Welcome to this curated educational transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. In this session, we provide a deep-dive examination of the critical perspectives and historical dialogues presented in Episode #1508. Our mission is to offer a high-fidelity, searchable research resource for students of cultural history, emerging technology, and global discourse. This transcript has been specifically optimized for academic reference, linguistic study, and archival preservation regarding Bitcoin Economics, Gold Standard Sustainability, and Modern Monetary Theory. Three, two, one, boom. Here we go. Hello, Peter.
Joe, nice to see you again. I like how you have
the Euro -Pacific capital above your left shoulder.
Very nice. Very wise. Well, this is my studio
in my basement here in Connecticut where I'm
hunkered down. But, you know, in honor of doing
your show, I poured myself a glass of scotch.
Oh, there you go. So I have it. I feel like I
should get drunk too. I'm sure you have something
to drink, but I wanted to toast your Spotify
deal. Oh, thank you very much. I got a bottle
of my good friend Josh Barnett's Warbringer Warmaster
Edition Mesquite Smoked Whiskey. Here's to you
and Spotify. I think they're getting it cheap.
You probably could have held out for more money.
Well, you don't know how much I got. Well, I
just know what the public says. They don't know
how much I got either. But thank you very much.
I'll drink to that too. I'm very happy. Spotify
is awesome. I'm very happy. I'm happy to be with
a company where they have a vested interest in
my success. Like we're together. That's the beauty
of capitalism. Mutually beneficial, voluntary
relationships. Yeah, there you go. Exactly. So
why are you in Connecticut and not Puerto Rico?
Well, you know, I live in Puerto Rico. And thanks
to my appearance on your show, a lot of other
people now live there too. I just got to tell
you how many people I run into and they say,
Peter, you know, I moved here because of you.
And I say, really, how'd you hear about it? Oh,
I'm Joe Rogan. That's amazing. A lot of people
have come down here, but I don't know. I don't
think you've been to Puerto Rico. I've never
been to Puerto Rico. Yeah, I guess you got an
open invitation to come visit me. I'll put you
up. I got I got a nice place on the beach for
you. What's their COVID situation like? What's
the COVID situation down there? This is it. It's
hot now. It's you know, it's July, August. And
so I would rather be in Connecticut. I love the
weather here in the summer into the fall. And
we still maintain a house here. You know, the
house that I lived in before we moved to Puerto
Rico. So now this is more of a summer home. And
so we're here for the summer, although we may
be here into the fall. I think we will because
the schools. you know, are going to be remote
now. So normally I would come back to school
start in mid -August in Puerto Rico. So we would
normally come back then. But since they're going
to be taking the classes online, we'll probably
end up staying in Connecticut for a little longer,
which which I like. But I really enjoy Puerto
Rico. It's a great place to live. You can't beat
the tax breaks. So, you know, this is going to
be an important thing, especially if Biden ends
up winning, which it looks highly likely that
that's going to be the case. I think a lot more
people are going to be coming down there to try
to escape what will be real confiscatory levels
of taxation so people can look into it. But yeah,
I mean, it's a real, real great place to be.
Well, let's let's get into that. So you you think
that Biden has a very high likelihood of winning?
Here we are. Let's just if people come upon this
in the future. Today is the 14th, 14th of July,
and we're a few months away from the election.
You feel like it looks like Biden is moving into
the direction of eventually winning. I think
he's already moved in that direction. And so
the question is. Can Trump change that direction
between now and Election Day? And I think it's
going to be very challenging. Maybe his best
opportunity is going to be the debates. We'll
see. I don't think they're going to have them,
though. But the big problem for Trump, and I
voted for Trump the first time. And I was initially
going to vote Libertarian, which is something
I do. And by the way, there's a candidate, Joe
Jorgensen, who you should have on your show.
I don't know if you've thought about it. There
is a woman running for president and she will
be on the ballot in every state. Joe Jorgensen
from the Libertarian Party. And so everybody
who thinks there should be a woman president,
I actually agree right now. And that's who we
should elect. Is that who you're voting for?
Is that who you're going to vote for? Well, I
can't vote for anybody. I live in Puerto Rico.
But I thought Puerto Rico was a part of the United
States, sort of. It is. It is part of the United
States. But you remember, you know, from the
revolution, no taxation without representation.
So what happens is, When you move to Puerto Rico,
you no longer have to pay the federal income
tax or the Obamacare tax, which is great. But
then you can't vote for the president and you
don't have any member of Congress. You don't
have a senator. So being in Puerto Rico, I have
no representation in Congress and I can't vote
for president. But the tradeoff is I don't have
to pay the taxes. Wow. So, you know, that's a
good tradeoff that I'm, you know, pretty much
everybody is willing to make. I can't vote. And
normally I vote for the lesser of two evils anyway.
And most of the time I vote for the loser. So
as far as I'm concerned, giving up my right to
vote for the loser is not much of a sacrifice.
But, you know, if I could vote, I would still
be living in Connecticut and it would be a total
waste of my vote to vote for Trump because he
has no chance of winning Connecticut. So I would
vote for Jorgensen, even though I know she can't
win. I would rather at least give her a vote
of support because I wouldn't be wasting my vote
because. you know, it doesn't matter. Connecticut
is going to go for Biden in a big way. And so
it's, you know, voting for anybody, it doesn't
really matter who you vote for in a state like
Connecticut. But as I was saying, the problem
for Trump, and I was one of the few people who
was in the media saying that I thought Trump
had a real good shot at winning. I didn't know
it was in the bag, but I thought that he was
more likely to win than lose, you know, even
though everybody thought it was a long shot.
And the reason that I thought that Trump could
win is because Trump was telling the truth about
how bad the economy was. He wasn't regurgitating
the lies that the Obama administration had been
telling or that Wall Street had been telling
about how we had a real recovery. I knew that
we had a bubble inflated by the Federal Reserve
and that beneath that bubble where you can see
the stock market at record highs and these phony
unemployment numbers, I knew. laid a weak economy
and trump knew that too and trump spoke to the
forgotten men and women of this bubble economy
and his message really resonated about how we
were you know a shadow of our former self that
our industrial might had decayed we had all these
big trade deficits that the stock market was
a bubble, all the numbers were fake. The real
unemployment number rate wasn't 5%, but 20%,
30%, 40%. And that he was a non -politician.
He was going to clean house. He was going to
drain the swamp. He was going to put politics
aside and bring a businessman's perspective to
Washington, drain that swamp, eliminate the national
debt, make America great again. And that message
resonated with a lot of people. And a lot of
those people were maybe afraid, to be honest,
with the pollsters because they didn't want to
admit that they were going to vote for this racist
misogynist or whoever the media was portraying
him. So I thought he could win. And he did. But
here's the problem. Now that he's been in office
for three years, he didn't drain the swamp. He
made the swamp deeper. He didn't make get rid
of the deficit. I mean, the deficit is bigger
than ever, even before covid. All he did was,
you know, nurture the bubble that he inherited
from from Obama and help make it get bigger.
cheerleader for the stock market. He didn't care
it was a bubble. All of a sudden, all the government
numbers that were fake under Obama were all of
a sudden real, like they just came down from
God on a tablet on Mount Sinai. And he began
talking about this low unemployment and this
booming economy, the greatest economy in the
history of the world, the greatest economy ever.
And none of that was true. And so you have the
same people who voted for Trump. thinking that
he would shake things up, thinking that he would
throw a monkey wrench in the system and make
their lives better. And their lives aren't better.
They're worse. People have more debt. You know,
the bubble got bigger. The trade deficits that
Donald Trump criticized are bigger now than they
were before he was elected. And obviously the
deficits are much bigger even before COVID. So
I just don't see how Trump convinces those swing
voters, those blue collar Reagan Democrats in
the Rust Belt. who decided they had nothing to
lose. And so they take a chance on Trump. Why
should they vote for him again? I mean, now they
may take a chance on Biden, even though, I mean,
Biden doesn't represent any change from the status
quo. He's just more of the same. But, you know,
once you're the insider and Trump's now the insider.
He doesn't have that edge for a reelection. What
do you think went wrong and why do you think
Trump just made the swamp deeper? Do you think
that he was deceptive when he was running or
do you think the influences once he got into
office were greater than he anticipated? What
do you think happened? Well, I have no idea.
I mean, even Ronald Reagan, right? Ronald Reagan,
when he was elected, and he was a very principled
conservative, right? Unlike Trump. You know,
he was he really talked a walk the walk, not
just talk the talk. And he was a big supporter
of Barry Goldwater, who didn't make it, you know,
when he ran against Lyndon Johnson. But when
Reagan came in, he really wanted to shrink government.
I mean, he campaigned about getting rid of the
Department of Education, the Department of Energy.
I forget. He really wanted to shrink government
and cut spending. But he was never able to do
that. He was able to cut taxes, but he wasn't
able to cut spending. Trump never really campaigned.
on cutting spending he didn't want to talk about
that because he didn't want to alienate any voters
so he just talked about cutting taxes and he
did you know officially cut taxes but he actually
raised taxes that is the important thing that
you have to recognize is that government spending
is taxation and what happened to government spending
under trump even before it went through the moon
with coven 19 and we'll get to all the coven
stuff but even before then Trump signed on to
all kinds of increases in government spending,
more spending on the military, more spending
welfare, huge increases in government spending.
Those are tax hikes. Now, Trump cut income taxes,
but the income tax is just one way the government
pays for spending because all government spending
has to be paid for by the public. One way or
another, we don't get any government for free.
Everything the government does costs us money.
So every dime they spend. represents taxation
in some form and what they've been doing is they've
been printing money right the federal reserve
prints money and in fact right now the federal
reserve is printing about 55 cents out of every
federal dollar that's spent so more money is
being printed and spent than collected in taxation
but all that printing all that spending that
is being paid for by a printing pass we don't
get that for free there is a cost see when the
government takes our money through an income
tax. They take my money that I earned and they
give it to somebody else who didn't earn it.
And now that person spends the money. But because
I don't have it, I can't spend it. I can't invest
it or save it. I don't have it anymore. The government
took it from me in taxes. But if the government
doesn't take it from me, they just print money
and they hand it to somebody else who didn't
earn it and didn't do any work and produce any
goods or provide any services. They just got
money from the government. That still costs me.
Because what happens is when that money is spent
in a circulation, it bids up prices. And so prices
are now higher than they would have been had
that new money not been printed. And so now everything
that I want to buy costs more than it otherwise
would have cost. Either the prices went up or
it prevented prices from going down. And so now
my purchasing power has been diminished. And
so either the government takes your money through
an income tax or a sales tax or something, or
they take your purchasing power. through an inflation
tax and so that's what trump decided to do to
pay for government through inflation rather than
taxation but what we know from history is that
is the most expensive way to pay for government
and in fact it hits hardest the middle class
and the poor right because the rich have a lot
of assets they have a lot of debt where they
not consumer debt like on a credit card but where
they borrow money to accumulate income producing
property uh to buy companies, stocks, things
like that. And so inflation helps those people,
right? If you have debt to buy assets, inflation
wipes out your debt. But if you're just saving
money and working for a living and getting a
paycheck, the inflation tax is very heavy on
you. And that inflation tax is going to get much,
much higher under Biden, right? For all the talk
about all these big government programs, and
we'll talk about that, that he wants to pay for
by taxing the rich, the rich aren't going to
pay those taxes. Most of the money is going to
come from the poor and the middle class through
the inflation tax. But getting back to, you know,
where I think Trump went wrong. So Trump gets
into office and he had promised to make America
great again. And the reason that America is not
great is because government is too big. Right.
When America was great. Right. We had very, very
small government. Government was an afterthought.
On all levels, maybe state, federal, and local,
maybe it was 5 % of GDP. We didn't have an income
tax, corporate or personal. We didn't have Social
Security. We didn't have minimum wage or any
of these laws. We had a very, very tiny government.
And because government was tiny, the economy
got very big. We had all kinds of freedom. And
because we were free, we were very productive.
