a charitable write off, you can certainly do that. So, yeah, I think that there are a lot of factors that sort of go into that gap. You are starting to see a reversion, by the way, a lot more tech billionaires than I know are now shifting away from the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party has gone so far and moving back.

[Jubilee Host]

It's also more like in the Overton window now, I think, to then subscribe to the Republican Party.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, I mean, well, this is the big shift for Trump in this election. I think that in 2020, if you were in Silicon Valley and you said, I'm supporting Trump, you would be socially ostracized. If you say that in Silicon Valley, people looking a little weird, but it's not quite the same thing as, like, you'll never get a job here again. You can't come to any of the. Any of the parties. I think something fundamentally shifted earlier in this election cycle when Biden was the candidate, and that was it became acceptable to say, I can't vote for the dead guy. I'm really thinking about voting for the alive guy. And then after the assassination attempt on Trump, I think that that really kicked into high gear where I was like, not only can I vote for him, maybe there's some qualities to this guy that people had overlooked. I mean, his reaction was pretty incredible. That's why he had Zuckerberg, who had support. All the Democratic candidates basically come forth and be like, well, you know, that was pretty badass what he did. And so once that break glass in case of emergency is broken, you can't unbreak it. Once you say openly, well, that's kind of badass, what Trump did. You're now in the world where Trump is an acceptable candidate. And once you're in that world, you can't then go back to, he's unacceptable unless he does something new that's unacceptable. And thing about Trump is he never does anything new that's unacceptable. He's the same person that he's been like, donald Trump is a McDonald's french fry. You leave it in the car for 30 years. It looks exactly the same.

[Graham Stephan]

What do you think are some of the biggest issues right now that are not being discussed?

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, I mean, I think any of the policy issues. I think the biggest issue that really doesn't get discussed is the state of our military. Our military is still the most powerful military on the planet, but we have serious procurement issues in terms of new technologies. We have serious holdups in terms of development of new technologies. We obviously have a massive problem in terms of recruitment to the military. These are problems that are going to require systemic overhaul inside the military. Enormous sums of money being wasted on weapon systems that are. That are no longer relevant. Not nearly enough innovation, not nearly fast enough. Right. Those are things that really, really matter. Because when you're talking about deterrent power, you actually need to be thinking about the next war, not about the last war. And so you have, you know, billions and billions of dollars being spent on aircraft carriers, for example, when the reality is that the next war in the Taiwan Strait is probably going to be fought over things like drone technology. And so the question is, which. Which is lower cost but higher yield? So how much investigation is being done at the military? Like, these are things that I think are really going to need to be, you know, looked at because. And that's nitty gritty kind of stuff.

[Graham Stephan]

Is there a chance, though, that they are developing this technology, but they're keeping it so under wraps that most people don't know about it because they don't want it to get out there, that they're invested?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, sure, that's definitely a possibility, but the United States military is ruled by regulations in red tape. To procure a weapon system. To get it, to get it approved is unbelievably difficult. You have to run through all sorts of hoops in order to get there. There's a book by. I think his name is Edward Ludvak. He's a military analyst, and he wrote about the Israeli way of developing military technology. And basically what he says is, because the Israeli military is held together with gum and shoestring because of that, things just get bootstrapped all the time. You're doing, like. Because they're constantly under existential threat, they're developing new weapon systems all the time. And very often you have, like, a unit that just develops it in secret without approval of the higher ups, and they're like, hey, guys, we have this thing called Iron Dome. Want to see it? And that sort of stuff happens. You're never going to get that in the US Military. You get punished for innovation in the US Military. Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

We also tend to think a few other areas that are frequently overlooked that are very important. Food and health.

[Ben Shapiro]

Oh, yeah. I mean, the RFK has tried to elevate a lot of this. Yeah.

[Jubilee Host]

Amazing.

[Ben Shapiro]

I agree. Now, I don't agree with everything that RFK says about food and health. I think I agree with a lot of races about food, particularly his take on vaccines. He's sort of variable on that. Sometimes he'll take the sort of maximalist position that vaccination generally is dangerous. Sometimes he takes the more specific position, which is that that some vaccines are more dangerous than others and the vaccine schedule might be flawed, which I think is a much more palatable argument. But, yeah, I mean, his focus on the nutrition of the American people, I think that that is excellent. I'm glad that he has raised it. It's something that really the federal government probably ought to be involved with, because we have an entire set of departments that are dealing with this sort of thing. And so that seems to me, if you're centering federal nutrition standards via the FDA or Department of Agriculture, I mean, that stuff, that really makes a big difference and good for RFK for raising.

[Jubilee Host]

All of that and some of the other things that we think about are that people don't care enough about the drug crisis because it seems mostly far removed from everybody. Yeah, we have thousands and thousands and thousands of Americans dying every year because of it.

[Ben Shapiro]

116,000Americans died of fentanyl overdose last year, and it was really fentanyl poisoning. I mean, that's a huge number. That's an enormous number, as twice the number of people who died in the Vietnam War in one year in the United States. And we did cut. I mean, we've covered this at Daily Wire. I actually went over to Kensington, which is sort of a suburb of Philadelphia, and that place a Hellscape. I mean, you walk over there, everyone's on fentanyl. They are bent over at the waist. They've been dosing it with animal tranquilizer to make it more potent. It's creating lesions on the body and eating away at the human body. I mean, it's really, truly horrifying stuff. I talked with moms of kids who have fentanyl poisoning, and these kids didn't even know they were taking fentanyl. They thought they were smoking a joint or they thought that they were taking some sort of Adderall that was actually laced with fentanyl, and the kid died. I mean, this is a major crisis in the United States.

[Jubilee Host]

The lacing is a huge issue, too. And it was interesting. I was actually listening to. I think it was JD Vance on Theo Vaughn. And Theo made an amazing argument, which obviously, it's a little bit of a stretch, but I agree with the general sentiment, which is, obviously, it's being manufactured in China and it's being brought with drug mules through Mexico. And if someone in Mexico was coming up into America and killing 116,000 of us every single year, then we would be making a huge. I mean, we would be at war with Mexico. But for some reason, when they're trafficking drug and obviously fentanyl, it just literally just kills you and it gets laced in with other drugs. It's just like, oh, you know what? It's not really that big of a deal. Obviously, by the end, juxtapose that, but still, it is.

[Ben Shapiro]

No, I totally agree. One of the things I think that people don't understand about Fentanyl, when we say lace, that really is the key word, because people think of fentanyl. I mean, I would normally, if I were just like a kind of casual watcher of politics, when you think drug overdose, you think, okay, somebody took heroin, stuck it in their arm, and they overdosed. That's not what happens with fentanyl. What's happening with fentanyl is a huge percentage of the people who are dying of fentanyl overdose don't even know that they're taking fentanyl in the first place, which means they're being poisoned. That's an act. I mean, there are certain states that are now starting to prosecute this as an act of murder by drug dealers if they lace fentanyl into their product. And so again, when we went down to the border and we actually rode along with border Patrol, they were full on, explained. I mean, it was pretty crazy. I mean, we went down, we rode along with Border Patrol. We did an episode. You can see it at Daily Wire plus, where I'm riding 20 miles on the border. No Border patrol agents anywhere. It was a Native American reservation on the border with Mexico. You could literally just step across into Mexico and back. There's no fence, there's nothing. And because it's a Native American reservation, they don't want to put up fences because of tribal lands and all of this kind of stuff. So it's used as a drug runner outlet. And while we were there, we're sitting out there with Border patrol and I hear this drone in the air behind us. And I look behind us, it's just giant drone flying right there. And I turn to the Border patrol, I'm like, that's one of ours. No, no, no, that's the cartels. The cartels have a drone on. I said, why don't you just shoot it? And he said, well, no, no. In order for us to shoot it, we need to have the approval directly of the Secretary of Homeland Security. And because otherwise it could theoretically be construed as an act of war or something. And so instead you just have this drone monitor. And what are they doing? Well, they're monitoring us. They're making sure where we are. So then they can see when we drive away, that's when they move all of the fentanyl over the border. So there's what the drug cartel strategy is. They actually, the way they make their money, they drive up to the border in trucks. Border Patrol can see them. I mean, like, it's. It's not hard to see. It's kind of an open field. They drive up in a truck filled with illegal immigrants, they drop them off. Those people walk across the other side of the border. There's actually a button on that side of the border that you can press for Border Patrol help the illegal immigrants Push the button. Border patrol rushes in. They immediately start processing these people because these people say the magic words, which is, I fear to go back to my home country, which means that's an asylum claim. They start processing them. The vast majority of them, within 72 hours are processed and let through into the United States. And they're given like a callback date with most of them never show up for. And meanwhile, while Border patrol is doing that, the drug cartels make their money the second way because they're getting paid by all these people to move. But the real money gets made when all the border patrol agents rush to deal with the illegal immigrants. Now you got 10 miles open border, and that's when you take the dude who's got the backpack filled with fentanyl and you just go right across the border, nobody to stop you. And so that's not a staffing issue, that's an allocation issue. It's a mess. It's a disaster. And anybody who treats the border as anything less than a disaster, as has been the case for the last four years, is just sleepwalking.

[Graham Stephan]

Now, isn't the solution to that, to legalize drugs? Because ultimately a lot of these people are going to be buying regardless. And if they're buying something from a dude that you know is selling illegal narcotics, it happens to be laced with something these people are going to be buying regardless. So why not legalize it? And at least they're buying something that's not laced with fentanyl.

[Ben Shapiro]

So I mean, it could be regulated. That's been the case that some people have made with regard to legalization of marijuana. The problem is that that hasn't stop people from buying illegally. So because of the regulation and taxation of marijuana, that happens just through the legal process. In the same way that people buy Lucy's with regard to cigarettes, people will still do that with regard to marijuana, particularly young people who want it cheap. And the way that marijuana tends to get sold is by, you know, your friend went and bought five blunts from his dealer, and now he has three extra blunts and he sells them to you. So it does tend to get passed hand to hand. I mean, there are pot shops all over California. That hasn't stopped the illegal trafficking in marijuana in California, obviously. And that's also true in Colorado. That's true in a wide variety of states that have attempted this. And does that mean that drug, you know, that the war on drugs has been particularly effective? I think that it's been relatively ineffective, obviously. But does that mean that the solution to that is full scale legalization, such that the police can't arrest somebody for dealing drugs on a street corner or something. That doesn't make any sense to me either. And the areas. And if you walk through Los Angeles right now, the place is just one giant cloud of pot smoke. I mean, that's just what it is. You're walking down the street and you're just smelling it coming from everywhere. That's an externality. And they regulate smoking but not pot. Seems kind of weird to me. And beyond that, the addictive quality of marijuana has obviously risen over the course of the last 30 years. The amount of THC that was in marijuana in the 90s when I was a kid, it's like 3, 4, 5%. Now it's like 30%. Because capitalism, free markets, what they do is make the product more effective and better. And so if you have that in the drug market, what you tend to get is more powerful drugs that are available to the general public. And so I think that that's a real problem also, you know, when, when you are smoking a cigarette or taking moderate amounts of alcohol, for example, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, the, the effects on the brain are not particularly dire. If, if you have a somewhat addictive, I mean, the new studies are showing actually relatively addictive quality to the new strains of marijuana. And that's being taken disproportionately by young people. That does have some brain effects on young people. I mean, the human brain doesn't really stop developing until you're about 26. So if you start smoking up when you're like 14, 15 years old, which is what's happening with a lot of kids, and then you just smoke more and more heavily until the time you're 26, that will, that will have some really, really dire effects on you. So I don't think it's quite as easy as just legalize all this and it fixes it. It seems to me that if what you're worried about is fentanyl, then the first thing that you need to do is worry about the fentanyl. And that means closing the border. You close the border and that's going to solve a lot of your problems. Because you know, the precursor chemicals, as you mentioned, are coming from China. They're being manufactured now in Mexico and smuggled across the border. It's a lot harder to smuggle the precursor chemicals directly into the United States.

