473: Will Swaim—Don't Follow California

Summary

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The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

Episode 473: Will Swaim—Don't Follow California
Date: March 3, 2026
Guest: Will Swaim, CEO of the California Policy Center

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Episode Overview

In this wide-ranging, candid conversation, Mike Rowe sits down with policy analyst and California Policy Center CEO Will Swaim to dissect the mounting challenges facing California—arguably the nation’s cautionary tale of well-intended policy gone awry. The episode pulls back the curtain on why seemingly robust progressive ideals in governance have led to rising costs, population flight, public sector dysfunction, and a warning for the rest of the country: “Don’t Follow California.” Packed with policy insight, personal stories, and sharp observations, Rowe and Swaim explore the consequences of expansive government, the power of public sector unions, the pitfalls of utopian promises, and the dire need for imagination and honest persuasion in America’s political culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. California as a Case Study in Policy Consequence

• California’s Wealth vs. Governance:

  • Swaim calls out the “inverse relationship” between government spending and results, noting that California’s state budget has doubled since Governor Gavin Newsom took office, yet outcomes have worsened.
    — “We are spending 100% more today as a state than we were when [Newsom] took office. And yet the results are simply not there. It's almost like there's an inverse relationship. The more we spend, the worse things get.” (02:38, Swaim)

• Driving Population Out:

  • The exodus from California is not purely political, but driven by cost: “My own four adult children—all gone from California. It wasn't because they hate Democrats… they left because the price of energy here is the highest in the country. Gasoline prices higher than Hawaii.” (03:43, Swaim)

2. Resource Paradoxes: Oil, Timber, and Regulation

• Oil Policy Irony:

  • California sits atop massive untapped oil reserves—it now imports emergency supplies, even from as far as the Bahamas, because of prohibitive drilling and refining restrictions.
    — “We cannot touch this oil. It has been locked under the ground by environmentalists, led by their spokesperson, Gavin Newsom, who is just now starting to understand that the debt has come due.” (06:43, Swaim)

• Timber Industry Demise:

  • Once the world’s largest lumber producer, California is now a net importer due to environmental legislation. Result: devastated rural economies and routine, catastrophic wildfires.
    — “You can only remove dead trees by either harvesting or burning. So we get a choice in California—we've chosen the latter... most of our state seems to burn down annually.” (07:48, Swaim)

3. The Dominance of Government Unions

• Political Influence and Fiscal Impact:
  • California has about 12% of the U.S. population but 25% of all state and local government union members.
    — “These government unions spend about a billion and a half dollars every election cycle... It has just distorted our politics.” (13:30, Swaim)
  • Unions direct campaign dollars and policy priorities, especially in education, public safety, and health, often outlasting governors and drastically shaping the state’s governance.

4. Tax Policy and the Wealth Exodus

• Proposals & Backlash:
  • A proposed “wealth tax” (retroactive to January 1, 2026) is driving billionaires and companies to leave the state.
    — “Even if it passes in November, it's effective backward… When billionaires started leaving, Newsom already has seen this. We've lost more population than the combined populations of several states.” (16:23, Swaim)

5. Signature Failures: High Speed Rail, Homelessness, and Education

• Infrastructure & Spending “Fraud”:
  • Much-touted high-speed rail is years behind schedule, over budget, and vastly reduced in scope—from connecting major cities to only linking two Central Valley towns:
    — “It was supposed to cost $33 billion… now projected to cost over $120 billion... I'm not saying these people set out to run a bogus train system. I'm saying they're incompetent to govern.” (21:38, Swaim)
  • Homelessness: $24 billion spent in four years with no reduction—auditors can’t track the money.
    — “Is homelessness reduced? No, it actually grew in that period of time... outright fraud.” (23:50, Swaim)
  • Education spending outpaces almost every state, yet California ranks near the bottom in results.
    — “We rank 48th. Mississippi, which used to be the laughing stock of public education in America, is now number nine. We pretend to educate our children.” (24:59, Swaim)

6. The Challenge of Doing Business

• Regulatory & Fiscal Obstacles:
  • Difficult to fire even underperforming employees; lawsuits threaten businesses over “speech” rights in the workplace; high mandated wages accelerate automation and layoffs.
    — “Running a business is hard here because the government wants to control your speech on your property… I had to lay off your friends, your colleagues, and you might be next.” (34:25, Swaim)
  • Example: Exemptions and favoritism with the state’s minimum wage law (Panera Bread alleged to have an inside track).
    — “It's the oldest damn story in the world. But in these times, it just feels writ large. And how, how do we gloss over it?” (35:44, Rowe)

7. Cultural & Political Drift: Imagination, Discourse, and Consequence

• Performative Politics over Practicality:

  • Rowe and Swaim lament the rise of “theatrical” politics where symbolic gestures matter more than real competence—citing, for instance, the LA mayor’s absence during a wildfire crisis and lawmakers' refusal to adopt stances on basic civic duties for fear of “the optics.”
    — “There's a real lack of courage… Congress has become like a vestigial third nipple. It's just almost an afterthought now.” (44:24, Swaim)

• Tribalism and Declining Civic Engagement:

  • Americans are increasingly unwilling to even attend events with those of opposing political views, leading to social fragmentation and weakened democratic habits.
    — "Our culture has become one in which people will not attend public events, social events, if they know that somebody with whom they disagree politically is going to be there... I wish I could get the two of you together so you could both have a fight someplace else and leave these civic institutions..." (53:52, Swaim)

• The “Imagination Gap”:

  • Rowe identifies a disturbing lack of creativity in how leaders and citizens approach problems, leading to stale, performative opposition and entrenched failed policies.
    — “It just seems like, if you can start with, look, we want the same basic thing,… but I object to what you're doing because in my view, there's almost always gonna be an unintended consequence that you're not thinking about. Shortcuts lead to long delays. That’s why I’m a conservative...” (60:31, Rowe)

• Need for Persuasion and Consequence:

  • Both agree healthy political culture requires room for persuasion and that, currently, lack of consequence is enabling failed opinions and behaviors.
    — “We have to reincorporate consequences into our social contract. There must be a price to be paid for being that indulgent... It's virtually impossible to happen in a world with no consequence where you can, where fraud is acceptable.” (65:38, Rowe)

8. Warnings for the Nation

• Federalization of Failed Policies:
  • If policies pioneered in California go national under a future Newsom administration, those looking to “escape” may have nowhere left to go.
    — “If all of the policies that these people are trying to escape now become federalized under a Newsom administration or somebody like Gavin Newsom? What do you do in that event? Where do you escape to?... It's now game over in the United States of America.” (18:15, Swaim)
  • Final plea: Don’t follow California—learn from its mistakes.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Doubling the State Budget and Declining Services:
  "We are spending 100% more today as a state than we were when [Newsom] took office. And yet the results are simply not there. It's almost like there's an inverse relationship. The more we spend, the worse things get."
  — Will Swaim (02:38)

• On California’s Untapped Oil and Regulatory Irony:
  "We cannot touch this oil. It has been locked under the ground by the environmentalists, led by their spokesperson, Gavin Newsom, who is just now starting to understand that the debt has come due."
  — Will Swaim (06:43)

• On Performative Politics:
  "There's a real lack of courage… Congress has become like a vestigial third nipple. It's just almost an afterthought now."
  — Will Swaim (44:24)