And the living standards were rising. And we
were eradicating poverty. We were making all
kinds of strides. The greatest economy in the
history of the world was produced from the freest
people in the history of the world, which was
the United States. Well, Trump wanted to make
America great again. The only way to do that
would be to shrink government, cut government
spending and free up all those resources back
into the private sector so that they can be used
efficiently again. But the problem is, how do
you cut government spending when every single
program has its own constituency that benefits
from it? And so once you're there, you can't
cut anything unless you're willing to stand up
to all the politicians and the special interest
groups. And apparently Trump wasn't willing to
do that. I mean, Trump, when he when he got into
office, became a politician or maybe he was one
when he ran for office. But he was more concerned
about getting reelected, which is a shame because
he probably won't. He should have used the bully
pulpit and used his office right away. to level
with the American public, to look them square
in the eye and tell them that government is too
big and spending needs to be cut, including things
like Social Security and Medicare and all these
sacred cows that nobody would gore. Trump should
have been the guy to do it. He should have said
the buck stops with me. I don't care if I don't
have a second term. And he should have vetoed
all of those bills that he signed. He never should
have agreed to allowing the debt ceiling to go
up. He should have enforced that debt. So we
now have twenty six and a half trillion of debt.
Right. When he came into office, it was just
under 20 trillion. So we've already added six
and a half trillion since he became president.
I would not have allowed the debt ceiling to
go up at all. Not one nickel. And I would have
forced the government to cut government spending.
And that's what Trump should have done. And,
you know, but but he didn't want to do it because
he was more concerned about the politics of it.
Would you say I would? Are you running for president?
Are you ready to do this? I'm going to say what
I would have done had I been Trump. Are you ready
to do this, Peter? Are you ready to do this?
I'm not running. But we need someone who understands.
I could be the first Puerto Rican president.
Did you ever watch the Sweathogs? Yes, sure.
Yeah, I'm on Epstein. I'm a Puerto Rican Jew.
Epstein played my brother in an episode of NewsRadio.
Really? Yes. He played my older brother, who
was a priest, who beat us up. It was fun. Gabriel
Kaplan's show. That was the 1970s. I could be
a Puerto Rican Jew. Yes, you could. I can't vote.
I can't vote for the president, but I can run.
In fact, I could be the only... person elected
president who couldn't vote for himself. That's
hilarious. Now, I'm so glad you're on here today
because you have a unique ability to illuminate
all these areas of finance and taxing and Wall
Street that most people just simply don't have
the understanding or the knowledge to lay out
for the lay person like myself. I appreciate
that. And you've got a great audience. And I'm
hoping to clear up a lot of misconception out
there because I've been saying, you know, the
only thing that spreads faster than the coronavirus
is ignorance about economics, about about finance.
And so I want to clear that up. And, you know,
a good place to get started is to really talk
about the current state of the U .S. economy
and where we were. Right. leading up to COVID
-19. Because, you know, Donald Trump is out there
claiming that we had this great economy, right,
that just got screwed up by COVID -19. We had
to shut it down. But we didn't. We had an enormous
bubble. There was nothing great about it other
than the size of the bubble. And the reason that
it collapsed so quickly was because what happened
was COVID -19 was a pin that tricked that bubble.
In fact, the bubble was already deflating before
COVID. It started to deflate in the fourth quarter
of 2019. That's when the Federal Reserve stopped
hiking interest rates and then started cutting
them again and started doing quantitative easing
again. And then COVID -19 came. It was like a
giant spear that put a gaping hole into a bubble
that was already deflating. Can I pause you there,
Peter? Why did that happen? Why did that process
take place before COVID -19? Well, because again,
Trump was very critical. of Janet Yellen during
the Obama years. Rightly so, because Yellen kept
interest rates artificially low to make Obama
look good by propping up the stock market and
the real estate market with cheap money. But
doing that is what prevented a real recovery
that would have benefited Main Street. And so
those are the people that Trump was tapping into.
The guys on Main Street that were getting screwed
as the guys on Wall Street were being enriched.
by by bad monetary policy so fed was trump was
right to criticize yellen and then he didn't
want to reappoint her because supposedly he was
going to reappoint somebody that would do the
right thing but as powell was doing the right
thing albeit too slowly powell started to correct
the problem by raising interest rates and shrinking
the balance sheet but when that began to impact
the markets Trump was like, oh, he started criticizing
him. You know, we're going to fire you. You're
a terrible Fed chairman. He was doing the right
thing. We need higher interest rates. And unfortunately,
higher interest rates means the stock market
is going to go down. I mean, that's just the
reality. The real estate market is going to go
down. You know, we're addicted to cheap money
like a drug addict is addicted to heroin. But
if you've got a guy addicted to heroin. The solution
isn't more heroin, so he stays high. The solution
is, okay, no more heroin, and now you're going
to go through withdrawal. So the economy started
to go through withdrawal as the Fed was withdrawing
that cheap money, and Trump was like, no, I don't
want withdrawal. Who's going to vote for me if
everybody's hung up? I want to party again. I
want the stock market at record highs. And so
because we did this, we never actually had a
real recovery. We just put more air. into the
bubble. But, you know, when when COVID started,
this is important to understand. So COVID -19
hits. And all of a sudden, you know, and I don't
even know, I've seen some of your discussions
on on the podcast about COVID itself and whether
or not the threat is being exaggerated. Is it
really as big a health threat as a lot of people
say? And, you know, I'm not an expert there.
You know, I tend to I tend to always be suspicious
of government. And I kind of think it's being
exaggerated like most stuff. But I'm not a doctor.
I'm not an immunologist. And so, you know, let's
just take them at their word that that it's as
bad as they say. I just want to focus on the
economics of it. But so when COVID hits. And
people, you know, people start, you know, staying
home and they're not going out. And, you know,
and people start losing their jobs and the economy
starts tanking. Right. The government comes in
as if it's the government's job to rescue the
economy. And the politicians say, in fact, Trump
himself said, oh, we're at war. I'm a wartime
president. This is like World War Two. Remember
that? Remember what he said? Yes. Yeah, it's
World War Two. And we have to sacrifice. Americans
have to sacrifice to beat. COVID -19 the way
a prior generation sacrificed to beat Nazi Germany,
Imperial Japan. We have to sacrifice. Except
what we're doing now is the complete opposite
of the actual sacrifice that Americans were asked
to make during World War II. Apart from the fact
that 16 million young men went off to war and
risked their lives, apart from that sacrifice,
The people that didn't go off to war, they actually
sacrificed. Because 1941, when the war started,
not even 10 % of Americans paid any income tax
at all. Fewer than 10%. 1942, there was a victory
tax. And after the victory tax, more than a third
of Americans began paying income taxes. They
weren't paying any income taxes before the war.
All of a sudden, they're paying income taxes.
And in 1942... They created the withholding tax,
which Americans, you know, we pay it today. You
think it was always there. Up until 1942, nobody
had any income taxes withheld from their pay.
What happened was if you were among the few people
who actually paid income taxes, you didn't write
a check until April 15th of the following year.
You made no payments. You made no quarterly payments.
You had no payroll withholding. That started
as part of the victory tax. So massive tax increases
on Americans. In addition to that, the U .S.
government told Americans, we need more money
than this. You need to loan us money. And so
the Treasury started selling these war bonds
to the public. And middle class Americans bought
the equivalent of trillions of dollars of war
bonds. So the government taxed the middle class
and borrowed from the middle class to pay for
the war. And this is in 1940. We just went through
the Great Depression. So these are Americans
that just lived through a 10 -year depression,
the worst period in American history, yet they
had enough money to loan trillions to the U .S.
government and to pay much higher taxes than
they were paying before. And in addition, nobody
got a bailout. No businesses, if you ran a restaurant
and nobody was coming to your restaurant because
your customers were off fighting a war. And the
ones that weren't fighting a war were now working
harder to pay higher taxes. And people weren't
taking vacations. They weren't going to theaters.
They weren't staying in hotels. But none of these
small business owners got one nickel from the
U .S. government. The government didn't loan
money to anybody. It didn't bail anybody out.
What are we doing now? The opposite. The government
is cutting people's taxes. The government is
loaning. Hold on. Wasn't that, but that's a different
time, right? This is a time of a united country
that is facing a global threat from a tyrannical
German Nazi regime. It's a different situation
than dealing with a virus. Well, first of all,
it's Trump and other people that made the comparison
to World War II. I understand that. This was
a global threat. This was a real war. This was
actually worse, believe me. COVID -19 is not
as bad as having a world war. Not even close.
I would much rather fight a disease than to fight
Hitler and Japan. I mean, this is not as bad
as what people had to deal with in the 40s. Would
you agree with that? Of course. Yeah, of course.
Okay. But the concept is the same. Government
had to spend a lot of money fighting this war.
And where did it get the money? It had to get
it from the people, right? And if people were...
disrupted. A lot of people lost money because
of World War II. It wasn't their fault. If you
ran a restaurant and now your customers weren't
coming because they went to fight the war, it
wasn't your fault that your business dried up.
Can I pause you for a second? Do you think that,
first of all, we had to do something to stop
the spread of COVID -19? I agree. I agree. But
the government didn't have to bail anybody out.
We have a problem. We have to deal with our issues.
Peter, we have a problem listening to each other.
Let me explain it to the people that are listening.
We're on Skype, and unfortunately, when you talk
and I talk, we can't kind of hear each other.
And you're not wearing headphones, so it's weird.
Well, I got an earpiece. Okay, okay. But there's
a little bit of a delay. So just let me – this
is one of the reasons why I stress it's so much
better to do these things in person. And I understand
that it's impossible for you to do that right
now. When you have a situation like COVID -19
and these medical experts say, hey, we've got
to do something. We've got to shut down most
– of what we do we've got to shut down a lot
of businesses we've got to shut down schools
and make things remotely there's going to be
a situation where there's going to be a lot of
people that are not going to be able to work
but we want to keep these businesses alive this
is a very unique situation and this is not like
any situation we've ever faced in my lifetime
What do you think could have been done that would
have been a better solution than what the government
did in terms of bailouts, in terms of telling
people to stay home? Like what could have been
done? Yeah, well, first of all, you have to remember
that the government doesn't have any money, right?
The government only has money it takes from the
people one way or another. Right. Grover Cleveland,
who is a president in the late 19th century,
he was quoted. He had a good quote. He said.
While the people must support the government,
the government should never support the people.
And so I agree. Let's say we have to shut down
the economy temporarily. People should have enough
savings to weather the storm. Businesses should
have enough savings to weather the storm, like
they did in 1940. Average Americans had lots
of money in the bank. They weren't loaded up
with debt. They didn't have credit card debt.
They didn't have student loans. They didn't have
car loans. They were solvent. Even after a Great
Depression, they were solvent. We lived in a
bubble economy. Everybody was paycheck to paycheck.
Nobody had anything. Businesses couldn't survive
if their revenue stopped. Workers couldn't pay
their rent if they didn't get their salary. That's
not right. That's part of the bubble, right?
So the fact that we were so ill -prepared for
a rainy day is because we had no rainy day fund.
We should have been able to deal with this on
our own, right? Now, we're not getting a freebie
from the government. Peter, we're at now, we
basically locked down somewhere around March.
We're four and a half months in or four months
in now. That's a long rainy day. Four months
is a third of a year. There's very few human
beings that have enough money. To last four months.
I'm sure you do and I do. But most folks out
there listening don't have enough money to live
and feed their families and pay their mortgage
or pay their rent and pay their car payments
for four months. That's a long fucking time.
Right. But they're going to end up suffering
much more in a year or two or three as a result
of the massive inflation that has been unleashed
to finance. All the bailouts and the stimulus.
But don't you agree that it's a good idea to
do something just to keep everyone alive, just
to keep businesses alive, just to keep people
in their homes, just to keep. Well, first of
all, first of all, a lot of the businesses should
have failed even before. I mean, the Fed has
been keeping a lot of businesses afloat. OK,
should have failed years ago. Hold on. Let's
talk about COVID would have been the final nail
in their coffins. And now they've got another
lifeline. But these businesses are damaging the
economy. See, businesses that are not profitable
in a free market should shut down because they're
squandering resources. Can I pause you? Let's
talk about my business. I'm in the business of
comedy. Comedy clubs are suffering terribly right
now. Because there's very few states that are
allowing people to go out, wear masks, socially
distance and go to comedy clubs. L .A. is not
allowing any of that. And they haven't since
March. The comedy store, which is my home, has
been shut down since March. All these clubs have
been shut down all across the country through
no fault of their own. It's not like these people.
