DOJ Goes After Comey, Mamdani Budget Woes, & The Hidden Forces That Are Devastating Us Financially | Tom Bilyeu Show Live!

Summary

Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu – April 29, 2026

Episode: DOJ Goes After Comey, Mamdani Budget Woes, & The Hidden Forces That Are Devastating Us Financially
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Main Theme:
This episode of Impact Theory dives into the economic, political, and cultural forces shaping America and the world in 2026—dissecting headline news and underlying systemic issues. Tom and co-host Drew unpack current events, challenge widely held assumptions, and urge critical thinking, with special focus on budget crises, monetary policy, the gender gap in politics, global trade, and social trends.

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Episode Overview

Tom Bilyeu and Drew tackle a whirlwind of complex, timely topics: budget deficits in New York City, manipulation and misinformation in politics, deep issues of inflation and monetary policy, global trade wars (especially the EU-China standoff), indictments against former FBI director James Comey, and provocative cultural conversations—such as the impact of gender on voting and government spending. Along the way, Tom clarifies popular misunderstandings, lays out economic realities, and calls for a return to personal responsibility, balanced budgets, and intellectual honesty.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. New York City Budget Crisis: Manufactured or Real?

[13:21 - 27:57]

• Zora Mamdani’s Announcement:
  NY City faces a ‘historic’ budget crisis and calls for new state revenue, blaming "years of mismanagement" and structural imbalances.
  (Zora Mamdani, [13:41])

• Tom’s Critique:
  Tom repeatedly calls out Mamdani’s claim that "we cannot close this deficit with savings alone" as a lie. He asserts the deficit is 'man-made,' created by new spending:

  "All he has to do is not spend more money. If he just went back to the 2025 budget, there's no shortfall. This is literally man-made."
  (Tom, [15:22])

• Political Manipulation:
  Mamdani is described as a ‘master manipulator’ who manufactures crisis for political ends:

  "He is manufacturing his own crisis. New York City does not need more money. They need to cut expenses."
  (Tom, [19:30])

• Comparative Spending:
  Tom illustrates NY City's overspending by comparing it to Florida:

  "The entire state of Florida operates on a budget of about 116 billion. The state... has nearly three times the number of residents of New York City."
  (Tom, [21:00])

• Root Cause: Money Printing & Deficit Spending:
  The real problem is “central bankers and politicians have created a system where they can deficit spend and steal from everybody by inflating the currency.”
  (Tom, [24:22])

• Inflation is a Hidden Tax:

  "Every year things should get cheaper and higher quality but they don’t... The reason is simple—money printing."
  (Tom, [29:26])

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2. Societal Fractures & Responsibility: Populism, Gender, and Government

[34:10 - 54:17]

• Populist Anger and Blame:
  As cost of living rises, Tom and Drew observe that the public turns to blaming outgroups (immigrants, women, corporations, etc.), but miss the true drivers.

• The Gender Gap in Voting and Government Spending:
  Tom presents provocative data on women’s suffrage and the expansion of the welfare state:

  "It really does appear to be the thing that built the welfare state, which is wild... In 1999, economists published a paper showing that when women got the right to vote, state government spending roughly doubled within 10 years."
  (Tom, [38:23])

  • Summary of Findings:

    • State spending surged after women's suffrage. (Direct correlation shown via “natural experiment” as suffrage came at different times in different states.)
    • Women consistently vote more for big government/social programs; data unchanged for decades.

  • Tom’s Nuance:

    “Men and women are equals. We are just very different... The dynamic tension has created the incredible world that we see.”
    (Tom, [38:23])

  • Caution:

    “Repealing the 19th Amendment would be moronic... but if you wanted to reduce the budget, it would work.”
    (Tom, [45:54])

• Entitlements and Spending:
  Tom underscores that spending has become untethered from fiscal discipline, regardless of which party is in power.

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3. DOJ Indicts Former FBI Director James Comey

[59:48 - 68:54]

• Indictment for 'Seashells 8647' Post on X:
  Comey charged with making threats against the President via a cryptic post.

  • Tom’s Take:

    "The fact that we have indicted James Comey for posting an image of seashells is ridiculous... If every time somebody says 'get rid of,' you think they mean to kill them, you live in a very different world."
    (Tom, [60:14])

• Freedom of Speech:
  Tom warns against overreach—urging the administration not to pursue legal ‘lawfare’ for ambiguous speech, and that free speech carries risk but is "well worth paying."
  ([64:51], [67:43])

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4. Global Trade War: EU vs. China

[69:07 - 75:49]

• EU’s ‘Made in Europe’ Initiative:
  The EU aims to onshore manufacturing (especially for EVs, steel, batteries), triggering Chinese threats of retaliation.

  • Tom’s Analysis:

    “Europe must find a way to get out from under being tied to China... This is exactly what Trump is trying to do here. Globalism was super awesome for the wealthy and absolutely terrible for the working person.”
    (Tom, [69:38])

• Geoeconomic Realignment:

  “The world order is getting fractured in far more ways than people realize… Things will not look the same in 10 years.”
  (Tom, [75:49])

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5. Supreme Court & Legal System Updates

[75:49 - 78:54]

• SCOTUS Strikes Down Race-Based Districting:
  May heavily affect future House seat distributions in key states like Louisiana.
• School Trans-Policy Lawsuit Declined:
  Supreme Court refuses to address parental notification re: trans students—leaving lower court decisions intact.

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6. AI in Culture & Society

[79:14 - 86:39]

• AI as Sports Coach:
  UMass pioneers use of AI in NCAA Football. Tom predicts student and donor backlash, doubts on-field AI will be unchallenged, but expects back-office AI use to be universal.
• AI in Governance?:
  Tom doubts public would accept AI as a neutral governing authority, due to trust and electability issues.

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7. The Minimum Wage Debate & Economic Mobility

[86:39 - 99:17]

• Proposed $25/hr Federal Minimum Wage:
  Tom offers a nuanced, data-driven analysis:

  • At federal level, minimum wage is ineffective; can have some utility hyper-locally (where employers have monopolistic power).

  • Risks: Can price out entry-level workers who want experience.

  • Root causes of wage stagnation:

    1. Lack of skill acquisition (education system not geared towards skills)
    2. Globalization (labor arbitrage)

  • Quote:

    “If you solve for [skills and deglobalization], people are back in the driver’s seat.”
    (Tom, [91:55])

  • Cultural Cynicism and Declining Upward Mobility:
    Tom laments the death of the American ethos of upward mobility due to structural inflation, asset inflation, and excess government intervention.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Mamdani’s ‘Budget Crisis’:

  “If he just went back to last year’s budget, there’s no shortfall. This is literally man-made.”
  (Tom, [15:22])

• On Politicians and Inflation:

  “We don’t find money, we make the money. And that is one and the same as taxing everybody that holds dollars.”
  (Tom, [28:28])

• On Gender and the Welfare State:

  “We are in many, many, many ways a socialist country. When you list out all the different social programs we have, it’s insane.”
  (Tom, [47:38])

• On Free Speech & the Comey Indictment:

  “Freedom of speech has a cost and it is well worth paying.”
  (Tom, [67:43])

• On the Minimum Wage:

  “In some cases, raising the minimum wage causes people to make more money, and in other cases it causes them to not have entry level jobs… You have to figure out, where is this a case of the employer having monopolistic control... and where is it so high it’s nonsensical.”
  (Tom, [93:50])

• On Upward Mobility:

  “We have calcified into a caste system. If you’re born poor, you’re going to die poor... That is a betrayal of the American ethos in ways that legitimately enraged me.”
  (Tom, [100:13])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Topic | |-----------|-------| | 00:45 | Opening topics & headlines rundown (Tom) | | 06:19 | UAE leaves OPEC, oil markets and Middle East capital | | 13:21 | New York City budget crisis, Mamdani statements (Tom/Drew) | | 19:30 | The mechanics and politics of budget deficits | | 24:22 | Money printing, inflation, and “hidden tax” | | 34:10 | Systemic fraud & cultural blame games (populism) | | 38:23 | Gender gap in voting & government spending dynamics | | 59:48 | DOJ indictment of James Comey for ‘seashells 8647’ post | | 69:07 | EU-China trade war analysis; world order shifts | | 75:49 | SCOTUS redistricting; Supreme Court case drops | | 79:14 | AI as football coach and AI in governance | | 86:39 | Debate on raising minimum wage, skill acquisition | | 100:13 | Decline of upward mobility, American caste system |

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Episode Tone & Style

Tom combines sharp, empirical analysis with passionate calls for accountability and personal responsibility. The episode is direct and sometimes confrontational but avoids partisan team-picking, instead emphasizing truth-seeking, data-driven solutions, and long-term thinking. Tom and Drew’s repartee swings from policy deep-dives to cultural commentary, always returning to core themes: economic reality, human nature, and the need for clarity in turbulent times.

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Conclusion

For listeners seeking to cut through the noise, this episode provides a blueprint for understanding today’s most pressing issues. From the myth of ‘unclosable’ budget gaps, to the dangers of fiscal irresponsibility, to the interplay of culture, gender, and politics, Tom Bilyeu challenges listeners to reject easy scapegoats, value personal agency, and demand transparency from leaders—while keeping a wary eye on the systemic forces that shape our financial and social destinies.

Transcript

[Tom Dilly]

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[Tom Dilly]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Tom Dilly show live. We have plenty to discuss today because the world continues to be a fascinating place. Momdani admits that he's run out of other people's money and cannot keep offering free stuff without a way to pay for it. Who would have guessed? The catch is he's created his own problem and we're going to be going through that in detail. More fraud is being uncovered, as Stephen Miller claims. Ilhan Omar is part of the largest fraud ring in American history. And Chris Ruffo accuses Newsom of fraudulently funneling dollars into his own campaign. The DOJ has just charged former FBI director James Comey with two fun felony counts based on his infamous seashells. That one will be fun to discuss. The global trade war just opened up a second front as the EU and China are now facing off. And maybe the most interesting thing that we'll talk about today, the gender gap in voting goes a long way to explaining the welfare state. Let's see how many people we can rile up with that one. And according to Trump, Iran is in a state of collapse, according to Trump. I like to remind people of that every time that we talk about this. According to Trump, we will see. But they certainly have been bombed a lot. A lot, a lot. So we'll see how it goes. But I doubt very much that they are going to just back off. That's not where we're at in this war. So brace yourself for more drama to come.

[Drew]

Yeah, and many of us were, you know, the last couple weeks, summertime's coming, end of the year, people are getting a little bit more clocked out. We have hit the two month period.

[Tom Dilly]

Do you think we're there in April? I mean, yeah, people start getting summer ready now.

[Drew]

People are getting people's light. It starts getting nice outside. You start getting 80 degrees day. Every now and then, you know, sundresses start coming out.

[Tom Dilly]

Boys and girls, boys and girls.

[Drew]

But we have hit two months in Iran, officially February 28th. Now we're April 29th. The White House tweeted out, Iran just informed us that they are in a state of collapse. That's an interesting status. I'm just going to leave that there. They want us to open the Hormo straight as soon as possible as they try to figure out their leadership situation, which I believe they will be able to do. President DONALD J. Trump. Gas prices are still high. Oil just reached A$115. Do you think that this Iran war lasts another two months? Where do we go with it?

