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Hello and welcome back to Now We Consume.
I am your host, Gibbs, and along with me is my co-host, Pip.
Hello.
And today we are talking about the cost of money.
Now, what that means in this context is more about we're going to talk about the US Treasury
and kind of the history of the US monetary system,
as well as the kind of philosophy behind how it's been operating.
But even more in the context of this podcast is how is that system screwing you over
and how is the government wasting your money?
I'll tell you one thing, money doesn't cost anything when you steal it.
Thank you for that tidbit. Thank you. Helpful tips from Pip.
Money doesn't cost you anything when you steal it.
Or when you decide to, you know, hold the rights to print it and do whatever the hell you want.
Exactly.
Without any congressional approval, you just do whatever you want.
Yay.
If you want to spend money, we print it. It's great.
Yes.
So anyways, the history with the US with our monetary system really starts post the revolution.
The idea is that the Continental Congress got together and said, hey,
so we decided to have a country, but we have a small problem.
How the hell do we pay for all the repairs and all the infrastructure work?
How do we even get this economy thing going?
Because didn't every state and like province have their own money?
We'll see that that was one of the issues, but there was no unified currency.
There were several different states that were issuing their own.
And really, and something people need to consider is back then, money was a promissory note.
It is in lieu of gold or equivalent silver, a common everything.
But usually gold and silver and those precious metals were kind of the coin of the realm.
So at this point, they're saying, wow, it's a 1790s, you know, after the Articles of Confederation are kind of are signed.
By the way, I only know all this because of the next history teacher.
And this is me nerding out on stuff.
So if you guys want to fact check me on this, if I get something wrong, feel free to in the comments.
But I'm 99 percent sure I remember all this correctly.
But it was after the articles tonight. Oh, yes.
Oh, yes. We're embracing it tonight.
Even our chromosomes, a nice little hug, but the chromosomes in the bag.
But my bag is full anyway.
By the way, this whole discussion that we're going to have tonight came about all because of the comment that was made this past week of Donald Trump, our lovely president, says he wants to get rid of the penny because it costs too much to make.
And we're going to touch on that whole debacle a little bit later and show why that's actually, while true, probably not the best course of action.
But this entire tirade that we've got is stemming from just that one comment.
This entire discussion, because it was something that I had never I really hadn't thought about it before.
Even I'm aware of the history was like, you know, now that he mentions it, how much does that cost and like, what is the process?
And so I looked into it, did a little bit of research, remember some history from what I learned.
We were discussing about it a little bit throughout the week.
Like, you know what? That this has to be the topic because it's actually far more chin than you think.
But anyways, so post revolution, our country's trying to figure out how are we going to pay for things?
How are we going to do stuff? So they said, hey, how about we create an official currency?
We will go with, you know, our founding fathers and going with some of these people that are influential.
Mind you, what's actually been on the US dollars and different amounts and everything, that's a whole history into itself,
especially with how Congress for certain ones would either ratify or be like, OK, you know, we're OK with this being on this bill versus not people being removed and added.
There's a whole different thing with the coinage and everything.
But it's more about the fact that they did it to pay the soldiers, the services, the infrastructure so we could establish an official currency.
Now. The something to consider here is the US dollar was net was not when it first came out.
It was not something that was highly valued, only really valued within the US.
And at that time, the only reason why we started to gain influence is because America was one of the only countries that was actively expanding post the 1790s, 18, 1810s, 1820s.
And we were continually discovering new resource deposits, too.
Exactly. We quickly became one of the major importers as well as a decent exporter.
And I in the European influence, I would I would like to use that term because short India at the time with Britain, there was a lot of changes happening there as well as they were suddenly Madagascar.
And then Australia was becoming a thing. So there were a lot of things outside of Europe.
Exactly. There were a lot of things outside of Europe, but Europe largely at this point, everyone's kind of settled to where they're going to be.
And the resources have been found and sure they still have things they can extract and refine.
But America is the new frontier.
So really, what helps America at this point is the fact that there's so much untapped resources and untapped land.
You know, you have all these investors, all these companies pushing to put money into the U.S. and how do they have to deal with the U.S.?
We're not going to accept the British pound. We just kick those bastards out.
No, we're accepting the American dollar. So what were they doing?
They were bringing in gold, silver, precious metals and exchanging it, putting it into banks and exchanging it for that American money.
Now you're getting to the point where when the slave trade hits its high again, they're exchanging American dollars.
So there was so much money coming into and out of America that we actually, in a lot of ways, got pretty lucky that we started off so late because quite frankly, we just had so much to barter with.
We had so much resources and land that while we never we did not become the de facto worldly financial institution, financial power that you see nowadays up until like post World War One, that growth is really what solidified what we became.
Right. We kind of took advantage of a system that was already in place and just had kind of plateaued a bit.
Oh, yeah. And we had so much room to grow.
Yeah. Whereas every other country had really plateaued at this point, and they really couldn't grow anywhere besides with technological advancements and everything else.
So the one thing that you can't really make you, you can mine new deposits, you can have more people in within your borders and everything, but you cannot make new land.
We were literally finding more new land and expanding westward at that point.
Oh, yeah. The Western expansion in America is really what drove that.
Oh, as well as you can you can talk about to you have the gold rush that happened between that eighteen thirties, eighteen forties to the eighteen sixties, even up until right around that civil war, where we then now as America, people forget that the U.S.
government at that point then had access to a large amount of gold.
Now, most economies at this point, these Western economies, the idea was that because that dollar is a promissory note for gold, that means the money had to be backed by gold or precious metals.
So because we had that gold rush, the U.S. government was able to actually collect and acquire a lot of that to them be backing more gold to then print more money appropriately.
That's how we're able to fund what's considered history, the Gilded Age of the 1890s, we're able to use massive amounts of money to build the growth, our infrastructure, the Industrial Revolution and and really a lot of that money was then available.
Not all of it because World War One is a whole nother thing about taxes, but we were able to fund that growth where we could handle the infrastructure increases and advancements going into World War One.
Now, I thought was oh yes.
So, the history we have up until World War One is that in that case, the U.S. had tariffs that we were using to collect money, as well as we had business taxes effectively and we had a land tax so they had to own land you paid into that.
World War One is when we first temporarily established an income tax to fund soldiers and the military and everything to go to war.
I want to point out as a quick little sidebar.
That was a temporary tax.
That was something that was it.
That was a fair what's common.
The president just says that this is what it is.
Exactly.
Thank you.
That's a good thing of the word for it and but that was a sorry you go.
I was gonna say, since we're touching on the president.
Mentioning the tariffs.
That's what President Trump is trying to initiate again and getting rid of the income tax to see if we can fund the country.
Once again via tariffs.
I don't know that it's possible these days, I think we still have to have probably a minimum or a very minute income tax.
I for one do not like paying tax on my land anymore.
It's way too high.
The tariffs, I think, are a good way to go.
The business taxes I think are a good way to go.
If we're going to do that, then it just has to be a flat tax, I believe.
No write offs, no big deductions.
Just apply it equally across the board.
We'll touch more on that later.
I don't want to take away too much from where you're at right now.
No, it's okay. That's something later on we do want to touch on the different solutions that we have to these problems.
Because there's quite a few and even discuss some of the notes and everything.
But effectively, yes, so it was a temporary order to raise funds for World War I.
Now, mind you, that was supposed to go away at the end of World War I.
Ideally, you know, 1917, 1918, originally that was extended for a little bit.
And then eventually they just they never got rid of it.
They said, oh, yeah, this is the law.
And they kept it.
By the way, same thing with capital gains that came after 1929.
You know, actually, I think it was like 1934, if I remember correctly, when they first started doing that, as well as when they were breaking up monopolies, they put in the late 20s after the crash.
I thought so. This this, by the way, this part, I didn't look up.
I just thought about it.
If I remember correctly from my history, I could be wrong on this point.
I will welcome the comments section to correct me on that one.
But I thought capital gains was post the crash.
I mean, it makes sense.
But at the same time, it just seems like an odd time to put it in after watching people jump out windows.
Well, that's trading one crash for another.
Oh, yeah. Well, that's what our government does.
Unfortunately, I hate to say it. We're professionals with that.
Oh, yeah. But the crash of 1929.
Is a very influential moment in monetary history because it shows what happens during a bank run where the idea that everybody wants to pull their money out.
Well, if the banks don't have your money, then effectively there's not enough money to go around and your system is worthless if there's no money in the system.
Now, we want to keep in mind this is going to be something that comes back up later with U.S. monetary policy.
In 1929, the idea was your money could be exchanged for the equivalent amount in gold.
It was still considered a promissory note of the equivalent value.
Let's fast forward to the Nixon presidency.
During Nixon's presidency, he got us off the gold standard.
What that meant was our money was no longer backed by gold.
Now, after World War One and World War Two, with the massive spread of U.S. influence, both culturally and economically, we thought, hey, America kind of controls the world's oil in either a direct or indirect way.
We have control over basically the world culture as well as we're the dominant military power.
America, fuck yeah.
Good or bad. That was the thought at the time.
Right.
So we figured, why not leverage that?
But the problem is what they did is they found out that within America, we did not have enough gold to back more money that we needed printed to fund our programs.
You could thank people like Lyndon B. Johnson, a few other people for it, for establishing and actually expanding our entitlement programs so much to where we could not back them up via the money that we were coming in.
We had to spend more than the money that we were getting in.
So instead of increasing taxes, they said, hey, why don't we just take us off the gold standard?
That way we can print whatever we need to.
Well, now you're getting to the point where a couple things, a couple laws change over time.
I do not remember the specific year on this one, and someone can please fact check me on this, but I believe right around the same time around the 80s or 90s, we changed from the idea of banking to where a dollar in is basically if you put a dollar into the bank, they invest that money and they keep your money.
So they always have your principal and they're always investing a little bit.
Just like your typical checking account or a savings account, you know, you get that half percent or quarter percent or whatever.
Whereas they change from that to the idea of fractional reserve lending.
Now this is huge because once the US government could print as much money as they wanted, they realized that, well, the bank doesn't actually have to have the amount of money that they say they have.
Even if I invest a hundred million dollars in a bank.
They're allowed to only have 10 percent of that in a liquid asset available to the public.
So one of the problems that we have nowadays is in most banks, they have more money in the system by a factor of, oh, God, probably 10 times minimum.
Then what they actually have in liquid assets, because what happens every bank is really just an investing firm. So they're investing to 97 other things.
And those things are investing that those banks invest in other banks.
Like, look, what happened last year with several of the banks that closed down, they were invested in by other banks and other banks are invested in by, oh, yeah, BlackRock.
So it becomes a weird kind of state street.