It doesn't matter that it's not their fault.
I understand that. But it's not like they've
done anything wrong. It's the state of California.
If the state of California is going to order
businesses shut down and then the state of California
wants to provide some kind of economic relief,
let California do it and let California impose
higher taxes on whoever they think should fund
it. We can't just use the Federal Reserve as
a piggy bank. The Federal Reserve cure is going
to do more damage than the coronavirus disease.
And I think if the states knew. that they would
have to bear the economic consequences of their
own decision making, they would do a better cost
benefit analysis on what they shut down and how
they do it. Right now, every state is like, oh,
let's shut everything down and the federal government
is going to bail everybody out. So we don't care
if we put people out of work because they're
going to get these enhanced benefits from the
U .S. government. Oh, we don't care if we shut
down businesses because they're going to get
these PPP grants from the government. But if
the federal government let every state know,
look, you make a decision. You handle this the
way you want and you pay for it. Right. So you
do a cost benefit analysis because thinking that
everything is free, that is the problem. I understand.
We are doing so much damage to the economy. People
have no idea. We are going to get such a massive
economic collapse, far worse than what I thought
was coming. You know, when I did your show last
few times, this is going to be much worse. We
are compounding the mistakes of the past with
much bigger mistakes. I mean, if you think it's
bad now with the civil unrest. it's going to
get a lot worse when there's no food. I agree.
When we run out of stuff. Can I pause you? Yeah.
Last time you were on, you were predicting the
bubble of commercial real estate and a lot of
other issues. What do you think is different
about that situation now? And how much does that
compound what we're dealing with currently? Well,
obviously, the coronavirus has made you know,
the problem worse for commercial real estate.
I mean, commercial real estate is going to get
killed for so many reasons. It was in trouble,
I think, before COVID. But COVID, again, just
accelerated the process. But obviously, if you
are a retailer, you know, no one's coming into
your store, your restaurant, if you got a gym,
if you got a movie theater. So you're not collecting
any rent. So you want to default. And so now
your landlord's not getting paid. And he might
have a mortgage and now he can't pay because
he's not getting rent. You've got all these office
buildings where a lot of offices now, like my
company, almost all my people are working from
home now. I mean, I got some people that come
into the office, but I got a lot of people working
from home. And so a lot of companies are thinking,
hey, I don't need all this commercial space.
I don't need this big an office anymore because
more of my people are working from home. So now
you have pressure. on the rent. So that was already
happening. You had WeWork that blew up and they
had rented all this space that was now on the
market for sublease. But all this was inflated
by the Fed. Keeping interest rates artificially
low to prop up these bubbles made that real estate
bubble very, very big. And so now it's going
to be far more disruptive when it pops. But it's
got to pop. Trying to prevent bubbles from deflating
by trying to blow more air into them. Just makes
it worse. Maybe you delay the day of reckoning
a little bit, but you make the day of reckoning
much worse because now you have additional mistakes
that you need to reckon with. I understand. So
it's essentially like a pull off the Band -Aid
situation. And we have to have a healing moment.
You have to let things collapse that need to
collapse that should have been done a long time
ago because of mismanagement. Yeah, and you have
to understand that we're ripping the Band -Aid
off a wound that the government inflicted us
with in the first place. Yes. The free market
never would have screwed us up this much. It
was government interference in the free market.
That's why, you know, capitalism gets a bad name.
You know, that's why, you know, we talk about
on one of these earlier podcasts about when I
went to Occupy Wall Street years ago and I went
down to Zuccotti Park because you had all these
young protesters. who were blaming Wall Street
for the bailouts and for the financial crisis.
And I would say, no, it's not Wall Street that
took the bailouts. Blame the government for providing
the bailouts, for making them available. Blame
the Federal Reserve for funding all this and
inflating the bubble. Yes. But, you know, the
interesting thing, if I tried to do that today,
if I tried to go to one of these protests, one
of these Black Lives Matter protests or anything,
you think they'd be civil? You think I could
do that? You think I could walk into a crowd
of hundreds of people? And take the opposite
position and walk out of there? They would beat
you to death. They would beat you to death, 100%.
Yeah, so, I mean, it really shows you the loss
of civility in just, you know, 10 years. Well,
it's not just a loss of civility. It's a loss
of opportunity and the loss of faith in the system
and the future if we stay on the same path. That's
part of the problem. People don't... believe
that if we keep going the way we are going, that
things will work out in an equitable, fair and
balanced way. And that's where young people today.
The important point I wanted to make, though,
too, when I went back to America in 1940, was
to show that the American middle class, you know,
was real strong. They could afford to pay for
World War Two. And to provide for their own families,
you know, because now they keep comparing World
War II now because we're running up as much debt
now as we ran up during World War II. But we
had the capacity to pay it back back then. That
was the point. The debt went way down. Debt to
GDP went way down in the decades after World
War II because Americans had the capacity to
pay back what they borrowed to fight the war.
We don't have that capacity now. I mean, the
debt's never going to go down. The debt's going
to keep on rising and rising and rising until
the dollar implodes. See, that is the real crisis
that we're headed for. It's going to be a collapse
in the value of the dollar because right now
we're printing money. And the government is sending
it out and people are able to buy stuff with
it. Right. But that's going to come to an end
because the world is no longer going to accept
U .S. dollars as the reserve currency. See, that's
the unique privilege that we've enjoyed. for
several generations now, and that we've abused
to the point where we're going to lose it. See,
right now, we're able to print money, and we
use that money we print to buy all sorts of stuff
that the rest of the world produces, that we
didn't have to produce ourselves. But producing
goods requires capital, it requires labor, it
requires land, it requires real resources. But
we get all the stuff for free. We just create
money, and here you go, and they send us stuff.
And then... To make it even better for us, they
take the money that we send them, the paper,
and they loan it right back to us at very low
rates of interest. They buy our bonds. They buy
our mortgage -backed securities. So Americans
get to spend all this borrowed money that they
didn't save. We get to consume all this stuff
that we didn't produce. And so we have an artificially
elevated standard of living. We live beyond our
means. That's going to come to an end because
foreigners are going to realize. that we're never
going to stop printing money, that the deficits
are never going to be brought under control,
that we're going to have QE infinity, zero percent
interest rates in perpetuity. And then they're
not going to want the dollar anymore. And then
the dollar is going to crash and we're not going
to be able to import anything anymore. And the
only things we're going to be able to buy is
the stuff we make ourselves, except we don't
make much stuff anymore. So prices are going
to go through the roof. That is the real economic
consequences. And so it's not going to matter
that the government sends you a stimulus check
if you can't buy anything with it. Because the
government can't create purchasing power. They
can print all the money they want, but none of
that printed money adds any purchasing power.
They don't grow any food. They don't produce
any products, nothing. They just print money.
Right. But there is if if the government gives
money to people, they will be able to buy things
and people still are making things. But now,
but when the dollar's value collapses, see, you
can't keep printing trillions and trillions of
dollars. and expect the dollars not to lose purchasing
power. Because paper money, all that does is
that allows us to divvy up what we produce. You
have all these Americans now who used to be working,
doing something. They were helping to produce
a product. They were providing a service. And
now they're just at home collecting a check.
So they're getting money for nothing. They didn't
put anything into the pot. But now they want
to take out of the pot with their money. There's
nothing in the pot. Right. So now the prices
of everything in that pot have to go up because
there's no there's no extra stuff. There's just
more buying. Peter, as what's been I'm sorry,
as an economic expert, what would you have done
differently if you could have advised this government?
And we were let's let's go back to March when
everything was shutting down. What would you
have advised differently? Again, first of all,
I would allow I would allow the states. to be
responsible for their own policy. So you decide
what you want to do in your own state as far
as what businesses you want to close, what you
want to do, and you pay for it. And if you think
that certain businesses or individuals need to
get money, then the state will provide it based
on local taxpayers. But what I would have done
on the federal level is I would have dramatically
cut government spending, even after COVID -19,
because government spending, is a drain on the
private sector. It's a drag on the economy. It's
the government taking resources away from the
private sector where they would be used efficiently
and squander them in the public sector. Can I
pause you for a second there? It's a burden.
Can I pause you? I would have lightened the burden.
What would you have, when you say lightened the
burden, what would you have cut and how would
you do that? When you think about all the different
aspects of the government that are essential,
things that need to be in place, what would you
have cut? Most of the government money is transfer
payments where the government takes money from
one person and gives it to somebody else. I mean,
the government shouldn't be doing that. That's
not why we have a government in America. Government
is here to secure our rights. Can you explain
that? To protect our property, not steal it.
Can you explain that? What do you mean by transfer
payments? Well, that's when the government takes
money from one person through taxation and just
hands it to somebody else or now through inflation.
The government just prints money and gives it
to people that it thinks needs it. But what do
you do? That's not what government. But let's
look at the PPP. Let's let's look at that or
the CARES Act. Right. OK, look at all the damage
that the CARES Act did to the economy. So first
of all, let's look at the payroll protection
plan that everybody wants to brag about. Right.
What a complete fraud this was. I said from day
one, this would be a cesspool of fraud. You know,
we found out last week that there were 600. approximately
hedge funds, private equity funds, asset management
companies that got PPP loans. And they're not
even loans because you don't have to pay them
back. So it's free money, right? And I could
have gotten one of those loans if I wanted to.
I just didn't want to lie to qualify. Can you
stop right there? Can you stop right there? 600
firms did. Can you stop right there? Most people
don't know. that these hedge funds got this money.
Most people think this money went out to American
businesses to keep these businesses from collapsing
because we need restaurants, we need movie theaters,
and all these various American businesses that
we assume this money went to prevent from collapsing.
Explain that, please. Yeah, well, you didn't
have to. All you had to do is apply. And according
to the Small Business Administration, as long
as the money you asked for was less than two
million, they didn't ask any question. Because
in theory, you were supposed to need the money,
right? You were supposed to have some disruption.
Like if you ran a restaurant and your restaurant
is shut down, you don't have any revenue. There's
nobody eating in your restaurant. So you have
no money coming in. So how do you pay your waiters?
How do you pay your busboys? You have no money.
So the government was like, oh, we'll give you
some money. As long as you don't fire your workers,
we'll give you some money to pay your workers.
But a company like mine, right? I have two or
three companies that I could have taken money
from, and I didn't. But you look at my asset
management company, Europe Pacific Asset Management.
I'm making more money now than I was before COVID.
And I assume that that's the case with most.
firms that are in my industry. Can you explain
how our revenue was never shut down? How is that
possible? How are you making more money? Because
all I do is charge fees to manage people's money.
I didn't stop managing their money because of
COVID. I mean, we just keep on managing it and
we keep on billing for our fees. We bill every
quarter. We weren't even shut down. Even in Puerto
Rico, where they were shutting down everything,
I was considered an essential business, financial
services. People could come to my office, even
though I let a lot of them work from home. And
remember, all of our customers, they talk to
us on the phone. So when I want to talk to a
customer, the customer doesn't drive down to
my office. They just call me on the phone. And
so there's no physical contact. So there isn't
any disruption. All of the revenues that the
hedge funds were getting, that the asset management
companies, All that revenue continued unabated.
Not a single job was in jeopardy, right? All
these companies that got government money. See,
the government wants to pretend that these loans
save jobs. They didn't save these jobs. These
jobs were never in jeopardy of being lost. So
all that happened is that it's a windfall. The
asset management companies, the hedge funds,
they got extra money from the government to make
their profits even bigger. On top of the fact
that the Federal Reserve printed all this money,
which inflated asset prices, we charge fees on
those assets. And so as the Fed inflates assets,
Wall Street has inflated fees. We make more money.
It was a double bailout for a lot of these Wall
Street firms. So that was one of the frauds.