[Tom Dilly]

Yeah, I think trying to put a timeline on it is really going to be about the collision that's coming between Trump and the Congress, because there is no universe in which Congress is going to accept that we're in some sort of protracted war there. So he's going to eventually run into that. Now, the War Powers act, everybody says that. They all just sort of wave their hands and say, this is nothing. So I'm not too worried that that's going to be the collision point. I think where the collision point is going to be, that there is. I forget what the constitutional date is, like six months or something, but there is a finite amount of time that we can be doing something like this without him needing to get congressional approval. So that's the only thing that I can see really dictating the timeline. The other thing that will probably before we get to the congressional showdown, would be their own economy. Iran's economy is going to run into real trouble if the oil is not able to be turned back on. That's for a couple of reasons. One is just so much money being sucked out of their economy and then to the way that the equipment works. And I'm very much at the headline level in terms of the mechanisms of the oil infrastructure, but the headline level of the way that the oil infrastructure works is once you turn it off, it's not easy to turn back on. Like, the easiest part still takes a couple months. There are some things, if it's off for too long, that it can take years, that there's like some amount of rebuilding that has to go back into it. So it isn't like turn a valve off and then open the valve back up. There's something about the machinery that breaks down when you don't have the expected amount of oil running through it. And right now they really don't have a choice. So people are estimating that they have between two and two weeks and like 22 days, so roughly three weeks before they're going to run out of storage. And so now they're like, you're literally just pumping it onto the ground at some point. So they would have to shut the machinery off. So I know there's going to be a lot of tension around there. So if Trump can avoid a collision with Congress up until that point, then I think that'll force their hand. Now, if people are estimating 22 days, there's usually something that people have in their back pocket that'll allow them to extend it. So call it like 45 days, something like that. And I think that you really start to see a problem for them that will force them to come to the table. And there's a really famous quote which is you're only ever nine meals away from revolution. So if stopping the oil by doing the blockade that the US has on the Hormuz Strait is hurting their economy as much as they want us to believe, then you may see them turn on each other internally just because they can't pay the militias and things like that. And once you stop paying people and they're having a hard time getting their meal, all of the allegiances go out the window, all of the ideology goes out the window. All of a sudden it's like, I need to feed myself, I need to feed my kids. And people get real clear real fast that that is the problem that has to be solved right now. So we'll see.

[Drew]

Yeah, and there's already reports of them using junk storage, putting vessels on storage, containers on vessels, just trying to. Your point of storing that extra oil? Because if they do turn it off, it's a multi month process to turn it back on. All right, so the UAE has left opec. And for those who know opec, the oil producing export cartel is. People are calling it a very big deal. UAE saying the biggest.

[Tom Dilly]

No one's ever seen anything like it. I owe you guys a way better Trump impression. I'm so sorry, but. Yes, sorry.

[Drew]

Yeah, The UAE is leaving because they're saying OPEC controls the demand and supply and the production of each country. With them leaving, they'll be able to unlock more production and get more oil up to a million extra barrels per day. How do you think this helps with the oil prices? 1. And then just in general, the economics of the straight of Hormuz being blocked.

[Tom Dilly]

This OPEC is a cartel. So if you put a nice name on something, it's opec, it's opec, it's all good. You lose sight of the fact that this works just like the Mexican drug cartels where it's like we have a product, we get together to make sure that we can control the price. So if OPEC really did fall apart, and I'm not a scholar on this, so I'd want to spend some time really researching what other potential knock on effects could be. But my initial read on this is that it would be better for oil prices just because if those guys are not moving in lockstep now, you've got people that can say, well, I can deliver that oil cheaper. And so as the globe we should want to be in that position. Now I know that there are things that they do in terms of avoiding huge swings up and down. And so some of the stability that they create probably shouldn't be scoffed at and it's something to think about. But my initial read on this is this is more a return to free markets that's probably in the long run better. It will just become a question of can the world tolerate some of these ups and downs. Now from a market perspective, volatility is good. I know people don't think that's true, but traders want volatility, short term volatility to be sure. So it could do something interesting there. I would need to go deeper on that. But my initial read on that is that it's positive and it's a signal that the world order, when people are really trying to like look out into the future, the world order is going to change more than people think. I think the Middle east is going to be a bigger player than people think. These guys really understand that they have a limited window where they can transfer this historic shift to oil, which is way more recent than people realize. Like if you go back and read some of the things that Churchill was talking about, you watch a guy in real time between World War I and World War II go, huh? This is all going to switch to oil. We've got to like upgrade all of our ships and get all this stuff running on oil and realizing that, hold on a second, you know, you're talking about something that happened 100 years ago, 125 years ago. Like this was not this super long ago thing that happened where we really made a hard shift. And so oil may end up being just this window that, you know, I mean, 120, 150 years or whatever. It's not a short amount of time, but it's not exactly like these gigantic periods of time, like we might think of gold or something like that, that's been in play in its current position for thousands of years. That's not oil. And so they understand it was a window in time. It allowed us to generate all this capital and now we want to be the hub for two things, tourism and capital. They've already nailed the capitol. Like when you look at. I know I've told the story before, but I just want people to understand how surreal it was for me to get invited to speak in. It was the UAE got invited to speak in the uae. I'm backstage and who walks into the room? Ray Dalio. And I started talking to Ray and he's like, he, he was dressed like a Westerner, but he was telling me about, oh, I've got like, you know, the big white suit and all that. And I was like, how much time do you spend over here? And. And he was like, a lot. And I was like, okay. And so it began to open my eyes in terms of how much capital is there now? Those firms there don't have, for the average public, they don't have the name recognition of some of the funds here in Silicon Valley. But the Silicon Valley firms are being funded by limited partners out of these firms in the uae.

[Drew]

And so especially with the media, the Paramount Warner Brothers deal, UAE is 50% of the backing of it, no doubt.

[Tom Dilly]

They're getting huge into gaming, obviously big into sports. So they're making a very big play to modernize, to attach to the economies of the world, the developed economies. And so that's where it's like, oh, these guys breaking away from opec, starting to do their own thing. Are we going to see more competition happening there that will end up benefiting the rest of the world? Or is this the beginning of an instability front that causes these guys to fall backwards? I would say it's too easy, too early to tell on that front, but I'm optimistic with what I know now.

[Drew]

Basic supply and demand though, with brewed oil up over 115, it's at 116 right now. A new oil producer entering the market with up to an extra million barrels per day. It should help the oil prices at least globally. I don't know how much will actually be reflected on our gas prices domestically, but it should at least help keep the oil prices lower for sure.

[Tom Dilly]

And if that ends up being the overall thing that comes out of a crack in the cartel of opec, that would be huge. And if this is just the first shot and then more people start doing it, it'll be interesting to see what happens. There is a point at which the economy around oil, the price can drop so low it actually becomes problematic. So there are things to watch out for there. We'll see. Nothing is ever sort of as simple and clean as you want it to be. But my, my initial take is keep your eye on it. But this is a positive move, especially now to your point where, where prices are climbing because of what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.

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[Tom Dilly]

Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

[Drew]

Now it's time to jump to our favorite socialists, Zora Mandani.

[Tom Dilly]

Yeah, it is.

[Drew]

Who came out yesterday and had a press conference talking about there is a budget shortfall. He had a deadline to reveal New York City's budget and saying that this is a historic delay and they'll need more funding. Let's go right to him and get the scoop.

[Zora Mamdani]

New York City faces a budget crisis of a historic magnitude. True, we inherited a deficit larger than any since the Great Recession. Years of mismanagement and chronic under budgeting alongside a structural imbalance between what New York City sends to the state and what we receive in return have taken a toll. We cannot close this deficit with savings alone. We need new revenue.

[Tom Dilly]

That's a lie.

[Zora Mamdani]

And we need a structural reset in our relationship. With the state. That is the only way to meet our legal obligation to pass a balanced budget, to do so without imposing a financial burden onto the backs of working people. I'm glad to partner with. With Speaker Menon as we call upon Albany and deliver a balanced budget together. We are extending the executive budget deadline from this coming Friday until May 12th. Because a crisis of this scale cannot be solved without state action. I want to be clear. We are not simply asking others to act. New York City is doing our part. We are committed to governing with the fiscal responsibility this moment demands. Speaker Menon and I have already identified meaningful savings, and we will continue that work carefully, deliberately, and without cutting the services that New Yorkers rely on. But we cannot do it.

[Tom Dilly]

I really hate this works. He is very politically smooth. He speaks in a very professional manner. He's extremely good at that. He doesn't get emotional. Like, he just, here's what we're doing. He. He really is a very talented politician. And I don't mean that like in a bad way. I. His. It is possible that there's something nefarious that lurks in the back of his mind. I'll reserve judgment for that as I see him operate. Certainly my. My very specific frame of reference reads him as having something nefarious, but I try to keep that out of when I'm parsing the things that he does. But he presents himself in a way that is fantastic. If he were putting forward policies that were awesome, I'd be like, oh, my God, this guy's amazing. But the reality is he's lying. And he lies in a way that is. That feels so good that you rally behind him. And it is a very distressing part of the human mind that if you lie in a way that's completely like, whoa, hold on a second. That, you know, don't worry, we're not going to be doing that. And I just want to walk you guys through exactly what we're doing. But your entire argument is predicated on a lie. It is not true that they can't close the budget gap, which I'm going to get into in detail in a second. He created the budget gap. Let's be very clear again. I'm going to walk you through the stats. He created the budget deficit, and now he's asking people to accept that there's no way to close that budget deficit without more money. Both. It's just. It is blatantly untrue. So all he has to do is not spend more money. Like, if he. We'll get into the Specifics. But the, the very quick thing is, if he just went back to the 2025 budget, there's no shortfall. This is literally man made.

[Drew]

I thought Eric Adams had a $12 billion deficit.

[Tom Dilly]

Eric Adams said, hey, all these things that we're doing, we're going to have this $12 million shortfall. But these you would still have. After all his maneuverings, I think it's like 5 billion is where they're at now. And he has proposed something like 15 billion of new things when he came into office. So some of the things that they've done have reduced the gap, to be sure. But if he just weren't proposing the $15 billion in new expenditures, he would have already dug himself out of the hole. So.

[Drew]

So he has a surplus, but then he added more stuff and that brought

[Tom Dilly]

him back into the correct. So what Eric Adams was pointing out is all these social systems, they are now creating this budget shortfall. He comes in momdani, reduces some of that shortfall and then adds so much more that he's now back in the negative. So if given the cuts that he's already made, went back to the 2025 budget, you would have no shortfall. The takeaway that I want people to understand, there is. Whenever you have a mismatch on your ledger, there's always two options. Option number one is to make more money. Option number is to spend less money. So anytime anybody tells you there's just nothing we can do, it is at just like the most factual level a lie. So if he were saying, I don't want to do it, I'm not willing to make cuts, and so I am going to ask everybody to carry an extra burden. I wouldn't be able to say he's lying. I'd be able to say, I think these are foolish decisions. Here are my reasons why. But I wouldn't be able to say it's a lie. This is just a blatant lie. Now he's in good company. Politicians lie all the time. I just assume politicians lie for reasons that I think everybody will understand. Economic lies drive me the most crazy, especially when you've got somebody who's riding on the back of socialism, which has a long, ultra documented history of just absolutely demolishing the working class being the most sinister thing you could ever do to the working class. And so he's talking like, oh, I don't want to have to do this to the working class. It's like the very economic structure that you're using preys on the working class. So, like, that's bullshit. So he either doesn't know the history of socialism or he doesn't care. And this is all political spin. Either way, it's maddening.

[Drew]

It seems like we need the breakdown, though. There's only like eight seconds. I think he just asked for help from Albany, which is a state capital of New York, the state. So, yeah, I want to hear the budget breakdown because I have a bunch of follow ups with this one, so.

