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DOJ Goes After Comey, Mamdani Budget Woes, & The Hidden Forces That Are Devastating Us Financially | Tom Bilyeu Show Live! - Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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

Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory

Wed Apr 29 2026

Tom Bilyeu and Producer Drew break down the New York City budget crisis, the real impact of women’s suffrage on government spending, the global trade war’s new front, and the political firestorm around James Comey—all with fiery debates and data-driven insights.

Summary

Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Episode: DOJ Goes After Comey, Mamdani Budget Woes, & The Hidden Forces That Are Devastating Us Financially

Date: April 29, 2026

Episode Overview

This live episode of the Tom Bilyeu Show (Impact Theory) dives deep into the week's most controversial and significant stories at the intersection of politics, economics, and culture. Tom and his co-host dissect hot-button issues, from NYC's budget drama to the Comey indictment, global trade wars, inflation, voting trends, and the viability of minimum wage hikes. With characteristic candor and insight, Tom strips away political narratives to expose fundamental economic realities and societal undercurrents threatening financial well-being and clarity in the current era.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Iran Crisis and Oil Markets ([02:31]-[13:00])

Iran's Economic Collapse and War
- The White House claims Iran is on the verge of collapse and seeking to open Hormuz Strait to export oil again. Tom is skeptical, noting Iran's troubled leadership transition and mounting pressure from blocked oil exports.
- Quote: “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…” — Tom, [05:24]
Technical Realities of Oil Infrastructure
- Tom explains that pausing oil production is complex; machinery can’t simply be turned off and on without months (or even years) of disruptions and costs.
UAE Leaving OPEC
- UAE’s dramatic exit from OPEC is seen as a potential boost for global oil markets and the return of free-market dynamics, but Tom cautions that such moves could introduce volatility.
- Quote: “OPEC is a cartel…If OPEC really did fall apart…my initial read on this is that it would be better for oil prices…a return to free markets that’s probably in the long run better.” — Tom, [07:25]
Middle East’s Growing Financial Influence
- Stories of Western businesses and capital gravitating toward the UAE highlight a shift in global power centers.

2. NYC Budget Debacle: The Mamdani Woes ([15:52]-[31:39])

Mamdani’s Budget Shortfall and Political Spin
- NYC politician Zoram Mamdani declares a historic budget crisis, claiming only new revenue can close the deficit without burdening working people. Tom emphatically rebuts, arguing the crisis is “man-made.”
- Quote: “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. It’s just…blatantly untrue.” — Tom, [18:24]
Breakdown of Causes
- The shortfall is due to adding ~$15B in new spending atop an already inflated budget; not a revenue problem but a spending problem.
- Tom details alternative budget plans by Speaker Menon that balance the budget without tax increases—plans Mamdani rejected.
Impact on Working Class
- Tom asserts that such economic policies “absolutely demolish the working class” and that the cycle of deficit spending and inflation squeezes the middle and lower classes, regardless of political promises.
- Quote: “Economic lies drive me the most crazy, especially when you’ve got somebody who’s riding on the back of socialism…” — Tom, [20:43]

3. Inflation, Deficit Spending, & Monetary Manipulation ([31:40]-[36:00])

Hidden Tax of Inflation
- Tom warns that inflation is a theft mechanism: “Every time we have a budget shortfall, we just...print it out of thin air…which makes it worse for everybody. That mechanism is the K-shaped economy.” — [31:52]
- Innovation should make goods cheaper, but money printing eats up all deflationary progress.
Root Cause Analysis
- While corporate greed and tax evasion exist, Tom doubles down that the “foundational problem” is central bankers funding endless deficits.

4. Gender Gap in Voting and the Welfare State ([39:35]-[56:18])

Historical and Modern Trends
- Examining academic studies, Tom explains that women’s suffrage closely correlates with a doubling of government spending over ten years in each state.
- “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.” — Tom, [40:24]
Nuanced Take
- Tom reiterates the value of “dynamic tension” between men’s and women’s preferences: “Men and women are equals. We are just very different...When we start pulling one way or the other too much…you can start to have problems.” — [40:24]
- He is adamant that repealing women’s suffrage is “a terrible idea,” but posits that the shift toward greater government spending is tightly correlated with the feminization of politics and culture.
Fiscal Discipline vs. Entitlement Expansion
- U.S. has become effectively a welfare state, and both social programs and military spending are critiqued as drivers of the deficit, depending on which party overspends.