But even in the case where the government is
actually giving companies, giving money to companies
that need it, right, that otherwise would have
fired their workers. Look, we don't know what
the future demand for restaurants and bars and
theaters is going to be. I personally believe
that demand is gonna be diminished for a long
time. It's not just a temporary thing. I don't
think it's gonna come back to the way it was,
especially since the way it was was a bubble.
See, that's what people don't get. They say,
we wanna go back to the way it was before COVID.
We can't reflate that bubble. We have to start
spending less. We have to save more. And that
means we can't go out as often. We need to build
up our savings again because we've depleted it.
So there's gonna be less demand for restaurants.
There's going to be less demand for a lot of
things. We have to let these companies downsize.
Look at the airlines. Americans are going to
be flying less. There's no question in my mind
that domestic air travel is going to be down
for many, many years, even after COVID is cured.
So the airlines have to shrink. They have to
lay people off. They have to be profitable. They
have to effectively utilize resources. So to
the extent that the government. prevents businesses
from laying off workers that really should be
laid off, they ultimately compromise the viability
of those businesses. And in the long run, they
may end up putting people out of business that
would have stayed in business. Maybe somebody
had 100 employees, and maybe they could have
downsized to 30 employees, and at least those
30 employees would have a job. But instead, they
keep those employees on the payroll. for long
enough to the point where the whole company has
to go out of business and now everybody loses
their job. Now, when you say hedge funds were
able to receive PPE and you're saying that they
did so while they were still earning profits
and there wasn't any diminishment of their income,
why were they able to receive PPP? Well, that's
the problem with government programs. There's
always fraud. Look, whenever the government is
giving out free money, people try to qualify
for it. Now, you know, you can read the fine
print that I know a lot of other people could
say, hey, you know, Peter had said, as long as
your business was affected by COVID and look,
yes, my business was affected. I mean, people
worked at home that used to work in the office.
But you had to you had to basically testify or
certify that the money was necessary to support
the ongoing operations of your business, which
for most of these firms, it wasn't. And you also
had to say that you had no other source of capital,
which, again. People were lying. But the government
basically said, if you ask for less than $2 million,
we're going to look the other way. We're not
going to vet these loans. But hold on. Hold on.
Did they actually say that? Did they actually
say that? They're non -recourse. There's no collateral.
So a lot of businesses that were going to fail
anyway and that were going to lay off all their
workers took the money. They're still going to
lay off all their workers. But now they're not
going to have to pay the money back because they're
going to bankrupt their business. And once your
business is bankrupt, even though you fire all
your workers, you're under no obligation to repay
the loan. OK, did they actually say that if you
ask for less than two million dollars, we're
going to look the other way? Like, where are
you taking this from? Well, what it says is we'll
assume that you're filing an honest claim. Right.
Because they're saying that if you if you ask
for more than two million dollars, we're going
to vet the claim and we're going to take a look
at your situation. But it said on the Small Business
Administration that we'll just assume you're
being honest. So if you ask for less than $2
million, we'll assume you're being honest. Well,
the minute they say it, ah, shit, I'm going to
lie. That's the problem. So many people lie.
Whenever the government has a program, it gets
abused. That's part of the problem with government
spending. Everybody tries to qualify. Just like
the unemployment benefits, this crazy deal with
the enhanced unemployment benefits. You have
a lot of people now. who are being paid twice
as much not to work as they were earning when
they were working. Now, you create that kind
of incentive. You have a lot of people now, the
last thing they want is to go back to work because
they're making so much more money not working
than they were when they were working. And most
of these people, if you have a job where you're
making $10, $15 an hour, $20 an hour, chances
are you don't love your job. I mean, you're not
working because you enjoy what you're doing.
You're working because you need the money. You
need to pay the bills. Well, if you can make
the same amount of money or more without working,
I mean, who's not going to go for that? I mean,
I don't blame anybody for not wanting to work
if the government is paying you more not to work
than what your boss was paying you to work. And,
of course, you know, there's more than just working.
You have to get up early in the morning. You've
got to fight traffic. You know, you've got other
expenses. You've got to put your kids in daycare.
You've got to dry clean your clothes. Women can
spend an hour in the morning doing their hair,
doing makeup. They don't get paid for that, but
they've got to do all that and add all that to
commute time. I mean, so there's a big cost of
working. And then, of course, you give up all
your leisure. When you're at work, you can't
have fun. The government now has created a situation
where people are getting paid to have fun. So,
I mean, how do you end that? What politician
is now going to take this away? I understand
what you're saying about that. And I do agree
with that. And that was very shocking to me that
people that I know who have friends that are
on unemployment don't want the economy to reopen
because they would lose money. And I was like,
my God, what a conundrum. I know people that
can't hire people. You can't get people to work.
Why should you work? I get more money not working.
So you know what some people do? They work under
the table. They get cash. They want to pretend
they're unemployed so they can keep getting those
benefits. And then they take a job under the
table for cash. That's what's going on. I believe
that. But that doesn't make sense with hedge
funds. With hedge funds, we're talking about
small businesses. Does a hedge fund qualify as
a small business? And we're talking about them
receiving PPP, and as long as it's under $2 million,
there's no questions asked. If they can't demonstrate
a loss of income, how are they receiving this
money, and what should have been done differently?
Look, as soon as I heard about the program, I
went online and I got the application just to
see what it was. You don't have to prove anything.
All you have to do is you have to have fewer
than 500 employees, which is pretty much everybody.
I mean, most of us in this business don't have
500 employees. And then what you did is you just
listed your payroll. And they gave you three
months of your payroll. So whatever you pay all
your workers. Right. And it was capped. So if
you had some people that were making a million
dollars a year, they wouldn't cover the whole
thing. Right. It was like I forget what the limit
was, maybe 100 grand a year or something like
that. But what they did is you could take all
of your payroll for all your employees and then
take three months worth of it. And the government
said, we will give you a loan. No questions asked
for three months of your payroll. And as long
as you don't fire more than a certain percentage
of those people, you never have to pay the money
back. So it didn't say anything about proving
that you actually needed it, proving that your
revenue went down. So the government opened up
an opportunity for all sorts of people. I mean,
I could have had a few hundred thousand dollars
if I wanted it. All I had to do is lie and claim
I needed the money. But, you know, look, as much
as I don't want the government to have money.
I'm already living in Puerto Rico, so I'm not
paying taxes. People can say I'm a hypocrite
because I'm living in Puerto Rico, but I'm not
committing fraud. I'm being honest. Anybody that
wants to pay less taxes is free to move to Puerto
Rico, but I didn't want to commit fraud. I didn't
want to sign a document and attest to the fact
that I needed the money when I knew I didn't.
What business owner needs the money like that?
If you're managing other people's money for a
living and you can't handle you know, a downturn
in your business, then what business do you have
managing people's money if you can't even manage
your own? I can't believe that anything under
500 employees is a small business. That seems
like a regular business. Like, what the fuck
world are we living in where 500 employees or
less is a small business? That seems like a business.
Yeah, well, believe me, they're not like big
corporations that have thousands and thousands.
And also, there was other criteria, like how
many locations you can have. I can't remember
all of it. But, you know, a lot of the people
that applied. were just self -employed people.
And so they were businesses of one. And so they
got their own pay. But you didn't have to prove
because a lot of people's businesses were not
disrupted. Because if you didn't work with the
public in a public setting, if you just sat at
a desk and worked on a computer and a telephone,
your business wasn't disrupted. So why do you
need any government money? But the point is,
even if you needed the money, The federal government
shouldn't supply it by printing money. People
don't realize how much damage we have done to
this economy. The U .S. government, the Federal
Reserve, is doing far more damage than COVID
-19. That's what people don't get. We're going
to reap the whirlwind for what the government
is sowing. Well, kudos to you for not taking
that money. I really appreciate that. Giving
your understanding of what's legal and not legal
and the fact you're willing to move all the way
to Puerto Rico to avoid federal income taxes.
Kudos to you. I didn't only do it for the taxes.
I did it for lifestyle and all that kind of stuff,
too. I mean, the taxes make it affordable. I
understand. There are other reasons. I was going
to move to Florida. I was going to go down there,
and so I ended up going to Puerto Rico. Listen
to me. Fuck Florida. Saw that shit off and sell
it to the Russians. I'm happy that you didn't
take that money. I really am. I want to understand
what would have been the best maneuver if the
federal government had like, let's imagine that
you and Trump were besties. And he's like, hey,
Peter Schiff, what should I do? What should I
do? We're going to have to do something. We have
this COVID -19 situation. We're going to have
to protect the citizens of the United States
from this. weird, novel coronavirus that we don't
really totally understand at the moment, especially
in February and March. We really didn't understand
what the consequences of this virus were. What
do you think they should have done differently?
Yeah. Well, again, first of all, we have to acknowledge
how weak the economy was before COVID, right?
That we didn't have a great economy. The economy
was a mess, that people were broke, right? Everybody
was living paycheck to paycheck. Everybody was
levered up. Can I stop you there? Can I stop
you there? Yeah, but we have to recognize the
fact that it was pouring out and we had nothing
saved for a rainy day. So we need to acknowledge
the fact and we have to understand why were we
so broke? Why was everybody so levered up in
the first place? This is so frustrating to do
these things with a delay. I'm so sorry. But
when Trump talks about COVID, he talks about
it being this interruption for this world's greatest
economy. This thing that he had created during
his administration. What's wrong with that narrative?
Well, I said, that's a lie. You know, that's
one of the things that frustrates me about Trump
is pretending the economy was great. Because
somehow he thinks that because he's president,
the economy should be great. I mean, that might
be his own ego. Hey, I'm the president, so we
must have a great economy. But we don't. It's
the same economy he inherited from Obama, only
more highly leveraged. And it's all the debt.
It's all the corporate debt, all the individual
debt, all the government debt. That's why we're
so ill prepared for any crisis, whether it's
COVID -19 or anything else. We were broke before
this happened. I said, it's raining out and we've
got no rated day fund. So the first thing we
have to acknowledge is why was the economy so
screwed up? How did it get screwed up? And that
was because of the Fed. keeping interest rates
too low, discouraging people from saving, rewarding
people from borrowing, putting too much emphasis
on the stock market and not enough on the real
economy, and government spending too much money,
government making us less productive by spending
too much and regulating too much and subsidizing
too much. So we screwed up the economy. So what
we needed to recognize is, okay, we need to reverse
all that, right? And yes, now we have an extra
reason to do that because now we have COVID -19.
But we need to restore sound money. We need to
let interest rates go up. We need to let asset
prices go down. And we have to build up our ability
to deal with COVID -19. Instead, we're just printing
even more money. We're juicing up the economy
with even more debt. We're pushing up the Nasdaq
to new highs. This is not productive. This is
making the problem worse that dwarfs COVID -19.
But I agree. Because of all the mistakes of the
past, because of all the bad monetary and fiscal
policy, we were not prepared for this crisis.
We weren't prepared for any crisis. Like, we
couldn't fight World War II again like we fought
in 1940. We're a shadow of a former self. We
don't have the industrial might. We don't have
the savings. So we don't have the tax base for
the government to tap into to actually pay for
a war. We just have a printing press. And we
can only use that because foreigners are dumb
enough to accept our money. And, you know, they're
not going to be accepting it much longer. So
this is bad news, right? Any way you shake it,
America has a day of reckoning. And I would have
rather had Trump level with the public and say,
you know what? The day of reckoning is now. And
yes, I know COVID -19 is bad, but we got a lot
of other problems, too. And we have to deal with
it. We got to pay the piper. right if they were
saying nobody has to suffer nobody has to sacrifice
you know what we have to suffer we have to sacrifice
i'm not happy about that but it's better than
the alternative which is kicking the can down
the road again so that we have to suffer even
worse which is that's the deal with the devil
that we made uh so we we should have you know
made government smaller And look, maybe we maybe
we should have dealt with the crisis more like
Sweden. You know, I mean, a lot of people are
giving shit to Sweden, but, you know, Sweden
didn't want to make that bargain. They didn't
want to print all this money. They didn't. You
know, they bore their own costs. And so they
had a different approach that didn't do as much
economic damage. And, you know, our economy was
so screwed up. I mean, the Swedish economy is
in much better shape than ours. And not because
they're socialists like Bernie Sanders thinks,
because they're not. Because they're actually
more capitalist than we are. Sweden's more capitalist
than we are? Yeah. You know, the rich pay lower
percentage of taxes in Sweden than we do. You
know, they don't even have an inheritance tax.