[Tom Dilly]

Well, I am very much looking forward to those. Here is my take. Mamdani is a master manipulator. You have to understand him in that or he is always going to confuse you. He is manufacturing his own crisis. New York City does not need more money. They need to cut expenses. Mamdani's own team put forward a plan to balance the budget that would have required no additional money. And Mamdani rejected it the same day. So when he says that there's no way to balance the budget without additional funding, he is lying. Here are the details. Mamdani says the city has a budget crisis and that they cannot close this. This is a direct quote. Cannot close this deficit with savings alone. He's asking Albany for a bailout and pushing to raise taxes on businesses, which nobody should be surprised by. And ultimately taxes like this always end up going from businesses and the wealthy down to everybody, because that's where the actual money is. Now, the problem with his plan is because he created the budget gap in the first place, he could make this problem go away simply by reducing it. But he's not presenting any of that. Mamdani's preliminary fiscal year 2027 budget proposes $127 billion in spending. That's roughly 15 billion above the previous year. It's a full 10 to 13% jump. Okay, so mom, Donnie himself, the things that he is proposing is somewhere between 10 and 13% higher than the already problematic budget that we had in the last year. So this is not me saying that Eric Adams was like, doing a great job or that the people before him were doing a great job. They weren't. This has been going in the wrong direction for a really long time. But the answer is very simple. New York City's projected budget shortfall right now is 5.4 billion. Now this is post some of the things that Mamdani has done. So credit where credit is due. But the spending increase that Mamdani has put forward is nearly three times the remaining budget shortfall. So if he wants to balance the budget, all he has to do is hold spending Flat at last year's level and the deficit disappears. Now. Additionally, New York is psychotically reckless with their spending. Long before mom Donnie came on the scene. The entire state of Florida operates on a budget of about 116 billion. The state, Florida state has nearly three times the number of residents of New York City. New York does not have a revenue problem. Okay, when you are outspending the entire state of Florida. And by the way, it would be one thing if New York City just had more people, but you're outspending a state with three times your population. So the fact that Mamdani is lying and saying the only way to close the budget gap is more money to me is absolutely grotesque. And the thing that I'm trying to get everybody rallied around, I do not care if you ident as Democrat or Republican, when people start talking about this, we have got to call a spade a spade. Remember the problem that we are all suffering from. The reason that people are going so hard to the left and the right, it's not the only reason, but it is the major foundational reason is because the pie really is shrinking. And so when people can feel that they're unable to make ends meet, they go on a team because they need somebody to fight for them, to make sure that they can take care of their basic needs. And right now that is mathematically becoming harder and harder. The reason it's becoming mathematically harder and harder has a knowable cause. That knowable cause is central bankers and politicians have created a system where they can deficit spend and steal from everybody by inflating the currency, by money printing, by weakening the dollar. Now it helps them in a whole host of ways. It allows them to fraudulently spend, it allows them to fund wars. It. All the things that are driving people crazy on both sides of the aisle come down to that very simple thing. If you allow people to deficit spend, if you allow them to bamboozle you and say that, hey, there's just nothing we can do other than to generate more revenue, you continue to get this flywheel that makes it harder and harder on the working and middle class. You get the K shaped economy just going absolutely bananas. And so whether it's Trump, whether it's Mom, Donnie, it doesn't matter. Anybody saying that step one isn't to balance the budget is your fiscal enemy. I don't mean that you should be standing outside of their house or doing things at their White House correspondence dinner. I mean that we need to be holding people to account for the cause and effect that exists in the Economy. And so yes, this is somebody who is on the exact opposite side of that that I'm going to rail on forever until they change that tune. Because otherwise we're all going to be Dr. Mad arguing about the wrong thing. Now, for the record, on April 1, City Council Speaker Julie Menon. This is what I was talking about earlier. This is Mom Donnie's own democratic ally. She released a plan to close the entire roughly $6 billion gap without raising taxes, without cutting services, or even raiding the reserves. Now, the reason that Mom Donnie had rejected it was that he called it unrealistic. But why is it unrealistic? Menon's plan closed the gap mostly by re estimating costs that have been overstated and revenues that have been understated. The biggest single piece of her plan was an $860 million reduction by just simply removing the budgeted salaries for the vacant positions that the city has been unable or unwilling to fill. So just say, hey, those things that we were going to fill, cities running fine. We're not going to fill those positions. That's $860 million. The rest came from auditing and competitively bidding department education contracts to the tune of about 175 million. Okay, these are the things that Mamdani is saying is, are unrealistic. But this is one of the things that drives me crazy about unions. I get what people want. They want the unions to be a place that give more power economically to the people in the unions. But you can look at the stats and it doesn't end up working. It has like 2 to 3% impact on their pay. What has an impact is when you actually have a competitive market where the high skilled employees are able to go in and demand more from companies because the companies need them. Globalization made that effectively impossible. So we need to be looking with a sideways eye at these groups that are able to get bureaucratic dollars that don't end up making their way to the actual people you can look at. Education is like the prime example. All of the additional expense, the reason that it's not yielding better results is that it's going to administrators and not better teachers. So looking at the exact kind of thing she's laying out here is precisely what we should be doing. So if we can capture additional revenue, the city that the city is leaving on the table, this is her hypothesis from sources like the Department of Buildings, permit fees, Port Authority rent, debt service adjustments, tapping older tax liens through cities, graveyard trust, things like that, then we can close the gap. So the fact that he rejected that out of hand on the same day and then isn't acknowledging that it's other things that he wants to do, to give for free or to make cheap that is causing the gap is absolutely maddening. This is how the taxes will precisely get pushed down to the average person. He's already talking about it. Forget it was like 47 days in was when he was like, sorry, homeowners, but you guys are going to have to cough up some more. We couldn't get the wealthy to do it, but this kind of stuff is just crazy making. So when Mamdani tells reporters that there's no path to balance without new revenue, that is a choice. It's a choice. No one's even talking, by the way, about the amount of fraud that is almost certainly going to be uncovered as soon as we have the will to look for it. Every time we've done in other states, it just comes falling out of the closet. So yeah. Oh, and by the way, to make matters worse, the Citizens Budget Commission projects that the budget gap is just going to keep growing and that it will hit roughly 10 billion within two years if spending isn't structurally reduced. So yeah, buckle up everybody. It's going to get weird before it gets better.

[Drew]

Hey, at least we have a politician who's talking about balancing the budget. You know, we got one. We got one.

[Tom Dilly]

Only he would tell the truth about it. If only he would tell the truth about it.

[Drew]

We have this conversation a lot and I think it's because of the populist moment, because I feel like it keeps coming back because there's people right now in the chat that are saying, well, if they paid their fair share or if we just reallocated some things and yeah, if we cut the fraud, we could find the money to do it. We find money for wars, we find money for cops, we find money for all these other things.

[Tom Dilly]

No, we do not. No, we do not.

[Drew]

Let's talk about it.

[Tom Dilly]

We money print. So that's the very thing that I'm really trying to get people to understand is the reason we are in the K shaped economy that we're in. The reason that the middle class can't afford things is every time we have a budget shortfall, we lean on the exorbitant privilege. It's what. It's the loving way that people refer to being the world's reserve currency. And we just say, look, there's a whole bunch of people that need dollars and hold dollars and so I can force them to eat inflation because there's no alternative and so we just, just make the money up. We literally print it out of thin air, which makes it worse for everybody. That mechanism is the K shaped economy. Those are one and the same. And so all of these things where we, we quote unquote find money, we don't find money, we make the money. And that, that is one and the same as taxing everybody that holds dollars.

[Drew]

As soon as we make the money, we equally break the money, quote unquote, like we hurt the people. That correct.

[Tom Dilly]

And so this is why things just keep getting more and more expensive. It's wild. And it is just confusing enough that people can't wrap their heads around it. And so they're like, well, nobody took any money from me, they didn't charge me any additional tax. And it's true if what you think of as a tax is I get a bill from the IRS and I must pay it. But once you understand inflation as a tax, that it is entirely man made, then you suddenly realize, oh, I'm being taxed nonstop. I'm going to do one quick diatribe and then we can get back to where you want to go. The thing I really want people to understand about inflation, inflation is not the number that they report. So if they're saying our target is 2% or 3% or whatever, please, please, please understand the following. Every year, every year things basically everything should get cheaper and higher quality. Every year things should get cheaper and higher quality, but they don't. Best case, they get better and are the same price. The question becomes why don't they get cheaper? Because innovation is happening all the time and innovation can be measured with less cost and better performance. I mean this is from blenders to cell phones, doesn't matter, should all be getting cheaper and better. Every year they get better, but they don't get cheaper. And the reason they don't get cheaper is very simple. It is because of money printing. The government knows that there's going to be innovation led deflation happening all the time. Now, one, they've trained you to be afraid of deflation, which you should not be. You should be afraid of crisis led deflation. But it's the same way that they got people paranoid about dietary fat. Dietary fat's extraordinary. Without it you would die. But they've convinced us all that if you eat fat, you're going to get fat, which just isn't true. So they've done the same thing with deflation. They have convinced us deflation is bad. Only one type of deflation is bad. Crisis led deflation is bad, but innovation led deflation is great. And they eat through it all and they money print all through that. You should be able to expect prices to go down and quality to go up every year. And they just eat through it all and they have every intention of eating through it all. And they know literally Kevin Warsh said out loud that I'm going to trust AI to make up for the recklessness with which I'm going to deal with the economy. He obviously does not say the reckless part, but that's what he's saying. AI is going to create this historic boom that will a productivity boom. And what they mean by a productivity boom is that we'll get more for our money. But in reality, the Fed, the people who print the money, they're just going to print all through all that and then plus 2% or plus 3%. So it's like I don't know what the number is. I don't know if that number is 25% but it is a startling number that is certainly higher than the 2 or 3% target that they're going for.

[Drew]

Let me speed run some of the things because I know you've addressed these before, but I just have to say it just so that we can say that we said it. So it's not corporate greed. It's not Ford v. Doge Bros. That cemented corporate shareholder corporations responsibility, the shareholder value. It's not big bad corpos.

[Tom Dilly]

Can I. Can I speed run the nuanced answer really fast and then you can push. Corporations are greedy. Corporations will hide from tax if at all possible. There are plenty of things to do there. So I don't need anybody to believe that corporations are Pollyanna. They are not. I am not a libertarian, so I like that we have government. It's just our government for reasons that we will talk later. Ladies, stay tuned. Has become completely unhinged in terms of the way that we spend money. So yes, those things are real. No, they are not. The foundational problem. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after Stay tuned.

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[Tom Dilly]

Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.

[Drew]

There was another guy seen on YouTube, he talks about the morality. So I know that this is an odd conversation. I know this could be in the, in the fantasies, fantasy realm when we focus individualism and capital accumulation. Those are the north stars of America. You come to America, you can be whatever you want and make as much money as you want. That's the American dream. We shouldn't be surprised that there's this exhaust of manipulation, greed, lying, all the, a lot of the things that people do that are unruly in order to get money, whether it's drug dealing, whether it's lying, politicians and everything in that spectrum in between. Is there a way that, Is there a way to mitigate against that or is that. Because I know a lot of people see all the negative impacts of the people's accumulation for capital and they put that at the feet as capitalism. Is there something we can either one legislate or is this just a human nature thing? No matter what system, there's going to be those people that, that do these things well.