[Graham Stephan]

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[Ben Shapiro]

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[Jubilee Host]

A couple other things that we also wanted to mention was the overwhelming division and internal hate that our citizens have for people with varying opinions. And it seems like we can't even unify over a common foreign enemy these days. And on top of that, declining birth rates, which is finally being discussed with Elon Musk and of course Graham's favorite financial literacy, which is what he kind of built his YouTube career on. But yeah, financial literacy is abysmal in America.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah. I mean, so we can go through each of those. I mean, when it comes to our inability to sort of have conversations with one another. Yeah, that's exacerbated by social media. The truth is that when you're at a coffee shop with a bunch of people, you can probably have a conversation with most of them on social media because it's anonymous and because you're hidden behind a screen, you'll say things to people on social media you would never say to anybody in person, ever. And people always ask me, you know, I'm relatively well known. I get a lot of people who come up and people are like, well, is that ever dangerous? I'd say that like 99.9% of the time when somebody comes up, it's because they like the show, they want a picture, they're super nice. And if there is somebody who disagrees, they'll tend to be like, yeah, I disagree with you, but I still enjoy your show or something. It's much harder to be an asshole in person with somebody than it is to be an online. And I think that social media has really exacerbated that.

[Jubilee Host]

But it's disincentivized having the conversation in the first place because people just. They just don't want to break through that obstacle of being, like, labeled something or, you know, I think that the.

[Ben Shapiro]

Internet is not real. And so what I've encouraged everybody to do is, is, you know, touch some grass. What I mean by that is that, you know, I'll have conversations with people who disagree with me. In fact, I do it, I think, probably more than anybody on the right, I would say, right? I'll have a conversation where I go on Lex Friedman, I talk Destiny for three hours, right? Or I, you know, go on Barry Weiss's show and I have a conversation with Sam Harris about Trump versus. Versus Kamala. And that's totally fine. That's totally. And I'm not afraid that the audience is going to be super angry at me. And if they are angry at me for having a conversation, well, I mean, who cares? Like, so. So you're pissed that I had a conversation. There are a lot of people who read the comments and like, oh, how could you possibly have a conversation? So a few years back, there was a host on a major left wing podcast, and I'd met him at a conference and I said, you know, we really should. This is 2018. We really should do a crossover podcast for the election. Election night. We should do a crossover podcast. Huge numbers, right? You're rooting for your side, I'm rooting for my side. It would be, it would be fun, kind of Rock Em Sock em Robots. My people would love it. He goes, your people would love it. My people would kill me. And he's right. I mean, on the left, there is the sense that if you even have a conversation with somebody on the right, that you ought to be denied access to polite society. And that's a serious, real problem. Again, exacerbated by the Internet in real life. Are there that many people who are, like, truly exercised as Sam Harris that he had a conversation with me? No, I guess it's like 10 people. Are there that many people who are super pissed that Anna Kasparian and I are friendly and that we talk sometimes online? That number is really low. They're just really, really loud. So that's exacerbated things. It also happens to be that because of the Internet, you're talking with people you never talked to before. The reality is before the Internet, the vast majority of people that you personally talk to were people in your immediate community, obviously. And so that, that lent itself to a sense of community because you have to see these people every day. You want to be a jackass, your grocer, you have to see that guy every single day. You want to be a jerk to your bank teller, you don't want to be nasty to your next door neighbor. These are people you're going to have to deal with in society. It's not a one off, right? When it comes to economics, for example, the thing that tends to generate positive effects in capitalism is repeat business, right? You want repeat business, which is why you don't just rip somebody off, right? The reason you don't rip somebody off is once you, once you create that trust deficit, you can never do business with them again. The Internet is a series of one offs. It's a series of, I can say what I want to you because I'm never going to see you again. I have no idea who you are. That's not true in your local community. That's why inside church communities, for example, everybody is much friendlier with one another despite the, despite the differing politics. It also is true that because of the size of the country, we just have less and less in common generally. And then when you add to that diversity a very hands on federal government that has an enormous amount of power and so you feel like you're the person who disagrees with you is going to grab that thing and then turn the government gun against you. Now politics becomes a matter of life and death. If the federal government didn't have much power, then nobody in California be like, oh my God, I can't believe those jerks in Alabama. Because who cares? Like, who cares? Like you might have opinions about it, you might have really deep and abiding opinions about what should happen in Alabama or vice versa. But it's not like you're sitting there every day like, oh my God, those people in Alabama, they're such a threat to me. There's something that the founders knew this, which is why they delegated the vast majority of powers to the states and didn't actually delegate very many powers to the federal government. The growth of the federal government combined with a more disparate public in terms of its opinion, combined with the viral quality of the Internet has broken down all of that. And the only solution to that is go touch grass, go to a Church group, go find a social group, go hang out with people in flesh, human beings with a face, and have conversations with those people and ignore a lot of the trash that's happening online and then on a governmental level. And again, I mentioned Anna Kasparian, I had her on the show and I said, well, one thing we might be able to agree on is what? And we disagree on nearly everything. What if the federal government just was not that important in your life? What if, like, you want to live in California, fine, live in California. I used to. I didn't like it. I moved. So what, what if that. And she's like, okay, maybe, you know, like, what if we agreed on federalism? That seems like a pretty good solution, right? Subsidiarity seems a really good solution to that. As to some of the other issues you mentioned, you mentioned economic illiteracy, obviously, major, major, major issue. And people are economically illiterate.

[Jubilee Host]

And the average person should know what an index fund is for sure. They should absolutely know about that. They should know what like tax advantaged accounts are, 401k Roth IRA for that.

[Ben Shapiro]

They should know what the stock market does. You don't even know what the stock market does. They think of the stock market as a roulette wheel. That's what they think of the stock market as. If you ask most Americans, how do you make money on the stock market? The answer is, I put money in a couple of companies that I think are going to do well. And then I. And then at some point I sell it. And if I get lucky, then I make it big.

[Jubilee Host]

Well, the stuff that got publicized was like, you know, Wall street bets and GameStop and AMC and stuff like that. That was the stuff that was all getting my attention.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jubilee Host]

And dogecoin and stuff like that.

[Ben Shapiro]

Which I guess if that thing is discussed, everybody wants to be Warren Buffett without applying any of Warren Buffett's actual investment methods. If you want to be Warren Buffett, read Benjamin Graham, right? You actually have to be slow and steady and you have to find places where the market has not quite caught up with your knowledge of a company. And then you have to stick with that investment for a very long time. Then you have to diversify your investments. That investment doesn't kill you. You have to have a margin of safety. As Benjamin Graham suggested. Those are actual investment principles. But nobody wants to do that. The way they think of it is, you know, I know a dude and that dude bought Apple when Apple's at like one buck. And now that dude is so rich so if I buy a $1 stock, probably one day I'll be super rich. And then they're all pissed off when it doesn't work out that way. Or they'll look at a stockbroker and they'll be like, what is that guy? What is the stock market even for? How are people making money off stocks? That's not, you know, I'm working with my hands here making a chair. I can see why I'm making money. I don't see why that dude who is like figuring out which companies to invest in is what is a venture. I mean, Tim Walls, the current vice presidential candidate on the Democratic side, does not own real estate, does not own stock, and admitted he has no idea what venture capitalists do. That's the guy who's running for Vice President of the United States. Insanity. That was insanity.

[Graham Stephan]

My next point, I posted on Twitter a while ago and I got a very divisive response. I called it financially illiterate not to own these things. Half of my responses has said that it's good that it's a good thing that he's not invested in the markets because he has no financial gain from certain policies whatsoever. What are your thoughts on?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, I think that's ignorant. I mean he certainly has financial gains from somewhere, meaning that he earned a salary. Okay? If you earn only a salary and you never invest, you're going to have a shallow view of how the market works because you are, especially if you work as Tim Walz did for a public sector union, because you're a teacher. If you're that, then you have basically a salary that's been pre negotiated with the state. It is guaranteed to you every week. Okay? And so where do you think money comes from? You think money comes from the state because that's who's paying you every week. And then when it comes to all the things that actually generate innovation in the economy, you've had no relationship with those things. You've had no relationship with building of wealth by getting a mortgage and making a smart decision about real estate. You've had no relationship with the building of innovative companies by investing in the stock market, which is really what investing in the stock market is. The stock market is a giant pool of cash that is attempting to find innovative outlets that generate an roi. That's what the stock market is. And that's why there are stock market failures. I mean, for every person who is succeeding on the stock market, there are a bunch of people who blew out on the stock market because the stock Market is, in fact, a winnowing mechanism for the companies that ought to survive. And that's what the stock market is. But you need that pool of ready cash available, so when a good idea comes along, somebody's willing to invest in it. That's what a venture capitalist does. He needs to know that. Because the thing that makes. The thing that makes the country better, economically speaking, is not, in fact, just wages being paid. Wages being paid to human beings throughout human history, literally for all of time. The thing that has changed how we live is innovation and entrepreneurship. And that's a relatively recent invention. That is because of property rights, and that is because of inventions like the llc, which was a national invention. And it's also because, you know, innovation, when not punished and when rewarded, will continue and people want to create. And a point that I've been making when I'm speaking to college students recently is, you know, you look at the world around us and you sort of don't even understand how amazing the world in which we live is. Every material that is in your cell phone was present on planet Earth 8,000 years ago. All of it. Every single bit of it. Right? Why didn't they have cell phones? Right. Because nothing has changed. Your suggestion is basically when people say things like, well, I don't live better than my parents do. The hell you don't. The hell you don't. Look at the technology in your life. You have more tech in your pocket than NASA had when they put a dude on the moon. Like, that's. That's crazy. Of course your life is better than your parents. Like, would you trade places with. With your parents in their tiny house with a unit air conditioner, with a. With a fridge that barely worked, and with a. With a TV the size of a. The size of a microwave? Like, you just. The tech in your life is better. Okay? So I don't know.