There's no estate tax in Sweden. Really? Zero.
No, yeah. I would have never guessed that. Sweden
became a very rich country because they were
a capitalist country. And once they became very
rich, they experimented with socialism. which
was an unfortunate experiment because there's
no reason to experiment with socialism because
every time it's tried, it's failed. But they
decided to try it. And of course it failed. And
so they had to start rolling it back once they
saw all the damage that the welfare state in
Sweden was creating. So they started dialing
it back and they've gone a long way. They haven't
eradicated it completely. But, you know, and
if you look at the tax proposals by Joe Biden.
I mean, we're going to go so far above Sweden
as far as the confiscatory levels of taxation.
I mean, look what Joe Biden wants to do with
the income tax, the corporate tax and the personal
tax. He wants to raise the corporate tax from
21 to 28. But then he wants to raise the dividend
tax from 24, where it is now, to about 40 something
ish. I forget the exact amount. But corporations
are taxed twice, right? They're taxed when they
earn the money and then when they distribute
it to the owners. So you have to add up both
rates. But then he also wants to apply social
security taxes to those dividends, not just the
Medicare taxes. So he basically wants to take
the corporate, the effective corporate tax rate
up from about 40 percent where it is now to about
60 percent. That's where he wants it. Which is
a huge increase. It's a massive number. And it
really is fascism because the government ends
up owning all these businesses. Because if you
take more than half of the income of a business,
I mean, you basically own that business. I mean,
it's your business. You're getting more than
half the income. So the government is really
nationalizing these corporations through taxation.
But it's not the corporations. It's the individual
shareholders. They're the ones that own the business.
That's a very important way to look at it. The
way you look at it there where half of the income
is going to someone else. I wanted to stop you
for a second, but I wanted to hear that rant.
There's a connection that people make. They connect
socialism to empathy, socialism to kindness,
socialism to people that are less greedy, socialism
to people that are more interested in a community.
This is coming from a person like myself who
has no economic... 86 % of what I know about
the economic world is from you. So I'm an idiot,
all right? I listen to people who are experts.
But when I think of the idea of community and
of helping people out, I think of the idea like
what's wrong with some socialist policies? We
have the fire department. That's a socialist
policy. Nobody wants a fire department to be
only for people who have money. We want the fire
department to be for the community. It doesn't
matter if you have zero dollars. if your house
is on fire, we're all going to pay for the fire
department to come put it out. We all have a
vested interest in keeping your house from burning
down and you dying and the whole community from
burning, right? We have these certain agreements.
Well, there's a big difference between that type
of program. But hold on a second. You're right.
You're 100 % right. But it's the idea behind
it that comes from idealistic people. And I'm
putting myself in this category. I am often naive
and idealistic, but also, ruthless in my assessment
of human character. It's a big contradiction
because I think there's a lot of people that
really could do more than they're doing and they
know they could and they want to make excuses
and it's part of the reason why throughout history
they've left people behind. There's certain people
that if you had a tribe and you had to make it
over this mountain and Bob is fucking lazy and
he's like, you got to carry me, bro. I'm like,
Bob, we're both walking. Come on, man. Bob's
not supposed to make it. He's not supposed to
make it. We want them to make it, but we don't
want our kids to die. We don't want our mom to
starve. We got to keep going. Bob, you lazy fuck.
Come on, bro. There's always been people like
Bob, and it's part of the problem with humans.
So I'm a contradiction. But hold on a second.
The best way to take care of them. I understand,
but I'm going to give you – that's what attracts
people to socialist ideas. It's just that they're
nice, that they want everybody to do better.
Socialist ideas are very appealing. I get that.
And that's why they're very popular with young
people who don't know any better. They don't
have enough life experience to understand. Peter
Schiff, this is the bridge. Because a guy like
you who really understands economics can talk
to a guy like me and we can explain it to everybody.
Because otherwise we just have – and I'm definitely
not arguing with you, but your argument versus
people who disagree with you's argument. You
have this. But there's an opportunity to make
this bridge and for us to understand each other.
Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. I think I'm here
to make that bridge. And I want to help people
evolve from being socialist to being capitalist
because capitalists aren't mean. Yes. They just
understand the unintended consequences of these
well -intentioned programs when that the left
is in favor of. But they don't understand that
they actually backfire and make all the problems
that they're trying to solve worse. It isn't
a part of the problem with your fire department.
Isn't the part when you have a local fire department.
Right. That fire department is there to put out
any fire at any house, right? So everybody in
the community benefits from having a fire department.
It's not there just for one person. It's for
everybody in the community. We're talking about
where the government takes money specifically
from one person and gives it to somebody else
for their specific benefit because they think
they need it for whatever problem, whatever reason
they need the money. Agreed. This would be like
Bob wanting money from you. Our lazy friend Bob
we were talking about. I am all in favor of private
charity. I'm all in favor of people voluntarily
helping out their fellow man. And Americans will
do that. I mean, we didn't do that. We did that
a lot more in the past when the government didn't
take so much of our income and taxes. We had
a lot more money. Like I mentioned Grover Cleveland,
when he said that quote about the government
not supporting the people, there was a bill to
appropriate $10 ,000. for some farmers in Texas
who had been hit by a drought. And Grover Cleveland
vetoed the bill because he said, look, there's
nothing in the Constitution that allows the government
to give money to people just because they need
it. I mean, this is not right. We can't take
money from the taxpayers and just give it to
somebody because we feel they're in need. And
so he vetoed that bill. But after he vetoed it,
the farmers got more than 10 times that amount
of money in private donations from individual
Americans. who wanted to help out. That's good.
When you give your own money at a charitable
giving, that is great. That is noble. But when
you steal money from somebody else and give that
money, there's no nobility in that. That's theft.
I don't care what you do with the money after
you steal it. Stealing is wrong. I see what you're
saying. I like what you're saying. Is there an
opportunity where these two things can merge,
where people can realize, like, hey, we need
less taxes and more charitable donations, and
it's both possible, and you would probably save
money, and we could figure out a way to distribute
that money in an equitable way that you have
control over. So if there's certain charities
that you really feel strongly about, like cancer
research. The people who are likely, likely to
give the most to charity are wealthier people
because they have more discretionary income.
And if you have a lot of wealthy people who are
paying 40, 50 percent taxes, and I was doing
that, I was paying about half of my money in
taxes before I moved to Puerto Rico. I didn't
have any special tax breaks. I paid about almost
half my money in taxes. So because half the money
went to the government, I had a lot less money
that I could be charitable with. I mean, I had
I had all the money I needed to take care of
myself. The money that was taken away from me
by government was money that I would have invested
to help grow the economy. Or maybe I could have
used it in direct charitable giving. And the
other benefit of when you allow more private
sector charity. Private sector charities are
much more efficient because they really care
about the people they're trying to help. Governments
don't give a damn when you have a government
program. That program exists to benefit the bureaucracy
of the program. So they squander the money. And
the last thing they want to do is end poverty
because then there's no longer a need for their
program. They want to perpetuate dependency.
You know, if you go back to the great society
in the 1960s, if you look at the declining poverty
rates in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, you know, leading
up to the 1960s when we had the, you know, all
the civil rights and all this big war on poverty.
We were beating poverty. We were kicking poverty's
butt. Poverty rates were really falling in this
country until the government declared war on
poverty. And then poverty won. That is the problem.
The government created poverty. They didn't eliminate
it. Well, what should they have done differently?
They should have allowed free market capitalism
to keep lifting people out of poverty. Look,
the reason people are poor is because they're
not earning enough money. Well, how do people
earn more money? They become more productive.
How do you get more productive? You acquire skills
and you have capital. Your employer provides
you with capital that makes your labor more productive.
And because you're more productive, you can earn
more money. And that lifts you out of poverty.
So it's free market capitalism that lifts people
out of poverty. And so the smaller the government
is, the more capitalism we have, the more wealth
we can create, the more employment opportunities
we can create. Government just gets in the way.
Can I pause you for a second? So what you're
saying is there's an opportunity to be compassionate
without the demand for you being compassionate
by the federal government. And if people had
to spend less money on the government, there's
opportunities for them to donate more money to
charities. And this would be a better way of
managing our money and our charity and all these
things. Yes, it's much more efficient voluntary
giving. Look, when people give money voluntarily,
their own money, they don't want it to be squandered.
They don't want it to be wasted. I mean, whenever
you give the charities, you always look at the
charity and you want to know, hey, if I give
you a thousand dollars. How much of it is used
in bureaucracy and how much goes to the recipients?
And you can look at their books and you can say,
hey, we're going to take 10 cents to run the
charity. And actually, 90 cents is going to go
to the people that we're trying to help. Right.
But in the government, it's the other way around.
They take in a dollar and only 10 cents actually
goes to the people that need the money. The rest
of it. is absorbed in the bureaucracy. There's
no incentive to be efficient. Charities have
to be efficient or nobody will give them money.
Government has no incentive to be efficient because
they take your money. There's no voluntary interaction
there. They take your money from you and so they
can be as inefficient as possible. But then the
private charity wants to help people out so they
no longer need the charity. The government wants
to keep people impoverished so they're in constant
need of the charity because that way they can
get their vote. The government knows if they
steal money from Peter and pay Paul, that they'll
always get Paul's vote. And that's what they're
concerned about. They want to keep people entrapped
in poverty so that they'll be reliable votes.
Is that what they want, or do they just want
to maintain this system that they have control
over? Because if they just released everything
to the public sector, or the private sector,
but if they just release everything from policing
to the water purification, everything they do,
if they just went, instead of the government
handling everything, they just allowed it to
the private sector. How would we manage whether
or not they were doing the good of the people
overall? That's what everybody's worried about.
What everybody's worried about is big business
assuming this monopolistic, gigantic monolith
that crushes everything before it and pollutes
the rivers. That's what we're worried about.
So the idea of the government stepping in for
business is to keep business from only growing
and not growing with concern for the consequences
of all the other people around it. That's where
everybody gets real suspicious, right? Wouldn't
you agree? And they shouldn't be. And this is
something that always kind of bothers me, that
people just attribute sinister motives to private
businessmen, yet they think politicians are angels
and just there to do the Lord's work. I mean,
there's just as many greedy people who go into
politics as who go into business. In fact, probably
more. But there's a big difference. See, I have
protection because if a greedy person goes into
private business. His greed can only help me,
right? Because the way a business grows and gets
bigger is by selling more products and services.
Well, why would I buy those products and services?
I have to like them. I have to think they're
better than the products or services that some
other businesses is offering me. And I have to
value those goods and services more than the
money I'm voluntarily exchanging. to get them.
So the beauty of the free market is that you
have all these businesses who may be greedy competing
with one another to best satisfy my desires,
my needs to make me happy. And if they don't
make me happy, if they can't satisfy my disease,
I don't buy their products. Agreed. They have
to win me over. They have to woo me and seduce
me to get my business. So I don't have to be
worried. about a greedy businessman who wants
to make money because he can only make money
by making my life better. On the other hand,
you take a greedy person and you give them the
power of government, they can make my life miserable.
They don't have to get me to voluntarily do anything.
They just take my money by brute force and they
just do to me whatever they want. So where you
have to fear greed and power is when it's in
government, where it can actually harm you. Not
in the private sector. We're going to help you.
Now, I know someone's going to say, well, what
if there's a criminal? What if somebody is stealing
my money? Yes, they're violating the law. And
we need government to protect me from thieves.
But businessmen that are honestly convincing
me without fraud or deception, but are being
honest and I'm buying their product, their greed
doesn't help me. It doesn't hurt me. It only
helps me. I think I think we're in agreement
on a lot of this, especially what you said that
we need government to protect people from a business
getting out of control and demonizing people.
But it doesn't mean that capitalism in of itself
is a demonic thing, a bad thing. It's a good
thing. No. And you think we're doing now, but
all the Wall Street bailouts, that's not capitalism.