[Tom Dilly]

So this is two separate issues. So yes, make it illegal and actually punish the people that do it. So that would be step one. There's been really interesting data coming out of Baltimore, I believe, where they're just basically running Bukele's playbook. I mean, not to that extreme, but they're saying we had all these laws in the books and we just weren't enforcing them. So we had Soros DAs that were like letting violent criminals back on the street. And so they've halved their murder rate state just by going, I'm not changing the laws, I'm just going to enforce them. So enforcement would be huge. But the foundational problem that people are contending with is central bankers and politicians and to be very specific, politicians voting to run deficits and then central bankers printing the money to facilitate that. That's the real problem. And so I'm sad that that gets boring for people to hear. But the reality is that you have to solve that problem and all the other things that they grab at. It's not that they're not real problems, it's that they're not the foundational problem. So for instance, if I see someone starving to death and I give them a Twinkie and then somebody goes, bro, like what are you doing? Like, if you leave a Twinkie alone, it doesn't rot, which is a lie, but they'll say it. It's like, how can you give that guy Twinkie that's so bad for you. And I'm just like, listen, starving to death is worse. So I would rather give him some nutrition. So that's how I feel. People are arguing about whether this starving man should eat a Twinkie or not. And I'm just saying, hey, can we just focus on the starvation part for a second? Let's figure out why he has no food to eat. So that is where people are getting lost. It's not that Twinkies aren't bad. They are bad. It's just that he'll stay alive for a lot longer eating that bad Twinkie than he will having nothing. So, yes, like what you're calling the exhaust of capitalism, which I disagree. I think that's the exhaust of human nature. So humans will try to exploit every system that exists. No matter what you do, people will try to exploit it. And so you want to legislate and you want to punish and try to mitigate that as much as you can. But the real problem is just absolutely nakedly in plain sight that if you spend more than you make and you print money to cover it, you steal from everybody and that makes things more expensive and you get a K shaped economy. Me and I mean, we can add the. If you want to be on the good side of the K Own assets.

[Drew]

Okay, I'm going to call it audible because now people are starting to fracture. And I love it. We're just, we're rolling with the punches. So Yellow Kite, Yellow Knight said in the chat we should just repeal the 19th. And saying it tongue in cheek. Women shouldn't be able to vote. But I'm bringing this up because Andrew Wilson and Owen Troyer had a debate yesterday, and one of Andrew Wilson's critiques on Trump is that he's two women's rights rights focused. He's one of those, like, we need to go back. Certain people should. You have to earn the right to vote. It shouldn't be given to just every American citizen, whatever, like that. But specifically, a lot of people are putting that at the altar of women, saying that the suffrage movement caused a lot to fracture in the government. So that's why I'm like. I was like, this is a perfect segue into it. I know we wanted to save that, but I have the chart pulled up. I don't know if you want to give us a. Yeah, yeah.

[Tom Dilly]

It's wild. It's one of those things that when I first started looking at this, I thought it was naked propaganda. But before I go into it, because by the way. It's not propaganda. And as far as I can tell, this is all real. I'm going to walk you through the data, but what I want everyone to understand is that my punchline is that men and women are equals. We are just very different. Women should absolutely be allowed to vote. You want that tension, but what you want to be able to surface is what are the outcomes that come from that? If for no other reason than people can go, oh, okay, I get it. I'm. I have a natural tendency towards this thing over here, but it's not yielding the results that I want. So do I want to come back to that middle or that they can debate? No, no. The problem that we have is that men are pulling us in the other direction. We need to keep going farther in that way, and then we can debate the data and we can look at it. Dynamic tension between men and women, I think, is why the world is as glorious as it is. But we have to understand the dynamic tension is the necessary thing. And I feel like over the last. Call it seven to 15 years, we've just started leaning in the wrong direction. We've been going too feminine. I've mentioned this before, but I had a conversation with Heather Hying, which is Brett Weinstein's wife. This is probably six or seven years ago now. And I remember ending the interview going, oh, I think the woke movement is basically everybody becoming more feminine in their behavior. And I can't remember how she responded, but it was something like maybe. And so now seeing the data come out more and more, there are just consequences. Remember, there's pathology on both sides. So guys go wonky, women go wonky. And so my goal and what we're about to go through is to get everybody to understand, okay, when we start pulling one way or the other too much and not like looking for the tension where we're sort of equally weighted in the way that we're pulling against each other, you can start to have problems. So keep that in mind. I'm somebody that I just. I know how much better I become from being married to a woman who views the world differently than I do. And for sure, we look at each other occasionally like the other person is out of their mind, but we understand that we actually get to a better result together. Okay, so that's my punchline, which I know people will clip everything we're about to discuss out of context, whatever. Not worried about that. We just want to find what's true. Okay, so there is actually a gender gap in voting, and it really does appear to be the thing that built the welfare state, which is wild. In 1999, economists John Law and Lawrence Kenny published a paper in the journal Political Economy showing that when women got the right to vote, state government spending roughly doubled within 10 years. The paper has been cited over 750 times. It's a graph you guys are looking at. If you're looking at it, it's pretty wild. Like, check this thing out. Like, you, you just see this stark, like, up and to the right in terms of spending. So what we're going to go through is not a fringe science. Lott and Kenny leveraged a actually really useful, what's known as a natural experiment, meaning a thing just happened in the world. Nobody orchestrated it but you to compare two different things. So we had different US states adopting women's suffrage at different times between the 1870s and 1920. So that let these guys track government spending and revenue around the exact year women started voting in each state. Both lines were flat to slightly declining before year zero, when women in that state got the right to vote. After it, both shot up sharply and have kept climbing. So the same paper found that federal congressional delegations from those states also started voting more liberally. That's the historic view. Okay? Now the modern view is just as crazy. In every U.S. presidential election since 1980, women have voted Democrat between 4 and 12 points higher than men. In 2024, the gap was a full 10 points. Pew has consistently found 58% of women prefer a bigger government providing more services. By the way, this is what they are evolutionarily designed to do. We should want them to have that impulse, but at the same time, we should understand how it plays out at a governmental level if it's allowed to go unchecked. Among men, only 37% agree. So the trend lines have not narrowed in 40 years. So you put that together, you've got a century of data showing women's suffrage correlates with government expansion. Okay, it's not controversial. You could say you love that, you could say you hate it. But nonetheless, it's correlated very strongly with women getting the right to vote. Four decades of polling show that women want more government, they want to spend more money, they want more services. But when you have a federal budget that has crossed $39 trillion in debt and shows no signs of stopping, you have a potential, not a potential problem. You have a problem problem. You have a problem. Now. In 1913, when they decided that they were going to start the Federal Reserve and be able to print money, they found A real ally in women who had started to get the vote. Obviously by what, 19, 20, they've got the vote, they're off and running now central bankers really have an ally because it's like, yeah, just keep adding those programs. We can deficit spend our way there. But even with all the good intentions in the world that starts this widening of the K shaped economy now, the American government has just kept getting bigger and bigger no matter which party is in charge. So let us be very clear about that. I think the data makes it pretty clear that the gender gap explains a lot of it.

[Drew]

All right, you set the chat on fire. I love it. Today's a chat heavy day. In bold letters, correlation is not causation. So although women's introduction to voting and the government spending increasing doesn't necessarily mean the government spending wasn't going to. If women weren't.

[Tom Dilly]

Now, I will remind the anybody that's on that team that not having an answer is not an answer. And so simply saying that correlation is not causation is not you putting forward an explanation. And there is an explanation. So now it becomes put forward your explanation. Remember, you're in a space right now where all I care about is true truth. I want to understand what is true. I don't have the emotional friction that most people have when they realize that they're wrong because I've gotten wealthy off of going, oh, I was wrong about that. Let me get right. And whether everybody thinks I'm a clown or not is totally irrelevant to me because I can leverage that knowledge to go out and do things in the world. So I care about about a very small handful of things. There are things I want to do for my legacy to like have real impact. I want to do the show, I want to develop games, right? So there, there are a very finite number of things that I'm trying to do. The truth is the only thing that's going to help me get there. So if a couple days from now I've got to go, hey, that thing that I was saying that didn't make any sense. This is the new thing. You guys are going to see me do that over and over and over. But I need you to put forward specific, concrete things that we can track against facts.

[Drew]

Next rebuttal I'm seeing in the chat, the explanation is like the defense budget. Women are in mass voting for increasing defense spending. And in the 90s and 80s, defense spending was the thing that increased our deficit. Nowadays it's entitlements and interest payments. I know that it Flips. I mean, that's one of those things that's like, you can't necessarily. The reason I'm giving you these counterfactuals, because I'm like, we. I don't want it to be, if we repeal the 19th, the budget's going to go down.

[Tom Dilly]

Okay, first of all, we should not repeal the 19th. I want to be very clear. If we did repeal the 19th, the budget will go down. Just gonna be real, real with you. So it's a terrible idea. Let's not do that. But nonetheless, if you wanted to reduce the budget, it would work. That idea, bad idea, but it would work.

[Drew]

My spidey senses are tingling right now because this is reminding me of another argument that Trump made at the beginning of his run where he said, once I deport everybody, all our prices are gonna come down. And now that a lot of people are deported and the border crossings are effectively zero, our prices still haven't come down. So while.

[Tom Dilly]

Well, so I would say there, if he were deporting whatever, 10 million people, your prices would come down if you didn't have all the other insane, mitigating factors that we have. So that mechanism is true. If you strip out a really substantive number of people, your costs are going to go down. So it might hit some things in strange ways.

[Drew]

But I think that that's the. My part that I'm rubbing against is because right now, if we were to take everything in isolation and just look at it variable for variable, if we change absolutely nothing else but the amount of people in the country, yes, the cost would go down. But it's one of those things where on one side you're going to say, hey, we need to deport these people to bring costs down. But then on the other side, I'm going to double the defense budget, so that way I can increase 100%. You know what I mean?

[Tom Dilly]

So you have a lunatic making really bad decisions.

[Drew]

I want to bring it back to this because I think on one side there is a. Yes, there is a correlation that women in the voting populace has caused prices to go up, up. But I don't want to say that it's an isolated variable. And if we just take women out, all of a sudden, our problems. Because there's still other mechanisms that are adding to that budget increasing in that stuff. You get what I'm saying?