[Graham Stephan]

I don't know if that equates to quality of life or happiness, because my understanding was that that happiness was higher back then in part because we were a lot simpler.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, I don't think that's because we were simpler. I think that's because there was more social fabric. I mean, what the happiness studies tend to show, and this is what Arthur Brooks writes about a lot, happiness tends to come from social connectedness. It tends to come from a feeling that you have a role to play in society. So when I say that your life is bad, I mean, economically speaking, it's better, because economically speaking, it is better. Economically speaking, you have a better car you have a better microwave, you have a better tv, you have a better phone. When people talk about the housing crisis and the housing shortage, the reality is the average single family home, you're comparing very often apples to oranges. The size of a single family home right now is like 40% bigger than it was back in the 1950s. I mean, if you look at houses that people were building in the 1950s, they're like the size of this room we're in. Tiny, tiny. Like the kind of house that I grew up in. And I grew up in like a 1400 square foot house. 12. I think it's actually an 11 or 1200 square foot house in Burbank, California with three sisters. One bedroom for us, one for my parents, one bathroom. And that, that's kind of a normal sized house. That wasn't, that wasn't like we were growing up impoverished. Like the quality of life economically is in terms of happiness. Economics doesn't always equate to happiness, obviously. I mean, you know, a lot of people who are not particularly rich who are very, very happy, and you meet a lot of people who are very, very rich. I mean, I know billionaires who are deeply unhappy and have screwed up their lives beyond all recognition. And in fact, every time there's a study of which countries are happiest, it's fascinating to see which countries consider themselves really, really happy. The one that always sort of sticks out like a sore thumb is not the Nordic countries, where again, there's, you know, kind of high levels of homogeneity and a good level of income in Norway thanks to their giant gas deposits. But, but the one that sticks out like a sore thumb is Israel, where they're constantly under attack and rank in the top 10 in happiness every single time. It's like, that's crazy. I mean, if you've ever been to Israel, you see rockets. I mean, literally, like, my parents are there right now and any moment they may have to hear an alarm and then go into a safe room. People in Israel are happy because they have a sense of purpose. And that sense of purpose tends to come from social fabric. It tends to come from the connections and roles that you play in your life. That. So this is one of the mistakes I think the right makes too. The right will look at social disconnectedness and they'll be like, if we changed our tariff policy, then that would fix it. If we had more tariffs and we brought manufacturing jobs back to the Rust Belt, that would fix it. Like, no, first of all, that, that's not going to bring enough manufacturing jobs back to the Rust Belt to actually make a marked difference. And it's going to raise everybody's prices. But more importantly, the problem was not that the jobs left the Rust Belt. That's a problem. The bigger problem is that the churches left the Rust Belt. Tim Carney has written an entire book called Alienated America where he compared economically, like an area of Wisconsin with very high levels of happiness and social connectedness with an area of Ohio. And the average income in both these places are exactly the same. And one is completely desolate and one is thriving. And the question was why? And the answer is because one has a pretty thriving church. It turns out that that sort of stuff really makes a difference in people's lives.

[Graham Stephan]

You know, I hate to interrupt you on this, but it got me thinking that AI technology these days is everywhere from molecular medicine, self driving cars, and business efficiency. Like, if it hasn't come to your industry yet, it's coming very soon.

[Jubilee Host]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jubilee Host]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jubilee Host]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jubilee Host]

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[Graham Stephan]

Now, going back to financial literacy, it said that Kamala has 800 to $1.7 million invested, cash holdings of 500,000 to a million, and a house worth $5 million in Brentwood. And this is per her disclosures, Sir Chance, she owns a lot more than this. That's in an irrevocable trust somewhere that technically she doesn't own, but has access.

[Ben Shapiro]

Possible. But the reality is that I wonder how much of that wealth is also held in joint with with Emhoff.

[Jubilee Host]

Right.

[Ben Shapiro]

Emhoff was a very high ranking entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles. Obviously he's pretty Wealthy. I mean, Kamala had been on a government salary pretty much her entire life from the time that she left law school. So, you know, the. The. The idea that she was able to afford a $5 million house in Brentwood on a government salary, little. Little hard to. To explain why that would be. But. But Emhoff had some independent wealth of his own. He was a partner at a major law firm. So.

[Jubilee Host]

Yeah. And Tim Walls, of course, no investments whatsoever, which is just.

[Ben Shapiro]

Tim Walls is a joke of a candidate and a joke of a governor. And the fact that we elect people who don't. I don't know what a venture. How can you even say that? I don't know what a venture capitalist does. I'm sorry, that's crazy.

[Jubilee Host]

He was saying that in a literal sense. I like to think that he kind of knows what a venture capitalist is.

[Ben Shapiro]

It's even worse if he. It's even worse if he said it in a figurative sense. If he says it in a literal sense, I'm like, okay, you're just an idiot. But if he says it in a figurative sense, meaning, like, I don't even know what a venture capitalist does to earn his money. That's so much worse. Because what that's saying is that a venture capitalist is essentially a leech on society who needs to be punished for the venture capitalism. Right, Right. Because if the idea is, I know what they do. What they do is they invest in companies, and sometimes the companies succeed and sometimes they fail. But I don't even know what he does. He builds. He provides the capital that allows companies to get started. That's what a venture capital. If you don't understand the importance of that. Right. You can read it one of two ways. You say, he doesn't understand what. What it is, or you don't understand the importance of the thing. It's worse if he doesn't understand the importance of the thing.

[Jubilee Host]

I mean, I think he was trying to come off as more relatable. And as we discussed, most people are financially illiterate, so they're like, I don't know what a venture capitalist is either. So it kind of, like, works for them.

[Graham Stephan]

I agree with you. I think most people see venture capital as leeches. They see investors, people that trade algorithms.

[Jubilee Host]

That's like a negatively connotative thing.

[Graham Stephan]

But if he says that, he's reinforcing the idea that, hey, I'm just a guy like everyone else.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, I agree, and I think that that's really bad. I don't like politicians who pander to the American people along the lines of ignorance. I don't like it on either side. I see. I see this all the time. My, my personal bugaboo. The thing I hate the most is when politicians will say that they're out. They. I mean, we've talked about this before. They are out to get you. And your own failures in. Your failures in your life are probably the result of some shadowy conspiracy that's out to get you. Okay, that may be true, but I'm going to need a description of what that looks like. Okay. The truth is, the vast majority of failure in life in a free country like the United States is probably because you made a bad decision. That's true for all of us. We all make bad decisions. We all fail. We've all had failures. We've all had successes. Hopefully you have more successes than failures. You learn from the failures. You can have future successes. The mark of an economically successful individual is somebody who fails and looks in the mirror and says, what did I do wrong? So that I can fix that and then do better the next time. The mark of economic failure is something goes wrong, and you immediately go, what external factors led to me failing here? What did I do? Not, what did I do wrong? What did society do wrong to me? Because the truth is, in most cases, it's not that society did something wrong. And if it was society that did something wrong, it's usually on such a grand scale that nothing that you personally do is capable of fixing that. Now you can take political corrective action, and there are times in American history where you really needed those big sort of social movements. However, there is something to be said for the fact that if you want to take the biggest social movement, most important social movement of all time in the United States, the civil rights movement, deeply important, deeply necessary as far as the economic trajectory of black Americans. It was actually stronger before the civil rights movement. That's not a case against the civil rights movement. That's a case that the things that make you economically successful, it is more important, the thing you do in your daily life to make yourself economically successful even than a bad system, which is an amazing thing. The bad system needs to change for sure. It needs to go away. But black middle class wealth was growing at a higher rate before the civil rights why? And that's because along with the civil rights movement came something called the welfare state. If those had been disconnected, then that would have been way better. If the civil rights movement had come along and said, we are getting rid of legal discrimination, it's Bad, it's wrong. It's violated the 14th Amendment, phenomenal. And then if it hadn't also said, okay, well, you know, but we also need to construct a welfare state that is going to pay people for having children out of wedlock and compensate for all of the systemic discrimination of the past that creates a system of perverse incentives. I'm not saying that was on purpose, but that is what it actually created. Again, none of this for Media Matters is a case against the Civil Rights act or against the Civil Rights movement, which is a wonderful, necessary, absolutely morally just thing. That is a case that when it comes to individual decision making, the single most important thing you can do in your life to build wealth is to make good individual decisions. And nothing you do politically is going to equate to those things in 99.9999% of cases.

[Graham Stephan]

So what do you think some of the biggest non issues are today that are being discussed too much?

[Ben Shapiro]

The wealth inequality. I think wealth inequality is a horseshit issue. I think it's stupid. I think on its face, it's stupid. The reason I say that is because. Because why do you possibly care what a rich person is worth? You should only care about what the poor person is worth. Meaning that if a poor person is getting richer, it is just human jealousy that makes you look at the rich guy across the street and say, yeah, but he's getting richer faster. That's just Cain and Abel kind of stuff. This kind of wealth inequality idea is shot through with the lie that the wealthy guy got rich because you're poorer than he is, that all that all economic growth is a factor of exploitation, and that that isn't remotely true. So I hate the wealth inequality conversation. I also think it tends to end around the real question, which is income trajectory differences. Like why are people having a different income trajectory? So when people say wealth inequality, it's a great way of baking in a bunch of systemic factors that are beyond anybody's control. So they'll say, well, you know, people inherited wealth from their grandparents, okay? The reality is that the vast majority of wealth in the United States is not generational. It passed down generation to generation. The vast majority of people who are millionaires and billionaires in the United States are not millionaires and billionaires because they inherited millions and billions from their parents. Right? Pretty much every billionaire that I know actually grew up poor to middle class. And that's the wonderful thing about America. It's the incredible thing about America. But wealth inequality masks the reality, which is that if you Want to build generational wealth, you have to have generational income. And then you have to generate generational income for your company. And then you have wealth in your company because you own stock in something that's creating generational income. I care much more about income than wealth because wealth is sort of the stagnant measurement of income.

[Jubilee Host]

It's interesting because that's actually something that surprisingly for I still don't understand. Graham has gotten a lot of hate for, which is some of his most popular videos are if you skip out on Starbucks every day, if you just put $5 into a Roth IRA or an index fund, in 40 years you'll have $1.6 million, like based off of 100 years of data of returns of the S&P 500. And he gets hate for that. That when he's promoting something that's like.