Right. Right. Banks that were over leveraged
in 2008 should have been allowed to fail. Investors
should have lost money. None of this is capitalism.
Bailing out companies that should fail is not
capitalism. Do you think it's corruption? Do
you think it's a crime? Like when you say it's
not capitalism, then what is it? Well, I mean,
you can call it statism, a crony capitalism,
fascism. So, I mean, there's a lot of ways you
can describe it, corporatism, but it's not free
enterprise. It's not capitalism. Failure is an
important part of capitalism. Because if you
look at the science of economics, what is economics
about? It's about how do you satisfy unlimited
human desires, unlimited demand with limited
resources. We have scarce resources. They're
not infinite. We have so much land, labor, capital.
And so we have to figure out how to organize
our resources in a way to satisfy as many demands
as we can. businesses compete with each other
for those resources and the businesses that combine
them in a way that they can generate a profit
that means that they're adding value that means
that the goods they're producing are more valuable
than the resources they consumed in the process
of producing them so that's a good thing but
when businesses are taking resources and their
products cannot recover the cost of production
they are squandering our resources And those
businesses need to fail so those resources can
be freed up to be utilized more effectively by
some other entrepreneur doing something else.
So we need companies that can't generate a profit
to go bankrupt. The profit and loss is the thermometer
that tells you if you're doing the right thing.
If you're making a profit, keep doing it because
you're creating value. If you're losing money,
then stop. You're destroying value. Your business
is making us poorer. So the market is trying
to function. so that we can have an optimal amount
of economic growth. Then you have the government
coming in and deciding to subsidize businesses
that it doesn't want to fail. Because, oh, we
might lose some votes. You see, there's a concept
about the seen and the unseen. And politicians
are concerned about what you can see. Because
when the politician bails out a company and they
save the jobs of these workers, everybody can
see that and they can take credit for the jobs
they supposedly save. But what you don't see
are the jobs that were never created or might
have got destroyed because the government misdirected
capital from where the market would have put
it to where the government wants it. So we destroy
productive jobs in order to save nonproductive
jobs. That makes us poor. But the politician
takes credit for the good that he supposedly
does, but he doesn't get any of the blame for
the bad that nobody can actually attribute to
his action. there could be a cap on the amount
of like we all agree that everyone there needs
to be some regulations right in terms of environmental
impact and a bunch of different things that corporations
can do wrong with regard to fucking over their
workers or whatever they're doing wrong there
has to be some government you can't just allow
people to thrive and do whatever they want to
do you have to have some sort of regulations
right so who decides you can't violate people's
rights but give me an example when you're saying
there has to be some rules to protect workers
from their employers. Like, what are you talking
about there in particular? Well, I mean, if you
have a company that gets enormous, just absolutely
enormous, and they control all the jobs in the
region, they could really dictate how much money
people get per hour, and they could make it really
poor and terrible. And you could say that people
have the right to just leave or find something
else or create a better future. That is possible.
I mean, they can do that. But if something controls
an enormous area. Not because it had some special
monopoly granted to it by the government. It
didn't get a big government subsidy. It was just
commercially effective. The government didn't
have a law making it illegal to compete. If this
company got so big in a free market, that meant
it got really big because it was just providing
the best services. to its customers, but also
if it was able to employ that many people, it
must have been offering those people a good deal.
Otherwise, they wouldn't have taken the job,
right? Because businesses compete for two things.
That's not necessarily true. That's not necessarily
true. Because if there was no other jobs available,
if you live in a place... No, but there would
have been. There would have been. There would
have been some jobs originally. I mean, there's
no way that there's just one business in the
entire community. But if you're born into this
and you're 16 years old, you're shit out of luck.
And that corporation does have control over you.
If you're if you're born into it, if you're 16
years old, OK, you're in high school and you
get your first job and the only job is at Walmart.
You're working at Walmart. If that's all you
have. You know, it's assuming Walmart is the
only potential employer. Now, I would say that
that's not going to be the case. It's usually
the reason that you're not getting a job when
you're 16 is probably because the minimum wage
is making you unemployable. And we can get into
that discussion because I'd like to talk about
minimum wage. But first. Let's talk about how
businesses compete for workers, just like they
compete for customers. Right. Because I have
three businesses. I hire people. Right. And I
just can't pay my workers, you know, a tiny wage
because they're not going to work for me. But
don't you agree there should be a minimum wage
that are in demand? There's plenty of people
that are bidding against me. For those same workers.
Right. And so I have to pay the market rate.
I can't just underpay them. They'll go work someplace
else. I understand. But do you think there should
be a minimum wage? No, there should be zero minimum
wage. Wow. That's interesting. We've discussed
that before. I know. But the reason that I don't
think there should be a minimum wage is because
I think individuals should be free to accept
employment opportunities that they want to accept.
See, the minimum wage doesn't hurt businesses.
It hurts individuals that have low skills. And
that's always the problem. When you have people
defending the minimum wage or opposing minimum
wage hikes, they always say, oh, it's going to
hurt businesses because it's going to increase
their labor costs. You know what? It doesn't
necessarily increase their labor costs because
they don't hire as many workers. They hire skilled
workers instead of unskilled workers. They automate.
They find ways to do without workers. They outsource.
They hire people in other countries. The minimum
wage law hurts the most low skilled people. And
they tend to be young people, teenagers, minorities.
That's who get get hit the hardest. You know,
before we had all these programs, you know, that
the black teenage unemployment rate once upon
a time was actually lower than the white teenage
unemployment rate. Now it's like double or triple
as high. But before we had all these laws, it
was actually lower. Because they got disproportionately
impacted by the minimum wage law, which prices
them out of work. I mean, basically, you're a
16 -year -old kid. When were these laws implemented?
Well, the minimum wage didn't really start until
the Great Depression. So it started, but it didn't
apply to – there were a lot of jobs that were
exempted from it. So it really started kicking
in more in the 1960s, and then it really started.
Can I ask you this? Has anybody ever tried to
have no minimum wage as an experiment, like maybe
a town or a city? Well, first of all, we had
no minimum wage before it was implemented, and
we had much lower rates of unemployment, real
unemployment. But you look at countries that
don't have the minimum wage, there's not that
many left anymore. I mean, most countries have
made this mistake because the minimum wage is
good politics because it sounds good, right?
If you're for the minimum wage, it sounds like
you care. Oh, yeah. Is anybody against people
working for low wages? Oh, okay. So it sounds
good. But all you do is you destroy jobs and
you destroy employment opportunities. But there
are countries like Singapore, for an example,
has no minimum wage. But wait a minute. Don't
they cane you? Don't they cane you? Singapore,
don't they cane you if you graffiti shit? Right?
That may not be the best place to quote. I know
they frown on that over there. That was a famous
place. But we're not talking about that. I understand.
We're talking about minimum wage. I mean, there's
other countries that have some kind of weird
minimum, but it's not the same as ours. I feel
like... I feel like there could be a minimum
wage and we still hold the same values that you're
talking about in terms of competition to keep
people from getting fucking shitty with their
employees. Have you ever seen an employer yell
at their employees or be in one of those corporate
gathering situations where someone has a lot
of control over their employees? Now imagine
if that guy was making all the money and he was
only giving these employees a dollar an hour
and making them live in poverty. But it's not
slavery. I agree with you. If you like it, if
you think it's the best alternative, look, people
quit all the time because they can get a better
job. Right. So by definition, if the best job
I can get is the job I have and nobody will offer
to pay me more money, then I'm not underpaid.
If nobody will pay me more, it's a free open
market. There's all kinds of employers out there.
And remember, you're free to work for yourself.
Nobody forces anybody to accept a job. Everybody
can start their own business. Everybody can be
self -employed. Right. So if you don't think
your boss is paying you what you're worth, then
quit and start your own business. I feel I completely
feel where you're coming from. But couldn't we
just say that there's a level of pain if you
make someone work 40 hours a week? and they don't
have enough money for food or shelter after 40
hours a week. Couldn't we say that maybe that
is not a good level? Like, let's just, as a community,
so everybody agrees we're all competing, but
let's make it so that if someone is under your
employment, and it's a human being, and they're
doing 40 hours of work every week, they should
have enough money for food and shelter. That
seems reasonable as a community. I know what
you're saying in terms – I know what you're saying
from like this economic standpoint. I know what
you're saying. Like free market capitalism, let
it ride. Figure it out. Get paid what you're
worth. And if you don't feel like you're getting
paid enough, quit. I understand what you're saying.
But wouldn't it be nice – Let's backtrack then.
Okay. Go ahead. So in general, right, if you
don't have any skills, right – If the most you're
able to earn at your job and let's say there's
no minimum wage and you're just a young kid and
you don't have any skills. Right. And the most
you can earn is four dollars an hour. That's
because, again, it's you're paid based on your
productivity. Businesses are there to make a
profit for the owner of the business because
that businessman is taking a lot of risk. He's
bearing the potential for losing money. Of course,
he has to, you know. And so a businessman is
not going to hire somebody. If they're not adding
value to the business. So if somebody can add
$5 of value to my business, I'm not going to
pay him $7 .25 an hour because I'm going to lose
$2 .25 for every hour that person works. So the
only way I can hire somebody who is providing
$5 worth of value is if I can pay him $4. Then
I can make $1 for every hour he works. The business
is not there to lose money. They're there to
make money. So let's say you're a young kid.
And you can only provide $5 worth of value. And
so you get a job for $4 and your employer makes
a buck an hour off of you. Chances are you don't
have a family. You're young. You're living with
your parents. You don't have rent. You don't
have, you know, so making a little bit of money
is okay. You just need some spending money to
go to a movies or maybe go out on a date or something.
You don't need a lot of money. What's important
is the work experience, having that job, developing
some skills, getting your foot in the door. Step
on that first ladder of the job, the rung of
the job ladder so that by the time you're 30
and you're ready to settle down and get married
and have kids, you've now increased your skills
to the point that you can make $50 an hour where
you can afford to support a family. If you try
to tell a business that you need to pay somebody
who has no skills. and adds minimal economic
value. If you have to pay that person enough
so that you can support a family, nobody's going
to hire that person. All you're doing is pricing
those people out of a job. So it's really good
to say it's not right if somebody is working
and only making $10 an hour and they can't support
a family. It's not the employer's responsibility.
It's not his fault that he's hiring somebody
that doesn't have a lot of skills. And if you
impose that minimum wage, all you're doing is
making it impossible. for this guy to get a job.
It really, what the minimum wage law is, is it
makes it illegal for you to work unless you have
enough, a certain amount of productivity. So
if the minimum wage is $15 an hour, what that
means is if you only have $10 an hour work of
productivity, right? You can't work. That you
have to turn down every offer of employment you
get. If someone offers you $10, $12, that's illegal.
You can't accept those jobs, even if you want
them. Even if you think that that's the beginning.
The first step on a road to higher wages in the
future, the government says, no, you can't accept
that unless you can find somebody who will pay
you fifteen dollars an hour. It is illegal for
you to have a job. And that is not good economic
policy. That is. And it's not even compassionate
because now you've taken away all the honest
ways that somebody can make a living and they
end up turning to crime a lot of times. I see
what you're saying. And that actually makes a
lot more sense the way you're framing it about
like if you only provide ten dollars worth of.
value to the company, why should they pay you
$15? They won't. I agree with you. I see what
you're saying. I see what you're saying. You're
making me think about it in a different way for
sure. I think a lot of people would say, well,
if they're really only providing $10 worth of
value, do you really need that person? Well,
yeah, sure. I mean, $10 worth of value is still
value. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I mean,
look, think of all these. Look, I get very frustrated
all the time. When I make phone calls and I can't
talk to a human being, I have to talk to a computer.
And the reason for this is because we've priced
the human beings out of the market. You know
what else is interesting, Peter? What's horrible
about this for all of us is when you do do that
and you're dealing with these… goddamn computers.
It's like we're losing part of our connection
when it comes to doing business. If I do business
with a company, I like to be able to call them
up. I'd love it if there's a thing when I'm doing
something. I like to make contact with the person.