[Tom Dilly]

I do. What I'm looking at is the mechanism of what men versus women vote for. So the trend lines were really steady. You had flat spending to down slightly down before women get the vote. You have the natural experiment of where do the. Where does spending start to uptick? Does it uptick when women get the vote? The answer is yes. So if one state del. By a couple of years, then the uptick in spending is delayed by a couple of years. It isn't. I wouldn't say we've gone all the way to proving it, but that's a lot of information. Anybody that's going to try to clap back on that, like, they've got a lot staring them in the face, that doesn't invalidate any of the things you're saying. And when men vote for dumb spending, it's just as dumb when they do it as if women are doing it. I'm just saying that you, you can look at Democrats are really pushing social programs. Social programs right now are your biggest problem. But if men suddenly were like, well, bro, we've just got to have military out the wazoo. Like, we've got a quintuple our budget and they start overspending, it will be functionally no different. So it's not like, oh, when women overspend, it's bad, but somehow when men overspend, it's fine. It's bad on both counts. So all I'm trying to do is say, very interesting. Right now we act like America is not a socialist country. We are in many, many, many ways. When you list out all the different social programs we have, it's insane. When you list out the percentage of Americans that are on a social program or another, it's massive. So we have an ungodly percentage, drew. It's like 35 to 40%. I mean, it is huge. So we have a ton of people on one governmental service or another. And when you start going back in history, you realize, oh, we used to have way more fiscal discipline and the only times we started getting this insane spending was in wartime. So cool. We can go wartime. Men overspending. That's men going pathological. And you would hear no argument from me. But we have historically been able to get that back down. Now what we're seeing is peacetime deficits that are absolute insanity regardless of political party. So that's where it's like, okay, so what's going on here? Why do you all of a sudden have Republicans that are like, yeah, bigger, Bigger government. Just keep going, keep going, keep going. So that right now, from a trend line perspective is, I will say so tightly correlated to. So I'll call it a feminization of culture. Not just women, but a feminization of culture has us in this position of like, well, we can't let that happen. And so everybody's like, yeah, we just, well, we got to keep funding all that stuff. And I'm saying Spirit Airlines should go out of business. And if I own Spirit Airlines, stock me, like, I invested in the wrong company. It just is what it is. So we don't have that mentality now. And that obviously goes beyond women voting. And just to be abundantly clear, in case somebody is just tuning in, repealing the 19th Amendment would be moronic. Women are incredible. They are men's peers. When you take all of this on balance, men and women are meant to like, work together. Evolution said, yo, I just need to get you guys into the future successfully. And the strategy it has run is to create these two halves of a whole. In my opinion, these are my words. And the dynamic tension between them has created the incredible world that we see. I'm just saying, hey, we should look at this mechanism. Because this mechanism of like, oh, well, we can't say no to that. It is the echo. I mean, this is why we brought it up tied to Mamdani. It's the echo of, well, we can't cut money, we can't cut spending. That'd be ridiculous. So we just gotta raise more money. And it's like, nope, hard pass. And so if I have to be the guy that's like the dead shark eyes of like, no, you have to cut, you have to cut. Just plain and simple. And so now we get everybody together and we say, what do we want to pay for? And so like, my wife was in the chat yesterday saying, well, well, husband of mine, are you saying that it somebody doesn't have a right to an ambulance ride to the hospital? It's like, well, what do we want to say that we're going to pay for no matter what? And if it's the health care, great. What are we going to cut to get to health care? Like, I don't have any beef with that. I'm just saying you can have anything you want. You can't have everything. So you've got to balance your budget. What do you want? And if you want to make sure that no matter what when people go down that there's a ambulance there, then you're going to keep working until the average age of retirement is higher than the average age of death.

[Drew]

Death.

[Tom Dilly]

And that's how we did it previously. So when we put in Social Security, the age at which you could retire was higher than the average age of Somebody died. And so now you're like, well, life's just going to kill a bunch of the people that paid into this system,

[Drew]

and then we'll never have to pay them out. Suckers.

[Tom Dilly]

Correct. But that's what made the system work. And now it's like the average life experience, like a decade beyond when people can retire. So if you're like, hey, I want to pay for healthcare. Cool. I'm. I'm on your team. Let me walk you through. In fact, this is what I think I'm good at that. Tell me what you want to achieve and I'll help you get there. I'll give this. I do this with entrepreneurs all the time. Okay, that's your goal. Awesome. Okay, if that's your goal, which, by the way, I think is a terrible goal. But if you want to get to that goal, here's what would need to be true for you to get there. Because you live in a deterministic universe. There are knowable things that will walk you there. And so let's just go through what would need to be true for you to achieve that. So if you want to stop robbing from the poor and working class, and you want to make sure that an ambulance shows up no matter what, one of the most obvious things, because your big expenses are military. The expense on your debt, which you've already racked up, nobody get rid of that. And your entitlements. And entitlements right now are the biggest thing. So it's like, cool, we've got two gigantic entitlements. Let's start focusing there. I'm also like, hey, let's talk about the military. What do we want to do if we're going to only project power in the Western hemisphere? Do we want to close down bases? How much would we save? I am super open to all of those conversations, but the reality is you have to start from a, what we call in business, a zero budget. So nobody gets money just because they had money in the past. We have goals. Where are we going to fund in order to get us to those goals? And one of the easy places is make the retirement age farther away than the average person lives. So people are going to hate this. What's the average age of death? 78, 76, something like that.

[Drew]

High 70s. Cool.

[Tom Dilly]

You retire at 83.

[Drew]

3. You can collect Social Security at 83.

[Tom Dilly]

Yeah, if. If that's what you want. Or if you're like, no, no, no, bro. Like, we just. Healthcare isn't that important because I don't want to work until I'm 83. So I want to be able to retire at 62. Well then it's like, yeah, there's not going to be an ambulance at your back and call. Which, P.S. by the way, there's not an ambulance at your beck and call right now. I dare you, I double dare you, have a stroke and then call and see how long it takes the ambulance. I, I personally performed CPR on someone who was dying in my house waiting for the ambulance to arrive. I did it for more than 20 minutes. So it is not like, it's like, hey, yeah, we're ready. And by the way, when they came, I was mortified at how they treated the situation, but whatever. So. And keep in mind, we spend an ungodly amount of money. I know everybody wants to say that we don't have health care. We spend an ungodly amount of money on health care care.

[Drew]

Somebody said, I'm eating you like, I'm sorry, I got to vote you off the island. I'm eating you like you're the first person's going to eat. Jesus Christ.

[Tom Dilly]

Okay.

[Drew]

No, no, no, no. I want to bring us back, I want to bring us back.

[Tom Dilly]

I still want to go down that fractals route.

[Drew]

You have a great saying that like you're groping in the dark trying to figure out what it is. Yes, I, I think that's where we're at right now as a society. I think everybody's feeling economically impoverished. Everybody just wishes they made $40,000 more dollars and all their problems will be solved involved. And in order to really fast on

[Tom Dilly]

that, for every dollar in tax that we have collected in the last, I mean it's 30 years or something, we end up spending a dollar 58. So if you make the extra 40 000, it's just going to get taxed because of the K shaped economy and money printing. You're not going to get there. You're not going to feel like you can get ahead unless you own assets. I just cannot say it enough.

[Drew]

While people are trying to figure out what that gap is, what that problem is, how come things are more expensive, they just keep. We're starting to just start grabbing these ideologies and riding with them. I know people who claim to be socialists, but if they had two chickens, they wouldn't give you one of their chickens.

[Tom Dilly]

You and I read the same thing. That was really good.

[Drew]

You know what I mean? So it's one of those things where you claim you want to do these things but you're not People are saying it's the women, it's the immigrants, it's the blacks, it's. Everybody's looking for a scapegoat to say, if you weren't, you are the reason I need this extra 40k. If I know our anger is directed at the Fed, but that just seems not.

[Tom Dilly]

Maybe you and I, but America's anger is not directed at the Fed. They don't even know it's directed at Elon Musk.

[Drew]

It's like it's distracting, it's confused. We don't know who we should be like channeling this energy to.

[Tom Dilly]

Not unless you're subscribed to this channel.

[Drew]

So that's why I think as we're going through all these conversations again, whether it's money, whether it's immigrants, whether it's the budget, there's all these outs that people are now standing on and I just want us to just be sober minded about them because I don't think that our economy is one is a single variable. So if all the immigrant haters deport everybody, I'm like, that's not going to make your house more valuable.

[Tom Dilly]

Like, well, you know, it won't make your house more valuable. It will actually make your house less valuable. So. But that's good for people that are worried about the cost of housing. So you said something earlier, it's all supply and demand. If you remove enough people then the demand is going to go down for the things that those people were competing for. So if you remove people that were competing for your house, your house gets cheaper.

[Drew]

How I said all that to say how. What is the actual one? Is there like a solution, a focus that we should have, whether it's how we output to the politicians. I'll start there because you said yes,

[Tom Dilly]

yeah, don't elect people that won't balance the budget.

[Drew]

Budget.

[Tom Dilly]

That's a little flippant because as I have said, I'm not, I, I don't think I'm going to do protest votes. So I'm, I think I reserve the right to change my mind on this. But I, as of right now, I plan to always vote for the person who I think will help the middle class the most. Right now it's a, you got to hold your nose and jump. But that is my focus. So who's going to help the middle class the most? And, and I'm, they're going to get my vote even if I think they're bad. But one of them is going to win. So I want to make sure that the One that's really got a chance to win wins. So with, with that sort of very grand caveat, don't elect politicians that won't balance the budget or at least only elect politicians that'll actually be positive to the middle class or do your best. And then we have to just absolutely pressure the life out of politicians to balance the budget.

[Drew]

Budget.

[Tom Dilly]

And if we balance the budget I just. Things would change so fast because you staunch the bleeding. So imagine you're like you just got shot. It's like first and foremost long before I need you to take the bullet out of me. Stop the bleeding. Because if you stop the bleeding I'll probably live long enough for you to address the wound. The wound causes me to bleed. That's the very problem. Problem. And so the wound is the central bank. It is the politicians deficit spending. But the bleeding is the deficit growing the debt every year and the debt coming with a huge interest payment. And that interest payment just starts eating all of our discretionary funds. And then the biggest part of the bleeding is just things get more expensive and so you're not going to be able to keep up.

[Drew]

We have to talk about, about the DOJ officially charging former FBI director James Comey with two felony counts. Knowingly making a threat against the President of the United States and transmit transmitting an interstate communication containing a threat to kill the President. All of this comes from his seashells 8647 post on X. Yeah. Carrying each of those charges carry maximum of 10 years in prison. So he's looking to doing up to 20 years. What's your reaction about James Comey?

[Tom Dilly]

Boys and girls, the fact that we have indicted James Comey for posting an image of seashells is ridiculous. There is a reason that we have freedom of speech in America. If somebody reads 8647 as an actual incitement to violence where they think somebody is going to go from you know I wasn't going to throw my life away and attempt to kill somebody to now you know what? I am going to throw my life away and attempt to kill somebody based on seashells that say 8647 also it's patently absurd to me. Me the most obvious reading of 86 is to get rid of. If you, if every time somebody says to you get rid of that person you think they mean to go and kill them. You live in a very different world than I live in. So when we think about freedom of speech we need to be giving the most like wide latitude humanly possible. Now if somebody Says, like, if we're going to point somebody out when what's his name, Hassan Piker, says, if you don't like whatever, you should. And he says, K I L L Tim Scott. I don't remember what it was about, but that's pretty direct. So if we're going to let that one slide, posting a picture of seashells saying 86, 47, it's just ridiculous. So that one, to me, you, right now, the Trump administration, I absolutely beg you, do not do anything from a legal lawfare perspective that even has a mild whiff of impropriety. They have come after you relentlessly and stupidly and foolishly and in ways that have just absolutely tarnished their reputation. And if you only go after people that, it's like, okay, this one is obviously really blatant. We cannot let this stand. I was talking about this at the beginning of the show. You have laws, enforce them. But if you start enforcing them to this point, this is where we really start getting draconian. Everybody has to look over their shoulder. Everybody has to be afraid. It starts pushing people harder onto teams because you want the protection and you will lose people that up to this point haven't been afraid to stand in the middle of the road and say what they think is true. And everybody starts saying what they need to say to be on a party to know that they're going to get protected. That is a terrible place to put everybody. We want everybody in a position where they say what they believe to be true, knowing that they have huge latitude, that if they, like, start veering towards something, that they get checked. Yes, but going all the way to indicting a guy for posting seashells that say 86, 47 is crazy. So this is one where we have got to remind people to pump the brakes. You become the bad guy so fast, it is very distressing. Use decorum, give grace, give a ton of latitude. I get it. This guy's a political enemy. I understand why there's frustration with him. I get it. But if you're going to pursue somebody and not have this rebound back on you when you lose power, or you want to make sure that you had restraint when the war of looking like the stable person in the room and right now, man, the Republican Party under Trump does not look like that. So when you've got China looking more restrained than the U.S. god damn. So please, kids, this one is fucking stupid. Don't pursue this.