[Graham Stephan]

Clearly just, I mean, well, yeah, when I do things to save money and they say, why is he doing this to save money? He's worth so much, you know. And they hate on the idea that like, I'd rather still make coffee at home.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, Well, I mean, again, I think that that's because what you do when you say that is it's not that hard to make money in the United States over time, which is true. But what does that do? It throws the responsibility for making money back on the person who could put the five dollar bill back in their pocket instead of shelling it out at Starbucks. And that's what people don't like. People get very angry when they are told that perhaps you ought to make a different decision. They like it much better when they're told the system is screwing you and that's the reason why you're spending so much money at Starbucks. Instead of asking the question, you're asking, which is do you really have to spend the money at Starbucks or could you just go down to the local Publix and pick up like a bag of ground beans and then just make it at home with like a French press and just do that over and over and over and save money. Like that's, that's the people, all human beings, things, right left, center. We all have an innate desire. And it's a bad part of us that wants to shirk responsibility and suggest that our failures are not our own. And that's why you have to cultivate virtue. This is why virtue is a very, very important thing. It's again, I'll come back to the religious point. It's the difference between the one, one of the things that's happened in our society that's really, really bad and dark is that the government has replaced church in society. And I mean that in terms of the economic functionality of church. Forget about the God of it, okay? Forget about the religion. The way that it works in my synagogue is when somebody loses their job, first everybody gets together and we start a meal train. We make sure that person is taken care of, their kids are taken care of and all of that. And then we start putting out feelers to get that person a job, because we know that person, we know their kids. But the person who's receiving all of this understands that this is actually a burden on the rest of the community, right? They know the person who's signing them the check and the person who's doing the mail train, which requires gratitude. And it also means that they don't want to take that. That always, right? They would like to not take it, actually. They would like to go and get the job, okay? Now remove that function, which means they. They now feel a duty toward the rest of the community to go out and sort and find a job and maybe even take a job they don't want to take just so that they don't have to be a burden on the community. Now think about it. Once government takes over that role, government sees the person who lost the job and says, here, here we are. We are money, right? You don't know us. You've never met us. You don't know the people who are signing the check. This is why it drives me nuts when politicians of both parties say, I created X jobs. You didn't create shit, my friend. Like, Donald Trump didn't create jobs and Joe Biden didn't create jobs because none of those people are hiring using their dollars. Okay? Donald Trump created jobs in his own private sector life. But. But the idea that, like, the government is what's the job creator is a lie. That's not true. You can create conditions that make it easier for people to hire, which is maybe what they're trying to say, but that's not the way that it comes off. When government comes into a situation where somebody is down on their luck and then they sign a check, no attendant sense of duty then befalls the person. This is why the shift from benefits to entitlements linguistically is really quite negative. Once somebody feels they're entitled to the thing, then it's like, okay, well, but what do I owe to the government? Do I owe to the government? Like, a necessity to, like, go and get a job? Like, how Hard. Do I have to work? Do I have to take that job that maybe I wouldn't have taken if I. If I weren't, you know, being paid by the. If I didn't have to like that. It. It ch. In the movie Cinderella man, you remember Russell Crow's character. He. He takes welfare for a while. You remember there's a scene where he goes back into the welfare office after he's made it as. As a boxer, James Braddock. And he carries a wad of rolls and he sets it back on the counter and he gives it back. Can you imagine anybody doing that? You can't. But you know what happens all the time in communities where, you know, the person who's giving to you, that. That sort of stuff happens all the time. I've personally floated loans to people who can't afford their mortgage. I do it all the time. And you know what happens? They pay me back, and they feel an obligation to pay me back. And they feel bad about taking the money. And it's not. They should feel, you know, guilty or terrible. If you need to do it, you need to do it. But they, but they understand that there is a cost to somebody else in doing the thing.

[Graham Stephan]

What should the role of government be and where should it end?

[Ben Shapiro]

So I think that it's different at different levels of government. I don't think the federal government has the same function as a local government. So I sort of have a basic formula which is that the more homogenous a community is, the more local government can set the rules for the community and the less it actually needs to, because people tend to agree more. When people tend to agree more, there are fewer stated rules, but more actual social rules.

[Jubilee Host]

Social fabric.

[Ben Shapiro]

Right, Exactly. So like in your family, there's not a list of laws in your family, in your house, but everybody kind of knows what the rules are because you live in the same house and the same thing happens to hold true in your community. You kind of all know informally what the rules are, and it's sort of enforced by social sanction. But if those laws were to be passed that sort of state the social sanction, it wouldn't make much of a difference because everyone's abiding by anyway. And I think that that's fine. I think that it's good that people get to live how they want to live communally, because we're not just individuals. We also want to live in communities of our own making with those rules. Think of an HOA. Right? HOAs are super annoying and they're really irritating. But also they make sure that all the lawns in the neighborhood are clean. So is that like a bad. Are hoas bad? I don't think hoas are bad. You volunteered in, you can volunteer out. You can escape the HOA if you don't want to live there. So on a local level, I think that there's a case to be made that because you have a larger role in changing sort of how the government is done, and because you can leave if you don't like it, then the government could do more, but won't have to do as much. And as you keep abstracting up the chain, the government should do less and less because there's less and less agreement about doing those things. And then it turns into just a game majority cramming it down on minorities. So the more heterogeneous a community becomes, like the United States, the more you have one giant government at the top setting the rules for everyone, the more people are going to buck against that system. So, ironically, you could set lots of rules at the local level and get no pushback against the system, but if you set those rules at the top level, you're going to get tons of pushback against the system, and you probably should.

[Jubilee Host]

The HOA example is a really interesting one. I've never thought about it like that. One of the things that people are discussing. Right. Discussing right now is the mainstream concern that this could be the last election. Now, I know that you talked, I think, with Sam Harris about this, that that's complete BS and that people shouldn't be believing that because it's a dangerous thought. But I'm kind of paraphrasing Elon Musk's sentiment right here. He says the basic belief is based on the number of migrants that would have come in if legalized and allowed to vote. Vote, would most likely vote overwhelmingly Democrat. And then the United States could become California politically because Democratic power would remain uncontested. What are your thoughts on that? Is that a genuine concern?

[Ben Shapiro]

That. That's certainly a genuine concern. It is not. It is not the equivalent of saying this is the last election being like, I don't think Elon's just going to go take his ball and go home if Kamala Harris wins the election. I think that very few of the people who claim that it's this is the last election ever are going to quit their jobs as political commentators and just say, well, I guess it's over now. I'm going to go home and. And take the Roger Benedict option and go live on my farm. Like that. That's not a thing that's gonna happen.

[Jubilee Host]

The last contested election.

[Ben Shapiro]

Even that I hesitate to say. I mean, if you look at the history of the United States, the Democratic Party's dominance in Congress stretched from the FDR era all the way to 1994. That was like 50 years of uninterrupted Democratic dominance of the Congress of the United States. And then Republicans won. So that is to say that things tend to move and they tend to shift. And also, it depends on what level of government you're talking about. Like, am I super worried we're in Florida right now? Am I worried that Florida is gonna be like. Like Kamala Harris's precinct of fun? Like, no, I don't think that's the case. I mean, thank God for the federalist structure. I think it's a little harder to change the systems than Kamala would like it to. Am I worried about all that stuff? Of course. I mean, I think that I'm worried about the legalization of 20 million illegal immigrants. I think that the supposition that all of those people and their children will forever vote Democrat is not true. I mean, that's been shown not to be true. I mean, you've seen a shift in the Hispanic vote just in my lifetime and over the course of the last couple elections. So. So again, I think it's very hard to project out 20 years into the future where things are going to be do. I think that in the immediate term, it's really, really bad. What Democrats are attempting to do by, say, like Kamala has said, she's going to kill the filibuster. She would do that in order to, presumably, she says, put Roe vs. Wade back in place, but that wouldn't be the extent of it. She would do more than that. Because the problem with simply passing a law that says Roe versus Wade is restored is the next time the Republicans take Congress, they just. Just unrestore Roe versus Wade, and it just kicks back down. By the way, even if she passed a federal law along those lines, my guess is the Supreme Court strikes it down and says that the federal government does not have the power to regulate in large scale on abortion. And this is a state issue, which is kind of what they said actually in the decision. What I'm more worried about is systemic changes to the actual institution. So I'm worried that Kamala Harris comes in, she says, let's get rid of the filibuster, and now let's immediately add two states. So now we have two more senators from Puerto Rico and two more senators from D.C. and so suddenly you have a massive imbalance in the United States Senate, which is typically not the way you've added states. If, if you look historically, the United States typically added two states at a time, one Democrat, one Republican. So this is why Alaska and Hawaii came in at the same time. Ironically, Alaska was a Democratic state and Hawaii was a Republican state at the time. And again, things change. You've seen how that's flipped. So, you know, I'm worried about that. I'm worried about her saying that she would add justices to the Supreme Court, which would lead, I assume, to just an unending series of adding justices to the supreme court. Assume there's 98 judges on the Supreme Court because each party comes in and they reverse it and they're like, let's add more judges to the Supreme Court. And suddenly it's the sanhedrin, you have.

[Jubilee Host]

70 law of big numbers could actually, you know, result in some pretty good.

[Ben Shapiro]

I feel, I feel like the written decisions are going to be kind of a mess. But. But it's, you know, those sorts of things keep me up at night and I think are really a problem. I'm obviously worried, as Elon is, about the legalization of this many people, especially in the sort of near term, immediate term, without any sort of assimilative process. But again, I think that it is dangerous in a democracy to say this is the last election because the or is the next thing that comes. Or what? Or what? What's the alternative? So let's say, let's say, what are we supposed to do now? If this is the last election, then that starts to justify things like, okay, am I supposed to pick up a gun? What am I supposed to do? Because resistance to tyranny is pretty well ingrained in the American bloodstream. If the idea is that Donald Trump. This is, I think what you're seeing right now, the left is saying Donald Trump is Hitler. And so the question I keep asking Democrats, including Sam Harris, this, like, okay, if he's actually, like a Hitlerian figure, doesn't Kamala Harris have a moral responsibility not to certify the election even if he wins, just to stop him? When you start using this sort of language, you box yourself in logically. That makes this episode is brought to you by Allstate. Some people just know they could save hundreds on car insurance by checking Allstate first. Like, you know, to check the date of the big game first before you accidentally buy tickets on your 20th wedding anniversary and have to spend the next 20 years of your marriage making up for it. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate Savings. Vary terms apply. Allstate Fire and Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career.

[Jubilee Host]

Day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he.

[Ben Shapiro]

Loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day.

[Jubilee Host]

Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn.

[Ben Shapiro]

You'Ll be able to reach people who do.