Exactly. Those are three names that you need to know.
Oh, yeah, because they are literally everything.
If you want to go down the rabbit hole, folks, look up the amount of companies that BlackRock State Street and Vanguard have in other companies.
They own literally everything.
Well, what was that famous comedian quote? It's a it's a small club and you're not invited.
I can't remember the name of the convenience almost only for me, but I believe it is George Carlin.
Thank you.
I kept on seeing Richard Pryor and I don't know why that was not the right way, but also another great comedian.
But yes, so so we're at the point nowadays to where there can't really be a run in the banks because quite frankly, they don't have the money.
But the same point, it's actually incredibly worse because if everybody were to pull the money out of the banks nowadays, it's hilariously impossible because we printed more money.
And but what I say by printing more money, I'm not saying by a little bit or by a small bit.
No, no, no, no, no. See, there there is this lovely website that I wanted everybody to reference called TradingEconomics.com.
And you can look at what's called the M1, M2 or M3 money supply.
Why I say this is very important is it gives you a exact idea of just how much money we have printed.
Now, most people reference the economic world, the M2 money stock with the M2 money supply in during Richard Nixon, during his presidency, we got off the gold standard.
You were looking at, you know, five hundred billion to a trillion dollars in circulation, depending on what kind of variables you want to look at and where during the presidency.
Well, what's interesting, if you look at that compared to where we are now at just shy of twenty two trillion dollars in circulation, that means effectively for every dollar that was around 1975, there are twenty dollars out now.
Gross.
That means technically without cultural influences, the petrodollar, military might and everything else, you should the dollar should be worth a 20th of what it was.
At least you know now.
I will say there are a lot more people in this country, so you can factor in GDP and a few other factors.
But something to consider is that is done without congressional approval.
Because to go back to something originally when the US Treasury was set up, it was originally run by the federal government.
And we do have a treasurer that is appointed.
However, they are allowed to print without congressional approval, which is something that it's something that's really concerning, at least to me, where the ideas that the US government can print whatever they want, how much they want, whatever their formula is, because I did see online.
They have a form of how many you have each type of currency they print.
Right.
But it does create the issue of number one, for every dollar they print, that means the dollar you currently own is worth a little bit less.
And number two, it justifies them spending way beyond what their income is.
So therefore, we're always going to be in debt.
And we're now hitting I'm just going to go right now live US debt clock.
And I want to see exactly as of today, get ready for some folks.
Oh, yeah. Well, here's the crazy part.
Now, US debt clock.
I just wanted to give a bit of a primer here.
It is not 100 percent accurate.
It's more like 99 percent accurate, 98 percent accurate.
But it gets you a good idea.
We are a thirty six and a half trillion dollars in debt or three hundred and twenty three thousand dollars in debt per taxpayer.
It's only about one hundred and ten to one hundred twenty million taxpayers in the country, which is kind of crazy to think about it.
But that's another point.
Or it's one hundred seven thousand dollars a debt per citizen.
As of today, that number only goes up.
Wow. So the question then becomes at the end of the day, what in the hell are we doing?
Because for so long, our economic success has relied on our economic strength, which that's been waning.
We don't in terms of an industry, we're not really making much in this country.
We're not exporting much in this country.
The only thing we're importing are really people or corporate systems like the high end parts of corporate jobs, but not necessarily anything that's producing a physical product isn't really done in the US.
Our cultural dominance is no longer strong as it used to be.
There was a time where American culture was accepted in so many countries wanted to be like America.
Now, I hate to say it, but no, I'm not going to say we're the laughing stock of the world because I feel like that's too extreme either.
No, we we kind of are in a lot of things.
Education, overall culture and some other stuff.
Yeah. Americans are the butt of a lot of jokes and it's well deserved as much as I hate to say that.
Unfortunately, because I would say previous administrations have squandered what America did so well with because you'd be giving away that money and really our influence as well as and I hate to say on this one, I feel like our military dominance as well as wained.
Granted, I am not I am not a warmonger type of guy. I don't like wars, stuff like that.
I'm not into that. But that being said, compared to our relative strength to other countries back in the 90s.
Sure. Nowadays, wars become more of a scalpel rather than a hammer.
Don't get me wrong. Yeah, we still are the leading edge in terms of technology.
But I hate to say it. I don't think a lot of countries are nearly as scared of the US.
So getting involved as they used to be because of political pressure.
Let me let me kind of work backwards on that a little bit.
When it comes to war, no country wants to face us like they might not be so terrified of our military per se, but they don't want to get into a ground offensive on US mainland territory.
Because then they know they have to face the citizenry.
Well, yeah, we are. There are far scarier people within the borders of this country than there are in the military. I will tell you that for a fact.
Uh, we we hold the technological edge on a lot of stuff.
You don't see a quarter of what we actually have available.
And there's a good reason for that.
You know that the the one guy that makes the videos with the faces HLC, the virtual line crosser, he puts out great content and the way he jokes about stuff.
It's hilarious, but it's true. The the F-22. I mean, nobody wants to have to fight those.
And there's a reason for that.
No country has anything that can even really touch it. China, the closest thing they've got is back engineered technology that they stole from us.
That's all they can do is steal shit and try to make it better. Now props to them because they have done that.
They have made leaps that from the technology that they've stolen and made better.
They couldn't have done it on their own.
They're still on their own. They'd still be 1970s.
To be fair, though, that is actually a well-known history, weirdly enough, with Asian cultures has been taking American ideas and kind of working backwards and reengineering, redeveloping.
Yeah. But then on the the deck clock and everything, I did want to ask, how are we looking on the Doge Tracker?
Well, yes. Rub those hands, beefy boy. Let's sell. Let's get this stuff out.
I'm not that far.
But no, no, our debt's beefy. But also the Doge clock. Yes.
What from now? Now, granted, here's the great assault. I want to say we are still awaiting.
This is supposed to be coming the next few weeks. We've been a couple of months.
The official reports of the first reports of what the Department of Government efficiency is going to be coming out with.
He has been leaking some information talking about the fact that we are wasting hundreds of billions, if not possibly, as I heard over the weekend, even trillions that we have wasted.
Yeah. To other countries. Now, so isn't he still trying to get audits done to departments that have never had or never passed audits like the Pentagon?
The Pentagon failed, I think, five or six. They've never passed.
Yeah, which is insane. Like, don't get me wrong. I understand that some military stuff that they're going to have to like, hey, you know, there's 10 billion dollars that I can't really tell you about.
If they were able to pass 90, 95 to 99 percent, I'd be like, you know what? Fine. I get it.
It's part of having it down as black budget cannot discuss, you know, above majestic clearance, whatever, and settle it there.
Well, from what I heard over the weekend, one of the things that Elon was discussing about was the fact that there was military budgeting set for food and housing that was misappropriated.
Yeah. And as I wasn't in the military, but I know you would several other people. Let me tell you something.
That shit gets so abused. It's not even funny. You've got these dudes that hook up with these women who are tri care.
Chasers. They get with these dudes and they are hooked up for life when they're with them.
Free medical. Free medical. They don't have to pay for it. We do.
All these kids, they pop out. All these procedures, they get done. All these meds they need. It's on our dime.
Yeah, buddy. Don't you love it?
Don't you just love giving away all that money that we could use to like house people here or give people?
You know, it's crazy to think about, like, as much as I'm not for free health care, the amount of money that we give away to other countries, it would literally pay it.
It wouldn't even be a question. If we just built the AmeriCube, we could solve a lot of problems and and just, you know, take care of our own shit.
But props if you if you get the AmeriCube reference, by the way.
I will say, though, there is something to be said with with America becoming not more like isolationist, but more America first.
Yeah, because at least then, like, we take care of the people here.
But looking at some of the stuff that they've been talking about, the Department of Government Efficiency.
I mean, holy crap, spending trillions of dollars on other countries health care.
Oh, yeah. I do want to say one last thing on the whole.
We can cure homelessness and all that shit. No, we can't.
And I say that because, yes, we could on paper provide everything needed for anybody who does not have a home or adequate housing.
And it would not cost that much.
The issue is there are a lot of people that are living that lifestyle that are choosing to live that lifestyle.
If they are just given something like that, they either will not use it or they will trash it.
If they are given financial support, they would use that to obtain drugs and or alcohol and they will kill themselves.
Now, the dark side of that is that's a problem that will correct itself.
Well, you're not wrong. I said the bad thing out loud, but it's true.
As bad as it is, there are people who are in that situation that do not want to be in that situation and they would be helped out tremendously.
They'd be immensely grateful, I believe.
But there are people who would just take the money and go and essentially, you know, chemically Kurt Cobain themselves.
Yeah. Well, it's a sad part with some people are always going to make the choice to be nomadic or be homeless or kind of do their own thing that you can't legislate out of.
But you know what can if if they just gave people like a magic debit card, essentially, and say here, if you don't want to live in a fixed location, here's the resources.
Go stay in hotels, get the food you need, get the supplies that care you need and go live your nomadic life as you see fit.
And you know what the crazy thing is, I'd rather that money go to that person than go to war or other random shit or or study or gender studies in Africa and Madagascar.
Did you see there's a clip and I want people to search this out. They did a Sesame Street in Iran and Iraq.
It is it is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. It's terrifying.
But by God, there were a couple of hilarious in the Elmo character go and like, boom.
My favorite one I saw was something like that. There was there was like a US a 10 that like that they could hear in the background and they all duck for cover.
And they come back and like, who he didn't get me. And then apparently a missile comes in and blows up like, oh, no, I didn't miss.
It's just but it was you know what? I will say at least it was funny.
Like, I don't agree with obviously what they're saying in terms like other stuff because it was like a video of like Elmo beating a woman or something like that.
But I'm not agreeing with that right now. But here's the problem. Why the hell are we funding that in the first place?
Yeah, no, these are oil rich countries. If they want to fund this stuff, they have resources.
Oh, shit. Again, have you seen AmeriCube? Well, I don't know if you notice I was watching a video last week about how oil is cheaper in some of these countries per gallon than water.
Even for some countries. Yes. Gas oil. Yeah. Either it is so abundant.
There are so many places they keep the prices up that they dump it back into the ground in some places just to keep the prices up.
So I'm sitting there thinking like, not for nothing. You have so much money readily available.
You can afford your own Sesame Street. Hand puppets are not that expensive. I'm pretty sure they can find fund that.
I mean, look at countries like Dubai. Yeah, they have air conditioned beaches.
They literally ran cooling pipes through the sand and some of the beaches so people wouldn't burn their feet.
That's the kind of money they have there. That's cool.
Like, don't be wrong. I don't support Dubai because they also still have slavery and other shit there. But like, that's cool.