• On Tribalism:
  "Our culture has become one in which people will not attend public events, social events, if they know that somebody with whom they disagree politically is going to be there."
  — Will Swaim (53:52)

• On Persuasion and Policy:
  "The most important word in all that was persuade."
  — Mike Rowe (65:11)

• Cautionary Closer:
  “For your listeners outside of California, please don’t do this to yourselves. This is not the exit door that you thought it might be. This is not the off ramp.”
  — Will Swaim (49:23)

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Timestamps: Important Segments

• California’s Fiscal Explosion & Policy Failings — 02:38–05:01
• Resource Paradoxes: Oil & Timber — 05:01–09:46
• Power of Government Unions — 12:12–16:23
• Wealth Tax & The Population Exodus — 16:23–18:15
• High Speed Rail Debacle — 19:17–23:50
• Fraud in Spending & Education Woes — 23:50–28:48
• How Regulation Hinders Business — 32:17–36:21
• Tribalism & The Death of Civic Imagination — 53:36–57:45
• On Persuasion, Policy, and Consequence — 60:31–67:52
• Final Warnings and Hopes — 62:51–69:19

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Tone & Style

Rowe and Swaim’s language is frank, reflective, and conversational, punctuated by biting humor and cultural references (e.g., “vestigial third nipple,” “Don’t do this to yourselves,”). They balance ideological critique with appeals for open-mindedness and imagination, advocating neither resignation nor rage, but persuasion and civic responsibility.

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Conclusion

This episode of The Way I Heard It delivers a sobering yet engaging deep dive into the real-world consequences of California’s ambitious and often disastrous policy experiments, presenting a warning for the nation while urging a return to persuasion, civil discourse, and creativity in governance and everyday life.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

What do you say, Will Swaim? Are you up for a, for an ad hoc public service announcement that just might change and save America and change

[B]

the trajectory of the entire planet?

[A]

Yes, sir. Let's do it. Folks, I've invited Will Swaim on because I don't know of anybody who understands what's going on in California better on a policy level than you. Maybe your old boss, Ed Ring. He seems to be still plugged in. But as a resident here, I just feel like something is tipped and I have no desire to open a big political can of worms. But I do think it's really important in part because I just watched a video from Fareed Zakaria who talked, you know, and not a Republican, not, not even a conservative, but he spoke very plainly about what's happening in New York City. And I just was taken by it because all the way out here in California, it struck me as, as a kind of public service announcement because our cities are in trouble, Will. And the trouble our cities are in sure seems to be a direct result of the policies that have been put in place. So I don't, I don't just want to make it a big dog pile. I don't have any personal animus toward Gavin Newsom. But at every front, at every angle, I see something that, that just feels more and more worrisome with every passing day about the present and the future of California. So to the extent you're comfortable doing it, I just, A, I want to make sure I'm not hallucinating and B, B, for the rest of the country. Can you, by way of example, talk about how this state got to where it is and what the consequences might be for the rest of the country if we adopt and adapt the policies that got us here?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. I think I can't help you on the problem of your hallucinations, but I can tell you that what we're seeing here and what Gavin Newsom represents, I think unfortunately for the rest of the country is the impact of bad governance on a really wealthy state. You know, Gavin Newsom loves to talk about the fact that California is the fourth largest economy, if it were in the world, if it were its own nation. But the fact is, A, that's not true, you know, especially when you figure in the cost of national defense. But B, what's really important is it. Gavin Newsom is. What's that old saying? Born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. He became governor of a state that was already reasonably well run even when he took office. He wins in 2018. He comes into the governor's office in 2019. And in the five years, six years now since he took office, he has doubled the state's budget. And I want to put this into context for people. We had the largest state budget to begin with in 2019. It was about $140 billion. That's larger than all that is larger than every other state in the union. Now it's twice that. And so we are spending 100% more today as a state than we were when he took office. And yet the results are simply not there. It's almost like there's an inverse relationship. The more we spend, the worse things get. And part of that is really owing to the fact that the more we spend, the more we have to tax in order to get that money. And so we are driving people out of this state, and not only for political reasons. You know, Gavin Newsom loves to say, oh, good riddance. The people who are leaving are just a bunch of angry Republicans. That's not true. You know, in my own family, I'll just give you an example. We have four children, all adults. Not one of them lives in California. It is not a political decision. They didn't leave and say, oh, gosh, I hate Democrats, or I don't like Gavin Newsom. They left because the price of energy here is the highest in the country. Gasoline prices higher than Hawaii, which has to import every thimbleful of gasoline. We have the highest gasoline prices. We also have the best oil reserves in the nation right outside of Texas and Alaska. We're right up there with those guys. Massive oil reserves, but we're not allowed to drill any of it because the environmental haven't.

[A]

I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but have we yet felt the impact of Chevron and Valero leaving?

[B]

No, no, we have not. Except in terms of, like, futures oil trades in Chicago or New York. But no, you're absolutely right to point that out, that our Oil policies are so restrictive in terms of exploration and drilling, refining and then actual retail sale of gasoline. They are so restrictive that as you point out, oil companies are simply leaving the state. And Gavin Newsom, who in 2018, 2019 was talking about how oil companies are gouging California, we need to punish them. They're the gu. Perpetrating climate change all over the world. The climate is changing because of these oil companies. When those oil companies started packing up their offices and moving back to Houston, Gavin Newsom realized what was coming next. We're gonna have a gasoline shortage. The prices will spike. And whether he's concerned about the impact on the poorest of the poor in California who are gonna be punished by that rise in gas prices. He certainly wants to be elected president and can't have that on his resume, that, you know, highest gasoline prices in the nation. And so now he's got all these people studying in his office. He says how to bring oil. He is doing a 180 on energy policy, in other words. And the whole reason is he now understands that when you limit the supply of gasoline, you are going to increase the cost. I don't know if you saw the story last week, guys, that California is so desperate now for refineries, oil to refineries, that it last week had to import emergency supplies from the Bahamas, that famous oil kingdom in the Caribbean, bastion of petroleum. That's right. So it's that bad. And there's this tremendous irony I want to point out in the climate change rhetoric of we've got to stop using fossil fuels and then having to use massive cargo containers to bring oil into the state. All those ships on all those oceans pumping out the exhaust from bunker fuel, this really toxic form of fuel that ships have to use to bring oil. There was that old saying, taking coal, was it shipping coal to Newcastle, Newcastle being a famous coal center in England. And the irony, or selling ice to Eskimos when we were kids, we sit atop these vast reserves, water everywhere, if you will, and not a drop to drink. We cannot touch this oil. It has been locked under the ground by the environmentalists, led by their spokesperson, Gavin Newsom, who is just now starting to understand that the debt has come due. And he's gonna have to start figuring out how to quickly recruit these oil companies back back into the state before he actually launches, officially launches his run for the White House.

[A]

So just using the same thing's going to happen with timber, right? I mean, we've got. The timber reserves here in California are extraordinary. And what I think, I think this state's the leading importer of timber or lumber.