[Jubilee Host]

Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com campaign to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com campaign. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn the place to be. To be. Yeah, I agree, it is pretty extreme language. I've been a super fan of Elon my entire life. I think he's one of the strongest forces for good, honestly, on the planet right now. But one of my biggest fears is that he's secretly evil and like, super profit motivated. Like, but think about how catastrophic that would be if Elon was actually like, behind closed doors. Like that would.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, first of all, great movie, but also I. I don't think it would be. I know Elon possible with all the.

[Jubilee Host]

Data, with, you know, the neural link with all of that stuff. I'm just saying there, there could be a different side of the token. I don't believe so, but it would.

[Ben Shapiro]

Be kind of amazing twist ending to this movie.

[Jubilee Host]

But I love Elon. I really, really do. You've spent a lot of time with him recently. What's something about Elon that surprised you?

[Ben Shapiro]

Elon. So the thing about Elon, I think you do see this publicly. He does have a sort of childlike sense of wonder about the world, which I think amounts to the drive for innovation he approaches. You know, he approaches the world with a sense of like, what can humans do? And that's so inspiring and so cool. I mean, how can you watch what he's doing with SpaceX and just not be inspired at how awesome humans are, how cool that is? And Elon brings that sense of optimism to many of the things that he's doing now. Sometimes that manifests politically because again, it's sort of like this almost naive enthusiasm about things. Sometimes it manifests in strange ways that are sort of disquieting. But I think that overall the kind of perception of what can we do if we put our minds to it is so cool. And we don't see that nearly enough. And so that's the thing. When I went with him to Auschwitz and we had this, we had a conversation for about an hour, then we had another conversation on camera for about an hour and behind closed doors and we were having a conversation about sort of the nature of humanity. And he was saying, he was saying, I think humans are inherently good. And I said, well, I actually don't. I mean we just went to Auschwitz. Like, it's very difficult for me to say that human beings are inherently good. I think that human beings have an innate capacity for good, but I think human beings also have an innate capacity for evil. And he like took it in. He was kind of thinking about it and it was interesting to just kind of watch him process. And he, he. I think that he comes at things with a, with a uniquely open mind, which also means that, you know, some bad ideas get in there, but a lot of really good ideas come out of that because to look at things with fresh eyes. One of the things he said, we were talking about the cyber trucks. My son is an enormous Elon fan, like a huge, he's 8 years old, loves Elon, loves SpaceX, loves Tesla, like super into it. And since the time he was three, Tesla was like his company. My son started like a little golf ball business where we live near a golf course. He picked up all these golf balls, we resold them and he, and he made like 4 or 500 bucks. He's like, what, what, what should I do with this? And I was like, you should buy some stock. His account just Tesla stock, right? That's what my son does. So he, so he, I was telling Elon like, my son loves the Cyber truck. And he's like, well of course he loves this. I made the cyber truck for, for six year old kids. I think it's cool. It's an awful impression which, like that's, that's, that's, it's a terrible impression. But it's, but it's, but like that, that approach which is like, what if I just make cool shit that people like? Like that's awesome. That's really cool. And it's uniquely, it's refreshing indeed. I love that about Elon. I really love it.

[Jubilee Host]

I think what he did with X was like massive, massive what he did with X. So a lot of respect to Elon.

[Graham Stephan]

What do you think his role in the government would be? Because he's very pro getting rid of some of the national debt and cutting by $2 trillion. Do you think that's feasible? And what would his involvement be?

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, discretionary spending, very difficult to reduce that by $2 trillion. You're talking about, about, you know, deep cuts to services. It's not just a matter of efficiency, it's a matter of which services are in play. You can't cut, you know, spending without there being another side of the coin, which is the things that the spending was paying for, even if you're overspending. So I think that just in terms of efficiency, Elon, the way that he runs companies is, I mean, you can see it with X. He comes in, he's like, I'm just going to fire everyone. Like if I can't see what you're doing right now, you are fired. And he took down the, and he took down the number of employees at x by like 80%. He went from a huge number of employees to a tiny number of employees and then sort of bootstrapped it until it worked again, which you can do in private industry. Much harder to do when you have public sector unions. Much, much more difficult to do when there are regulatory agencies that you're sitting on. So I think that he can make a difference in terms of allocation of contracts, negotiation of contracts, getting rid of some of the wasteful spending. The reality is that the thing that's bankrupting the country is typically not sort of these discretionary programs. It is the embedded entitlement programs and discretionary and sort of means tested welfare programs that are discretionary under the budget. Budget that are, that are eating up the entire budget of the country. And those are bigger problems for the American body politic politics than just Elon sitting there with a red pen.

[Graham Stephan]

How do you solve that? Or is it solvable? Can you solve the national debt?

[Ben Shapiro]

I think not. I think that the high likelihood is that the United States runs directly into austerity measures in about 10 years. Human beings very, very good at, very, very bad at prevention and very, very good at adaptation, just generally speaking. And so we can see the problem coming and ain't nobody stopping that problem. I mean, this has been one of my big critiques of the Republican Party under basically since Paul Ryan left the scene. A lot of people hate Paul Ryan. The thing that Paul Ryan said that was right is that the entitlement programs are bankrupting us. They clearly are. And when he suggested changing them, the Americans were like, hey, hold up there a minute, buddy. Now what's amazing is if you reverse the clock, go back to 2005, George W. Bush was proposing that we privatize Social Security. By privatize Social Security. He didn't mean that, you know, Social Security go away. He meant that we will take your money that you're paying into Social Security and we'll put it into an index fund, and then it will pay you back when you retire. Can you imagine how much money people would have made if they had done that in 2005? If they took your Social Security, where was the stock market? Where's the Dow Jones in, like 2005? I promise it wasn't 40,000. Okay, so if they taken and put into an index fund like George W. Bush was.

[Jubilee Host]

Individual accounts.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes, individual accounts. Individual savings accounts. Right. They put it into an individual. They leave it there. And you just leave it there. You can't even access it. Right. You're not going to sell it because we don't want you to sell it because we're afraid if you sell it, you're going to be dumb about your stocks. Fine. So you just leave it there for like 40, 50 years. Okay? They do for you what you're talking about to coffee, which was George W. Bush's actual proposal. He was ripped up and down, people. No, you're going to steal our Social Security and destroy it. And in the end, this is a democratic republic. And that means that if people are too dumb to understand how economics works, then I guess we'll all pay the price when the austerity measures come and we have to radically increase inflation, radically increase our taxes, or radically decrease the benefits, because those are the only three choices.

[Graham Stephan]

I did the math on this, and if you invested in an index fund over 40 years instead of Social Security, you'll have three times more money.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes.

[Graham Stephan]

And it will be able to be passed on to other generations. The downside of that, the other part is that with Social Security, they buy US Treasuries. And so without that influx of capital, which is a big part of who's buying US Treasuries, the government might have a harder time running and funding itself.

[Ben Shapiro]

Good. You know, that sounds like a feature, not a bug to me. I mean, I'd prefer that we buy fewer U.S. treasuries and stop funding so many terrible government programs. I think that actually, that sounds great to me. That sounds like more monetary stability. So, you know.

[Graham Stephan]

Okay, so why don't they do privatized accounts? Because it would make sense to me if it was like, you know, a target date index fund that just balances over time, and by the time you hit 70, it's. And mostly treasuries maybe 20% in equities, you know, some regular income that's coming in and you just receive 3% of that for the next 30 something years. And if you run out, you know, you run out or something like that.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, I mean, it makes perfect fiscal sense. But the problem is that the minute anyone politically says you are touching Social Security, everybody has a bias toward the status quo in American politics. This is how Obamacare goes from. I can't believe how terrible this is. Why is anybody touching my healthcare too? Why is anyone touching Obamacare? This is terrible. Why is it, why is everyone touching my health care? Whatever the status quo is, people are very, very nervous about messing with the status quo. Problem is sometimes the status quo is fiscally unsustainable over the long term.

[Jubilee Host]

Yeah, you got eviscerated for talking about retirement and Social Security earlier.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, it's good times.

[Jubilee Host]

Yeah, I remember that distinctly because I watched that episode like when it came out. And then to my surprise, like, I actually didn't expect that sort of revolt to happen.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, I mean, again, you stepped on the third rail. The third rail is Social Security is, is owed to you, that retirement is, should be the goal of life. And when I said retirement, I wasn't talking about like, yeah, you know, like, like you. Right. I mean, like if you're broken down, that's, that's a different thing. And I wasn't even talking about retirement in the sense that like you retire and then you take a part time job teaching or you, or you go work at your church. I was talking about sort of the vision that I think a lot of Americans have about retirement, which is at 65, you go sit on a beach somewhere for 30 years. I don't think that's good for human beings. I think that you have to have a data.

[Jubilee Host]

It's not.

[Ben Shapiro]

Right.

[Jubilee Host]

I mean, it's kind of what you were referencing.

[Ben Shapiro]

That was what I was referencing. And then of course, the way that our politics works is that all gets telescoped down into a headline, which I want everybody work until they die. Which is like, no, I mean, I would like you to do something meaningful in your life until you die. That seems like a pretty good thing to do. And the meaningful doesn't have to mean working for a wage. It can very often mean that you worked at a backbreaking job. And now what you want to do is you want to work, you know, for your church community, you want to go do politics, you want to, you want to go and write your book. Like you have to find some sense of purpose and meaning. And what you're seeing, I think is, and you can see this in the data is enormous amounts of rising depression among older Americans actually. And that's a huge problem.

[Graham Stephan]

Where do you see our economy headed over the next 10 to 15 years?

[Ben Shapiro]

Stagnation. I think stagnation is upon us and I think that the possibility of. I've been less worried about inflation in the long term than stagnation. We're spending too much money. We are overregulated. The sort of innovative capacity. I know there are a lot of people putting a lot of hopes in AI and maybe that hope is justified in terms of radical increases in productivity. Although they haven't really been able to make the connection between AI and kind of general use productivity yet. It's very early. So we'll see how that applies to the vast majority of industries. Hopefully it'll lead to a real productivity increase. But absent that sort of world changing technology, it seems to me that we have not geared our economy for success, that we've overregulated it, that we've provided enormous amounts of benefits to people that I think are disincentives to innovate. We're still the best bet on the block, but I think the entire global economy is in for a world of hurt. We've taken out way too much debt, all of us.