That is that is gross amounts of money. And I would I would love to have even just like one percent of it.
But it does go to show, though, that if you keep, you know, 99 percent of the money for the country, for the citizens that are paying for it, you can do crazy good things.
Now, don't get me wrong. Dubai also still has legal slavery, which is fucking awful and shouldn't be around. Oh, yeah.
I'm not I'm not I'm not going for that. But. At the same point, we are giving away more in this country than many European countries GDP.
And that's the scary part. I just looked down at my notes.
You were talking about how we left the gold standard because we didn't have enough gold to print an equivalent amount of money that we needed.
Mm hmm. Why didn't we just do what we do and go and invade and buy or take more gold?
I mean, it's a legitimate prospect. Yes, we would have just been seen as tyrants, but we already are.
Well, I think that that's one of the problems where, unfortunately, we have had generations of politicians that used wars to make money through the stocks and investments and embezzling money as we're finding out.
So it's the case of well, well, let me let me let me finish my point, because there's another point I have to bring up.
But the issue that we have had for the last really ever since World War Two has been the fact that our politicians have been able to stand on your stocks and trading
to then bet on these wars and these companies to then make money to do a new war to give a new a new company a contract and keep that cycle going.
How is it that there are several politicians only make, you know, hundred seventy hundred eighty thousand dollars a year, which is already a lot for what they do.
Don't get me wrong. But then somehow they're in office for three years now.
We're 10 million. The math ain't math.
Number one. Number two, why are they even allowed to do these trades if they have insider information that I think is already a conflict of interest in.
Regardless, or you make option two available, which is they have to make all trades public within an hour.
Is that that way? Hey, you know, if you're going to trade with insider information, great.
I'll just follow your trades because guess what?
If I had done all the trades that Nancy Pelosi did, then the same hour I too would have had a 55 percent return this year.
There are apps that you can get that will do that for you.
Yes, but unfortunately, they every single one of those people wait until the last second to announce that they wait that 90 days.
Yeah, because they don't want you to make the money.
They know the more money they make or the less money that you make, the more money they make on those trades, which I hate to say it, but that's the way they're thinking.
Yeah. But so as much as unfortunately, it would have been nice to have the U.S. economy back American citizens.
It's been really all about the oligarchs that are in power.
And the other issue with this is the fact that quite frankly, it gives them control.
This is a big game and you and I are not in it.
We are the average people. We're not the ones that are supposed to make money off on all this stuff.
We're not involved in it. And they know that, oh, yeah, if the economy grew for everybody, it wouldn't grow specifically for them because then they can own the land.
They can buy stuff.
And I am not somebody that's against people making a good living and having a great lifestyle.
My problem, you shouldn't exploit Americans to do that.
You shouldn't exploit the people that you're supposed to represent.
That's not OK. Hopefully you're not exploiting anybody.
That's the goal. But really, your only obligation is to the citizens and the people that you represent.
You're right. If you're if you're an American politician, your obligation are to the French citizens.
I'm sorry. But like your government's your problem.
And looking at French politics, your government's definitely your problem.
So that's not up to us.
But yeah, so that's that's been an issue where our government has been outrageously outspending our economy.
And I have to say, really, ever since Clinton, that's been the issue, regardless of political party, because the political parties be damned.
It doesn't matter. Everyone's done it since then.
That's kind of the point where it kind of started to take off and become more publicly acknowledged.
That this has been the issue. And this is why you see inflation that's so bad today, where typically with economics, the ramifications are never seen in a matter of days or months.
It's usually years or sometimes decades.
Look at what happened. One of the greatest examples I can give is the 2008 to 2009 housing crisis.
Oh, yeah, that's fine. That came about because in the early 2000s, they started saying, hey, give everybody a home.
It doesn't matter. It's an adjustable rate mortgage. Doesn't matter.
Oh, yeah. Can they afford to pay it? Doesn't matter.
But they also put in laws saying that, hey, if you're a certain color, you have to be given incentives to get a home loan because they want to write in an equity rather than looking at it at a merit talk merit talk.
Sorry, meritocratic basis.
They said, hey, if you're a certain skin color, you're going to get this home loan, which did not work out well.
And look at what happened, unfortunately, with the effects of Hurricane Katrina and everything else, where all these people not only do they lose their homes, but they defaulted on the loans that they couldn't afford.
And there were mass areas of the south.
They were completely decimated between the housing crisis and the hurricane and a few other economic events that happened.
It was a shame. That's why those parts of the south are still devastated.
Even to this day, I was going to say I may be incorrect, but I'm pretty sure there are still spots down along the southern coast that still bear the scars of Hurricane Katrina.
Oh, yeah. There's actually a fascinating documentary about it. I believe it's on Netflix.
I don't remember the name of it offhand, but it does talk about the effects of Hurricane Katrina.
And I hate to say it, a lot of it also like a lot of it was due to the hurricane, but there's so much that happened after the hurricane that had to do just the breakdown of society.
Yeah. And the mismanagement of resources and FEMA on that one. Oh, God, FEMA.
FEMA. And that's again another point we're talking about the U.S. Treasury and government efficiency.
FEMA has been notorious for misusing funds or, quite frankly, for not being that helpful. They want money that we put in the amount of money we give them.
They are not providing the aid to people that you would think they would.
We should probably just do like an entire episode on FEMA. Oh, this this is me prepaving that my friend. I've already been working on that.
You have after after what I've seen after North Carolina. Oh, yeah.
And also even Hawaii as well, like with Maui that they got nothing as well as even California.
I would have liked to come on gives they got they got seven hundred dollars each.
Come on now. Oh, that's you know, that that is so much money nowadays.
That's a good. Even since then, I think that's like a whole six hundred and twenty five dollars now.
Oh, sorry. Six twenty four. Yeah. Just keep waiting.
Oh, Jesus. By the way, on inflation, there are adjustment inflation adjustment calculators out there.
You can type in currency amounts for years and compare them to today.
If you look at the difference between even twenty twenty and now, it is a very gross change that you will.
You will put yourself on your ass. You go back another 10 years and it's it's horrifying.
But then you go back to like the 90s. I just read an article and I think I sent it to you,
but it probably got buried everything else I've sent you in order for somebody to live like their parents lived in the 90s or in 1990.
I think it was they have to make one hundred and forty thousand dollars more per one hundred thousand that their parents made in 1990.
Now to live as they did in the 90s. So if your parents made one hundred thousand dollars in 1990,
you have to make two hundred and forty thousand dollars to live the same lifestyle.
And that's my one bake your noodle. Yeah.
And the scary part is because our tax system is based off percentages,
what that means is the more you earn, the less you take home.
So as this inflation goes up, that money that you earn keeps getting put into a higher and higher tax bracket.
So unfortunately, you have to make even more and more and more to get to that same level of income after tax.
So it becomes this issue where this is why I've always been against a progressive tax system, a far more favorable flat tax,
because effectively you do not reap the same rewards as you keep earning more and more.
And it becomes an issue where now when inflation really hits, you have to basically double or triple your earnings.
Something else I want to bring up, too, when you talk about the inflation calculator.
In December of 2019, before covid, there were roughly 15 trillion dollars in circulation.
By April 20, 22, there were 22 trillion. Jesus.
In the span of a couple of years, we printed more money than we printed between 2020 and 2010.
Or to even put it even a little bit more harshly, we did two years of inflation.
What previously was about like seven to ten years. Yeah.
So when people are asking why are things 20 to 40 percent more, even more?
Well, previously, usually two to three percent was typical.
For inflation year over year. Well, right now, year over year, it's been looking like 20 percent.
So basically, after the last few years, you're looking at that 40 to 60 percent, depending on the product, depending on the cost.
Right. That that falls in line with the money supply.
And you wonder why all these investment firms, BlackRock and Vanguard State Street have all this extra money.
Well, because a lot of that money went to them. Yep.
By by the way, when it comes to taxes, it is currently estimated that only 51 percent of actual taxpayers will be paying taxes this year.
This is this is the problem with a progressive tax system.
These are so many ways if you have money to get out of paying taxes.
And there are so many people that because of inflation are going to be earning so little they don't have to pay to where.
The massive burden of taxes falls on the average guys like you and I and probably for most listeners.
So don't you love the fact that we pay more in taxes percentage wise than every Fortune 500 company?
Fun fact, we're actually worse off than people were during the Great Depression.
Yeah. By adjusting for inflation and taxes and everything.
Oh, yeah. And that that's an average income.
Well, the biggest thing is if you look at what percentage of income of the average income it takes to buy a home or a vehicle.
Oh, it's disgusting. It's not even close.
And I guess hold that thought that you just Zoid berg into my head.
Minimum wage. Yeah. OK.
Let me have like a two minute tirade here.
Minimum wage was initially put in place to have the minimum sustainable wage for a single person to be able to afford a home and live a life.
Let me let me take that back. The minimum wage to be able to afford a home.
So when minimum wages were first instituted, they did the calculations that a single person working a full time job at that rate could afford a home.
And now we're at a point where the minimum wage is what? Eight, nine, ten dollars, something like that.
Well, it could be twenty dollars and it wouldn't matter.
I was like, can you afford a home? Can can people even afford rent at that rate? No decent places to live.
But that that's what happens when the when the money's no longer backed by gold, when it's backed by hopes and promises.
That's one of the big differences. Those minimum wage was established back during the gold standard.
And it was not appropriately continued.
So now you've got people saying, oh, minimum wage is just for kids and retirees and all this. No, it really isn't.
It's supposed to be the minimum sustainable wage.
The problem we are always going to have is as long as our money is not backed by something that has value.
We're back solely right now by the idea of the American way.
We are back solely by now by our military might, by the petrodollar, by our cultural influence.
And I will say this literally by the fact that if you don't like what we're doing, we'll kick your ass anyways and make you like it.
But here's the problem is we can't do that anymore.
With all the international pressure, we can't do like operations like Iraqi freedom and the Gulf and stuff like that.
We can't. We just wouldn't be as supported in them.
No, we get into a situation that was similar to what Germany got themselves into in World War Two, where we'd be fighting on too many fronts.
And then we would, you know, not be America anymore.
Well, the problem is because our economy is so heavily dependent on imports and exports because we don't make things here.
We have to be nice with everybody. Correct.
Now, if we switch to a system that benefited American companies being here, we could play hardball because we'd at least have some sort of leverage.
But we don't. Quite frankly, we are reliant on China for almost all of our industries.
China and India. Yeah.
Anything that has to do with electronics, anything that has to do with like plastic parts, aluminum parts, pharmaceuticals.
That's the biggest one. Why we get a lot of our meds from China.
I don't know why we let that happen.