[B]

Yes, indeed. You've talked about this an awful lot on the show. I know that. You know, we used to have this massive industry in California for harvesting and replanting our forests. And we were legendary at one point in California, in the early 20th century, we were the largest wood producer, finished wood producer in the world. Flash forward just 60 years from that point into the 1980s, and we were a net importer, as you point out. And now the cost of getting that. Again, think about the climate charges of trying to get wood products, you know, typically now cultivated in the third world and shipped over the oceans to California. More climate change, of course. And meanwhile, what's happening in the forests that we're trying to. To preserve? You know this as well as anybody. You've had my colleague Ed Ring on the show. What's happening to those forests is they're like locked in amber. There is no natural harvesting going on anymore. We're not seeing guys go up there and pull wood out of that forest. And as they say in the forestry business, you can either, you can only remove dead trees by either harvesting or burning. So we get a choice in California, we've chosen the latter. Ironically, you know, most of our state seems to burn down annually in a carbon explosion that is unparalleled by anything produced by cars or factories. So we have shut down our forests, eliminated all the jobs and all the jobs associated not just with forestry, but that depended on those lumber towns in California. They have dried up. Anybody who has visited the really lovely northwest in California, Oregon and Washington, you can drive through these towns that were thriving in our childhood. That's not that long ago. But in the 60s, 70s and 80s, these towns started to dry up. Why? Because environmentalists succeeded in persuading the state lawmakers to shut these things down in order to. They. They said to preserve flora and fauna. We're paying the price for that.

[A]

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[B]

Right.

[A]

You know that. But they're simply because there are plenty of people now who are enjoying record low gas prices. No one in California knows what I'm talking about. I don't think we believe it because we're, we're used to paying 450, $485 a gallon. I mean, how I know the answer. But in simple terms, what should people what will happen to the price of gas if the person in the Oval Office hangs onto the same orthodoxy? Am I overstating it? Is it going to be that expensive everywhere?

[B]

That is going to be the big question. How much federal authority would a guy like Gavin Newsom be tempted to exercise on behalf of the, I'll call them the climate change activists, because that's what it is in California. It's going to be a lot harder. You know, this is not a red or a blue nation. It is a very diverse place. And there are people in some very big and powerful states that are going to resist that. Oil companies have a lot more pull in those states than they do out here. That's why they've simply abandoned the oil companies, have abandoned California. There's just no hope, really, of honest regulatory change. I think that, you know, to pull the camera back, if we can, for a moment, I would say that a lot of this is owing to a unique feature of California politics and governance, and that is the role of government Unions. And if you don't mind, I'll just explain real quickly. We have about 11 or 12% of the nation's population here in California. So let's call it 11 or 12%. We have 25% of all the state and local government union members in the country. So more than. We are disproportionately represented by, by 100%, the number of state employees and local employees who are members of government unions. So we have about 1.6 million people who pay dues to unions. And those unions bankroll, they finance the campaigns of politicians. And they only have one concern, these unions, typically. And it's a really simple concern. We want to make more money, and we want to have more control over the workplace. So, for example, right now, the governor is trying desperately to get government workers to go back to the office after Covid. Remember Covid? Remember that thing that happened when Gavin Newsom locked down the state for the longest period of time of any other state in the nation? Workers got used to working at home. Their unions made that an integral part of all of their collective bargaining agreements. And now they don't want to go back to the office. Newsom is pounding the podium and saying, you gotta go back. And they're saying, we brought you into this world. We can take you out, Governor. And that's exactly what happens. These guys bankroll the campaigns of candidates who get into office as Governor Newsom did, and they return the favor in terms of higher pay and benefits. But that's all really, the unions care about. After that, any candidate they elect, they don't care what that person does other than giving them higher pay and benefits in their particular niche of jobs. And so you get people who, in order to cobble together a coalition during their campaign, start talking to people about climate change is really critical, and we're gonna have to stop oil drilling. They never look at the unintended consequence of that, or if shutting down the forests, which now have dried up and burst into flame almost annually, we talked. You know, the price of wood is so expensive that housing costs are through the roof. That's one of the many reasons for that. We could talk about that problem, but the bottom line is these government unions spend about a billion and a half dollars every election cycle. $1.5 billion. That is the most of any other state. There is no other state that comes close to this. And it has just distorted our politics in such a way that you get a guy who's the governor and he claims, you know, I'm sort of on all these issues. But the fact is he's led by the nose by the Service Employees International Union, the California Teachers association and others. So that is a unique feature of California that, you know, in office. Newsom has already pledged that, you know, in the White House, part of his ambition would be to extend worker rights. What does he mean by worker rights? The right to work in any job they want to do, any professor, start any business they want. No, no, no, no. It's going to be you gotta go to a work, you gotta go to work in corporations that are managed by federal government, labor law, especially unionization. So that could be coming to a nice state near you. Wherever your listeners are. That is a kind of a brass ring the Democrats have been aiming for for about 20 years.

[A]

To what extent are the unions driving the current push for a wealth tax, a billionaire tax? Because I see the governor, you know, kind of pushing with one hand away and waving closer, closer with the other. He, he seems to be in an odd spot with that. But that's very much on the menu in New York as well.

[B]

Yeah. Just so that your listeners know, if they haven't been following the show, we have in California a proposal to put a statewide ballot. Gosh, pardon me, guys. A ballot initiative on the statewide ballot here in November that would impose, they say, a one time 5% tax on wealth. That means not just like your income or the value of your house or something like that. It literally means like somebody goes through your house and calculates that painting is worth X, that automobile is worth Y, that jet you have for your corporation, that's part of your private assets. We're going to tax you on that. And what immediately happened was that billionaires started packing up and leaving. The other weird and creepy feature about this is that it's retroactive. So even if it passes in November, it's effective backward to January 1st of 2026. So billionaires started leaving. Newsom already has seen this. We have lost more population than the combined populations of several states in the last, you know, under Newsom's term I mentioned, he comes in in 2019, he's elected 2018, comes in in 2019. We've lost nearly 2 million people in that time. And why have they been leaving again? It's not a political decision for many of them. It's a tax situation, it's a cost of living situation, cost of housing, cost of gasoline, cost of electricity, cost of regulation to run a business. A lot of companies left right around the COVID lockdown and just said, you know, I'm moving to Tennessee, moving to Florida, moving to Texas, famously. You might remember this guys, that Newsom was debating Ron DeSantis Florida governor with. Was it Sean Hannity, I think on Fox. And Good old Ron DeSantis came loaded for bear and said, you know, there's a lot of folks in California who are moving here now and gosh, some of them are your in laws. So his wife's parents have moved to Florida. Why again is because they hate their son in law? That's possible.

[A]

I doubt it.

[B]

I think what's really going on is it is simply cheaper to live someplace else. So Californians are voting with their feet. What do you do if all of the policies that these people are trying to escape now become federalized under a Newsom administration or somebody like Gavin Newsom? What do you do in that event? Where do you escape to? Do you go to Canada? I'm not sure. I don't know what you do at that point to escape policies that have really driven California into the economic ditch. We've only begun to scrape the surface on how difficult it is to live here. But what happens if there's no alternative? There's just nowhere to go. If this is it, it's now game over in the United States of America because these policies will limit growth and drive people into poverty and the worst effects will be, will be felt precisely by the people that Gavin Newsom says he's here to help. I'm here to help the poor, so I'm going to raise taxes on the rich. The rich therefore raise the taxes on the product or the price and the product they sell to account for that. Everything gets more expensive.