[Graham Stephan]

What about housing affordability?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean housing affordability could be solved simply by removing so many of the building regulations. It's very, very difficult to build in a lot of places. They're huge. To get a new house built in California is really, really difficult. Like it. Not as difficult as in some other countries, but it's, it's very, it's very rough. If you, if you have a. Create major barriers to entry for creating more housing stock, it's going to be very difficult to bring down the price. And the other thing is that, you know, one of the things that really hasn't happened yet, but I think it's going to, is the move away from cities. I know there's a lot of talk about this during COVID I think that if you want a cheaper house, you're going to like people want a cheaper house where they currently live and that's not how the market works. Like the price of your house is what the price of your house is because you're competing with other people to buy that house. If you would like a cheaper house, you might have to think about not living where you live. And that's a hard thing for People. But one of the weirdest things about kind of the American experiment right now is that if you look at the history of Americans moving for jobs, fewer Americans right now are moving for jobs than any time in modern American history. Which is super weird because it's actually way easier to move now than it was when you're, you know, grandpappy's grandpappy had to get on a covered wagon and cross Native American territory and sit by a river and wait for bad shit to happen to him. Like, now, if you want to move, it actually is quite doable. So if you want to move for a job, you can. I understand why people want to stay put. I mean, I understand you got family nearby and all of that sort of stuff. I mean, these are real considerations. But I think that there has set into a lot of the American mind this idea that it's owed to me. I get to live where I want, and the price is going to be low. I get to live where I want and take the job that I want and get the pay that I want. It's like, you don't get to dictate to the world what the conditions are. The conditions are. What the conditions are. And so if you want to alleviate the. I mean, you had a housing stock problem back in major cities in the mid 19th century. You know, people did. They got on wagons, they went across a mountain and built like a hut in the middle of nowhere. Like, this is the way typically. Typically the way that housing stock problems get solved is you go to a place where the housing is cheaper, more affordable, you can build it yourself. That's how it will be solved this time, too, because it certainly isn't going to solve by. By rent control or by government subsidized housing. Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

Do you think homeownership is necessary? Because when I look at the price between renting and buying, and I've said this a lot recently, that renting is substantially cheaper right now. So it makes more sense, in my opinion, to rent over the next 10 years than buy a house and speculate on its value.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, I think it depends where it's all locationally based. I think that. Would I buy in Los Angeles right now? No. I think the prices there are wildly inflated. I think there's also a real weird stickiness to the market right now because of the mortgage rates. And because the mortgage rates have been so high, that means that there's less housing stock available on the market because nobody wants to sell their house and then get into a mortgage that's twice what they were paying. So that's been a real problem. But yeah, I mean, listen, I've always been a big fan of homeownership since I got married. We've never rented. I always bought because I just felt like I was flushing my money down the toilet. But that's because the math worked. If the math doesn't work, the math doesn't work. And so you have to make the best decision. I mean, if you'd rather take the money that you're saving on rent and put it in the stock market market, then go for it, that might pencil out for you better. You know, historically speaking, depending on the market, it may pencil out better to buy your house than to rent your house. I also, it depends how risk seeking a risk averse. You are right. I tend to be relatively risk averse about my investments and so I like real estate as a risk averse investment, meaning it's never going to be worth zero. Whatever my house is worth now, if I hold on to it for long enough, it will be worth more than I'm paying for the house right now. So, you know, again, that's a pretty risk averse way of viewing housing. And I think for some people that's, that's probably the right way to view it.

[Graham Stephan]

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[Jubilee Host]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jubilee Host]

Thank you so much to Range Rover Sport for sponsoring this episode. And back to the podcast. Another interesting idea that I wasn't exposed to before like four or five months ago is that the average square footage of new developments has just been steadily increasing over the past like 40 or so years and people are getting in places that are like 23, 26, 2700 square feet, which is a very large home. Whereas back in the day people were more used to like the 1200 square feet to the 1500. I mean, you said you 1100 and obviously it wasn't super comfortable, but it still works and it was conducive to. It's fine.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, you know, I remember. So my parents, when I was 11, moved into like a 2400 square foot house. And I was like, this place is a palace. This place is enormous.

[Jubilee Host]

Yeah.

[Ben Shapiro]

And now we live in a place like three times that.

[Jubilee Host]

Not a lot of developments are like 3,000 square feet and stuff like that.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, yeah, I mean, because if, if you're. Because again, upward mobility means that people want nicer stuff all the time and they want more space and they want higher ceilings, for example. And if you walk into a house that's built in the 50s, now most people, you walk into a house that's built in the 50s, you're like, this place is cramped. What were people three feet tall? Like, what's the deal? And you know, that's because the market tends to push the limits of what's available and what's possible.

[Jubilee Host]

I think it'd be interesting if there were more tax incentives for developers to create smaller square footage houses because it's more profitable right now for them to make the bigger houses.

[Graham Stephan]

Like also land prices are so expensive that they have to build bigger to get that ROI on square footage. And then if they get incentives, it's the taxpayer that's then still paying for it. The money's got to come from somewhere where.

[Jubilee Host]

Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

So either way the money's got to.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, there's, there's a very good free market reason why they're building bigger houses. And if somebody wants to try and make a bundle off of making small single family homes again, I think part of the problem is that the places where people want small single family homes are likely to be in major cities where those are way more expensive. And if you take that same price and then you apply it to like rural Texas, you can have yourself a giant ranch.

[Jubilee Host]

So how big of a deal is our national debt? Do you think we could just print our way out of it?

[Ben Shapiro]

I don't think we can print our way out of it. I mean, we can, but I think that it'll be very bad for everybody. If you like the inflation of the less last few years, then get ready for more fun. I think the idea that at no point will anybody call in our debt. I think is wishful thinking, financially speaking. Now, again, we are the best bet on the block. The modern monetary theory idea that if we just keep pumping money, there won't be any consequence because we'll remain the best bet on the block is only true so long as nobody calls in the debt. It's easy to take money out of the bank and pour it into your business so long as the bank never asks you for the money back. And when you're talking about U.S. treasuries, when you're talking about U.S. debt, somebody at some point is going to call for that back. I mean, China owns an enormous amount of US Debt right now, and just as a weapon, they could theoretically just offload that into the general market and totally destroy our capacity to take out new debt. If they decided to sell U.S. treasuries at a loss just to us, they totally good. I mean, it would be. And if we got into, like a serious military conflict with them, you could certainly see them doing something like that, figuring it would do more harm to us than it would to them.

[Jubilee Host]

And it's interesting because we're at a huge trade deficit with China right now. But I know Trump wants to try to renegotiate that, to try to, like, catch up for lost time, but at the same time, we technically owe them a lot of money. Do you think that there's going to be any issue with that?

[Ben Shapiro]

I'm not super worried about trade deficits. I'm more worried about the general productivity of the American economy. Meaning that as long again, as long as you remain the best bet on the block, then you can work with trade deficits. They start to collapse on you when you have nothing to sell, when there's nothing for you to sell, then all those, you know, you bought something from China, China now has a bunch of dollars. They have to use the dollar somewhere. The idea always was by classical economics that they're going to spend it back where the dollar came from. They're going to spend it with you. And so what are they going to buy? Well, if you have nothing really to sell, that's when you got a major problem on your hands. The United States still has plenty of stuff to sell is why I'm worried about overregulation. It's why I'm worried about the incentive structure of innovation. It's why I think that it's ridiculous that we're taking so many steps on the consumer end, but nothing to actually jog the supply end of the chain. So much stuff is concerned with the consumer end. Of the mar market. Take, take healthcare, right? Enormous amount of focus on the cost of healthcare. And so see people like, what, what if we just cap the price of drugs? What if you just do that because it's really, really expensive? Say, well, you could do that. But as you say, somebody's going to have to absorb the cost of that. The people who are going to absorb the cost of that are presumably all of the medical R and D companies that are actually developing those drugs. If you want fewer drugs, then sure, I suppose that you could, you could do that. And to me, there are other things that you could do, like, for example, use other methods to cudgel other companies into paying, paying the fair market price for the actual drugs rather than using their collective bargaining power to find, to screw the American consumer. But, you know, I think that, you know, focusing on sort of the trade balance is generally a mistake. You should focus more on the productivity of your own economy and then on lowering all of the ballast that is represented by the regulatory and welfare state, which is, which is eating up all of that entrepreneurial effort.

[Jubilee Host]

I hope Elon is able to deregulate.

[Ben Shapiro]

I hope so, too.

[Graham Stephan]

Now, speaking of some of that, the 0% income tax has been thrown around recently. Do you think that's even possible?

[Ben Shapiro]

I think very, very implausible. I mean, dream of dreams, hope of hopes. I mean, like when Trump was talking about his 20% tariff plan or 10% tariff plan, like, but then when he's like, instead of the income tax, like.

[Graham Stephan]

But now, why even, why even throw some of these things out? Because it seems like a lot of politicians are throwing out these wild pipes.

[Jubilee Host]

It's a moonshot.

[Graham Stephan]

And they're just saying, whatever.

[Ben Shapiro]

How ridiculous. I think that's a great way to please everybody. Right? You're saying I'm going to throw out tariff plans and that's going to bring manufacturing jobs back to the, back to the bereft Midwest, the Rust Belt. And then he's like, okay, but that also is going to increase prices. By what if I said instead of the income tax, and it's like, okay, well then I can have all the things again. The truth is that is there's solid precedent for that in American history. Before the income tax, that is actually how the federal government generated its income was tariffing imported goods and then there was no income tax. And I'd venture to say that was probably a better system. Tariffs plus a gigantic income tax. A pretty terrible economic system, actually. But yes. I mean, everyone throws out these plans. None of them will ever come to fruition. Similarly, Kamala Harris suggesting that she's going to tax unrealized capital gains is psychotic. Maybe it sounds good to her. Bernie Sanders, Thomas Pachetti base.

[Jubilee Host]

I don't think it sounded good to a lot of people.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, anybody who has any basic knowledge of, of how businesses run valuations under understands like that's, that's, it's psychotic. I mean it's not like when I say, I mean full scale asylum level psychotic to, to suggest that as a serious.

[Graham Stephan]

So this is purely people throwing out random things just to a.

[Jubilee Host]

Right. Yeah, but it means something to the American people. That's the problem that I have with it is because we have a list right here of like the 0% income tax. We have the wall that was talked about forever and obviously some of it was built. But now we obviously have the huge immigration problem. We have homelessness, which people are talking about, about but nothing is ever done. Actually today Gavin Newsom did something. He put what, 878 million towards homelessness. So hopefully we'll have one shelter in 30 years.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah. After spending $24 billion. Homelessness and totally failing.