Same thing with as we learned, PPE equipment, all of our masks, everything, a lot of our doctors and hospitals.
Why all of that stuff on for just a security reason isn't made in America. I don't understand.
I would happily give these companies a tax cut if not even a tax write off completely and say, hey, for security reasons, I would rather you guys make the stuff here and just have you guys pay the income tax on it.
That way we would be more of an income. And for security reasons, we have it. We own it. It's our it's our stuff.
Yep. But now because these people want to make money off it.
They want the stock trades. And unfortunately, I hate to say this, but there's not a single politician that cares about you or I.
Not a single one of them say, hey, what were to happen if shit were to hit the fan?
Because, oh, yeah, they have enough money. They have stuff already prepped. They don't care.
They have one of those missile silos that they've turned into a bunker.
Well, even better yet, they're protected enough to where they're already assigned details.
They will. They are already in a situation where they can get to somewhere where they got to be.
I want their funders kids to have.
We'll see. We'll see someday, buddy.
I really want one of those bunkers up that all part of the plan.
But I guess the point I'm getting at here.
Very simply is that every single administration that I can think of after Dwight D.
Eisenhower. Every other administration post World War Two, I don't care which side of the aisle you're on, not a single one of them.
And I will put a caveat besides Trump, because I will say at least statistically he's done some stuff, has cared about the average person's lifestyle.
Not a single one of them, because if they had, they would have been fighting to keep these jobs here in America rather than outsourcing them elsewhere.
They would have been fighting for tax cuts or more efficient government.
They would have been fighting for a better education, not by just throwing money at it, but by saying what are the standards that actually make people more employable, make them better employees, but also more importantly, what makes them more successful at starting their own businesses by having their own business.
Yeah, but that's not the point of education.
But see that see that's the issue though is all this ties together.
Where with this government waste they have regulated to a point of stagnation to where you cannot do anything in this country with all this over regulation.
On on that, if you want to go down the fun rabbit hole look up the Henry Ford and Rockefeller connection when it comes to education and and the founding of schools and the curriculum, because the way kids are taught is not the way kids are supposed to be taught and
we're being taught through the 18 and early 1900s. Once Ford and Rockefeller got their grubby little mitts into everything. It was make them compliant make them good little workers. Don't don't make them free thinkers don't make them inventors.
We don't need that we need factory workers and assembly line workers.
Absolutely. Go down that rabbit hole I highly encourage it, it will piss you off and make you want to rage.
It is that it is that sole education method for why when you look at the Federal Department of Education when we brought it in.
Why our education standards went down drastically to the point to where we went from number one in the world for a while down to God at one point I read room like the 70th or 60th country for a lot for a while in the 20th or 30th we were like below most the European countries.
Yeah, some subjects I think we're barely in the top 100.
It's insane because we throw the most money at kids by a long shot.
Oh yeah, like I read mind you I'm a few years out of date because I haven't been the education field in a while.
But I remember back in 2017 reading that New York City was putting in $17,000 per kid per year.
And they were still.
If they ranked if they ranked in New York as a state as a country in the world list they were like 80th or something or 70th.
It was embarrassing.
But what it goes to show you the problem is not the money.
It's not putting money towards the kids.
It's the curriculums, it's the standards, it's the federal government saying hey, this is what we're demanding these kids to know, and these things that they're trying to have these kids know they're not relevant in the workplace.
So there's going to be a whole education episode because that is something I can rant for hours. But I am glad that there are many parents that have been standing up and saying hey, this wasteful government spending on this needs to stop.
And hopefully these powers can go back to the states.
Hopefully, these states can realize hey we want to be competitive and compete and show what's best for these kids because quite frankly, the US country is so huge.
That these states should be competitive with their education systems and also cater to what they need.
For example, if you live up in Maine, you, you probably don't need to teach your kids farming but if you live out in like Idaho, somebody has to take over those fields somebody has to take over farming.
And I'm not saying to use it just like, oh we need farmers but we number one we do, but there are certain things geographically that change what you should be taught, because you're the area that you live in is very different than other parts of the country.
It's very important. So that's just that that's my two cents on it, but hopefully it stops some of this wasteful government spending and gets people more educated.
Now, on the topic of wasteful government spending.
Again we brought up earlier in this that Trump was saying that it costs three cents or four cents to make a penny. Oh yes, and I actually on stats. Well I put some into in the notes I don't know if you agreed with it.
I looked up some.
You'll see in the bold it's in the white bold, but the. Oh yeah, yeah, the cost to make her on coins. Yes. Yeah, so I have some things to add into that on the flip side of it but yeah go ahead and do this I'll bring up mine because I think you and I have opposing views on this and I want to hear your side in a second.
Oh, it's not opposing at all. It's it's correlating. Oh, okay. It's just on the other side of it. Ah, okay.
So in 2024 the unit costs increase a dime cost 5.76 cents that's fine. It costs half of what it is to make something it's worth 10 cents I'm not I'm okay with that.
The quarter costs about 15 cents, which is fine. I'm a half dollar cost 33 cents again about the same percentage.
And the penny costs about four cents, which that makes sense because there's many other countries that have gotten rid of their pennies. I think it was like Canada got rid of the their pennies as well as a couple of the European countries that got rid of the penny, because it is true
over time things get more expensive and then eventually there's no point in having that denomination.
Correct. If it just doesn't make sense.
Right now, as far as making sense. Here's what I have on that, because you said that it's worth this or it's valued at this.
Okay.
The current nickel
is actually worth in metal content.
Five and a half cents.
That's one reason why it's so expensive to make
the current penny is worth in metal content. As of today,
point zero zero seven dollars. So seven tenths of a penny.
The penny is worth less in metal than face value.
Well, that's sorry, the dime is worth 2.2 cents.
If you want to round it up.
The quarter.
Five point six cents.
The 50 cent piece.
11 cents.
You know the cost of making them is more than just the metal.
Yes, which is the point.
The metal content of these coins
is nowhere near the cost to make them.
So it costs four cents to make something worth seven tenths of a penny.
I wonder. Wait a minute.
I wonder if there's like some government efficiency bullshit going on there.
As somebody
doing some money.
That's kind of what I'm wondering.
I think about that. I think they're they're pushing some some dollars around like that.
The nickel. It takes 15 cents to make a nickel. 14 cents, whatever.
It's worth five and a half cents, dude.
That is 10 cents per coin.
On labor?
No, that's just metal content.
No, but what I'm saying is like if it costs 15 cents to make it and it's five cents worth of material,
that means you're charging 10 cents in labor or something that a machine does.
Exactly.
Yeah, that they make on mass. That does not make sense.
Exactly. That's that's a doge thing.
Pardon the pun. I'm sorry. I'm not. I'm literally not meaning the pun, but I know it's
Wow. The dollar coins.
The second you weas and the presidential dollar coins.
Those are not actually bad. That's only seven cents worth of metal.
Hmm.
I like that we don't have the stats for how much those cost a half dollar at 33 and a half cent or 34 cents to make.
For for the half dollar being 11 cents of metal.
And it's worth 34 cents or cost 34 cents.
That's a three times increase.
Yeah. So I do believe the mints are cooking some books.
Yeah.
So that's what I wanted to add to your to your thing there.
You know, maybe it's because of I I'm mad that I never thought about that.
You're welcome.
Because I didn't consider that the government was fraudulently moving money around like that.
The government would never do anything fraudulent.
Gibbs, come on.
I guess like I guess I just assume that like this is an Excel spreadsheet like A plus B plus equals D.
That's like here's here's the metal cost. Here's the labor cost.
Here's this.
But then who the hell would approve of printing money that costs more money than it's worth?
OK. You want to do some some math here?
Here's one for you.
The nickel costs 14 point.
Where did it go? I just had it.
Help me. Help me.
Gibbs. A 14.68 cents.
OK.
14.68 cents. There were 30 million nickels made last year.
So if you're losing 10 cents on each, you're losing three million.
But who got the three million?
Who got the three million? Mansley.
Where's the three million on the nickels?
Imagine if so. Hear me out.
Imagine if this is all like a Rothschild fricking conspiracy thing of that's how they're making their money.
They just run the U.S. Treasury of the Mint and they're just taking it taking some off the top.
Yeah. Wow.
I mean, there are ways to to slush fund your money around when you are running the slush machine,
especially when there's nobody in the government that really cares enough to look into this.
Nope.
Except apparently Trump and Elon, which.
Hopefully they find something.
They're they're they're exposure exposing a bunch of shit.
You know what? I'm going to call it out and say, say what I think it is.
This one's going to be spicy, but I just got to say it.
If you're against Elon going after government efficiency, why are you hiding money?
Yeah. And this goes out to Maura Healey, the of Massachusetts, that absolute asshole.
I'm going to call you out because I very much dislike you.
The fact that she said, quote unquote, it is not up to the people to know what the government's spending their money on.
Excuse me. No, it actually is.
It's my money, woman. It's mine.
I enforce me being having to pay that I have every right to know where that money's going.
You can't just tell me, oh, you have no right to know where that money's going.
Absolutely. And my other question is, why are you scared, Maura?
Why are you scared, Miss Healey?
Why are you worried that they're going to be looking to your taxes?
You're the one that going after Trump for not releasing his taxes.
Where's your taxes? Where's the tax money, Mansley?
So I just I. You want to see if we can get her on the show?
Oh, yeah. She would love to.
Absolutely. Oh, God. God.
I would destroy her in a debate.
Oh, my God. I have so many questions for that woman that she will never answer.
Right. She's already actively dodging.
But there were so many politicians coming out against.
The auditing of the government, which.
Oh, did you see the thing I showed you or sent you something popped up on a real estate thing for D.C.?
This was the other point I was getting at. The whole area is on sale right now.
So did you guys know that fraud defense lawyers and defense attorneys,
the the search history on Google has spiked to like six or seven times the usual in that area,
as well as 70 percent of all the homes are suddenly up for sale and somehow they're worth millions of dollars on a government salary.
I thought they're hear me out on this back in the 70s and 60s.
I was always told I wasn't around back then.
I was told back then it's like you either take a private sector job or it's higher risk, but you get more money or you go the safe route
and get a government sector job, which you pays less, but you have better benefits and it's a little more secure.
I could be wrong, but that was generally the accepted idea.
Who the hell is working in D.C.
just working for like U.S. aid or something like that or working for the Pentagon or some sort of military thing
and have enough where they can afford million dollar houses.
Yet I'm getting lectured that my money has to go to Ukraine or Africa to teach gender studies or something.
Your money, not not their money. Exactly.
What? No. But also, yes, that's been a very, very big coincidence as well.