[A]

Everything, including say, a high speed rail. How important is it for Joe Blow and Salinas to understand the totality of that debacle and how such a thing can happen? How important is it, you know, homelessness as well? I don't know if it makes sense to conflate those two things, but all of it will just seems to come back to we sure are taxed a lot, you know, and everybody I know pays their taxes. And I don't know anybody who cheats on their taxes, including me. And we just have a front row seat to seeing our money squandered.

[B]

That's right. Yeah. We were just talking about, you know, transportation, high speed rail, we pay the most in gasoline taxes of any state in the Union. It's about $1.18 in additional taxes over what the other states pay. And you would think for that that we would have the Best roads because that's what the tax is for. But in fact, by every available metric, state auditors in California, and I mean government auditors in California or national highway safet Transportation Board, you pick your poison literally. California has among the worst roads in the nation and yet we have the highest gasoline taxes. There is something in between. It's a South park underpants gnome problem. You know, we get all this money pouring in and at the end of the day we still have lousy roads. Where is the money going? There is a level of fraud here. And you point to high speed rail where the governor recently celebrated laying that first mile of track, which turned out not to be high speed rail track, but a railroad spur to get supplies from one railroad system to another closer to where the track will actually be laid one day. But we are now six years past the deadline. It was supposed to be completed in 2020, was supposed to connect San Francisco with Los Angeles and now it connects two farm towns in the Central Valley. That's their big goal now. High speed rail between two towns that almost nobody moves between or around or goes to. I mean, I love the Central Valley. I think it's absolutely mystical, magical and wonderful. It's a, you know, it is one of the greatest producers of agricultural goods in the world. We don't need high speed rail through there.

[A]

It wasn't suffering from a lack of transportation options.

[B]

That's correct. But they have just simply do they do what they do frequently in Sacramento, they just simply move the goalpost. So now it's not going to be San Francisco to la. It's going to be two farm towns connected. It's not going to be a high speed rail for most of that distance. It's going to actually be like sort of standard train service. And it's going to cost. It was supposed to cost $33 billion when completed six years ago. It's not only not completed, it's now projected to cost over $120 billion for that much reduced high speed rail plan. But again, the unintended consequences. I'm not saying these people set out to run a bogus train system. I'm saying they're incompetent to govern and therefore the unintended consequence was perfectly predictable. These are people who love to sort of blue sky utopian solutions to problems. How are we going to beat climate change? We're going to get everybody out of their automobiles. What are they going to drive? They're going to take a high speed rail. Well, now we don't have the high speed rail anymore. And our gasoline is more expensive than anywhere else in the country. We are stuck between rocks and hard places in almost every policy debate. There's almost nothing in California that couldn't be made better by less government. Sincerely, I mean, almost nothing. You mentioned. You asked if you were conflating or confusing a mention of the high speed rail debacle with the problem in homelessness. Not at all. They both bear these similar hallmarks. And just as we were talking about high speed rail and homelessness, the problem is Governor Newsom said, I'm gonna do something really amazing. Record spending $24 billion in four years. And then he couldn't account for where the money went. Very embarrassing. So state auditors couldn't track the money. They said most of it. We'll never know what happened to it. And is homelessness reduced? No, it actually grew in that period of time. We have more homelessness now, not less. Even though we spent $24 billion, we can no longer find and account for. So in any other context, that would be called what it is. It's outright fraud. We do the same thing in public education where we spend more per student than any other state in the union. And we have. We rank 48th. Mississippi, which used to be the laughing stock of public education in America, is now number nine. A few years ago, Mississippi decided they were going to teach math and reading and they were going to insist that kids learn it. We don't insist. We just pretend our kids right now are being trained. As one local education leader, the teachers union in LA said, our kids may not know their multiplication tables, but they know insurrection and revolution. Yes, they do. They're training for a different kind of employment in class warfare. So we pretend to educate our children. We continue to pay the teachers. We do not allow any teacher to be fired without having it run through the union filter. So that means we have a lot of teachers who do not belong in the teaching profession. And those who do are stuck carrying the burden of ill educated kids who are under educated by their own peers in their own schools. They're carrying the burden. I would say give those people raises of 100 or 200 or 300% if they're good. But we don't measure teacher quality by that kind of a metric. We say that we can't, it's impossible. And the result is we're handing out high school diplomas to kids who absolutely fail on first contact with community college. They are not educated. We have lied to them. It is another fraud when you spend that much Money to quote unquote, educate a kid and they can't get through a semester at a community college. We had a great report come out. Mike, you guys may have seen this. Chuck, did you see the story coming out of University of California San Diego about a month ago? They have, they say about 20% of their students coming in who can't do Math at the 8th grade level, 40% can't do math at the 12th grade level, and they're being admitted to one of the most prestigious University of California State campuses. It's just an amazing school. So what are they doing? They're saying we have to fire the high end math professors if we can and replace them with remedial people who can teach addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to college students who are led into the University of California. We just pretend to educate our kids in California. Now imagine that miracle imposed on every state in the country. Now think about what that portends for our economy. What does it portend for systems like Social Security or Medicare? If you love these social welfare programs that are absolutely essential for a lot of people, what do you do when nobody's working and paying the taxes that fund those programs?

[A]

Shameless. Plug. It's been a while since I bragged about my grandfather's whiskey, so if you'll indulge me, let me just briefly point out that we've done it again. We've won another double gold medal, this time for the Rick House edition, which people are just loving. The barrel strength is still flying off the shelves. The single barrel is a huge hit. The original juice is still popular. And the rye, people love the rye. You know what I love? I love that every time we sell a bottle online it benefits the Microworks Foundation. I'm so appreciative of all the support you guys have given this brand. We're in 35 states now, which is awesome. And people are loving our secret recipe for the perfect old fashioned. Spend 100 [e-mail] and you'll get nine orange bitter infused sugar cubes. You just drop it in a glass, muddle it up, pour in the juice and boom, Bob's your uncle. The perfect Old Fashioned. Check it [e-mail] that's k n o b e l spirits.com and use the code Carl. Drop his name. You'll get a tube of those aforementioned orange bitter infused sugar cubes for the Perfect Old Fashioned. Noblespirits.com Soon may the noblemen come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waiting is done. We'll take a drink and go. Well, what do we do about Nashville? You give the producers of Idiocracy a long overdue Academy Award? Because that's the answer in the documentary class. I mean, how so, really? Like, we've talked a lot about this before and I know that, again, I don't want to answer, I don't want to ask questions. I think I know the answers too. But how much of what ails us is a result of just the lowering of standards where they ought to be raised and the raising of standards where they ought to be lowered? Like, when does Reg. It feels like we're just over regulated in areas that make no sense and underregulated in areas like where's the standard for rooting out fraud? Well, for a minute it was called Doge, I guess, and then we clutched our pearls because that looked mean or capricious or something. But now in the wake of Minnesota and what it looks like, the. I just. I don't know, Will. I mean, it just. Standards and expectations must play a role in this rant.