[Jubilee Host]

And the wealth tax was an interesting one too. Student loan cancellation, which is always talked about. It's never passed the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

[Ben Shapiro]

Again, these, these are when, when you say it, when you talk about economic illiteracy. I mean anyone with half a second of thought about any of these programs realizes that there is no such thing as a free lunch and there's a cost on the other end. So okay, let's get rid of the student loan debt. So you're doing a few things. One is you are now putting the burden on people who actually paid their student loans to pay off everybody else's student loans or onto their kids. You're just adding to the massive debt of the United States, which will have long term ramifications, as we've discussed. And at the same time, you're also propping up an entire educational bubble that is a giant scam for an enormous number of people. You're telling people they need to get a degree in order to work at a Starbucks. That's ridiculous. What we actually need is a deflationary scheme inside of higher education. But instead you're contributing to an inflationary scheme inside of higher education, which is what that is. It's a subsidy. You know some of the other ideas that are being mentioned, when Trump says tariffs, it's the most beautiful word in the English language. According to whom? I mean, like what Are we tariffing for. I understand. Security tariffs. Okay. You want to protect domestic industries that are important to national security. That I totally get. You don't want China being responsible for manufacturing drugs that are vital to us because they're an opposing power. I get that. But the idea that like tariffs are inherently good and inherently beautiful. No, they're not. That's, that, that's, that's, that's economically illiterate. It's not true.

[Jubilee Host]

I think my general sentiment on this, and I think I share this with a lot of other citizens, is that people will say anything on the campaign trail to, to gain favor. Not even that I'm in support of the things that I agree.

[Ben Shapiro]

And it's almost always a, and they say it on behalf of a, a, an aggrieved minority or a, that to which there is a concerted benefit at the expense of a dissolute majority. Right. Like, like a terrible benefit like these 10 workers in Ohio at the expense of the entire consumer base of the United States, for example. But it's like $0.01 to every consumer. But it's, but it's 10 bucks to all these guys in Ohio. Right.

[Jubilee Host]

But as soon as they get into the office, I feel like their interests are no longer in actually supporting the American people and just in supporting this like amorphous thing, like Trump said on pbd, this like group of people, the deep state, the whatever it is, it just doesn't seem like they're necessarily really representing us, I suppose. What are your thoughts?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, again, I think that, you know, when, when people talk about sort of the swamp or they talk about the, the amorphous mass of government, I mean, those people have names and they have departments and we should eliminate those names and departments. Right. I mean, this is, I think, where Elon really is useful. I mean if Elon really had power, what he could do is he could come in, he could just say no more. Department of Education. Right, sorry. Like it just. We're going to get rid of this like the, it's an executive branch agency. You're all fine. Right. Like he could theoretically do that. Like that. That would be great. I'm very much in favor of that. And there are tons of agencies inside the federal government like that. The number of overlapping welfare agencies in the, in the federal government. You're talking about like dozens and dozens and dozens of agencies that effectively overlap when it comes to means tested welfare programs. Is all that necessary in order to get people a check, Even if you agree with the check is all of that necessary? I don't think so. I think that that's where Elon could theoretically be useful. The reality is that the American government was built for grid block. It was built to do nothing. This is the thing that nobody actually wants to recognize. If you read the Constitution, if you read the Federalist Papers and the anti Federalist Papers, the founding documents were built in order to ensure that the federal government didn't do things, that you only did things when there's a widespread agreement that we ought to do the thing. So you had a Congress, and then that was checked by the Senate, and that was checked by the presidency, and both were checked by the Supreme Court, and all of that was checked by the states. Right. And so like, all of these checks and balances were built for gridlock. The system is built for gridlock. This is why, when we say, why can't the government do act? Because the government wasn't built to do X. And then, then in the early 20th century, thanks to the rise of an unelected bureaucracy in the administrative state, and the idea that Woodrow Wilson put forth, which is that government was actually built to do things as opposed to not do things, then you end up with kind of the worst of both worlds, which is an embedded bureaucracy that is unelected and ever growing, and that same system of gridlock that you had before, which prevents you from getting big things done. So you almost get the worst where it's like this behemoth that rolls along the landscape like the giant, giant Jawa, you know, thing in, in Star Wars Episode 4. It's just kind of like the sand, the sand crawler, like just kind of going along this giant thing on its own momentum. And it's very difficult to stop that because the government was not built to, to do things. And stopping things is a way of. Do you have to do something to stop it?

[Jubilee Host]

Actually, let's talk about the media a little bit. You had a really interesting experience with the New York Times recently. You made a whole thread on this. I mean, I read the message that they sent you, and I'm not gonna lie, it made my blood boil a little bit. I was like, who do these people think they are? Walk us through what exactly happened in this situation.

[Ben Shapiro]

Sure. So there's a reporter from the New York Times who just texted me and it turns out texted pretty much everybody on the right and said, based on research from Media Matters, which for those who don't know, is a very, very activist left wing organization whose explicit desire is to essentially shut down conservative media and the way they've done this historically is to get advertisers to boycott conservative shows or boycott the advertisers to the advertisers boycott conservative shows to pressure social media companies in order to shut down conservative MIT material. So the New York Times explicitly in this message says, based on research from Media Matters, we have discovered that you're one of the people who has engaged in election misinformation. And so we have a question for you. Are you monetized on YouTube? If so, are you part of their monetization? Pro. So what this is clearly an attempt to do is write an article that is going to then cudgel YouTube for allowing election misinformation one week before the election to be monetized. They're going to say that YouTube is at fault if Trump wins. Basically, if Trump wins, it's going to be because there was massive election misinformation. And that was so YouTube could make money. And that's because YouTube is corrupt. Corrupt. So the only way that YouTube can avoid the sort of meat grinder set up by the New York Times is to demonetize people like me or anybody else on the right. Now, the example that they cited of me engaging in election misinformation was not, in fact, election misinformation, as people who regularly watch my show know, or even tangentially have seen my show know. I think Joe Biden won the 2020 election. I said that, like, the day after he won the election. I think that the attempts to thrash against the box by the Trump legal team were unjustified by the evidence that was available. And I was perfectly willing to watch Trump, you know, do all those legal challenges, but then once it gets adjudicated and the state votes are certified, we're none. And that's how the process works. And I didn't see the evidence that was capable of overturning that. So, like, coming at me with election misinformation is weird. They claim that what I had said was election misinformation was that the voting rules had been rigged in order to ensure a vast number of mail in ballots and also ballot harvesting. That's true. True. Okay. When I say rigged, I don't mean like corrupt in the back room. They, like, they wrote it into law secretly in secret ink that can only be discovered by lemon juice or something. I mean that they passed laws that were explicitly designed to increase mail in balloting because they wanted low propensity voters to vote by mail in 2020, and they wanted ballot harvesting. So the professional Ballot harvesters could go out and take advantage of that. That is 100% true. There is nothing that is false about that statement. It was reported by 538, which is owned by the New York Times Times. It was reported by CBS News and they're calling it election misinformation specifically so they could get YouTube to shut down anybody on the right side of the aisle. So I mean, it wasn't even a good faith attempt to shut down things that they thought were false. It was just, it was just an attempt to shut down anything that was, that was to the right.

[Graham Stephan]

Now, one thing I find interesting when you talk about misinformation like that, I've mentioned this to Jack yesterday and I've started taking screenshots of this on Reddit. I've noticed it seems as though some pro Kamala posts, anti Elon Musk, anti Trump, are getting upvoted to the extreme very quickly. And I started noticing this about a week ago where I'd screenshot everything that all of a sudden got like 50,000 upvotes, random things that would normally not get upvoted that quickly. And I started screen recording them. And I would show Jack every minute I would refresh another thousand upvotes, refresh another thousand upvotes, and I would sort the comments by newest and the comments were negative, despite the upvotes being overwhelmingly positive for that specific thing. And I have about 20 things screenshotted. And I went back a day later, the thread was deleted, most likely, I think for bot activity. And I reached out to the moderators of a non political subreddit that this was posted to and ask for a comment like, have you seen any botting going on? Have you noticed any of this? What is your experience? No responses back.

[Ben Shapiro]

So that's something that the Federalist actually just reported this yesterday. This exact story was the manipulation of Reddit. And I saw this as like their top headline over the Federalist yesterday. No, I didn't. And at Breitbart, yeah, they had a whole thing about the manipulation of exactly this, this exact thing about how that there is, there's obvious, you know, ginned up astroturf activity on Reddit in order to increase the visibility of pro content.

[Graham Stephan]

So what's interesting is that the FTC banned fake reviews and boded activity and fake followers from.

[Jubilee Host]

In August.

[Graham Stephan]

Yeah, from businesses. They didn't say anything for political parties. The other thing I find interesting is that it's not illegal to accept donations or payment for an endorsement, which I thought was wild. And I didn't think this was going on to the extent it was, but I heard that, like, a somewhat distant colleague was offered $10,000 to endorse a candidate and they turned it down. But just the fact that they're reaching out to influencers, saying, hey, if you say this, we'll pay you $10,000 or $20,000.

[Ben Shapiro]

So it's probably a little hard to make that illegal only because you can say that it's bribery for a vote. It's very hard to say bribery for an opinion because that probably falls under the First Amendment just in terms of free speech protection actions, but obviously in terms of unethical, highly unethical. I mean, if I were to contact somebody and be like, here's 10 grand to support Donald Trump publicly, I don't care. You vote and I'll write that in the document. You can vote however you want, but publicly you should say that you support Donald Trump for 10 grand. Is very hard to prosecute. Deeply unethical.

[Graham Stephan]

Just makes me wonder how many endorsements are paid for.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, I have no idea. The truth is, I think that most celebrities are willing to endorse just through social press pressure. You know, the why Taylor Swift silence is deafening and you get enough of that, and then Taylor Swift suddenly is very political and she has to make a dumb statement or something. But yeah, I mean, the notion that astroturfing isn't happening is ridiculous. Of course it is.

[Jubilee Host]

Another thing that I find really interesting is the sentiment that people should not be compelled to present voter id. What is the strongest argument that we should not require voter id? I have yet to hear a single good argument.

[Ben Shapiro]

Again, the only argument that I've ever heard put forward along these lines, and it's the one they keep trotting out, is that it's diffic. There's a disparate effect in terms of requiring voter id, that there are people who are poor who can't get over to a DMV to actually get the id, and we still want those people voting. And if they register to vote, then they should be allowed to vote. And the amount of voter fraud is statistically negligible. And so, you know, if you balance the possibility of voter fraud against the possibility that somebody is disenfranchised, more people will be disenfranchised by the requirement of voter ID than will people vote falsely in one another's name. Right. That's sort of the steel man of the case. Now, the opposing case is everybody's got id. What the hell are you talking about like, if you're going to buy alcohol, you got to get id. If you're going to drive a car, you got to get ID to vote. You should have to get id. And if that's a hoop to jump through, well, tough. I mean, that's how we know who you are. The number of proper electoral votes, the amount of proper voter fraud is zero. It's not that you balance the number of people who are quote unquote disenfranchised by having to go down to the DMV and get an ID versus the number of votes that are fraudulently counted. The number of fraudulently counted votes should be zero. Right. This is sort of like the argument you hear about illegal immigration. So you'll hear people on the right will be like, the amount of crime that's coming across the border, the amount, the amount of economic turmoil created by people crossing the border is really high. Then the counterargument will be, well, yeah, but illegal immigrants who are crossing the border are committing crimes at a lower rate than native born American citizens or they're taking welfare at similar rates or lower rates because they can't get federal welfare. And the answer is right. But the amount of crime that should be committed by people who shouldn't be in the country should be zero. It should be zero. And so that, that's an avoidance of the actual argument, which is that we can stop all of it. We can stop all of it. And if there's an attendant cost like you have to go through the border legally, well then I guess there's an attendant cost.