Trump said, oh, yeah, all these people that were committing crimes, the part of the FBI and everything.
If you want to go and take your severance, absolutely take the money, leave, be gone.
And then all these homes go up and U.S. defense attorneys starting to pop out of the woodwork.
It's like, wow, gee, what a coincidence.
Maybe they're scared about those audits because they were doing something they weren't supposed to be doing.
How many of you think are going to leave the country to some non-extradition country?
Good. Leave. Be gone. Yeah.
If you if you think committing crimes in the name of the government's OK, I hope you leave. Right.
I'm just saying. And this goes for either party.
Again, I don't I just like the party system.
So anybody that says, oh, you're right wing or oh, you're left wing. Congratulations. You're wrong, too.
No. Absolutely not.
But yes, it's it's insane.
Our our government is insane. But the good news is I think I will not get too much into politics, but
I do like to see the government being held accountable, regardless of either party, regardless of either side.
I would like to see a balanced budget get approved for once.
That'd be nice. That'd be great.
Well, I think hear me out.
So if we can if we can transition now into the tariff discussion, because
I think what Trump is trying to prove is very simple.
Once he finds all this government waste in the realm of trillions of dollars, he can then say, hey,
we don't need the income tax because we've been wasting so much money on other stuff that doesn't need to happen.
So we could save all this money that we could save on your income taxes.
And we can use tariffs as a greater leverage to bring more jobs back to the U.S.
Thus driving the economy more, because the one advantage with tariffs, I will say, is at least you get to choose when you get taxed.
Because unlike with an income tax where it's involuntary, the money is taken from your account, at least for the tariff,
you only pay the taxes when you spend.
So therefore, if you want to avoid the taxes, you can say let's just say if you were going to buy a vehicle and you want to buy like a Jaguar.
If you know you're going to pay that ten thousand dollars on the taxes on that, you could take that same forty grand you have for that car,
invest it for a year, make money on it, and then buy the car and you made money off that money that you invested.
And you could pay the tariff and you still made more money.
It makes investments way more possible in the U.S. because most Americans will save on average, according to the U.S. debt clock,
the average person pays about fifteen thousand dollars a year in taxes.
So guess what? If you're the average taxpayer, that's a fifteen thousand dollar bump, roughly.
Actually, it's probably closer to about ten thousand after property taxes, or in my case, a lot less because my state's bullshit with property taxes.
But even so, a lot of Americans see a huge jump, which means things like 401Ks and Roth IRAs being able to put a lot more money into investments rising.
So I'd be very curious about how many Americans react to say, oh, man, these other products are more expensive.
It's like, well, yes, but you also don't have to buy them.
The inverse will be a lot of companies saying, well, what if we just build everything outside the U.S.,
but just bring it to America and have it assembled here that way it's made in America.
It's like, well, great. That means those companies now have to pay property taxes in America, which generates growth.
That's better. As well as hiring all these people.
And with us having tens of millions of people without a job, that is great.
And one of the biggest driving factors I can think of.
Why do you think in the 1950s and 60s, I have heard numerous times from from from boomers, why is it so hard to get a job?
Just walk in and get one. People forget back then it was so much easier to start a business.
Back then it was a job surplus.
The idea is that there were more jobs than there were people.
So the bargaining power was in the hands of the employee where they could say, hey, I would love to work for you.
But here's my conditions. Whereas nowadays, because it's a worker surplus, most companies will tell you, yeah, I you know,
either you work for me for these conditions or you can go f off.
And that's where people are at right now.
If you want to have a market where things grow to where the worker has any sort of advantage or bargaining power, you want to have that job surplus.
So if you were to do these things between the tariff, which obviously all this is an ideal world, but you have the tariffs to get rid of the income tax.
More people have more money. They can choose whether to invest it or save it.
And more companies can make more profit by operating here in the U.S.
So it's a win win for everybody.
I don't see how you can lose other than by spending too much by having just wasteful spending.
Right. I want to ask when you brought up the the tariff on the stuff that that was mentioned recently.
The aluminum were the two things that stood out as having some tariffs hit recently. Does that mean that the recycling payout on those metals is going to go up now?
Because it's more expensive to import them. So they should be getting recycled more. So they should be paying out more.
I would hope so. That's a benefit too, right? Yeah, I didn't think about that. But yeah.
To be fair, we should probably do more about recycling metals anyway, just in general. But that would be a net benefit. Absolutely.
Especially right now, I think with American, like if you look at scrap value for cars, it's like an all time low.
Like it's nuts. Oh, yeah. But.
Now, having that benefit of being able to leverage these.
Would mean so much, I think, to the American taxpayer, which, yes, in the short term, it would suck for a year or two.
Because for the first couple of years, you guys think, oh, man, until you until you see that tax effect change those first six months, you're going to be like, oh, man, things are more expensive.
Yes, it would suck in the short term, but in the long term.
Imagine the difference. Let's just say the average person makes ten thousand a year more.
Imagine if you split that in half the extra five thousand a year you can save and the extra five thousand you can spend for a lot of people.
That's like what they had changing. Well, that's before covid. Yeah.
That is that difference from before covid. That's the easiest and quickest way for us to get there other than going back to the gold standard and have to somehow come up with a bajillion pounds of gold.
Yeah. But do you think that the overall American public has the patience to wait out that initial more expensive phase?
I mean, people are ready for price deflation like now.
I know. Look at look at grocery prices, dude.
I don't know up in your area. Eggs are still expensive as shit.
And I know that was mostly due to the bird culling that took place during the last couple of months of the Biden administration. And it takes time for egg laying birds to hit, you know, maturity.
So, yes, egg prices will ease, but not until if my math is correct.
Early April, I think you should start to see from May, June. Yeah.
Again, so so full disclosure, I own chickens. I know a little bit about that. I'm not like a commercial chicken farmer, but I understand quite a bit about it.
So unfortunately, it's one of those things where again, neither party's at fault for that. It was a bird flu.
It was really bad. That is unfortunately part of the process where if one bird is infected, one egg is infected.
They have to call the whole group and it spread really quickly throughout the Midwest.
There's nothing really much you can do that happens every five, 10 years or so.
It's just when you have that many animals in smaller spaces like that, it happens.
It's unfortunately more of a factor of large scale mass industries instead of having the lot of more smaller farms that are family farms.
You know, when you have 90 percent of all the chicken in America grown by like three or four companies, this is what's going to happen where it's all centralized.
Instead, it used to be decentralized where a lot of people have local farms and local things.
So it wouldn't affect it as much. So, yeah, it's going to take it takes you about from chicklets or little chicks to them being of age to have eggs.
It's about that three to six month window, depending if they might twenty to twenty eight weeks in it.
Yeah, give or take. It depends on the breed, too.
I know for what they do for the industrial scale, you know, because they only lay eggs for like a year or two to two years, depending.
It's a pretty quick window. But yeah, they're going to need like that three to six months to be able to get up to speed as well as they have to deep clean everything, pull all the manure out, refresh everything.
It's a process to blame either party. I think it's stupid.
Those people are blaming Trump or blaming Biden. That's not either here nor there.
Oh, no, I'm not blaming Biden. No, the the calling just took place during the last bit of his administration.
Yes, but people are trying to say, oh, it was this person or oh, was that person? No, it was just the timing of that bird flu hitting. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
So but it was like right near the end of his administration. So no egg prices will come down.
Unfortunately, neither president has direct control over that outside of if they would say, oh, call all the bird herds right now. That's about the extent of the control they would have.
And if people want to be bad about egg prices, support your local farmers. Yes. Find a local farm that you like.
Support them, buy eggs from them. Sure, they might be more expensive than going to the store, but these number one, you know, where their source and also number two, they are way less likely to have a problem like that.
So support local period. Yes. Find find butchers, find mom and pop shops, find the mom and pop restaurants, go support them.
Forget going to McDonald's and all those other shit restaurants that just feed you chemical meat.
And it might even be a lag grown meat here in the next couple of years if it's not already.
No, thank you. Or in the case of the Japanese inventing or inventor and production place, it could be poo meat.
Have you seen that one Gibbs? They're they're making reprocessed meat out of poop.
Um, I'll say it again. I will eat humans before I eat bugs or poop.
Meat's back on the menu, boys.
Meat will be back on the menu. But more importantly, why have we?
We have enough resources to have enough meat for everybody.
Like, why are they making mean on a poo? That seems so inefficient.
Well, you know, to the great E.M. Malcolm again, they were too busy trying to figure out whether they could.
They didn't stop to think whether or not they should.
You know, I remember I've said this at least like three other episodes.
We just are telling scientists no. Right. Like a really stern no.
This isn't like a oh, please don't know.
This needs to be like a no with a paddle in one hand. Like, no.
Hey, I'm not going to turn this into a paranormal podcast.
But is your house haunted? Mine?
Because I just saw like a white wispy thing behind you.
OK, so we can go on a slight aside on this one.
Number one, please don't mess with me too much as my house was built in 1739.
It's one of the oldest in the country. That's right.
And I have had several of my family members die in this house.
Number two, there's photos of my house going back.
Like paintings, it's an old paintings of my town.
It's an old photographs. I have a lot of stuff.
So with this house, I have to deal with a lot of weird stuff.
Things just happen. OK.
So because I just saw like a little white wispy over your left shoulder.
It didn't have any shape or anything, but it was just like a little there and then gone.
So that's oh, yeah, there's our paranormal aspect for the day.
Oh, so one of these days, if we could do a paranormal podcast, we could do an episode on that.
Well, I want to include some video I can get from this house because.
Yeah, yeah, I've I've had friends when I was younger that stayed over once.
So like never again. No, absolutely not.
So, yeah, I actually you know, a slight aside, I do want to do a deep dive on my own house because my house has some history.
That's actually rather unique, including remember this.
This house was here before this was a country 1739.
So I mean, before we had the revolution.
So it's if this house could speak, it's seen a lot of shit.
Oh, yeah. So what side now that we had that that aside.
Yeah. So here comes the ultimate question from everything we've been discussing.
What should we do? I know we discussed it a little bit.
Build the AmeriCube.
Now, would you like to explain to listeners a little more in detail what you mean?
OK, so the AmeriCube came from an episode of a show called Inside Job animated.
Definitely not for children cartoon on Netflix.
Very first episode, a robot president resembling a bumbling Trump ish type character who short circuited and decided that America was too friendly and needed to go full isolationist.
So he decided to try to build the AmeriCube and isolate all outside influences.
So that's what I'm saying by build the AmeriCube. We just keep to ourselves and tell everybody else, eat shit, deal with your own problems.
In the case of Japan, they are actually eating shit.
So that does tie in very well.
I would definitely say probably not in the literal sense, but more of more of America.