[B]

It's true. And for that, I hold us responsible. By us, I mean every single California voting age, we do this. I banging on the drum here about how much money government unions spend to finance political campaigns. The fact is, we're the boneheads who vote for the people who are representing those kinds of claims on our money and our government power. We vote for this. We vote for it all the time. We prefer, apparently based on results. We prefer performative theatrical politics to actual getting stuff done. This is why the night in 2025, when LA burst into flame and, you know, significant portions of the city of LA and LA county burned down in the space of about a week, this is why that happened. Where was our. Where was the mayor of la? Not that she'd be carrying a fire hose, but the symbolism is important. She was in Ghana. Ghana, in Africa, attending the inauguration of the president there. Where does that fit into fighting crime, reducing homelessness, preparing your city to handle massive fires because they do happen here. Wildfire is a regular feature of the West. And knowing that we might have been in, we might have made better preparation to fight that. But no, she was off. And I think, again, this is symbolically important. I'm not saying she could have picked up a hose. Also really important. The reservoir run by our own appointed Department of Water and Power, appointed by the mayor, was empty in the west side of the city. I mean, you know, all this, I don't have to go through the catalog of data there. But this was not, as the media and Karen Bass, mayor of Los Angeles, and other elected officials tried to say, this was not evidence, these fires of climate change. This was evidence of government incompetence and the fact that we as Californians elect incompetent people, people who tell us about a dream that we want to live where we don't have to work and we get stuff for free and we're going to have a perfect utopian society. We vote for that, all of us. And I'm sparing individual shaming and blaming here. I did not vote for these people, but I apparently did not do a good job of communicating the disasters that would unfold if we continue to elect these kinds of people. That's my responsibility.

[A]

Nor did you stomp your feet, take your marbles and leave. Maybe you should have. Maybe I should. Maybe Chuck should. It's just so. I think I said this off mic, but I'll say it out loud. You know, if you're trying to start a business in this state, if you're trying to expand a business, if you're trying to hire, it just feels as though there's some. You mentioned the invisible hand earlier. There's a, there's an invisible force that seems to be double dog daring me to do everything that I feel like. I feel like a good government, and I feel like wise policies would encourage people to invest, would encourage people to hire. I mean, talk maybe a little bit, since you invoked unions so the rest of the country understands, what does it mean for an entrepreneur or a small business person to hire someone? The most basic deal, like how complicated and fraught has that become in the Golden State?

[B]

Well, it's very, very easy to hire a person. It is very difficult to fire a person in California. You could talk about the teachers unions as an example. It costs about a quarter of a million dollars to fire a teacher. And I know you asked about the private sector and a business. We'll come to that in a second. But where unions exercise that level of control over the workplace, as teachers do in schools, it's almost impossible to get rid of a bad teacher. And the result is, you know, we have all kinds of research that shows that if you got rid of about the bottom 5% of teachers in California, our outcomes, our student achievement outcomes would skyrocket. But you're really asking about how difficult is it to run a business in the state of California? And I'll give you a couple of quick examples, just anecdotal for the moment. But one of them is, you know, I'm involved in a lawsuit right now. The governor signed off on a bill a year ago which prohibits employers from speaking about religion or politics in the workplace. They call this a captive audience. Your workers are forced to sit there and listen to you opine about politics and religion. Now, I can't say how other employers run their shops, but in mine, talking about politics and religion are important. You know, I run a small policy organization, and of course, we talk about policy and politics and religion occasionally. And that is apparently illegal under this law. Now, take that out to any other business enterprise. I'll give you an example of the fast food industry, which got hit with a massive spike in pay hikes that was demanded by the Service Employees International Union and signed off by Gavin Newsom. It raised salaries in the fast food industry from roughly 15 bucks to $20 per hour. Now they're looking for $25 per hour. So the next thing that happens is restaurants started raising their menu prices, number one. Number two, they started laying off workers. Number three, replacing those workers with kiosks, which are increasingly run by AI so that you have a lower labor cost. And that's how almost everybody I've spoken with in California who runs a business, they do a lot of reporting. And every. Almost every one of the businesses I've talked to have said, I have simply had to reduce my labor costs by shrinking the number of workers I have. So we have laid people off. The unintended consequence, again, right, of, oh, we're gonna raise people's salary so they can afford to raise a family by working the counter at a McDonald's. And the next thing they know, they have no job. No job at all. So running a business is hard here because the government wants to control your speech on your property. And if you own a fast food restaurant and you want to explain to your employees why suddenly some of the workers are no longer here and why there's a kiosk now, you know, at the counter where a worker used to be. How do you explain that, except as an act of political homicide, effectively, that the governor signed a bill that raised labor costs so high, I had to lay off your friends, your colleagues, and you might be next.

[A]

Not fair.

[B]

Yep. Right. Thank you for pointing out. Why don't you tell the story? That was a good one.

[A]

Well, I don't know the details of it, but it sure seems like. And this goes under the fraud category again, but it's. It. It feels like there were exemptions that were made for that whole Fast food, minimum wage thing. And it feels like Panera Bread got a pass. And it looks like the governor had a relationship with the owner.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And it's the oldest damn story in the world. But in these times, it just feels writ large. And how, how do we gloss over it? Will, I know what you're gonna say because we're fat and happy and soft and we're citizens. And so far, yes, it's annoying and it's troubling, but our house isn't the one on fire yet. It hasn't gone splat to the point where Will Swaim, Chuck Klausmeier and Mike Rowe will go. That's it. Now I've had enough. I'm following Joe Rogan.

[B]

Well, you asked just a moment ago about this wealth tax and it is backed by the Service Employees International Union. And only one arm of it is backing at the Health Service workers. And their claim, their claims are, boy, they're just untrue. I mean, they say that the reason they need this is because tax revenue is down. And I pointed out a moment ago, tax revenue is way up in California. We have a budget that's twice what it was six years ago. Our problem is not revenue, it's spending. It is the effectiveness of our spending. But unions never miss a chance to get more cash. So all of this money will be poured into an area where SEIU has a special interest and growing its membership, that is in hospitals and home healthcare. What's fascinating about this, again, I think this is a really important thing to talk about. You and I, you know, Chuck and you, Mike and I, we're not, we're not making these observations in a vacuum. It's not just like conservatives, perhaps like me, who object to this. It's other Democrats. California has become the poster child because of all the dysfunction we've talked about. California has become the poster child of why you can't trust Democrats. I'm not saying that other Democrats are. You mentioned Fareed Zakaria talking about New York City, but we've also got the famous kind of lefty liberal guy right out of Southern California, Ezra Klein, Washington Post columnist, who with his colleague Derek Thompson. I think Derek's at the Atlantic. They wrote a book called Abundance and the book is almost a total takedown on California. Ezra's written numerous columns and again, I disagree with them and Ezra's policy pronouncements, most of them. But we both agree California is a problem for the Democrats. You know, as soon as Gavin Newsom starts running, you can count on his opponents, even inside the Democratic Party, to say, here's a picture of San Francisco. You want more of that? But, you know, I say that and then I reflect on the fact that, you know, all I told people in 2018 when Newsom was running was, we don't have to guess what he would do. Look at San Francisco and what he did do. So how do we raise awareness about this? I think, you know, Mike, you and Chuck do an awesome job of warning people, I think, about what government regulation can do, however unintentionally. But I really do believe that this is a problem of an American cultural problem, of people who want to be rescued by a man on a white horse, primarily a man. We'll take a woman, I think, in America now. But it's, you know, we want some hero to come riding in and deliver utopia. We want a king. As much as our friends on the left love to hold no Kings rallies, they also want an imperial president. They want a president who's going to be unbridled, unchecked by the constitutional power. And we've got a president right now who's sort of pushing in that direction anyway. So there is a kind of bipartisan charge at the idea that we just should have whatever we want. The rule book, the Constitution of the United States, can be safely ignored. We can trample people's speech rights in the workplace. We can trample people's property rights at home and in the workpl place. We can screw up the cost of living dramatically and still claim that we're the guys who can fix it all. I think there's just, you know, again, I would ask you guys, what do you say to people who are in the middle wondering, who should I vote for? I would just ask, Sorry, please go ahead. I was just going to say, do not vote for people who tell you they can deliver utopia. The fixes here are going to be very, very painful. We did not get into this mess in the last couple of years, even the last six years. I'll give you one other example here. California, for 40 years, has flouted, has violated federal immigration law. And so when Donald Trump decided he was going to finally shut down the border and end the kind of lawlessness around immigration in California, by the time those federal agents came here, undocumented people were really built right into our communities. You know, we all know or suspect we know somebody who's here illegally. They're frequently going to our churches, their kids go to our schools. We shop in the same stores quite frequently. And Then all of a sudden, this whole thing is disrupted by a president who is, I would argue, legitimately and reasonably concerned about the problem of this lawlessness. But it took 40 years to get here. And look what the blowback was. As soon as Donald Trump announced he was going to really stick to be faithful to federal immigration law, people burned down la, they held up traffic in San Francisco, blocked bridges. It is a really tragic thing. It is going to be hard to break and reset these bones that have been badly broken for decades now.