If everything is being done through automated
systems, it's getting weirder and weirder for
us. More and more detached. Do you remember the
original Back to the Future movie? Yes. Remember
when... When he goes back to 1955 for the first
time and he sees that car pull into a gas station
and like five people descend on the car and start
washing the windows, checking the tires, doing
all that stuff. What happened to all those people?
Because that's what gas stations were like before
the minimum wage destroyed all those jobs. I
worked in a gas station. Did you ever work in
a gas station? I never did. But look, I delivered
groceries. I delivered pizza. I worked in a shoe
store. I had all kinds of jobs in high school.
that probably kids don't have those opportunities
today. They can't get it. But going back to the
gas station, do you like pumping your own gas?
I do because I used to work at a gas station
and I know what happens when you let kids pump
your fucking gas. I don't want anybody to open
it. They spill it. They fuck up. Some weirdo
has got a highly flammable fluid next to a piece
of your property and they get to stick it in
there. I think if we didn't have a minimum wage,
You'd have a lot more kids working mostly for
tips. We used to tip. If you remember, I'm still
old enough to remember tipping the guy that pumped
my gas. Yes, they check your tires, the whole
deal. But you know what used to happen? These
young kids that got low -paying jobs as pump
jockeys, what they would do between fill -ups
is they would go and hang out with the mechanic.
It was there working on cars and they would get
a free education in auto mechanics and they would
actually learn a trade. Have you ever seen these
guys? I mean, we'd have more auto mechanics.
They get a skill. Some of these guys would end
up, you know, opening up their own service stations.
Look, it's good to allow young people to have
employment opportunities, not to price them out
of the market by just. By mandating a minimum
wage, I mean the minimum wage benefits high -skilled
workers, unions, by eliminating competition with
younger, lower -skilled workers. You're forcing
employers to hire high -skilled people instead
of a more numerous number of lower -skilled people.
That's what happened. Have you ever seen the
movie The Hustler with Paul Newman and Jackie
Gleason? Yeah, it was a great movie. In fact,
I saw the remake with – what's his name? Tom
Cruise. Tom Cruise. Yeah. But the point, my point
is they're both good movies. They're great movies.
But in the beginning of the hustler, Paul Newman
pulls into a gas station. And he tells the guy,
check the air in the tires, check the oil, do
all this. And the guy, fill them up, mister.
They go out there and they do all kinds of shit
for you. It's not just as simple as they pump
your gas. They pump your gas, check your tires,
check your fluids. They do everything. But there
was less people with cars back then, too. Yeah,
and that kept the cars. Cars were in better shape
because every time you went into a gas station,
somebody made sure you had enough oil. They made
sure your tire pressure was good. Well, cars
are more reliable today. Those cars were bullshit.
Those cars, you had to check the air. You had
to check the tires. It was bleeding oil. But
it's just interesting to see the difference.
Look, they used to have ushers in movie theaters.
Yep, I remember that. They would just show you
to your seat. The service sector has really been
obliterated. All these low skill. Look, they're
working on these kiosks now. Look, they're going
to get rid of all the workers anyway. Ultimately,
all these fast food restaurants, there's not
going to be anybody there. They're all going
to look like self -serve gas stations. You're
going to go in. You're going to order off your
smartphone. And the food is going to come down
a chute through some machine. There's going to
be nobody there. I worry we're going to lose
movie theaters. I really worry about that. Movie
theaters, that we're going to lose movie theaters?
Well, we're probably – look, we lost drive -ins.
Some of them are coming back, but once upon a
time we had all these drive -ins. They're coming
back now because of COVID. People love them now.
It's a great idea. It's a great way to be socially
distant and still watch a movie with a bunch
of other people. Yeah, but look, that's – things
evolve. I mean now – I mean look, people have
giant screen TVs now. They don't cost a lot of
money. That's the beauty of capitalism. I remember
the first kind of like high -def TV I ever saw.
I went into a department store or not the part
like a good guys, one of those electronic stores.
And I remember looking at it. I was amazed because
I was like, oh, this is like looking through
a window. It was like because people don't realize
how bad the pictures used to be unless you actually
see an old TV. You know, one of these with the
tubes compared to what we look at now. I mean,
you can't even watch one of those things. But,
you know, we didn't know how bad it was until
something better came along. But when I first
saw that, I was like, oh, my God, this is incredible.
But I didn't buy it because it was $10 ,000.
And that was a lot of money to me back then when
I was in my 20s. A $10 ,000 TV, I could buy a
car for that. I wasn't going to spend that much
money on a TV. Now you get those TVs for $500,
$600. And they're internet enabled and they're
smart and they do all this stuff. So now people
don't need to go to the theater as often because
they have good quality at home. They've got all
kinds of streaming services they can see. And
so if we're evolving, to the point where more
people are chilling at home with Netflix, then
the theaters have to evolve. I mean, and you
know what? So we can use those resources. We
can do other things. I mean, businesses have
to find other ways to make me spend my hard -earned
money at their establishment. But by the way,
the example of a television set, because you
hear this all the time. I mean, it's a little
bit of a tangent, but it's an important topic.
So the reason that I didn't buy that ten thousand
dollar tv it wasn't because i didn't want it
it's because i couldn't afford it right but some
people were rich enough to afford it and they
bought those tvs and because some rich people
bought those ten thousand dollar tvs the companies
that made them got money so they can figure out
how to make them make them cheaper and then the
price came down to five thousand and then more
people bought them And as more people bought
them, the companies got bigger and they invested
in R &D and they found out how to make them better
and cheaper. And so the free market reduces prices.
And when prices go down, we buy more stuff. But
now you have all these politicians trying to
sell us a bill of goods that we need inflation,
that the Federal Reserve has to make sure that
prices go up every year. Because if prices don't
go up, they say we won't buy anything. We're
all going to sit back and wait for lower prices,
which is a bunch of nonsense. People buy televisions.
They buy computers. They buy cell phones. They
know that if they wait a year or two, they'll
be cheaper, but they don't wait because the only
time you wait to buy something is if you can't
afford it, and then you wait until you can't
afford it. The first cell phone, you ever watch
the movie Wall Street? Yes, I talk about that
scene all the time, him walking on the beach
with that brick. Yeah, money never sleeps. Those
cell phones, those cell phones were like, I don't
know, five grand back then. And if you made a
phone call, it, the phone call, it was like a
dollar every, every 30 seconds. Yeah. I remember
my first cell phone. I would like, I would have
to get off the phone so quickly because I didn't
want to spend the money. And I would tell people,
I would wait till the evening or the weekends
to make the calls because it was too expensive
to make the call, you know, during the, during
the day. I remember those days roaming. Remember
roaming? Yeah. You get charged. Crazy money.
I mean, you got charged extra long distance.
I mean, it used to cost a lot of money to dial
long distance. I mean, there's no such thing.
I can call I can call somebody in Asia, you know,
on WhatsApp and it's free and I can see them.
Yeah. This is the beauty of capitalism. Yeah.
The free market brought the prices down and now
more people own these products. So the government
is trying to tell us that we need rising prices.
We don't. Businesses make more money when prices
go down. Because when prices go down, their costs
go down. And what's important is not the price,
but the margin, the difference between your cost
and your price. And the lower the price, the
more customers you have. And if you sell more
units, you make more money. So this is all nonsense.
But that's the beauty of capitalism. It makes
things cheaper and better. Government makes things
worse and more expensive. Every service that
the government provides you with, whether it's
education or health care, it gets more expensive.
And the quality goes down. Everything we get
from private sector gets cheaper and the quality
goes up. That's why we want to limit what government
does to the smallest amount of stuff. And let
the free market do everything else. Because it's
going to do it better. I see what you're saying.
And it sounds beautiful if it was that simple.
Do you think it's really possible to manage this
whole country that way? Genuinely? Should we
have some regulation just to get from being a
complete asshole? Because you have these politicians
that want to get votes. And the way they get
votes is they promise to steal something from
one person and give it to the person who votes
for them. That's the problem. And then in order
to stay in power, governments basically take
what amounts to bribes from businesses to basically
protect them from competition or bail them out.
We've given the government too much power. And
you can't blame the private sector for trying
to get that power to be used in its advantage,
because if it doesn't do that, one of its competitors
will get it and it'll be used against like the
government is like the mafia. Right. And people
have to pay protection money for the government
to leave them alone and to and to kind of set
them against somebody else. You know, there's
a there's a great movie. I might as well plug
it because the sequel is coming out. But the
guys that produce it, they did a really good
job. It's the bubble movie. And if you go to
LetUsDisagree .com, you can see this movie. But
the guy that produced it, Jimmy Morrison, and
I remember he came to my office and filmed me.
He started it back in like 2010 or something
because he wanted to talk to the people that
predicted the 2008 financial crisis and get their
perspective on what the government did wrong.
And so this is a whole movie about the history
of how government has screwed stuff up, going
all the way back to the Great Depression. Because
there's a lot of misinformation out there about
why we had the Depression. People say, oh, it's
because we had too much capitalism. It's not.
It's because we had too much government. We had
a Depression in 1920 that nobody knows about
because it ended so quickly because the government
did nothing. The reason we had a Great Depression
in the 30s was because Herbert Hoover did the
same type of stuff that Trump is doing. Herbert
Hoover was the first big interventionist president
that started spending money to prime the pump
to try to make it better. We can't just sit back
and allow people to lose their jobs. And so Hoover
intervened in the economy and helped create the
Great Depression. And then Roosevelt came in
and just expanded on Hoover's failed programs.
And the Great Depression spanned the entire decade
of the 1930s. We didn't get out of the Depression
until 1945. when we ended the Second World War
and government finally started to get smaller.
But this movie goes all the way back to that,
and then it goes to the housing bubble. And so
it's a great movie to really show how the government
creates these problems with well -intentioned
programs. And the sequel is about to come out,
which is about the next crash, which is the one
that's coming, right? And it's coming soon. And
because of what we just did after COVID -19.
And the mood that we're in right now, I mean,
I am so terrified of what's coming in this country.
I mean, the popularity of socialism has risen
so dramatically because we have discredited capitalism
by preaching it and not practicing it. All the
damage that has been done to the economy in the
name of capitalism has given it a black eye.
You know, there are real problems in this country.
I'm very sympathetic with people on the left.
who point out some real problems. Now, racism
isn't one of them. Let's forget about that. But
there are a lot of problems. They're not because
of racism. They're because of too much government.
And those problems are real. And I want those
problems solved. But I understand that the solutions
that everybody has, we're going to make them
much worse. And the way we're going to finance
it, by printing money. See, we can pretend that
we're going to tax the rich. That's not going
to work. We've tried to tax the rich before.
In fact, People don't know this. The only reason
we have an income tax is because we were going
to tax the rich in 1913. That's the only reason.
And the government told the public, if we have
an income tax on Rockefeller and Carnegie and
Vanderbilt, and it was only going to be like
2%, tiny, little, teeny tax, the government said,
we'll eliminate tariffs. That's why we had an
income tax, to get rid of tariffs, because tariffs
were paid by the average American. I mean, people
back in 1913 were smart enough to know that consumers
paid tariffs. Donald Trump is trying to pretend
that the Chinese pay his tariffs. They don't.
Americans pay every tariff that Trump has imposed.
They're a tax on Americans. That's what they
are. And so what Woodrow Wilson said was, hey,
let's tax the rich with an income tax and we
can eliminate these tariffs that the average
people are paying. And we made that deal. But
now. Average Americans are paying income taxes
at levels far higher than anything contemplated
for Vanderbilt and Rockefeller and Carnegie.
So, look, taxing the rich doesn't work. And you
know what? A lot of the wealth that Bernie Sanders
and I know you had him on the show and, you know,
but a lot of the wealth that his ilk wants to
tax is going to be destroyed by the very taxes
that they want to impose. And they're not going
to collect anywhere near the revenue that they
think they're going to get. Everything is going
to cost much more than they think. And they're
going to have to pay for it by printing money.
And they're going to destroy the value of the
currency. If you're a person who was advising
a president or a governor how to fix an economically
disabled community, if you have a community that's
always had a history of poverty and crime and,
you know. drug use and gang use in these communities?