First thing I know I said earlier, but would help in so many ways.
Definitely having better control over our intellectual property in America.
OK, so when when we say America first, I have zero problem with helping other countries out when they need it.
Absolutely. It's when we become their personal wallets that I have an issue.
Yeah. If if we are there to do a job in the country and we destroy buildings and schools.
OK, sure. That's on our dime. We will help rebuild those and get them back up and running.
But if there are people coming behind us and destroy them again, that's on you, my friend,
because you didn't provide the security needed to build to guard.
And then now you're going to have to go in and rebuild that shit.
There was that Wisp again, Gibbs. I'm sorry.
OK, please don't freak me out. I'm sorry.
It's just I don't know if there's like some light shining on your camera.
Also, there are cars passing in front of the camera, so like you'll get all right.
That might be so it is. Yeah.
Is now we be on edge all night only because I've seen some weird stuff.
But I'm sorry. That's OK. Edging is a bad way, not the good way.
But no, I do agree with you that, again, I think is one of the benefits we have to this country with our abundance is I like to help people.
I like to help other countries.
But that being said, there needs to be an agreement there of, hey, we are doing this not out of an obligation, but because we would like to help you.
That being said, that is a two way street, my friend.
If you were going to stab us in the back and we're helping you.
Oh, no, we cut that off. No, we put you on the do not stops. You are on the do not call list.
You are on the hey, I'm sorry for countries burning, but you kind of screwed us over.
And we need to be more realistic about spending money in other countries, especially when we have so many people that are homeless, some people that are dying from health care issues.
So many Americans and veterans that have actually put their lives on the line and we treat them like absolute shit.
Whereas we're getting these other countries so much money and wealth that it's kind of insane.
Like if you look at Ukraine, for example, we gave them well over two hundred billion dollars between the money, military aid and everything else.
I distinctly remember during Trump's first presidency that they said five billion dollars was too much money for a wall.
Now, I don't care if you think the wall would work or not or whatever.
Here's my. Yes. But here's my problem.
Even more simple than that, if we can overnight agree, yes, we're giving Ukraine and Israel these hundreds of billions of dollars.
Why is the money for the wall?
Well, where's the money for border security, even if you don't agree with the wall?
It's where's the money for borders? It's getting hidden in the fucking mint.
OK, where it is, that is a possibility.
But it goes to show a skewing of the U.S. priorities or the government's priorities, where clearly these are issues we could have solved overnight.
Clearly, clearly we had the money because we sent it to them. It's gone. Bye bye.
It's already there. It's gone.
So if we had this whole time, mind you, this is after I will give, you know, Biden.
How should I say this nicely?
I will harshly criticize him for this when he left tens of billions of dollars in military equipment and Middle East when we backed out, as well as all the money we gave to Iran and Iraq over the years,
as well as all the money we gave to Iran, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel, where, look, it's one of those things that we had all this extra money to throw around.
We didn't know what to do with it. Like we were like to buy. But the entire country.
Fine. I wouldn't be caring about this. But come on, let's get a price.
A couple of things. Are they going to be paying us back?
No, that's that's one thing that would be they should be because of course they help them out.
So where's the where's the payback?
Secondly, the government can just print money and they do it all the time.
Why do we still have to even pay taxes? And why can't they just print what we owe them?
Well, that's the other question is why why pay taxes when they can just print five, five percent more every year?
Uh huh. And just I mean, it's facetious because that's like infinite inflation.
And then we end up with the Zimbabwe trillion dollar note. Yes.
And a loaf of bread costs five thousand dollars, you know, before you know it. Yes.
But then thirdly, those countries that burn us, we just have to put them on the we will not be trying to reach you about your cars, extended warranty program.
Well, it's I guess it's frustrating because we are continually obligated to help countries that have absolutely no goodwill towards us.
And we can't continue this vicious cycle.
Until to where we fund terrorist organizations, you know, things like ISIS were funded by us, Al Qaeda were funded by us.
And it seems like a lot of people just don't really care because the end of the day, it doesn't really affect their day to day life.
But unfortunately, American money was funded, you know, used to fund things like 9-11, you know, used to fund terrorist attacks in America.
And it's hurt tens of thousands, if not millions of people directly or indirectly.
And that that is our money. Those are our resources. And we should be far more careful with that.
I still want to know how building seven fell.
We're going to do an 11 episode more these days. Yeah.
And then we're going to say we're going to end up on another list.
We're probably on like seven right now. We're probably grow that to at least 20.
And I think that's the point. If anybody wants to think at least how I view America, I will give credit.
I really feel like the first Iron Man movie.
Actually does show kind of how I've always viewed America when it comes to our military industrial complex, where we don't realize just how much money and supplies are going to the people that we've been fighting against and our phone.
It's this vicious cycle.
So until we fix that, this is just going to keep happening.
But it's something that I think we as Americans need to stand up and say, hey, we're not OK with this.
We're not OK with funding all these wars. We're done with it.
Done zero. No.
Yeah, it's it's it's entirely too much.
And when we're fighting ourselves, essentially, that becomes a bigger issue.
So getting on to the next topic here. So the question then becomes a final question.
How do we fix this? What is the easiest way? What is the simplest way?
Now, the obvious option, which is not dead, we already discussed this one, but we can't really return back to the gold standard because there are simply not enough gold.
If you do the calculations, well, there's not a whole lot of our asses and get some asteroid mining going.
We could go and get enough gold. But then we have to spend more money than we have to then get the gold and then back up and spend money to make money.
Gibbs, come on. Yeah. But all I can picture is I'm just going to go like, put it to maximum overdrive.
And they're just printing money out. No, they can't.
But there's no like it would be nice. But no, there's just no there's no way to do it.
Because with our luck, we'd find some new exotic metal out there and it would happen while, you know, Orange Man still in office.
And then we'd have trompey neum on the periodic table.
And suddenly it's worth, you know, fifty thousand dollars a gram.
And we find, you know, a major deposit of it. And he just says, here, every American gets, you know, two grams of trompey neum.
And then we crash the entire world market.
But. I mean, if it gets us out of debt. Yeah, I know.
Oh, speaking of getting us out of debt sidebar, the trillion dollar coins, have you ever done any research on those?
You know, I remember we discussed that one time, just like minting a bunch of trillion dollar coins and just depositing them and then melting them down to say they never existed.
Yeah, that's not going to fly, though. It almost did.
It wouldn't work. I think it was Obama's like the end near the end of his second term.
They were talking about minting trillion dollar coins from the mint, depositing them into I think the Fed or however they handle like the the bank sheet for the country.
And then that would clear off the sheet. But that's not how that works at all.
Well, because it has to be assets attached to that, like they can't just trend, print a trillion dollars and just delete it.
They probably would have held on to them, but they were going to be trillion dollar platinum coins.
But then, like, where does that.
In the most secure vault in the world.
Falls barred.
I know, but the the issue with that is like it just it wouldn't solve the problem.
No, but it would have taken an eight trillion dollar chunk out of the problem.
Yes, but then the inflation alone caused by that long term wise.
Well, yeah, it's an interesting rabbit hole to go down because, yes, it probably would have caused inflation.
But how much that's what they could never figure out.
It was just a little they're literally deleting eight trillion dollars of overhead.
But think about this, because it just got paid off.
Think about this week. We printed five trillion over the course of covid and look at how bad we are right now.
Imagine if they had just done seven trillion in coins.
OK, the caveat to that is the the the debt that was there then is still there now.
So it would be less than it is now.
And I think that's how they were trying to look at it.
Yeah, but then it would have been even imagine if inflation went up right like right now, it's like averaging like 20 to 40 percent.
Imagine it was 60 to 80 percent, especially back then there was a far smaller money supply.
That's like doubling your money supply and then deleting it.
Yeah, like I don't know how that like sure.
Theoretically, maybe nothing could have happened.
I mean, it's it's been too long since I've looked into it.
I don't remember the particulars, but it was an interesting thing to to go down the rabbit hole long.
So if you're still listening to this, I suggest you look into it.
The minting of the trillion dollar coins and everything that would have fallen out from it.
I definitely refer to the discord on that one.
That's something that I'm going to watch and I'll throw in the discord because I'm curious.
That's not something I know a lot about.
Also, did you watch the video I sent you?
I watched about half of that because you sent that to me about half an hour before I got home.
So I'm curious if you want to dive into that one.
So there was a video that came out about 14, 15 years ago called The Day the Dollar Died.
And it kind of goes into the fallout that would happen if the dollar ever stopped being the world reserve currency.
And while it is fiction, of course, and it's highly.
Oh, the words I'm thinking of inflammatory hyperbolic.
Yeah, it's very fictitious with what I saw.
Yeah, but the the structured layout of the events that could foreseeably happen are accurate.
Yeah, at least according to the time that it was made in.
It's terrifying if you just kind of sit there and think about it like, oh, shit.
That could happen.
And what would it do today?
Because that's old enough now that things would move slightly slower and would take slightly longer to disseminate out.
We're we're in the quantum age at this point.
Damn near as scary as that is to think.
And that kind of fallout, I mean, it would be immediate.
Oh, yeah.
So we'll we'll link that video in the discord.
But the day the dollar died worth a watch, I think it's like less than 10 minutes.
Yeah, it was like seven and a half or eight when I saw it.
Yeah. Highly encourage you to watch it and just kind of let it sink in and let it wash over you like a warm bath on a cold night.
And just let it tickle your brain noodle and see how you feel.
That was not a nice tickle with that video.
I have you wrote that that was that was a worrying tickle.
No, that was non-consensual.
I guess it was consensual because I clicked on the video.
But now you told it to you wanted it to be there, Gibbs.
No, no, no.
And it arrived and it was there.
I don't like that.
Oh, I didn't expect that.
No, no, no.
Not on this podcast.
No. But another thing I was thinking about, too, because I know this we've discussed in the past as well.
But you could have a monetary system that's backed by a crypto currency, particularly a block chain type of crypto.
Again, that's also risky because then you would have a lot of fluctuation or a lot of also nobody over the age of like forty five is going to want to participate in that system.
Well, they just don't understand it.
Exactly.
But I'm I'm almost forty four years old.
I barely understand it.
Well, it's the idea of OK, it doesn't exist.
I mean, it's less it's less tangible than our current money system.
I can go to an ATM and get physical dollars out of my bank account.
Yeah, I can't go to an ATM and get physical Bitcoin right now.
No, but I'm not. I'm not saying the money would purely be digital.
What I'm saying is it's backed by a cryptocurrency or a block chain based cryptocurrency.
So effectively, I know the US Treasury back in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, they were working on a digital US dollar equivalent that was block chain based back when Bitcoin was starting to really go crazy the first time.