5. DOJ Charges James Comey: Free Speech or Incitement? ([61:49]-[69:53])

Comey’s Seashells Post
- Comey is indicted for a “threatening” post with seashells reading 86/47 (interpreted as “get rid of 47,” i.e. Trump). Tom blasts the move: “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.” — [62:15]
Defining Incitement
- Tom’s standard: Only direct, explicit calls for violence should be prosecuted; coded speech or jokes, even in poor taste, must be protected for democracy's sake.
- Example: Defends both Comey and comedians like Kimmel from charges due to satirical or ambiguous content.
- “Freedom of speech has a cost and it is well worth paying.” — Tom, [69:53]

6. Trade War: EU vs. China ([71:07]-[77:50])

Europe’s Industrial Act and China’s Backlash
- The EU’s “Made in Europe” laws aim to rebuild independence from Chinese-dominated supply chains; China threatens “countermeasures” and calls U’s policies “systemic discrimination.”
- “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…they strengthen themselves by bringing some manufacturing back.” — Tom, [71:39]
Geopolitical Realignment
- Tom predicts the next decade will force countries worldwide (Canada, Mexico, EU) to choose economic allegiance between US and China, upending the current world order.

7. Supreme Court Rulings & Policy Updates ([77:50]-[81:12])

Redistricting & Voting Rights
- SCOTUS rules that drawing congressional districts based on race is unconstitutional, likely benefiting Republicans in upcoming elections.
- “This redistricting stuff is so wild...But when you look at the actual maps, you get, like, crab claw shapes...There should just be some sort of standard, like, give me a grid pattern or something.” — Tom, [79:31]
Trans Student Policy Case
- SCOTUS declines to hear a Massachusetts case about parental notification for trans students, kicking the issue back to lower courts.

8. AI in Sports and Governance: Possibilities and Limits ([81:15]-[88:40])

UMass’s AI College Football Coach
- UMass introduces an AI-powered coach to optimize strategy—Tom predicts widespread debate over AI’s role in human endeavor, both in sports and, theoretically, in politics.
- Firmly against “AI running government,” Tom views AI as a tool for humans, not a replacement for human judgment.
Why Politics Fails
- Politicians are incentivized to say what gets them elected, not necessarily what works, reinforcing the gap between what should be done and what is done.
- Humans are “optimized to be right, not identify the right answer.”

9. The Minimum Wage Debate and Skill Acquisition ([88:40]-[101:18])

$25 Federal Minimum Wage Bill
- Tom opposes a federal minimum wage, calling it ineffective and “purely emotional,” but allows for nuanced utility at highly local levels, particularly where employers hold monopolistic power.
- Negative outcomes: Blanket wage hikes can eliminate entry-level jobs and block skill ladders.
Upward Mobility Solution
- Emphasis on creating a culture of skill acquisition and de-globalizing industries: “If you solve for those…now people are back in the driver’s seat.” — Tom, [93:55]
Upward Mobility & Cultural Energy
- Tom laments the calcification of the American class system; blames government overreach and inflation for killing the immigrant/dreamer path to the middle class.
Quote: “I want people to believe that they can become what they want...But the reality is, 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...” — Tom, [98:11]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Inflation: “Inflation is not the number they report…everything should get cheaper and higher quality, but they don’t. The reason…is because of money printing.” — Tom, [32:20]
On Political Manipulation: “Mamdan is a master manipulator. You have to understand him in that vein or he is always going to confuse you.” — Tom, [22:01]
On Free Speech: “If you’re not just out and out saying it, we have the First Amendment for a reason… we have huge latitude.” — Tom, [65:47]
On Upward Mobility: “We have calcified into a caste system. If you’re born poor, you’re going to die poor. That is a tragedy.” — Tom, [102:14]

Timestamps for Important Segments

[02:31] – Iran’s crisis, oil production woes, and UAE leaving OPEC.
[15:52] – NYC budget breakdown, Mamdani’s deficit, and Tom’s critique.
[31:40] – The true cost and source of inflation.
[39:35] – Gender gap in voting and the welfare state.
[61:49] – DOJ charges former FBI Director Comey over social media post; incitement law discussion.
[71:07] – EU–China trade war and geopolitical realignment.
[77:50] – SCOTUS rulings on redistricting and school policy.
[81:15] – AI in sports, thoughts on AI in government.
[88:40] – $25 federal minimum wage, skill acquisition, and the reality of job markets.

Episode Takeaway

This episode underscores Tom Bilyeu’s central thesis: To thrive in today’s complex world, you must see through political storytelling, understand the foundational levers of economics (deficit spending, inflation, skill, competition), and remain vigilant for the incentives and narratives that shape policy and public perception. The real solutions—whether in budgets, jobs, or social policy—require sobriety, nuance, and the courage to accept hard truths in pursuit of real progress.

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Transcript

A (0:01)

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B (2:31)

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.

A (2:40)

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

B (2:44)

So people are getting people's light. It starts getting nice outside, you start getting 80 degree day every now and then, you know, sundresses start coming out.

A (3:26)

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's 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 break before we get to the congressional showdown would be their own economy. Iran's economy is going to run into real trouble. 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 two, 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.