[A]

I think, Chuck, you lived here longer than I have.

[B]

Yeah, that's true.

[A]

I mean, what would it take to send you back to Baltimore or someplace else? Yeah, I think I would go someplace else. I mean, I feel like I'm this

[B]

close, you know, but my job is here now. And.

[A]

Yeah, about that, you know, if my. If my job left,

[B]

I'd be inclined to follow. Mike. Yeah, I think it's an interesting question because, you know, famously, Joe Rogan, right, heads off and goes to Austin and. And Ben Shapiro was in la, and I think he's in Florida now. Perhaps Elon Musk. I mean, Elon Musk.

[A]

Gentlemen, it's a scientific fact and one of life's great disappointments, that men who exercise and eat right will suddenly find themselves putting on weight and running out of energy. This is not a motivation thing. It's just what happens when we get older. And, yeah, it sucks. That's why I'm happy to tell you about EmDrive Boost and Burn. EmDrive has a number of different formulas, but this one, Boost and Burn, was specifically designed to burn fat, increase energy, and maintain a healthy metabolism in men. EmDrive's been around for almost 20 years. They use high quality, clinically tested ingredients, and they make their products right here in America. You can find them nationwide at Sprouts, or you can order off Amazon, or you can go to mdriveformen.com to learn more and order straight from there. Guys, if you're still exercising and if you're still watching what you eat but not getting the results that you used to, it's not your fault. But if you don't do something about it, well, I'm afraid that's on you taking care of your health matters. Mdrive Boost and Burn makes it a heck of a lot easier. See the results for [e-mail] that's mdriveformen.com but look, how about this? Since it's on everybody's mind, and by everybody's, I mean mine, talk about what we're talking about in the context of half the Congress losing the ability to stand, to simply stand up. I get it. They were trolled. I get it. They were put in a corner. But you know What? There are 10 cameras pointed at you and you knew it when you walked into that chamber. It's like Disneyland. You must be this tall to get on the ride. Well, you are. And now you're sitting there and now you must know the country is watching. And man, when you just talk. How are we to think about the inability to stand up in agreeance with the simple statement that the duty of the government first and foremost is to protect its citizens? Like what? We're in a world where half of our Congress doesn't agree with that. Or, or maybe they do, but they couldn't show it. Your thoughts on that?

[B]

Yeah, I think you've said roughly what I would. We're in this period where theatrical performances flying to Ghana right before a massive wildfire breaks out, or not standing up when the President asks a trolling question to which there's an easy answer. You know, I don't feel trolled when I stand up under my own volition and say, yeah, I believe I was elected to the Congress to protect the American people. That is incontrovertible. That is the purpose. You swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America when you got into the Congress. And if you can't stand up and reaffirm that oath, then you've got a problem. And if it's because you're embarrassed and afraid that you might be trapped by folks on your left, you've got a problem. There is a real lack of courage. You know, I would just say the Congress has become like a vestigial third nipple. It's just almost an afterthought. Now, it's fascinating that when the Constitution was written, it starts with Article 1 and that is, you know, just symbolically. It is therefore the most important thing the framers thought to erect. First. What's the most powerful body? It's not the President. It's not the Supreme Court. It's the Congress that is supposed to have all this power. And yet, because it is divided into two houses and selected from people in all 50 states at present, it's going to be a very diverse body. It's going to be a lot of arguing. The Senate is supposed to cool off the debate and actually make sober decisions over a period of six year terms, but they've all just checked out and that's a Democrat and Republican problem. A lot of our congresspeople have just decided it's a lot easier to let the president, whether that's Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Donald Trump. It doesn't matter to them. It's let that guy take the heat. I'm gonna go back and sit in the living rooms of the rich and raise cash and run another campaign so I can keep this awesome job where I really don't have to take a whole lot of risks. So again, I would just ask, I ask all of my friends, are you willing to sit down with people and really explain in a kind and sober way what's at stake here? What's at stake in California is the immiseration of entire families. What's at stake here in California is a defunct and dysfunctional economy that not only can't sustain itself, but will come increasingly to depend upon all other states. One example on that, by the way, before I slip out of here and we forget about it, we're talking about fraud and homelessness, fraud in the high speed rail system, fraud in our public education system. The other one that's really fascinating to me is during COVID almost every one of the US States got a federal loan to back up its unemployment insurance fund. Because as you shut down the economies during COVID lots of people went to the unemployment department, metaphorically, and asked for that weekly largesse of like 400 bucks a week or something. And we ran out of money really quickly. Every state was running out of money, teetering on insolvency with not enough cash. And first Trump and then Joe Biden dutifully poured hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars into these systems with the promise that the state recipients would return the money as soon as they were able. Well, we were able to return that cash in 2022 in California. We had $100 billion surplus, which sounds great until you realize it was just because a lot of tech firms during COVID had just exploded in terms of value and were paying huge dividends and therefore huge tax revenue. So $100 billion budget surplus on a $300 billion budget. A lot of money left over. And what did Newsom do with it? It was like Oprah, you're going to get a gift, you're going to get a car, you're going to get some. And it was just pouring the money out in all these kinds of we gave Medicaid subsidies or payments. We gave free Medicaid to illegal immigrants in that period. Newsom did. That's when that catastrophe Started because we had all this state money, but it was a one time deal. As soon as that money was gone, we not only didn't have a Medicaid system we could fully fund anymore, but we're gonna blame Donald Trump for that. We also had this problem of not being able to pay back our federal loan of $20 billion. Oh, and by the way, we lost 55 billion of that money to international fraud gangs and prisoners in our own state prison system. Just petty fraudsters, international crime gangs associated with the Chinese government, the Russian government, the North Korean government. Everybody knew where the suckers were. California, $55 billion just evaporated and Newsom will not pay back the loan. So he may think he's really clever. We're the only state that didn't pay back its loan. It's a very complicated issue and I would imagine a lot of your listeners are now trying to switch off and have me stop talking about unemployment insurance, trust fund. But here's the real kicker in the story. What happened is the IRS said, oh, you're not going to pay us back. We have ways of making you pay us back. They attached an escalating series of payroll deductions that will be taken out of employer payments to their employees. So every California employer right now who pays federal employment payroll taxes will now have a higher tax this year than they did last year. It was higher last year and the year before that, et cetera. And for the foreseeable future, our state auditors say we are a dog chasing its financial tail. We will not be able to repay this loan. This tax is high and rising. It's another curb, another break, another impediment to hiring people. You asked earlier. You know, how difficult is it to run a business? It gets more and more expensive because of that kind of government. I wouldn't even call it incompetence. That's like giving Newsom a pass. He refused to pay this back knowing that the irs, his creditor, would come back and get the cash anyhow. So California, from employers, they would not get it out of the general revenue system because he's too busy paying off all of his allies through, you know, grants of largesse. So it's a really troubling circumstance. I used to say, thank God he's running for governor because he's become more moderate. But his form of moderation is still so radical and devastating to the economy that I don't know how else to say this. For your listeners outside of California, please don't do this to yourselves. This is not the exit door that you thought it might be. This is not the off ramp.