This would be a CBDC, if I'm not mistaken, and those were just banned.
Well, see that that I'm curious about how long will that be banned for?
Probably the next three and a half years.
Well, the ish.
Well, you know, this is my curiosity is eventually.
We are going to hit the point where the way inflation is going.
Where it's going to be too expensive to even print to the dollar, the five dollars and the ten dollar eventually physical resources are going to become so expensive and energy will be so cheap that it will be cheaper.
And more sustainable to have everything be digital.
So the question is, will we eventually switch to a block chain based or digital entirely based currency that has a ledger because I will get block chain credit, at least it is more accurate and honest than the US Mint or Treasury because it can be audited.
So as much as I dislike the idea, because I don't freaking trust computers in that system, but but because it could be audited by anybody.
Just let AI run it will be fine.
I hate that. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, sir.
No, you don't have any money in your bank account today.
I'm sorry, Dave, you do not have the social credit score for that ice cream.
Oh, God.
Social credit is one thing that terrifies the hell out of me.
Oh, the credit score alone is already a sham, let alone the social credit score.
Uh huh.
That's something, by the way, fuck the credit system.
I gotta say that whoever invented that's an asshole.
Yeah, because the idea that you can pay 99.9% of your stuff, but if you missed one payment four years ago because you were in the hospital, all of a sudden, wop wop, you can't get over an eight 20 credit score.
It's like, if you man, you know, I'm doing everything else right.
I'm calling from a little personal experience here, but it's like, come on.
Do it and the fact the fact that you have to utilize a certain amount of your income to them pay, but if you don't have enough debt, it goes negatively against you. FF that system.
That's BS.
I hate it.
Yeah.
Whoever designed that system. Why?
But yeah, the social credit.
That's that's something.
I don't think we need to do an episode on that. I think Black Mirror already did a great episode on that.
That was a terrifying episode to watch.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a good watch.
I think it's like season two, season three.
The cute redhead from Jurassic World is in it.
Okay.
I don't know the actress name on that one, but I can never remember her name either, but she's in that episode of Black Mirror.
I never saw Jurassic World either.
Really? I was never into the Jurassic Park Jurassic kind of who hurt you, Gibbs.
I don't know life.
Clearly the government has my fucking wallet is empty right now.
Like Jesus.
Yeah.
You know, especially when you got a job that's part commission.
I mean, they do. They gobble that up.
But yeah, no, I never really got to see the like I saw Jurassic Park, but anything pass.
I never is a double Jurassic World. That's the one with what's his name that play Star Wars.
Oh, Star Lord. Yeah.
No, I've heard his name. Chris Pratt.
Chris Pratt. Thank you.
Yeah, I never watched that one.
They're they're not bad.
I mean, they're, you know, they're they're just push the continued narrative.
Would you say.
Another one coming out with Scarlett Johansson.
OK. You know, my my future wife.
I'm going to let that pause kind of speak for itself on that one.
I think I think that pause said enough for the look of.
Yeah, right on your face. Just said enough.
Yeah.
Are you hiding millions of dollars that we're unaware of or?
No.
Eat that. Never mind. There's things I can't say in the podcast, but.
The dog of doom over there, apparently.
I'm hiding something else.
No, no, don't don't don't even.
I do not want to see the dog of doom. I'm good.
I'm good. Thanks.
Yeah, no, no, no, no girthquake.
You could stay over there.
Keep six feet. Oh, Lord. But.
Those movies. Would you say that random question?
Would you say those drastic movies as a remake or continuation are about as good as like the Star Trek remakes that they did in like the late 2000s?
Like on par ish as good.
Yeah.
Yeah, more or less like they're not phenomenal.
Oh, like they were solid popcorn flicks.
Okay. I mean, it was loose writing loose concept.
I mean, okay.
Dinosaurs on of on a facility get loose.
You can only push that concept so many times before it gets old.
Yeah. Like they just never learn.
They keep doing it and trying it again. Well, they keep making money.
It's like socialism. We'll do it right this time.
That's it's dinosaur socialism. That's all it is.
You know what? That's on a side note, because we're talking about different forms of government monetary theory.
Every time I ever debate a social. So I was like, yeah, but it wasn't uncorrect.
It wasn't real socialism.
It was. If they've tried it somewhere, it was. And it didn't work.
Learn from history. It does not work.
Come on. On paper, it sounds great. You know, who wouldn't want to free everything and everyone taken care of?
It only works on the very small scale.
Absolutely. But that there's still a capitalistic system that has to survive outside of it.
Socialism works on a scale of like 20, 30 people running like a local commune kind of thing.
A hundred, maybe 200 tops.
I don't even think it would be a very close knit community.
See, I think it breaks down way, way sooner than that.
Because then once you get enough freeloaders in the system, the whole thing breaks down.
Well, that's why I said it has to be a very close knit community.
I guess it's possible. Like, like I'm totally into I love the concept.
I did get together a bunch of friends of buying like a big plot of land and like working together, doing stuff.
But I would not I would not like.
Get rid of capitalism, absolutely not. No, because my my my.
It has its faults, but it's so far it's the best option.
It's the best you've ever had until we reach that Star Trek utopian, which need a replicator.
That's all we need. We need one. Yeah.
Oh, you were talking about energy a minute ago.
Free energy or cheap energy, cheap and abundant.
If AI has its way, I don't think that we're going to get there soon enough.
The amount of energy that it's taking to run these AI and data centers.
We're having to fire up formally decommissioned nuclear plants just to meet the power needs that those are now requiring or going to require.
Three Mile Island is going to be coming back online here in the next few years.
What was that? Yes.
Late last year, I think it was just a fun these these like servers essentially just to fund like AI and data centers.
Yeah, I think they're going to push some out to the market.
But yeah, that's at least one of them. You know, I really think it boils down to the matrix was right.
AI is going to look at us as a really nice battery.
I mean, possibly. But there are companies that make these modular nuclear reactors.
They put out, I think, 30 or 300 megawatts. I can remember the zero on them.
They fit in a shipping container and they're portable.
Are you telling me I can get a nuclear reactor for personal use?
Yes. How much? I mean, now the Enron egg, I think, was shown to be a hoax.
But these are actual portable reactors.
They can run like a neighborhood or, you know, a small city.
What kind of cost are you talking about here?
Because I mean, I mean, Rolls Royce makes them. That's one of the companies.
Yeah. How have you never shared this with me before?
Wait a minute. I don't think it ever came up, dude.
Wait a minute. So so we how?
Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. This is I'm fucking we're doing it live.
I'm doing this. Hold on. Sidebar.
Yes. I need to know this for the sake of the audience.
We need to figure this out. Personal.
Personal nuclear. You're going to get something on the Enron egg.
I bet you. I guess it called SMR, small modular reactors. Yep.
And they're great because they have a passive safety system
that prevents a Chernobyl like reaction from going out of out of control.
If the cooling water is cut off, the control rods fall into place and shut down the reaction.
The cooling water actually suspends the rods over top to keep the reaction going.
So it's like water pressure that just pushes them up like a check valve.
If the water is cut off, the rods fall into place.
Reaction shuts off. So it's a passive safety system.
You know, it's crazy. How is this never made national news?
I don't understand. But out of all companies, West power companies are terrified of this Westinghouse.
They're offering one. Yeah. It aims to be available in twenty twenty seven.
Will generate about a third of the power as a flagship one, whatever.
It could power about three hundred thousand homes.
Are you kidding me? It costs a billion dollars.
But I mean, a billion dollars for three hundred thousand homes and you're all set.
That's that's the city of the future right there.
You could plop one of those down the middle of Kansas and then do this.
Mm hmm. OK, OK. We're going to do an episode.
You're not OK. Your gears are cooking. OK.
We're going to do what's the episode.
We're going to do an episode on the future of city planning and development.
Cities of the future, because that if you can get just a couple of those.
Two or three of them.
That that that's power infrastructure or better yet, imagine something like that.
Again, I'm all for helping other countries, but imagine we just sent a few of those to certain countries that need help.
And also, if they're portable, why wouldn't we have that for like FEMA?
Right. So, you know, L.A. just burned to the ground.
And they want to turn L.A. into a smart city.
Oh, that's how you do it. Oh.
I mean, not a bad idea. You do it, buddy.
Because I've always been pro nuclear as long as it's safe, which it has been for a while.
And you have the security measures in place.
Like, there's no reason why not. But that that would be awesome.
Oh, my God. Now, the ones from like Rolls Royce, they're available and shipping now.
They're they're on the market. That's incredible.
And, you know, they're like I said, they're they're shipping container size.
They're they're kind of all over the place.
This is so far off topic of the Fed and the money situation.
But the money that we're wasting could pay for these.
Think about this. Right. So so. OK. OK.
Let's do a little bit of math here. If one of those is roughly a billion dollars in power, power three hundred thousand homes.
How many homes? How many homes in the U.S.?
One hundred forty five million homes.
So one hundred and forty five million homes divided by three hundred thousand.
Four hundred eighty three. That means four hundred and eighty three billion dollars.
And we solve energy. Thank you.
I expect the check in the mail. We've solved it, folks.
That's it for a double what we gave to Ukraine and Israel.
All of us can have free energy. Yeah.
What the fuck? Right.
Hey, since since we saw free energy, let's go ahead and solve retirement and financial security real quick while we still have some time.
Absolutely. Let's go ahead and toss that out there.
Since we're talking about money and management. I'm assuming.
Are you throwing that curve that one to me?
OK, so I know we probably discussed it on another episode, but if we're talking about we we we touched tips on it.
This is why I can't bring you out in public. This is why you're online only.
This is what no one wants to bring me out in public.
I was I was at an aquarium and I was told that the words that are coming out of my mouth are making people uncomfortable because I said I wanted to belly boop the seahorses because they were they were fat and looked like me.
All right. That's your choice whether you want to leave that one in the podcast or not.
I'm going to let you decide on that one.
But so in talking about government waste and spending.
Here was another solution I had was and again this this requires people to be a little bit financially responsible for if they want to have a family have children.
But the idea is this instead of the US government giving you Social Security.
They go 50 50 on you for the retirement package for a kidney.
The idea is very simple.
You put up five or 10 grand. The US government puts up five or 10 grand.
And you have that account that that's based within a trust fund for that child for when they retire and that's invested in the market.
Now and this is in place of Social Security.
This this instead of putting a dime into it.
That means the US government's putting in five or 10 grand you put in five or 10 grand.
I'm using that number is a rough idea.
It really should be 50 50 up to like 30 grand or something like that.
Do you know if you put in five grand and the government puts a five or 10 grand total by the time they retire be worth one point five million.