[Jubilee Host]

It's incredible because I remember a few years ago, people that believed that we should require voter id. It was like a racist thing. Like people called you racist.

[Ben Shapiro]

There has never yet been a poll of black Americans showing they oppose voter id. Every single poll shows that black Americans are very much in favor of voters id. It is only a bunch of elitist idiots who think that black people are too stupid to get voter id. You have to be a racist to believe the black voters are too stupid to get voter id. That's, that's, it's asinine. It's, it's ridiculous on its face. It's like saying black people can't pass a driver's test. Like, what the, what, what is wrong with you? Seriously, what's wrong with you?

[Jubilee Host]

Yeah, I want to talk about the business of the Daily Wire real quick since we, we got about nine minutes to wrap up here. How has the business of the Daily Wire changed in the past year and what are the main revenue drivers of the business? For example, example, is it the documentaries, the TV shows, the movies, the podcasts? Lady Ballers, by the way, we went to the premiere. Loved it.

[Ben Shapiro]

Thank you. So, you know, the, it all sort of goes to the same place. Meaning that if we were to look at sort of the lines of business that earn us money in terms of the actual receipts, so advertising earns us tens of millions of dollars, I'd say that represents maybe 25, 30% of our business. And then I would say that we have merch and merch represents maybe another or 5 to 10% of our business. And then the rest would be subscribers. And we have right now about a million subscribers on the, on the website. I think more than that now. And, and so that, that subscription base is fed by all of the things that you mentioned when it comes to things like, you know, Matt's documentary, which was the biggest launch day we've ever had for subscribers in the history of the company. Financially, it's very expensive not only to make a documentary, but then to get it distributed. And then the revenue splits with the theaters and the distribution mechanisms and all that kind of stuff. And so the, the, the amount of money that you make on a, on a movie in theaters right now tends to be almost zero when you, when you gross out what you spent and what you get back. And so it can be a high grossing film on, on sort of paper without it actually being money in your pocket. But we are making money off of mass film, obviously, because now it's only available to stream on our website and that means there are a lot of people who didn't see it in theaters because it wasn't available everywhere. And they're now coming to the website and subscribing for that. We put a bunch of great new extras from Matt's film. Matt explaining how he actually, actually did all of these things, like got access to all of these spaces and what we did behind the scenes, like all that kind of stuff that drives subscribers. So a huge number of subscribers have come in thanks to Matt's. And the single best subscriber that we ever had was the first day that we made his movie available. Really? For streaming. Yes. So that was, so that, that was earlier this week. So, you know, you make money that way in terms of merch. We have Jeremy's Razors, of course, which has been a growing business. And honestly we need to put more attention on because it's grown so fast that it actually outgrew our capacity to handle it. So we need more investment dollars. We need to actually, actually sink some more money into that and, you know, either fund it independently or pour more resources into it. We haven't really turned on the monetary machine that is bentkey, right? We made this entire children's network and we gave it for free to all of our Daily Wire subscribers. At some point that will, I assume, be not free or it will just become an offering in sort of an up sale of Daily Wire Plus. So we haven't quite figured out, you know, on. It's got a huge number of users but no actual independent revenue at this point. So that will change. Change, obviously. And then obviously the shows, I mean, we're going to continue to grow. Shows like mine, which thank God is very, very large and continue to grow that. And the big move that we are really focused on right now, just company wide, aside from the traditional, you got to get better at marketing, you got to solve every problem that comes along the pike and there's a new one every single week. Aside from that, the big thing that we're trying to do right now is direct people to our own platform. Because the big worry is exactly what the New York Times is trying to do, shutting you off on YouTube, right? That you see that Amazon Web Services decides that Jeff Bezos one day decides that he's going to go full woke and just shut off, you know, access to, to things that he doesn't like or something. So one of the things that we've been trying to do is direct people to become subscribers. Not just because we make money off the subscriptions, but we want people to use our website or our app in free mode. We want you to watch my show on the app. Because you watch my show on the app, then that means you can never be denied the content. Number one, we have to censor the show sometimes on YouTube, right? Because I'll say something, and I'm not even talking about quote, unquote election misinformation. I'll say something like a boy is not a girl. And YouTube might come right down on us and we have to be very careful of that sort of stuff. So we'll, we'll legitimately put material that is kind of like too hot for YouTube on Daily Wire plus and make that available to subscribers. So even if you're a free user of Daily Wire plus, you will get a different show watching my show there than you would if you were to watch the show over at YouTube. It'll be slightly different. So, you know, that's sort of the big Move that we're making as a business. We really are. We're upgrading our app. I believe it should be out in the next few months. Like a really upgraded, much more user friendly, much better app. We're really excited about that. There's a bunch of stuff we're going to do when we launch that and the idea is to in house as much as humanly possible on the app.

[Graham Stephan]

What was your decision behind going on Jubilee?

[Ben Shapiro]

So that was brought to me by our PR person. She had seen the kind of numbers that Jubilee was doing and she's like, you are maybe the most famous debater on the right. And this is a space that is getting enormous traffic and I just think it would be great interaction Internet. One of the things that we noticed is that very often conversations like the one that we're having, very often those will do better on social media than my daily show will because people want to see me talk with people sometimes people who disagree. Very often that even does better because there's a controversial aspect to that. So I think that was one of the aspects of Jubilee. Very weird experience. I mean, I will say that was definitely one of the weirder experiences of my political life. I mean, they filmed it like in the middle of the worst area of Los Angeles. I mean, by downtown, right? Oh my God. Warehouse. Yeah. Woo. I mean like no place any tourist would ever go if you wish to retain your valuables. I mean, just an awful place. And so we come in and, and it's really kind of a beat up old warehouse. I mean, there's nothing there except for some cameras. And you know, I walk in and I'm, I'm friendly with people typically friendlier than I think the public perceptionist. And so I'm being friendly with everybody.

[Graham Stephan]

Was there anyone who was surprising off camera?

[Ben Shapiro]

The only person who was. The truth is that all the people who I, who I, you know, debated in that. With the exception of the trans person who was berating me for minutes at a time. And I made the conscious decision that moment to be like, okay, there's nothing. This is not an argument. This is just an, this is just an outburst of emotion. I can't argue with that. You know, if this makes you feel better about your life, I suppose you can do it. So I was like, okay, just, you know, go. But it's. Aside from that, I think virtually every single person with these. Of the 25 people, probably 20 to 22 of them came up to me afterward and like, that was really enjoyable. That was fun. Can we get a Selfie, you know, like which, which is normal. That's fine. That's good. Like, like some of the most people, the people have gone viral the most. Like the, the girl with the nose ring, for example. Like, you know, who's, who's in a lot of these clips. Like it looks like she's, you know, being very confrontational with me and, and the moment, it is confrontational. That's fine. That doesn't bother me at all. Like I'm, I'm very, I'm very, you know, kind. There's, there's a Jewish prayer that you say every, well, three times a day actually that says let my, let my soul be as dust to, to people. Meaning like you should be just humble. Let it kind of wash over. That's fine. If people want to do that. It really doesn't bother me all that much. And so, you know, afterwards she came up and she's like, that was really nice. And you know, that was, that was fun and like that, that happened with pretty much everybody who came up afterward. A lot of them, like, a lot of them. The people who are the most raring to go. A lot of those people came up and they were like, that was, you know, I enjoyed that. That was, that you were really cordial and that was really nice. And can we get a selfie? And that. That was kind of. That was. Yeah. It isn't as surprising as I think people would think it is, but it's a little surprising.

[Jubilee Host]

We know you love hypotheticals, so hypothetically speaking speaking, you're a manager with one position available and two candidates. One is highly qualified and has a perfect record, while the other is a good fit but has a minor criminal past that they've been working hard to overcome. Hiring the first candidate would be easier for the company, but the second would have a life changing opportunity. Who do you hire?

[Ben Shapiro]

Are they equivalent in terms of like, stick to itiveness and grit?

[Graham Stephan]

I would say so, yeah.

[Ben Shapiro]

So as a business person, I hire a, I hire the person who's going to be a bigger, a bigger benefit to the company. Company because with, with a lower downside. I'm. I have a response. I have a fiduciary responsibility in my company and if, if there is a potential risk, I have to feel that the, the risk is, is so justified by the qualities of the person that. So I guess that's the question. Is the risk so justified by the qualities of the person? Like I, I really like both of them. Like, I really like both of them and I have faith that the person who has the criminal past or something, that that person is not going to make the mistake again.

[Graham Stephan]

Correct.

[Ben Shapiro]

And it depends what kind of what the crime is like, how humiliating the crime is. Is the person like, with. They call, like. Well, what, what exactly are we talking about here? Was it like a minor drug offense? I need a little more specificity because they're individual people were talking about. So let's say it's somebody with a. Who is. Who made a mistake when they were 18 years old, got caught, you know, with minor distribution of marijuana or, you know, a, a DUI at the age of 19 or something. And now that person is walking in at the age of 25, having worked hard, you know, made something of himself. Looks gritty, looks hungry. Agree. I'd probably hire that person. And the reason is because that person has had to show additional grit in coming back from a thing. If I really believe that that person is unlikely to make the mistake again, that makes sense. But again, that's, that is the burden of proof. I mean, you, you do have to show if you've got something on your record that you're. That you are not going to make the mistake again and that you're not going to humiliate the company if, if the person comes in clean. You know, I'm not going to. You don't get extra points for having made mistakes in the past, but might get some extra points for having overcome the mistake in a unique way in the past. And so you think that's probably right.

[Jubilee Host]

That makes sense. Okay, Ben, thank you so much for coming on the show. To end it on a nice note, do you, you read a lot. Everyone knows this. Do you have any book recommendations for the viewers?

[Ben Shapiro]

Oh, my gosh. So since we mentioned it, Benjamin Graham's the Intelligent Investor is totally worth reading. If you haven't read it. It's. It's a, it's actually not a super hard read. So that one is great. And since you guys like finance, then you should read Neil Ferguson's history of finance. I think it's called the Ascent of Money. It's. It's a terrific read and Neil is a terrific financial voice.

[Jubilee Host]

Awesome.

[Ben Shapiro]

Really appreciate it.

[Jubilee Host]

Thanks so much, Ben. Appreciate it. Until next time.