[A]

These are not the droids you're looking for.

[B]

You are looking for.

[A]

It struck me when you were talking about the decision not to stand. Part of what bothered me so much, watching it. In fact, Chuck, you and I and our whole crew stayed late and watch this thing. And the thing that troubled me, and it didn't occur to me later, it wasn't that they were affirmatively saying, we don't agree that the American people are our first duty of care. It wasn't that. That was too obvious and too. What bothered me was, I would bet big, I bet my life that that many Democrats who sat would have preferred to stand, but they didn't. They felt like they couldn't. They were in their bubble. And the prime directive, of course, the real prime directive is, if he tells you to do it, don't do it. Right. If he's for it, we have to be against it. Even reduced to that seemingly very, very simple choice. The thing that bothered me more was the lack of imagination. Like, why didn't that guy who fell asleep and then got caught picking his teeth. I don't even know who that was, but it's such a man.

[B]

Indelible image.

[A]

He could have stood and not clapped. He could have stood and put his hands in his pockets and continued scowling. He could have stood and given him the finger, which was basically what, that button that what's her name Tlaib was wearing. Right. F ice. So there's. There's no decorum. There's no manners. There's nothing stopping these guys, in other words, from not blowing themselves up and falling in line like a good Democratic lemming. But. But doing something creative and individualistic. I think I would have respected it had they stood and flipped them off, thereby telling their constituents, I'm still with you, but I don't like being put in a corner like this. I don't like the do you still beat your wife? Question. But they don't. They don't. And that makes me think they're not that smart or creative. And that's a different insult than, oh, I don't believe, you know, I don't agree with your policies. I just. I just despair of the lack of imagination. And that lack of imagination, I think, mutates into the governor we're discussing and a great many other governors, too. They're just not being creative.

[B]

They're just not.

[A]

They're in their box. They're in their bubble.

[B]

I wonder, Mike, I Wonder. So sorry to cut you off.

[A]

I was done anyway. I was just making sounds at that point.

[B]

You know, there's the saying, often attributed to Andrew Breitbart, that all politics was downstream from culture. And our culture has become one in which people will not attend public events, social events, if they know that somebody with whom they disagree politically is going to be there. And it gets down to the level of family, it could be a neighborhood party. I talked to a neighbor who said, oh, we don't play AYU soccer anymore because all the people are extraordinarily liberal. And one of the other neighbors who is extraordinarily liberal said, oh, I don't attend AYSO soccer. Use soccer anymore, because everybody there is a Trumper. And it was like, oh, my gosh, I wish I could get the two of you together so you could both have a fight someplace else and leave these civic institutions to be this. This other thing, which is, you know, I go to a church. There are people there, including one of my priests, with whom I have vigorous political debates and differences. None of it means I don't go to the church or I hate these people or I wish them ill or I'm going to stop going or they shouldn't get to go. All it means is I am compelled every single day to rub up against, if you will. That sounds wrong. To interact with all kinds of people with whom I might disagree. Oh, kiss boy.

[A]

But it's just a handshake before we start with all the rubbing up against each other. Hey, you know what's funny, man? And this literally just happened yesterday. I don't think there's anybody I've had on the podcast so far with whom I would disagree politically more than my friend Evan, who came on yesterday. Evan makes the neon signs that we have in our space now. Chuck, turn your thing around. Show Will, if you haven't seen this thing, so that.

[B]

Oh, I love that.

[A]

Yeah, it's not lit, but show him the microwork sign, man. This guy Will, I met him in Austin 10 years ago. We shot a segment of Somebody's Gotta do it, and he runs a company called the Neon Jungle, and he's been doing this for his whole life. And, you know, he's an English major who went into architecture and left it all behind and then became an antique collector and then fell in love with neon and then just started bending glass and using paint and argon and neon. And so I finally called him and asked him to make me these signs, and he did, and he. And he sent them Out. And then we sat down. I had him on the podcast. And with respect to the scintillating conversation that we're about to conclude, I've never had a better conversation. On the podcast. We talked for an hour and a half about everything but politics. And it just. It was. Chuck, tell me if you didn't. I mean, you felt the same way 100%. Yeah, it was. It was absolutely great. It was. The two of you talked about all

[B]

sorts of different things that you agreed

[A]

upon, that you disagreed upon, but you.

[B]

It was a conversation that I was

[A]

just hanging on every word. It was art, literature, commerce, losing everything, peripatea, building it back, being curious, looking after your neighbor, raising your own standards, giving a damn about things that maybe other people wouldn't. It was just. It was about humanity.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know, it was about imagination. And that's what I mean to say before, the thing that makes me not despair, because I'm still fundamentally an optimist. I'm worried for this state, and I'm deeply suspicious of the policies that have gotten us where we are. But the thing that I. That I find myself most sad about is the lack of imagination that I saw in the Democrats during that. There was a way to make your point without sitting there and sticking your lip out. And I. It just made me just go, good grief, man. That.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When someone says, why don't you get into politics? That's. That's the real reason. It's not the money. It's not the machine of it. It's just that somehow or another, a lack of imagination isn't punished. And it should be punished. It should be unacceptable to be that boring and that uninspired and hold that much power.

[B]

I love this. And I love the conversation, as you guys describe it, with Evan, in part because that's my experience, too. I have a son whom I love deeply and whose politics are very different from mine. He's a very progressive kid. Do I love him less because of that? Absolutely not. He's still my child. And he and I have found a way to, miracle of miracles, not talk about politics like that's not the only thing in this complicated, beautiful, crazy world. And to use a hammer and an anvil to try to pound every single conversation and every relationship into a one size fits all. But it's gotta fit me. Has to meet these political metrics first before I can have a conversation with you. Chuck and I were talking yesterday about the fact that. Yeah, it is. It is difficult sometimes. It is. Some of these relationships can be Very fraught with people. But my son and I talk. What do we talk about? We talk about the fact that he actually bends glass. He has made neon. He is an interior design guy. He's a graphic designer, lives in New York. He's living that kind of a crazy, wonderful life. And we talk about books and film and parks and hiking and dog care and his brothers and sister. We talk about his trip up to Montreal, driving through October leafiness all the way north. You know, you can find other things to talk about. And I don't say that this is just a way to avoid the difficult political decisions. It creates. I think the space and the permission for imagination and humanity and recognizing that other people are more complicated than the person for whom they voted to become president.