That means.
And that's not getting touched. That's never adding to it.
Exactly. That is that one time investment because with the power of compounding interest by the time they are 20 years old 21.
That'll already be worth 80 grand.
$80,000 to put in someone's retirement at that age by the time they retire. That's gonna be worth about one point five million.
Do you know how insane that is for most people that they've never even come close to that.
Do you know the amount of people I know that probably retire with like $300,000 in their account three or four hundred thousand sometimes even 200,000 and they scrape by.
And I know it's tough and that that really sucks.
But you know imagine I could that could transform the US government by saying you know what we're just not going to do Social Security.
All you have to do is save up five grand.
Before you have your kid.
The US government matches you want it.
And now you know that kid will be fine.
You do that for two generations.
America will be by far the wealthiest country in the world and it will not even be a contest.
It would be incredible having a couple of generations of kids that know we never have to worry about retirement.
But also could benefit and give that some of that income to their grandchildren or their great grandchildren set them up for success.
And on the flip side instead of paying out Social Security taxes and everything you could just put that money into it and let it grow with it.
You wouldn't even have to do it for your full working time.
You could choose like a five or ten year period when you're making the most money in your life and contribute the most and get the most out of it.
And think about this. That means all the money you do invest will grow doubly more because the US government is now investing so much more into these sectors in these areas.
So all of a sudden now all of your investments grow tremendously.
It's a lot to but the issue is there are so many politicians and whatnot that use Social Security as a slush fund.
They won't give that up.
It's very unfortunate. So when Social Security was initially set up it was set up to not be a slush fund but rather an account that you couldn't touch.
However I believe it was back during the 60s. I believe it was Lyndon B. Johnson.
I could be wrong. Well they changed it over into a slush fund because they had money they needed to acquire again.
That was before we got rid of the gold standard.
So they needed some extra funds. So by doing so and just saying hey you know because this is going to be an entitlement program we got to be able to put money in and take money out.
So it should be accessible.
There's a reason why Social Security is going to be insolvent the next five or 10 years.
It's because of that and because quite frankly we have an inverted pyramid right now where there are so many more people retiring than there are working.
Hence a country of 300 not only that but the Social Security program was set up when life expectancies were what five to eight years beyond retirement.
Yeah. So Social Security was only expected to pay out for five six seven eight years up to 10 years tops.
Yeah not 30 years. Well we'll think about it back then people were tired at like 62 when it was set up and they were living to be about 74 72 74 somewhere in there.
Even 70s were considered pretty common.
Whereas now people are retiring at 65 68 and they're living into their 80s or even 90s.
The average age of death in America I believe even during COVID was about 78.
And you might think oh it's only a few years. Yeah but monetarily especially with inflation everything else growing.
That it's a lot of money quickly goes and unfortunately there's a lot of Americans and I hate to say it but a lot of people that were never raised on how to handle finances and it is a full time job.
It's very difficult. I've been lucky that I've been able to spend a lot of time studying and learning and I've been able to figure this stuff out and I've had some good people around me.
A lot of great friends and family that be able to help me out with this kind of stuff to learn it but that's something I'd like to share with a lot of people were a little bit of planning can set your family up a generational wealth where unfortunately you'll never see that wealth doing a plan like this.
But you will be your family will be able to enjoy the shade of a tree that you unfortunately never get to. But that also means you will never have to worry about it because they will be beyond set up because imagine how many people do you know of that you know when they retire going to 1.5 million.
And for people to consider because I happen to know some of the stuff because I do investments for every 250,000 if you're investing in the market right now you get roughly about $1200 a month.
So that right there just off the interest you're looking at $78,000 a month off that money. Wow. That's just in the interest without touching the principal and that's also investing a little bit in the principal only talking like 100 bucks a month or something.
So 1200 a year back into it. So that's what it's still growing. For most people, that is a life changing amount of money, especially now here's consider this imagine if your entire working life. You could keep the money from Social Security and not having to put in your 401k.
Oh yeah, that's an extra two to $500 a month $600 a month and imagine cases in some cases that per paycheck that yeah and doing what you're making imagine employers not having to pay that because they also have to pay payroll tax.
And the match so I mean it's it's something to where they'd be able to afford to pay you more, and you would have to pay less. So, it is something to consider but that does mean the average person the average family would have to be more financially responsible and put up that money before they have a child.
Yeah, so it is something to consider.
Yep.
But that that was my two cents on how to, how to fix the US economy on on that front anyway. Unfortunately you can't like legislate that be like hey you have to have this kind of money.
I mean you, you could kind of put some things in place to kind of ease that along like getting into a GIMP suit you just kind of take your time and make sure that it's done right.
But you can, you can make it happen.
For the audience to understand I'm giving him a very very unhappy face.
Or using that as an example.
No.
And honestly, I don't think 90% of us can relate.
Because I don't think most people get into those are these probably not. It's God I hope not.
Yeah.
But to each their own whatever you're into, whatever you're into bro.
We're not here to shame.
But I think we should probably go ahead and wrap this up we've been here for almost two hours.
What? No we haven't.
No we oh my.
Oh my.
Wow.
Alright sorry about that folks I kind of let.
When the tism hits.
Hey.
You lose track of time.
You ain't wrong.
We definitely want to say thank you all for for listening and participating.
Really appreciate we've been loving all the feedback we've been getting lately.
I really appreciate the viewership taken off.
We're very.
We.
Yeah.
We broke 500 downloads.
Yeah.
Just a couple days ago.
So that was a milestone that we did not think we would hit this fast.
It does not sound like a lot but it actually is.
Considering that that happened around 10 episodes.
So that's incredible.
So honestly thank you guys.
We really appreciate it.
And for a little little podcast that we're just doing this to have some fun to talk about some stuff to learn and share some information.
I've been super thrilled about it.
I know you have to.
And we're very excited for the future holds.
Especially where we're hoping to include some new things and to branch out and start doing some more as time goes.
If if things go well next week we'll have a little surprise for everyone.
So it'll be a new chapter.
Put it that way.
A new exciting chapter that could get us in trouble.
But we like trouble.
We are the trouble and trouble like us.
Yeah.
Well a little bit.
But just want to say thank you all seriously for being here.
Make sure to check out all of our socials you know Instagram Tick Tock YouTube.
Especially the the ones that have the reels.
We're going to start.
I hope getting the reels put out this this week.
That's my fault.
I've been slacking.
I will hold my hand up on that one.
You've been busy.
Yet life life has been kind of bitch slapping me.
Life made you a fleshlight.
So yeah.
Yeah.
It's you know what though.
Things are going back to normal and I appreciate it.
Yes.
Not a new normal but like an actual normal.
It's been nice.
But yeah I would like to get back into you know posting stuff on the regular doing some more as well as interacting with people more.
You know so that that is definitely on our radar.
It's just also one of those things where I ever since covid I really kind of stepped away from social media.
So now that I get back into it for the podcast I have to relearn some stuff.
So bear with us as or with that.
But definitely feel free to interact with us on discord or any of the social media.
Definitely let us know your feedback what you'd like and dislike.
Also if you want to participate and give us some ideas for episodes we do have an area in the discord for all that kind of stuff discussion.
We have fun little chats in there and we have a few laughs.
But feel free to share us your memes and your ideas.
We're also going to be doing an episode where we're going to recap some things any any of the episode topics that have had new developments.
Primarily it'll be the AI episode the moon and Mars maybe one or two other ones.
And we would like to include listener feedback in those.
So if you have anything to add if you were sitting there yelling at the device that you're listening to us on.
You can throw your comments in or email us or put it in discord or something.
And we'll include that.
I welcome a fact check for me because while I am a repository of knowledge I occasionally screw things up.
So you are more than welcome to correct me at any time.
And I would love to get that feedback.
My head is a cornucopia of useless knowledge.
I am bound to get some shit wrong from time to time.
So please bring on the fact checks. Oh yeah.
You know and that generates a discussion that way that's something that we can learn from and we can grow and that way all of us share information.
So at the end of the day that's the goal of this podcast to have some laughs but to also learn a little bit.
I want to grow. I want to grow taller.
I was going to say we have we have pills to regrow our hair to make our dicks stay hard for hours on end to cure some of the most vile diseases on this earth.
Where are the pills to make us grow two or three inches in height.
It's not a it is twenty twenty five Gibbs.
We should have those pills.
They're they're they're not pills.
It's a leg surgery.
I don't want to say surgery.
I don't need a leg surgery.
I want a pill.
How how are you going to get a pill that grows more spine or more leg.
You activate the pituitary glands.
Oh that's just simple right.
That's just easy.
That's just you know being switched.
They got twenty twenty five Gibbs.
We have nanomachines that are getting into our blood and doing all kinds of crazy shit.
They they get the five G's and involved with the with the carbon nanotubes and everything.
I saw some weird shit yesterday.
All right.
I'll just be making a deluxe tinfoil hat and send it your way.
Call it the Alex Jones cap.
That's I'm sick and tired of all the crap I put in the water and turn into the freaking frogs gay.
The sad part is he wasn't wrong.
He was he was not wrong.
Oh my God.
The amount of shit that he has gotten right is terrifying.
He should never have gotten anything right.
But oh my God he's been right so many times.
You know what the sad part is scary because he said some inappropriate things about Sandy Hook.
That's what he got dragged to the mud on.
But there's a lot of other stuff where it's like Jesus Christ dude.
But to be fair I will say this when you say as much stuff as he does with as much air time he's on the air for six or eight hours a day.
Or 30 years you're bound to get a lot of stuff right when you get a lot of stuff wrong.
I will say he has a lot of stuff right.
If you made an Alex Jones was right jar you'd be able to retire.
He put in a buck in it.
But a broken watch is right two times a day.
Exactly.
So so but God he said some funny stuff.
Oh look up some funny stuff.
Look at Alex Jones saying weird stuff on YouTube.
It is hilarious.
It's gold.
I'm kind of retarded.
Oh he was on Joe Rogan.
It's hilarious.
I will admit.
Oh God.
You know it makes me laugh.
And I will say he's naturally funny.
He's naturally funny in a very similar way that Trump is funny.
Whether you agree with what they say they have that same kind of charisma.
And it's just interesting.
But anyways I we are the kings of like going on tangents today.
It's the tism I blame the tism the tism and macaroni and cheese.
That's all fair enough.
I get that.
But all right as a final you know thank you.
I want to say thank you all for being here.
It's been wonderful.
Yep.
We appreciate it.
We love you guys.
We really do.
You're beautiful.
We wouldn't be here without you.
Absolutely.
Thank you all for everything.
And we will catch you on the next episode.
Hell yeah.
Thank you.