[Drew]

How would you define incitement to violence, though? Like, if you had to make it as A policy. Policy.

[Tom Dilly]

If you say something along the lines of, that person should be killed, somebody should kill that person. We know there are people out with guns. Maybe somebody should use them.

[Drew]

Like, that is explicitly hinting at, like, murder, violence, guns.

[Tom Dilly]

You've got to be saying it. Like, if you. If you get like, 2x clever, and it's like, okay, well, if you know all the context of that, that is obviously somebody calling for violence. No, like, I get it. I get it. You sent a subliminal message out into the public, and it should be condemned. And people should be like, this person is an. And we absolutely shouldn't tolerate that. But if you're not just out and out saying it, we have the First Amendment for a reason, because you start getting into interpretation. I did not read 8647 as James Comey's. And James Comey, I don't know. The guy don't have pluses or minuses, so I don't give a. But when I read that, I was like, he wants him out of the presidency to make the immediate leap that he wants the president to be murdered. Oh, my God. God. Like, it. A reasonable doubt exists for a reason, and that one has as much reasonable doubt as you could possibly convey. I do not think a reasonable person hears 86 anybody and thinks, oh, they mean kill him. If a Mafia boss goes up to me and says, Yo, 86 this guy, then I might be like, whoa, hey,

[Drew]

Mafia boss, FBI director. This is the. That was the handshaking meme.

[Tom Dilly]

Yeah. Oh, Jesus. So, yeah, I think we have to. That. That lands a little too hard, Drew. But, yeah, I do think that we need to be very careful, because eventually that case law is going to be interpreted by the person that you despise,

[Drew]

which is a despise, especially right in front of the midterms. You know, it could flip like this. This. This entire decision can get turned 360 in a year. But we shall see. I'd be curious to jump in. How does this. Like, I feel like there's this trend of trying to punish people for things they've said like that. Like we're seeing now with the FCC investigating Kimmel. How do you feel about that? I'd be curious to see with this trend.

[Tom Dilly]

Yeah. So investigating Kimmel is also stupid. This is one of those where, again, just an obscene amount of reasonable doubt that it could have been a joke about the age gap, which is what he says it is, which I'm totally fine with. Also, guys, please want comedians to point out the most. Like unsayable thing in the world, we should want that from them. And so, again, I don't think that what he's saying is an incitement to violence. Now, I certainly understand that when you aggregate all of the things that are being said, you've had three attempts on President Trump's life. So I think that that's a very real thing. And I think that the rhetoric that we see pouring out from all over the place is creating a real problem. Populist moments create a real problem. But if that is just a reality that we have to face from having social media accounts and everybody being able to say this stuff, and it just creates this background problem. Because, listen, you should be able to say, if you really think Trump is a Hitler like figure, you should be able to say that. Now, if the consequence of, you know, 10,000 people that have real voices online saying that this guy is like Hitler results in people making an attempt on his life, I still don't think that that means that you go and start arresting people for saying that. I think that that means that there is a cost to having freedom of speech. And I'm saying I'm willing to pay that cost. Now, the fact that we have drawn lines to say, if you go say he is Hitler, like, and you should go kill him. Yes. Now I get why. Or if you even say he's like Hitler, and I really hope that the next, next Churchill rises up and treats him the same way.

[Drew]

Cool.

[Tom Dilly]

That's not nearly veiled enough for people to get away with. So there are definitely lines. I trust the Supreme Court to draw those lines. But the FCC going after Kimmel is dumb. There was nothing in that joke that I think people should go after. Because, man, you open that and people are just going to come after the comedians on your side. You don't want to be in the world of like.

[Drew]

Like.

[Tom Dilly]

Is that what he meant? Unless it is just blatantly obvious. Let it ride. That is freedom of speech. Freedom of speech has a cost and it is well worth paying.

[Drew]

And I'm sure that also extends to Britain and Miami and some of these other places where we've seen people tweeting things, having a social media opinion, and then getting arrested, getting thrown in prison and all these things. Again, not incitements of violence, but criticisms and critiques on institutions, people, certain countries, things like that.

[Tom Dilly]

The UK is a joke.

[Drew]

Joke.

[Tom Dilly]

The UK is a joke. I don't know what they're thinking that you guys are a parody of yourself. I cannot believe some of the people that you guys have locked up for the things that they've said. It is absolutely ridiculous. It is authoritarian rule. You're going to destroy your own country. And I weep because my wife is British. Some of the people that I love the most in the world live in England. And so the last thing I want to see is you guys becoming the very thing that George Orwell warned against your own son, trying to talk you guys off a ledge. And nonetheless you're racing towards doing it. It really is. You guys look like buffoons. It is absolutely moronic. Immediately stop. That is just so stupid.

[Drew]

And we'll be there in two weeks. See you soon, uk Kirstarmer we no beef. Just let us get through the customer. Beef. Beef.

[Tom Dilly]

Not Drew. Doesn't leave Drew alone. I have beef.

[Drew]

All right, let's keep it moving. Speaking of the eu, China just warned the EU they need to back off their made in Europe plan. The EU wants to rebuild its manufacturing base. Industrial accelerator act. 70% European components for EVs, low carbon steel quotas, aluminum requirements, local content rules, etc. The EU is trying to break free from Chinese supply chains. China is threatened economic consequences. The trade war just opened a second front. This is from the Marigin trader. What say you about the China warning eu? We're the only suppliers around here.

[Tom Dilly]

Europe must find a way to get out from under being tied to China in the way that they are. This really is a second front that's being opened up. And this time you've got China going head to head with Europe because China is not happy about what Europe is saying. But Europe must get independent. On April 27, China's Ministry of Commerce publicly slammed the EU's proposed industrial accelerator act, calling it it systemic discrimination. That is wild. That is China going. These dumb asses in the west and their obsession with discrimination. Remember, they've got Uyghur Muslims in camps, okay? So these guys talking about systemic discrimination is brilliant. It's very smart because Western audiences actually bow down to this stuff. But that is wild. And they warned that Beijing will have, and I quote, no choice but to take countermeasures if Brussels enacts the law now, hey, fair enough. This stuff is going to be tit for tat. So there is going to be the back and forth shots fired on both sides. So be ready for that. The Industrial Accelerator act is the centerpiece of EU's Made in Europe strategy proposed by the European Commission on March 4. It forces any company seeking public funds to hit minimum EU content thresholds in strategic sectors. This is smart. This is exactly the kind of thing that Trump is trying to do here. You have to do things to motivate your nation to build its manufacturing sector. The reality is that we did globalism for a while was super awesome for the wealthy and absolutely terrible for the working person. So if you are working or middle class, ooh, buddy, this was not a great play. It made things very cheap and it helped pull a lot of people out of poverty, which is rad. But now we've hit the point where we've got to start thinking in the opposite direction. The US for sure is going to be in a conflict, even if only cold, with China and Europe is going to have to make a decision whether they're going to bundle themselves under your under China or if they're going to bundle themselves with America. But that choice is going to have massive consequences. Either way, they strengthen themselves by bringing some manufacturing back to their own countries. I expect everybody to start doing this now. Electric vehicles right now must be assembled according to this in the EU with at least 70% non battery component value originating in the block. To qualify for state support or public procurement, construction and infrastructure projects must hit at least 25%. Low carbon steel and aluminum thresholds end up being roughly similar. Beijing has four segments that they're going to be fighting for. So expect if the EU goes after these, China is not going to play around. And that's batteries, EVs, solar PV as they call it, and critical raw materials. Coincidentally, those are the exact sectors that China currently dominates and they do not want to let go because that is the modern world and China wants to have control of the supply chain of the modern world. I don't blame them. If we were in their position, I would do the same thing. But the reality is letting them control that is a terrible idea. India, Beijing claims the act violates WTO rules, which it might by the way, and creates investment barriers, which it does. If you peer through all the legal mumbo jumbo. Europe is just doing what the US has started doing back in 2018, trying to break free of Chinese supply chain constraints and rebuild its own industrial base. This is the moment that we're in. This is a must. They need to do it. So I applaud what the EU is trying to do, but anytime that you're in a trade war, it's going to get messy. And the commission says that the block has lost roughly 200,000 jobs in energy intensive industries and auto just since 2024, with 600,000 more projected this decade in car Making alone. So at this point, Brussels can't afford to do nothing. You can't just let China run wild. But China's not going to back down. So we'll see how this plays out. But we now have our second front in the trade war.

[Drew]

It's interesting to see China move kind of as a block, what they do with the economic sanctions and things like that, because right now, the amount of Americans who view China as the enemy has dropped significantly. That's so 42 in 20, 24, 28. Now, that's crazy. We're seeing the inverse in countries like Israel and things like that, where they were most favorable, and now they're still starting to get unfavorable opinions. So it's. Once China starts ramping up sanctions, trade wars, and they start to enter that front of economic hegemony, it'll be interesting to see kind of how if that changes their perception globally and if people still look at China as the communist utopia that everybody wants it to be, depending on their argument.

[Tom Dilly]

Dude, this one is really going to be interesting because the reality is people are now going to have the option to choose between the US And China, and they're going to have to choose as the US And China begin battling it out. So it will be very interesting to see how China plays this, because just like America is isolating itself, China could start isolating itself and pissing off a bunch of people. And so, yeah, it will be very interesting when all of this settles out. Does Europe get closer to China or the U.S. does Canada get closer to China or U.S. does Mexico get closer to China or the U.S. like, all of these questions are going to be answered over the next next seven years. I mean, it's. It's really going to be wild, man. The world order is getting fractured in far more ways than I think people realize. I think the Middle east is a bigger player than people realize. I think capital matters a lot more than Americans realize because for so long, we've just invisibly controlled the world capital flows. Everybody wanted to invest in the US and so it was just like, yeah, we didn't even really think about it. It was the water to our fish. And now we're realizing, oh, wait a second. The Middle east can point their dollars wherever they want, and so will they keep pointing them at the US Will they keep pointing them at the US in the same quantity? So this is. Yeah, man, this is going to be wild. Things will not look the same in 10 years.

[Drew]

Okay, this is just breaking news. The SCOTUS came out with the decision that ruled that drawing congressional district the districts based on race under the voting acts is unconstitutional.

[Tom Dilly]

Was this the United States Supreme Court or is this in the State?

[Drew]

No, the U.S. supreme Court. The state is specifically. It was brought up through Louisiana because of their districting map. If you can look at the map at the bottom. So quick primer for those that don't know based on the voting acts, there was certain reservations for sex, gender, things like that. What happens in the south south with a lot of this gerrymandering cases that the majority party because now both Democrats and Republicans do it, they would try to redistrict the maps in order to gain more party for their constituency. One thing that was stopping it happening dramatically in the south like we're going to see on the right down here, is that.

[Tom Dilly]

Look at that Louisiana map. That is hilarious.

[Drew]

Crazy. There's certain historically African American districts that they were able not to be gerrymandered because you would then have to redraw those districts. And these district redrawings are like ridiculous. I'm talking about like through a neighborhood, through a street. One side of the street is one district, one side is the other. Like it's that kind of tick for tacky. So yeah, with this new ruling now, race cannot be something that functions as a reason to gerrymander. So they can redraw these districts. And this should actually be a good news for Republicans, especially coming up to the midterms because fundamentally they could get a lot more seats, especially in the South South.