A (7:25)

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 lock step 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 capital. 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 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, but the Silicon Valley firms are being funded by limited partners out of these firms in the uae.

A (11:46)

Sure. 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 prices are climbing because of what's going on in the straight of Hormuz. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead so don't go anywhere. Let's talk about the most powerful force in wealth building. Compounding. There is a reason that people have talked about this forever. You put an asset to work, it generates more of itself over time, the curve bends way in your favor. Every serious wealth builder knows how compounding works. Most gold owners though, have completely opted out of it. Monetary Metals changes that equation. They've built a way for your gold to earn yield paid not in dollars, but in more physical gold, up to 4% per year, more ounces stacking every single month, compounding in one of the only assets that can't printed, inflated or debased. And storage and insurance are included by the way, so hidden fees don't eat your yield. The average person is passively absorbing inflation. This is how you compound your way out of it. Click the link in the show notes or visit monetary-metals.comimpact to learn more. This is a paid advertisement. Let's talk about the worst investment most guys make on repeat cheap clothes. You buy them, they look fine, but six months later they're pilling, shrinking or just falling apart. So you replace them. You do it again and again. You're spending more over time and you never actually have anything worth keeping or wearing for that matter. That's the whole model behind Quince. I've got one of their 100% Pima Cotton Tees and the quality is immediately obvious from the second you pick them up. They're soft, well constructed, the kind of thing that holds up over time. And that is the point. Refresh your everyday with luxury. You'll actually use head to quince.com impact pod for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Quince Q-U-I-N C E.com impactpod for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com impactpod let's talk about money you're leaving on the table. Every time you pay full price for a health product out of pocket, you could be missing out on 30% savings. There are over 40 million HSA accounts in the US holding $159 billion in pre tax dollars. That's where True Med comes in. Trumed helps qualified customers use pre tax HSA dollars on health products that can qualify as medical expenses under IRS guidelines. You complete a health survey, Trumed handles the documentation and the purchase and you can save an average of 30% on products like 8 Sleep Peloton, AG1 and others that studies show can treat or reverse many common chronic conditions. Stop paying full price for products your HSA was billed for. Go to truemed.com impact and check out what things you want that may qualify. It takes just a couple of minutes. True Med is for qualified customers only. HSAFSA tax savings vary. Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action

A (22:01)

Well, I am very much looking forward to those. Here is my take. Mamdan is a master manipulator. You have to understand him in that vein 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 Momdani 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 identify 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 Mamdani 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 city's 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. It. This kind of stuff is just crazy making. So when mom Donnie 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.

A (31:57)

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.

A (37:07)

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 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 problems. 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. And I mean, we can add the. If you want to be on the good side of the K. Own assets.

A (40:24)

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. 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' 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 A 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 that you guys are looking at. If you're looking at it, it's pretty wild. Like, check this thing out. Like, 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 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 it, but it allowed 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, 1920, 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.

A (49:39)

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 you the, where does spending start to uptick? Does it uptick when women get the vote? The answer is yes. So if one state delays by a couple of years, then the uptick in spending is delayed by a couple of years. It, 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, 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. 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, 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. 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 got to raise more money. And it's like, nope, hard pass. And so if I have to be the guy that's like, 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 healthcare, great. What are we going to cut to get to healthcare? 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. 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

A (62:15)

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 C shops that say 8647 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.

A (71:39)

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, Europe must get independent. On April 27, China's Ministry of Commerce publicly slammed the EU's proposed industrial accelerator act, calling 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 4th forth. 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. It was super awesome for the wealthy and absolutely terrible for the working person. So if you are working or middle class. Ooh. But 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. 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. 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 says 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 though 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.

A (84:54)

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, 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. 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. 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. So there are people that I love very, very much and, and they don't understand the economy, but they will eject out of any conversation where the economy gets brought up because 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 really emotion. 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 were not aimed. 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.

A (90:46)

Get students obsessed when they're kids with skill acquisition and deglobalize, 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, did. 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. You're forcing me now to pay? 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 cheap, cheaper. And 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 you. I'm going to do as little work as possible. So 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. 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. Options anyway, because I can't 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.

A (95:51)

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 you've now placed it so high that it's nonsensical for the kinds of people that apply for that job? 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, 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 skillset, 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 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. 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 door and I will do the rest of the work. So I'll take the shitty job. I wasn't, dude, I hate working on a 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.

A (98:11)

100%. 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 fiendish 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. 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 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. I want people to believe that they can become what they want. Now, here's the. 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 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. 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, and I was like, what are the things you like? I like art. I like heights. And I was like, oh, shit, okay, this is cool. Like, what do you want to do? 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. 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 I will.

A (102:14)

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 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. 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 shit. It's like we're making that impossible. And the way that we're making that impossible is that, 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 is for bureaucracy. It's not for actually building the infrastructure that, 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 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 it. You're going to 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. Problem.