[A]

It's not that hard, right? I mean, to be able to say, okay, I want what the proponents of minimum wage want. I want a satisfied, engaged worker who's able to make ends meet. I want a workplace that's informed by a sense of fairness, right? We want the same thing. I want the same thing the proponents of rent control want. I don't want people thrown out into the street. I don't want the market to suddenly make it impossible for a hard working young family to have the shelter. We want the same basic stuff. We disagree on execution. We disagree on philosophy. And the reason you're here and have become a friend to this thing is because we disagree on policy. But policies, it's just a tool to an end. And it just seems like if you can start with, look, we want the same basic thing, but I object to what you're doing because in my view, there's almost always gonna be an unintended consequence that you're not thinking about. Shortcuts lead to long delays. That's why I'm a conservative, not a Republican, a conservative. I'm suspicious of shortcuts in general. You know, and, you know, it's. It's hard not to like me because of that. There are other reasons. You might not like me, but you can't really hate somebody because they're suspicious of shortcuts, you know? So, yeah, you don't have to talk about politics, but more to the point, you gotta find something else that you can both get fired up about. Even if it's the foliage on the way up 95 or something. Something, you know, doesn't matter what it is. But anyway, that, that's not why I invited John for this conversation. I. I'm afraid that while I do believe everything I just said, I'm also worried for this state, and I'm also worried for this country, because the way we're doing it, the. We're.

[B]

We're.

[A]

We're on a road, and it. And it leads to something. It leads to a place I don't want to go. Will.

[B]

Yeah. No, I'm with you. And I love your assessment that the question is more about means than ends. And there are some people with whom I even disagree about the ends. You know, so a Mondami character, for example, there's a guy who believes that you can actually achieve equality of outcome. And that problem of believing that everybody has the same talents and therefore should have the same income and there's the same demand for everybody's talent. I'm an acquired taste. I don't expect everybody to want what I've got. I'm lucky, frankly, to have found a woman who can tolerate me. How amazing is that? Congratulate me.

[A]

A consummation devoutly to be wished.

[B]

Yes. So my point is that other than that it really is the means to the ends, and I think the data has been in for about 100 years. We know that less government regulation typically, and I'm not saying. I'm not an anarchist, but I am saying less government tends to produce a more prosperous people, people who know that it's on them to. There's both the burden, the responsibility of having your life turn out the way you want it, and no fair blaming other people. You don't get to do that. But it's also true that we have a greater opportunity of individual fulfillment. I'm not being told, you know, like in some Soviet society, that no matter what I want to do, no matter what I think I'm good at, I'm going to do what the mayor or the Politburo leader wants me to do. So I really do believe fundamentally in that principle, that the greatest gift we have in America is our individual freedom as defined and protected by the Constitution of the United States. These are inalienable rights, and the government is constantly trying to alienate them from us. That's what government does. And I would like to see a lot less of that. I'd like to see greater freedom. And if I could persuade my friends in California about anything, it would be trust, freedom, trust other people, believe in goodness in other people. That doesn't mean you have to be crazy about them. It just means most people are probably going to do the thing that is right for them. And if the incentive structure is in the right place, people are going to do good things for everybody else without even being aware they're doing that.

[A]

The most important word in all that was persuade.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

We just spent an hour. I don't know if we were persuasive or not. I hope we were. But as I've said to you before, nobody wants a lecture and nobody wants a sermon. But reasonable people, I think, are open to changing their mind. You know, I just did a podcast, the not the Bee. You know those guys, the Babylonians?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They do a thing called Beyond Parody, and they showed a picture of a girl with blue hair who was basically saying, the Constitution is nothing but toilet paper. We need to redo it. And the founders were old men who never could have known who she was. And, you know, so, easy target, right? And I. And I asked them, I said, well, what do we do? I mean, what do we do with her? Like, is she. Is she salvageable? Can she be persuaded to reconsider? And, you know, knowing that she's not going to respond to a lecture or a sermon or anybody on this call telling her the way it should be, like, what do we do? And the answer that came out from both the hosts was excellent. One of them, Dan Dillon, said, well, we have to reincorporate consequences into our social contract. There must be a price to be paid for being that indulgent. Like, her opinions are separate, she's being supported in a way. She's not working, she's doing all sorts of things are allowing her to be propped up and form an opinion that she feels deeply about. So she's not living in a world of consequence. And the other host pointed out, and Chuck, I used your example. You know, you don't flip a switch. You don't persuade somebody by going, hey, look at this. You see this? And now, oh, I hadn't thought of it that way. You know, I guess I'll vote this way instead. You spent five years listening to Larry Elder and Dennis Prager. Drip, drip, a little here, a little there. You and I talked endlessly all your, you know, it's your friends, it's your family, it's being engaged. And then maybe, maybe you're persuaded to reconsider, rethink a thing. But, man, it takes time. And it's virtually impossible to happen in a world with no consequence where you can. Where. Where fraud is acceptable. Right. Like, we can't. How can we be persuasive if we violate the immutable laws of consequential nature?

[B]

Well, I love that. One of the things I would say is that one of the consequences of bad governance in California is that, you know, nearly 2 million people have left, right? There is a freedom there. There is a consequence. And Gavin Newsom, to your earlier point, don't want to, you know, be at the door saying goodbye to you and then reopen the conversation. But I will say that that wealth tax is a signal challenge for Gavin Newsom. No other labor union is signed onto that thing because at least every other labor union recognizes something that that chapter of SEIU does not, which is these people leave. They're taking their jobs, their wealth, their future business ideas. They're taking all of that with them. And you can chase them as long as you want, but they're not coming back from Texas or Miami or whatever. They're gone. And when they're gone, the state tax revenue is going to take a hit. And when that, when that hit comes, there's going to be a big fight in Sacramento about what to do with all that's left, which may not be very much. One day, 151,000 people in California pay 70% of our income taxes. Just 100. You could put that in the Coliseum in LA. 150,000. Maybe a little more than the LA Coliseum, but you get my point. Small number of people are paying a disproportionate number of value of the taxes in our state, and they're being chased away every day by bad, bad policy. That's a consequence, and it has a way of curbing, I think, the ambitions of some presidential candidates, including perhaps Gavin Newsom, who, as you point out, opposes this thing. Sorry about that. P.S.

[A]

no, not at all. I'll just conclude by saying I will see you both at the Coliseum. And as for the rest of you still listening, thank you, Will Swaim, as always, where do people go to bask in the deep end of your wisdom?

[B]

It's a shallow end, but I'm at the. I am CEO of the California Policy Center. You can find [e-mail] I do a podcast. It's available everywhere. Find podcasts are given away for free. It's called Radio Free California. I do this for the National Review magazine, says Radio Free California and California Policy center, and of course, on Mike Rowe occasionally. Thanks.

[A]

Yes, well, you know, you get what you pay for. Always a pleasure. Appreciate your time.

[B]

Thanks, Jack.

[A]

Adios. If you like what you heard and even if you don't Won't you please, won't you please, pretty please, Pretty please subscribe. Well, I hate to beg and I hate to plead but please, pretty freaking please, please subscribe.

[B]

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