[Tom Dilly]

So this redistricting stuff is so wild. This is one of those things that nobody wants to look at because it's really boring, but it is ridiculous. It's one of the things that happens in plain sight. Everybody can see it, they do it. But when you look at the actual maps, you get like crab claw shapes like you were talking about street skinny split. It's so dumb. There should just be some sort of standard, like give me a grid pattern or something. And it's like this is your district. It is what it is. And it's all geographically based on. But yeah, what we do now is ridiculous. And by the way, whatever happens when you do that happens. And it's just like. Yeah, just like a zip code. It's like it's. You got to think of the poor mailman that's got to deliver your. So you can't have part of the zip code over here and then way the over here. There's still some weirdness with that, but yeah, anyway.

[Drew]

Yeah, a Lot of people are bringing this up because Virginia just got the approval on their ballots to redistrict after California got approval when text when Trump told Texas to redistrict. So there's been three major redistrict redistricting efforts that happened this year alone. So after this ruling, I can only imagine how many will try to get done before November and the midterms open up. So, yeah, we should keep monitoring this story, but this is definitely going to be interesting.

[Tom Dilly]

That's wild. I didn't even know that was, like, on the docket for today.

[Drew]

It was one like, you know, Supreme Court, they just hold cases for a while and then they just start dropping them like mixtapes. Another ruling that came out, this one isn't as sexy, but it got stricken down. Massachusetts was going against the Supreme Court to escalate their decision about their kids being trans in, like, schools. And then Supreme Court didn't. Didn't even want to take the case, so they rejected it to the lower level.

[Tom Dilly]

Interesting.

[Drew]

Parents were saying that the school shouldn't do it, regardless of if the parents had consent or not. The school was like, we're just following policy.

[Tom Dilly]

We.

[Drew]

This is different than the California. I don't have to tell your parents. Right. If I see that there's danger there. We're allowed to help. We're allowed to reaffirm care just to make sure people are okay.

[Tom Dilly]

And the Supreme Court's just like, we're not touching.

[Drew]

Kicking it back to the lower court. So you guys figured, what's the current

[Tom Dilly]

ruling right now in the lower courts

[Drew]

that I need to figure out? But it was a 90 decision not to touch it. And Supreme Court doesn't do 9. 0 at all. So once I seen that, I was like, oh, yeah, they're not. They're kicking that down all in, though. This is one of my, like, frustrations. I was going to save this for later, but the University of Massachusetts is set to hire the first ever AI coach in NCAA football. Now, I thought this was, like, amazing. It's created by UMass student engineers. It would analyze trends in real time and help decide, like, live game strategy recruiting. Oh, this focus was because UMass, for those that don't know, was once prominent D1 school and now it's middle of the pack, bottom of the pack most of the time. So it's like, instead of spending $40 million on a new coach trying to rebrand the whole program, they went the other way. Let's just AI it and see if maybe we can Moneyball It. Moneyball is like using analytics in sports and all. It's interesting when I see, like, sports taking these chances and then politicians were arguing about redistricting rules and things that seem to be petty on surface. Surface. Do you think that we'll actually get to a point where somebody would be like, okay, AI should take the reins because they're a neutral party versus us, keep bickering and humans ruining politics right now?

[Tom Dilly]

That would be an absolute disaster. So, no, we should not be inviting AI in any way other than humans use AI and then ultimately put their judgment on it. But this is going to be interesting. So I am still convinced that there is a fair amount of violence between here and, like, the inevitability of AI adoption. But I grow more convinced by the day that there's. People are really going to fight back. So there's. It'll be interesting to watch this play out because there's no way that the student body is unified on this. There's no way that the donors to the school are unified on this. There are going to be some people that are like, absolutely not. Over my dead body. No way. Having a coach use AI for sure. It'll be interesting to see how it gets dealt with at the collegiate level, whether they go, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't use AI in real time or anything like that. So. And then as. As a body politic, we're all going to have to decide, do we want, like, when it comes to sports, do we want people to leverage AI as much as humanly possible, or do we want to see humans compete on a human field? Right. And so where they'll end up drawing the line because there's a ton of technology already being used. But where are they going to draw the line with will be very, very interesting. But I could certainly see people saying, no AI on the field. So you can't do anything in real time using AI or something like that. They'll obviously all use it in the locker room. There'd be no way to stop them. You wouldn't know if they were doing it. So that is certainly going to happen. So on the Moneyball side, where it's like back in the conference room and you're sitting down, you're analyzing things, I'm sure people already are using AI, but actually on the field as a coach, so anyway, this probably is more of a PR stunt than anything announcing that they're going to be using it because right now you still need leadership on

[Drew]

the team down there. There's still gonna be somebody doing Substitutions, but maybe they'll just be reading the results or something. The. The reason I bring this up is because we both shared this frustration about there's certain things that the government should just be doing that doesn't. Like, I'm not a rocket scientist. You're not a rocket scientist. You've done so many successful things. Politics, you dabble your foot in. But even in your dabble, you have talked about solutions that career politicians don't even bring up. So it's one of those things that we see that there's a gap between what's actually happening and what we think is our North Star should be. Does that gap ever get closed? Or is this kind of like war, where it's perpetual in every society and it's always been around? And that's just part of the exhaust of human nature.

[Tom Dilly]

The only way I could see it getting solved would be if AI got to the point where it proved itself to be benevolent and it proved itself to be good at governing. And so if we had those two things where it was like, okay, let's say each party had their AI or whatever, and it's like, okay, the AI is advising that we do this, I could see people getting behind it and being like, man, it's really delivering results. This is exceptional. We want to listen more and more. You know, in the beginning, you wouldn't listen a lot, but otherwise, it. It is. Is. It's all comes down to electability and the big, like, I think about this a lot. Like, why do I not want to run for office? Like, I have such an aversion to it. And part of it is that I know, like, even on this show, I. I get a lot of comfort from. I never have to tell you what you want to hear because I'm already wealthy. So it's like, oh, the show didn't work. Okay, no big deal. Like, I'll just go do my next thing thing. And when you're in a position where it's like, well, I'm a politician. That is my job. If I don't get elected, I am literally out of a job. Now all of a sudden, people are like, well, I've got to tell you what you want to hear. But the problem is, the thing you want to hear may not be the thing that actually works. I think about this a lot with the economy and what people say in the chat. It's like, people will clap back on the chat like, oh, my God, this is so dumb. Like, you know, we're going to eat you and I'm just like, but you don't understand the mechanisms of the economy. Economy. So there are people that I love very, very much and they don't understand the economy, but they will eject out of any conversation where the economy gets brought up because they, they can't be around me talking about the economy. And I'm like, wow, that's so interesting. So I know they're smart, I know they're well meaning, but they have a frame of reference that simply will not allow them to engage with the mechanisms of the economy. So you've got that electability problem. It's, it's really emotional. So humans are having an emotional experience. They're not having a logical experience. Humans are not aimed at North Stars almost ever. And if they.

[Drew]

We're not aimed.

[Tom Dilly]

No. Well, so maybe a better way to say it is. The North Star that people are aiming towards is almost always invisible to them. They don't know what it is. And it's usually just driven by ego. And so there's a way that they want to feel and the things that they do in life are based on, oh, that makes me feel the way I want to feel. And so I do more of that. That just like completely devoid of any assessment as to whether it's moving them towards their long term goals or not. And that is always heartbreaking. And it really does come down to like a definitive thing that you can point to. And it comes down to do you build your self esteem around being right or do you build your self esteem around identifying the right answer? And I don't remember who it was, but somebody put forward the hypothesis that they believe that evolution optimized us for being right, that the very thing that we try to do is be right, not identify the right answer. And I was like, whoa. So if all people are trying to do is effectively win the argument, if that means that they have to lie, if that means that they have to cheat and steal, great, they're no problem. Because they are optimized to end up being the one that is perceived as right. Because that's where I started. It's a little too easy for me to believe that that's true. But if I could get people to make that little switch where you want the outcome of your goal more than you want the momentary, like, oh, I'm right about this man, it will change your life forever. Because now all of a sudden you're not so much groping in the dark, you're just trying to map cause and effect. And once you're you're mapping cause and effect. You're in alignment with the fact that this is a deterministic universe. I can tell. I could spend the rest of the time talking. I'll stop there. But just know the thing I'm talking about now is the secret to the human experience.

[Drew]

Okay, this is perfect because this leads us to our next story. Because I think this is one of those things where on paper it sounds good, but then there might be some back North Star stuff that we not are, we're not all on the same page about. So two Republican, two Democratic reps, excuse me, are introducing a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour and eliminate sub minimal wages. This is a crazy term. I just found out what this means yesterday. We'll get into that. Reps. Dealer Ramirez and Analia Mea are introducing the bill saying it's unacceptable that the minimum wage has been stuck at 725 since 2009 on paper. Before we get into the nuance of it, how are you, Are you a no minimum wage person at all? Federal? I know there's, there's been different feelings about it. What's your opinion on the minimum wage and how it should be set federally?

[Tom Dilly]

Well, yeah, I, I'm data driven, so I will say at the federal level it's not effective. So at the federal level it's a terrible idea. It can have some positive impact locally. So people are doing it in like a really specific. I don't know if you can do it at the state level. That's probably still too broad, but that's certainly better than federal. Maybe at the city level it would have some positive impact. My, my rough take on it is you probably don't get enough out of it on balance to pursue it. But the answer is nuanced and a blanket yes or no answer, which I've recently come to. Previously I would have just said it's blanket stupid. But the data does show as you get hyper local in certain circumstances. Like where, where employers have like monopolistic control there, it really is useful. But breaking up monopolies is always a good idea. So it, it does have a utility in very specific ways. But the way that we go for it is purely emotional and completely nonsensical and we should immediately stop.

[Drew]

Okay, what is the solution to stagnant wages then in your opinion? Because I know, I think from this going to the North Star thing, they think if we raise the minimum wage that's going to incentivize corporations to raise how much they Pay people. It'll make competition. There'll be at least more jobs that pay a better, better rate to their workers.

[Tom Dilly]

Get students obsessed when they're kids with skill acquisition and de globalize, say a couple more things. So there really is only two things that you have to do. So people have to understand. Shout out to Patrick Wrightson, who pointed this out in his interview. He got a big response from saying, I believe that, that if I work to get better at something, I will get better because skills have utility. That will be very useful to you as a company if you could get education system that turned kids out that were just like obsessed with acquiring skills. So whatever their goal is and their job or whatever, it's like, oh, I need to be good at that. Cool. Got you. I'm going to go get really good at this thing. So now they're a good investment. They're getting better and better over time. It is so hard to find people that are really effective. I'll use you as an example. I was having night terrors over California, passing the law and having to move and then you being like, bro, I got to be close to Lynn. And so now I'm like, fuck. I know that you're not an interchangeable piece. The show will be fundamentally different if anyone else ever sits in that chair, God forbid, bid. But should that be true, it just will be a different show. It will have been. This will be like the, oh, that was the Drew era. It'll never be the same. And so that puts you in a really powerful position. And you've done that by acquiring a set of skills that matter to me. Now somebody can say, oh, I need to pay more or whatever, but that makes me go, well, is Drew worth the amount that you're forcing me now to pay?

[Drew]

Pay.

[Tom Dilly]

And so that's where you end up with all this stuff, is if people are skill acquisitive, they want to get better. Now I'm like, oh, you have a skill I care about. So if you're able to help me make more money, that matters a lot. You're now in the driver's seat. If I can just replace you. Hence the deglobalization. If I can just replace you, then I'm like, meh, I'm on to the next guy who will do it for cheaper. And so. So if you stop those two things from being a problem, lazy employees that feel like working for a company is just about being exploited. So fuck you, I'm going to do as little work as possible. So now I'm like, you are an interchangeable cog because you're not trying to get better. So if they're like you and they're obsessed with being great at what they do, and when I go on vacation, you're over here improving things, and I come back to a 1 out of 10 video. You bang it out of the park. It's like, okay, that's somebody I want to work with. Cool. So you've got that piece in place, then. The other thing is, well, if I'm unable to replace you easily because I can't just outsource you to Bangladesh now, It's like, it's a double whammy. You're getting very good at what you do. You're pushing yourself and your skills. So you're in the driver's seat there. You're putting yourself in a rarefied error where it's like, that's just somebody who's trying to get better for their own sake. Very rare. And I don't have a lot of options anyway, because I can't just. Just go, you know, anywhere in the world. So those would be the two biggest things that I would say. If you solve for those now people are back in the drivers. I tried to get through that.

[Drew]

No, I appreciate you. And people like, is Drew quitting? No. That was the specific example. Come back to the.

[Tom Dilly]

Yeah, I want to. I, I.

[Drew]

So here's focus, guys.

[Tom Dilly]

Drew's not quitting. That I know of. As a. A person in front of a camera who employs people, I always have the option to use the show as propaganda where I can just ever so slightly not say a true thing to position the people that are in the room that can hear me. Like, I know when I talk to this mic, I'm also talking to the editors. So it's like, I can use that if I want or. And by the way, I have gotten advice from people to stop saying some of the things that I say because it puts me in a weaker position as a CEO. I couldn't give a To me. Actually, that's not true. I believe they're wrong. I believe it hurts me in the short term and helps me in the long term. And my thing is, I don't mind you knowing the position that you're in, because I'm perfectly happy to pay a fair wage to keep you here. So that's just my strategy. And it helps me in some ways and it hurts me in others. So, anyway, I like to publicly acknowledge you because I think that you do a fucking great job.

[Drew]

Job.

[Tom Dilly]

So Anyway, people can get used to that. It's not because I'm afraid of anything. It's just because I think I appreciate it.

[Drew]

I am as great as the backs of the people that make this show happen. So I can't take all the credit.

[Tom Dilly]

Drew does the same thing,

[Drew]

but I think that in that very specific example for impact theory, it makes sense. I think everybody can hear that and say, okay, cool, got it. I understand that. So when we get to the federal minimum wage, is it just going back to when we make blanket statements that apply to everybody? That's where government gets it wrong. Because while some companies, it's a fastball down the middle. This makes sense. People will make more money. People have will be able to pay their rent easier. And then in other cases, it's going to be catastrophic. More layoffs and people are going to be in a worse situation. It's just that the nuance is a part that the government miss when it makes these mandates.

[Tom Dilly]

Yeah, it's to sum all that up in a single sentence. In some cases, raising the minimum wage causes people to make more money, and in other cases it causes them to not have entry level jobs. So you have to figure out, where is this a case of the employer has monopolistic control, so the employee is in a weakened position and therefore can artificially defeat the market essentially by holding the pay low. And where is it that, that you've now placed it so high that it's nonsensical for the kinds of people that apply for that job? And if you think of it like, hey, sir, I want to get a job working at your bar and I don't have any experience. Oh, cool, then I'll give you a job at $8 an hour. And that's great for me because you're cheap. And it's great for you because now you're going to get experience. But if the government comes along and says you can't take that job job, I know you think that that's a good deal for you. It's not a good deal for you. You've got to charge $12 an hour, whatever. And then I go, well, for $12 an hour, I can get somebody that has experience, so I'm just not going to offer you the job. So now you're without a job and you were like, hold on, I would have been much happier with a job that paid me $8 an hour. So I can start building the experience and by the way, build my skill set, show that I'm indispensable, claw My way up, which is before I became an entrepreneur. That was exactly how I was getting ahead. When I was younger, young, I used to tell my friends, you can put me in any company in the world and I will climb my way to the top. And I literally proved that. I went from a Steenbeck repairman to running the same film school. So they hired me to fix machinery. And then by the time I left, I was running the LA branch and opening remote branches in, like, London for them. So it was like, yeah, just get me in the fucking door and I will do the rest of the work. So I'll take the shitty job. I will. Wasn't, dude, I hate working on equipment. So it's like, I'm never going to be that guy for a long period of time. But it's like I know what I can do to people by showing them how rapidly I can acquire skills. And so when you, in certain circumstances, when you rob people of that ability, they just can't get their foot in the door to prove it.

[Drew]

And then that's why your first point, you're saying, education, we need to start making skill acquisition the thing versus knowledge, memorization or some of the other folks, the education 100%.

[Tom Dilly]

One of the things that I hope that this. So my secret of all secrets is, and this partly is because I'm not a parent, I really want to help kids. And I am so fish about what is actually useful. And what is actually useful is what I call the only belief that matters. If you put time and energy into getting better, you will get better. Now, maybe people listening to this show don't realize that we're not there culturally. We are not there culturally. Culturally, right now, we are in a place where people believe that companies are just taking advantage of their employees. And that makes me weep because I was raised to believe that I could do anything that I set my mind to. I had to get good. It would come at an extraordinary price. But if I was willing to pay that price, I could become anybody I wanted to become. And it's really funny to watch my family respond to me because I'm learning now. When I was a kid, they just thought it was what they were supposed to tell me. They didn't actually believe. Believe it. So my mom wrote a message in my 50th birthday book that was basically like, you used to tell me all the time that you were going to be rich one day. And I was just like, yeah, of course you can be anything you want. But, like, secretly, I'm like, how the hell is he going to pull this off? Like, nobody gets rich. And thankfully they told me that. So I just kept foolishly marching down that path thinking, oh, cool. Yeah, everybody's telling me I can be whatever I want. I want to bring that energy back, back. I want people to believe that they can become what they want. Now, here's the brutal secret. Most people aren't disciplined enough. Most people aren't smart enough. I hate that. But the reality is that for a lot of people, there's just too many things against them and they really aren't going to make it. But the second you let that be the cultural energy, now, the people that would have made it become cynical and don't even try. And that's too heartbreaking. I can't bear it. So. So I would much rather live in a world where people are completely delusional and they're swinging for the fences, and then the people that really have a shot to make it will make it because they're being reinforced by culture that, yeah, of course you should dream big. You should go for anything you want. Like, let's go versus. I've helped, like, Big Brother a fair amount of times in my life. And I had this one kid, I was just really trying to figure out what he wanted to do, do. And I was like, what are the things you like? I like art. I like heights. And I was like, oh, okay, this is cool. Like, what do you want to do? His punchline haunts me to this day. Maybe I could put up the signs on the billboards because he likes art and he likes heights. And I was like, okay, okay. Like, have we ever thought of. Yes, like, definitely. But are there other ways that we might be able to express that? And I remember thinking, he's driving down the street, he just sees billboards, and so he doesn't even have the frame of reference to be like, oh, I want to be a painter or a high school teacher, whatever. Yeah, it was just. That was as far as he could think. And as a culture, we've gotten there. It's. People are cynical. They don't dream big anymore. We clown on people who do. So anyway, whatever little bit that I can contribute to that. Gladwell.

[Drew]

I get this from Malcolm Gladwell. There's the upward mobility piece that I think is the invisible contract that societies have with, like, its citizens. And I think to your point, it made sense to work that $8 an hour job because you have the. Okay, I know it's $8 today, but next week is going to be 11. Because I'm gonna go this other thing, then I'm gonna do this other thing, then in six months, a year, two years, three years, whatever. I would be in a different position because of the new skills I acquired, the new roles I acquired, the new responsibilities I acquired acquire. It seems like now in 2026, a lot of people just feel like every day is the same. It's Groundhog Day. No matter how many skills I get, whether I BINGE Watch every YouTube video, whether I get straight A's, I'm still can't afford anything. I can't get ahead. I'm stuck. I'm stuck, I'm stuck. And is that something that is systemic, that is coming from outplace, or is this. We just need to kind of get into a mirror and talk to ourselves and get our mindset different.

[Tom Dilly]

Like it is systemic and it breaks along the lines of we have calcified into a caste system. If you're born poor, you're going to die poor. And that is a tragedy. That is a betrayal of the American ethos in ways that legitimately enraged me. And unfortunately, it comes back to the same problem. When you don't let Spirit Airlines go bankrupt, you create a problem where even companies are turning to the government for nanny stuff. State, you just, you cannot do that. It is completely immoral to make it where people who save their money are punished, which is the system that you live in right now. And so you might have like think about all those stories that we hear about a Mexican family immigrates to America and the parents just work themselves to death and they, you know, they're putting money aside so they can put their kids through college and their kids go to college and then they get a good job. And now it's like they're a middle class family. And then their kids are like doctors and senators. And it's like we're making that impossible. And the way that we're making that impossible is that the first generation is never going to be able to get ahead because they can't save enough money. And we're overproducing elites. So even if you send them to college, they're going to go because the government is getting involved in the grants and the loans to put the kids through college. They're going to go study something stupid that's not going to have any relevance in the job market. And then all of the extra money that we're pulling from taxpayers that we're pumping into the government. Government is for bureaucracy. It's not for Actually building the infrastructure that entrepreneurs are going to be able to go and win with. And we're just taxing people to death. So it, it is this ridiculous structural thing that we built in place to stop people from falling down. Right. Going back to the idea of you partly get this nanny state because women have this massive compassionate impulse, which is awesome, but it has to be checked. And so we're not doing a good enough job of saying, yeah, we're not a nanny state, we ought to not be a nanny state. People need to be able to fail so that the best among us can rise. And when you get in a situation like that, I get it. It's hard to watch. It's hard to watch somebody fail. It's hard to say, your family has to pick you up. The government's not going to do it. It's hard to say, hey, that's, you're gonna have to turn to the church because the government is not going to make sure that you've got all the food that you need. It's hard. I get it. People don't want to say it, but there's a reality to be faced which is a K shaped economy, which is a caste system. And for me, that's a horrific trade off. And I would much rather be in a position where I have to look after my mom because the government's not going to do it. I'd much rather be there because, by the way, accepting that then I might fail. So, yeah, I want to be back in the world where getting rich was no guarantee that you were going to die rich. And there was certainly no guarantee that you're going to be able to pass it on to your kids. And letting the government confiscate it does not help. That is a horrific solution to the problem.

[Drew]

Really quick yes or no, when the AI babies drop, would you think about it?

[Tom Dilly]

I would for sure. If I can speed them up and slow them down. So if I can enjoy like age 7, which seems like they're, they're not a blob, they're not in the terrible twos, they still want to be around you, that would be dope. And if I can just like diaper period. No, no, that can be like a weekend. Just so I can be like, yo, I did it. And then the like, ah, let me see. How long? Okay. Admittedly only 48 hours. Right. And they can clown to me for that. But I do think that AI will get to the point where that will be a proxy. It won't be the real thing. I'M well aware of that. But as somebody that didn't have kids, yeah, I think that would be a very interesting experience that I expect to have clipped and beaten to death with it at some point five or six years from now. But, yes, that would be fun.

[Drew]

Nice. All right, that's all I got.

[Tom Dilly]

And then We've got a Zero to Founder AI Masterclass coming up Thursday, May 7th at 1pm Pacific. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback from this class. The last one was awesome. So I hope you guys will come and join us. It is free and I'm going to teach you how to launch a company using AI. It is very useful stuff. It's super free. And that is Thursday, May 7th, at 1pm Pacific. All right, everybody, we'll see you Friday. Love you guys. Bye.