What would you do? How do you use this idea of
capitalism to fix something that clearly requires
some charity? It requires effort, right? First
of all, we can stop making the problem worse.
We can decriminalize drugs and end the war on
drugs. Just like the war on poverty, it's backfired.
The war on drugs is a failure. People, look,
in a free society, People have a right to consume
what they want to consume. Of course. Especially
if they want to do drugs, let them do drugs.
Right. And even if those drugs are harmful, adults
can make decisions and deal with the consequences
of their decisions. Especially the legal alternatives
are just as bad. Right. But the problem is when
you when you have the war on drugs and you and
you make it a crime, now you incentivize criminal
activity. Because whenever something is illegal,
it's much more expensive than it would be if
it were legal. And now you create this huge profit
opportunity for criminals to come in and fill
that demand because people still want the drugs.
They just can't buy them legally through a reputable
source. The only way they can get them is illegally
through a criminal. So this is the best example
of what we've created in Mexico. The best example
of that in Mexico, right? And then what you do.
is you increase the cost of the illegal drug.
So let's say there's a heroin addict and now
heroin is illegal. And so heroin is very expensive.
Well, where is this heroin addict going to get
the money to buy that heroin? He goes out and
steals. I mean, most of the robbery is committed
by drug addicts because they need the money to
buy their expensive heroin. Well, if heroin were
legal, it would be much cheaper and they wouldn't
have to steal. Of course. And, you know, we create
all these other crimes. I'm not saying that people
should do heroin. but they should be free to
make a decision, but they shouldn't have to rob
other people to support their habit. And, you
know, and when you when you when you have heroin,
when, you know, when it's illegal and there's
all these profits, you know, the drug guy, the
pusher has an incentive to get you hooked on
it. You know, I think it should, you know, maybe
you should have to go get a prescription for
it where the doctor can try to talk you out of
it. Hey, are you sure you want to use this stuff?
You know, this is going to really hurt you. I
mean, you really want to become an addict. Here's
some movies. Watch what happens to you. You know,
I mean, most people probably wouldn't necessarily
make that decision if they were confronted with
a lot of. evidence that shows why it's a very
disruptive way to live your life. But so we got
to get rid of the war on drugs, get rid of the
crime in that community. You know, you know,
that's number one. But then as far as if you've
got a lot of poor people, why are people poor?
Right. They're poor because they don't have the
skills or they can't earn enough money. They're
not productive enough to generate income above
the poverty line. So. If you have people who
are poor, the way to make them less poor is to
increase their productivity. One way, obviously,
is through education when they're young. But
I don't think government education is the solution
because I don't think government education is
educating anybody. I think government schools
are run for the benefit of the bureaucracy, of
the school districts, of the teachers unions.
I want free enterprise. I want vouchers or private
schools. to compete for educational dollars just
the way the cell phone companies are competing.
They want me to buy their cell phone instead
of somebody else's. They have to make it better
and they have to make it less expensive. So let's
have schools that are competing to be the best,
to offer the best education at the best value.
And we've got in these cities, we've got these
poor kids trapped in these failed government
schools. They waste their time. They learn nothing.
A lot of these kids graduate. They're not even
literate. I mean, they can't even do basic arithmetic.
Right, but in the current state of the world
right now, those people don't have any other
options. They don't have any other options because
the government has taken away that option. But
what do you do for them in real time? If you
have a guy who's in a lower income family and
he has a seven -year -old son and that kid is
going to school right now, how do you fix that
right now? If we had private schools, the kid
could go there. They couldn't afford that. What
if they couldn't afford the private schools?
For people who are really poor, private schools
would give out scholarships to kids that have
a lot of potential and their parents don't have
the money. But when the private sector educates
kids, it's cheaper. A lot of potential. A lot
of potential. That bothers me. Because what if
a kid doesn't have a lot of potential? Then he
doesn't get an education because he can't afford
a private school. Not every, but let's say a
kid doesn't have a lot of potential. A certain
type of education might be a waste. That kid
might be better off learning a trade. He might
be better off learning how to do something. How
would you know? Learn a trade. How would you
know while the kid is seven? If the kid's in
first grade and he's seven, how do you know whether
or not that kid has a lot of potential? That's
crazy. Seven is, I don't know, seven might be
a little young. Before you pull the plug on that
kid. The tuition. in first or second grade is
probably going to be less than in high school.
Because in order to teach a second grader, the
teacher doesn't have to know as much as a teacher
needs to know to teach a 10th grader. So you
wouldn't have to pay a second grade teacher as
much as a 10th grade teacher. See, the problem
in the government is everybody get paid the same,
whether they're a lousy teacher or a good teacher,
whether they're teaching a first grader or a
high school. It's just all based on seniority.
It's a crazy crackpot system that only the government
could devise. And it's only because they have
a captive audience. The people, the customers
don't have a choice. And the parents aren't even
involved. If the parents were actually writing
a check and paying for the education, they would
make sure the kids did the homework. They would
make sure they were getting their money's work.
When you get it for free, I mean, you just take
it for granted. So we need real education for
the kids that can benefit from it. We need to
get rid of the minimum wage law and all sorts
of occupational licensing laws and other things
that the government does that prevent people
from getting jobs or starting businesses. The
government is creating all sorts of barriers,
artificial barriers, that would not exist absent
government. You have a government. Let's say
if you want to be a florist. A lot of these states,
they have licenses. You have to get a license
to sell flowers. Why? Why can't I just buy flowers
from whoever I want? I mean, what's the worst
thing that can happen to me? I buy flowers from
a guy that doesn't know what he's doing. I get
a lousy arrangement. And so I don't go back.
Does the government have to protect me from getting
a bad floral arrangement? Well, look, the free
market's sorted out. If a guy's no good, he won't
have any customers. But we make it a lot harder.
There's all kinds of regulations and rules and
permits. Just let people go into business. I
mean, poor people can start businesses if we
didn't make it so expensive and so hard. And
if they can flourish in the marketplace, if they
can find customers, then great. If they're no
good at what they do, they're not going to have
any customers. Do you feel like this applies
to everything? This applies to all businesses
all the time? I mean, pretty much. I mean, we
don't need government, you know, having these
certifications. I mean, the private sector is
certainly capable. At this point, look, is it
consideration social media and holding people
accountable, like holding businesses accountable
for their actions? And like it's a different
world in terms of like the ability to like alert
consumers as to what's good and what's bad. It's
a different world when it comes to that kind
of thing. But people, especially now with the
Internet. Yeah. I mean, if a business isn't any
good, I mean, it's going to get a bad reputation
online. I mean, you're going to have consumer
reports. that go out and rate look look at what
happens like look at the banks right the banks
are completely regulated by the government right
everybody who opens up a bank account knows that
the government is guaranteeing their deposit
that wasn't always the case that the deposit
insurance didn't start until the 1930s because
of the bank failures in the great depression
which were minimal i mean fewer than two percent
of the banks actually failed There wasn't that
much in the way – and we had a lot of banks,
way more banks than we have now. Now we just
have these massive banks. Before the government
got involved, we had a very, very competitive
market. We had lots of little banks out there
taking deposits, making loans to entrepreneurs
to start businesses and employ people, not funding
Wall Street. Right, but do you remember the savings
and loans collapse? For sure you do, right? Yeah,
but that was – but those banks had government
guarantees. That was the problem. That was the
problem? Right. Before the government guaranteed
banks, before you would put your money in a bank,
you would do a little research, just like you
do research now before you buy a car. You try
to figure out which is the best bank for my money,
which bank is the safest, which bank isn't having
problem loans. And you would consult periodicals
or reviews online, not online, but you would
find out where the banks were good. And you would
put your money in that bank. And now the banks
would have to compete on reputation, on honesty,
on not being aggressive. And they knew that if
they made bad loans and they went bank and something
happened, nobody would bail them out. The government
wouldn't bail them out. Their deposits would
lose money. So we had a very sound banking system
back then. Today, it's very unsound. The banks
are doing all sorts of reckless things with their
deposits because no one gives a damn. Nobody
cares what the bank does with their money once
they deposit it because the government guarantees
a deposit. One bank is just as good as another.
I'm just going to put it whatever bank is closest
to me. And so the government has polluted the
entire system. They've taken away all the checks
and balances of a free market. And now we have
a banking system that is completely reckless.
It's all these banks that we bailed out in 08
are going to fail again and they're going to
need even bigger bailouts. We have a very fragile
system. And now they say, well, we can't let
one of these banks fail because it's so big.
Why is it so big? Because the government insured
their deposits and allowed them to get this big
and allowed them to have access to all this cheap
money from the Federal Reserve. I mean, we would
have a vibrant, competitive banking system if
the government got out of the way. We don't need
the government to do that. The banks are much
more reckless and much more corrupt now. because
of government than when we had free market forces
reigning them in. Why aren't there more people
saying what you're saying? Why is this a controversy?
There are. I mean, I'm not the only free market
guy out there. As I said, if you have a Jorgensen,
a libertarian candidate, she'll say some of this
stuff. No, I'm sure I could find it. We could
actually have a woman president if we vote for
her. I'm sure I could find it if I went looking
for it, Peter. What I'm saying is, why is this
not, you know, there's... There's various discussions
about how we should do things economically moving
forward. You hear it from a bunch of different
experts. I don't hear your perspective. Your
perspective is very ruthless and honest. And
some people would say maybe you're not considering
the people that really don't even have an opportunity
to get into this system and compete. They'll
be held down. They'll be put into this cloud.
I'm not being ruthless. I am being honest. But
I think I'm being fair and compassionate because
I understand. the damage that is being done in
the name of these programs. But the reason that
you don't see more people like me in positions
of power in government is because it's hard for
people like me to get a power position in government
because we're not beholden to a special interest.
You have so many special interests that are feeding
off the public trough, right? There's so much
corporate welfare in this country right now,
which is not capitalism. And so they're not going
to fund candidates that want to take away their
corporate welfare. They want to fund candidates
that are going to protect the status quo. And
the same thing with people. Look, the government
has crippled so many people that they think they
need a government crutch. You know, that's an
old Harry Brown quote that he ran for libertarian
president. He said the government is great at
crippling you and then handing you a crutch and
saying, you see, without me, you couldn't walk.
So so many people have been crippled and they
think they need that government crutch. I don't
want them to be crippled. I want them to walk
on their own, right, to be free. You know, I
wish, you know, we had the 4th of July just recently,
and, you know, we celebrate America. And, you
know, I talked on my old podcast, you know, about
what it means to be an American. And people just
don't appreciate what truly America was all about,
right? It's about freedom. It's about liberty
and individual opportunity. It's about being
left alone from government. and being able to
achieve all that you can achieve without anybody
standing in your way without anybody erecting
a roadblock and we created government in america
government didn't create us we you know we didn't
have a king that gave us some privileges we started
off as free people and we seeded some of our
sovereignty to a government to secure and protect
our rights and that's it and that's what made
americans rugged individuals right who were not
beholden or begging from government. They took
care of themselves and they took care of their
neighbors if their neighbor really needed help.
It wasn't about thief. It wasn't about trying
to get free stuff from the government. I mean,
look at all these kids now. What do they want?
Free this, free health care, free education,
all kinds of free stuff, free housing, guaranteed
jobs. That's not what America was about. All
of my grandparents. All four of my grandparents
came to this country broke, barely spoke any
English. Some of them were teenagers. They came
with nothing from poor countries and they came
to America. They had no welfare, no food stamps,
no minimum wage. They didn't they didn't want
anything from the government. They came to America
because they could be free of government. They
left the big governments that existed in Europe
to have American freedom. Because that's what
it meant to be an American. And it was unique.
And we created the wealthiest society in the
history of the world because of the freedom that
was uniquely American. So that's what we need
to restore. That's our birthright is to be free,
not to try to get the government to steal stuff
from our neighbors because we think we're entitled
to it. That's a hell of a rant right there, Peter
Schiff. I tell you what, that was very good.
I see your perspective. Wouldn't that make you
be proud to know that we're a nation of free
people? Can I say that your assessment – this
is what I'm seeing from you. You think that the
– The competition and the nature of the free
market would have been better off without the
intervention of the government. But you understand
the government was kind of put in there to regulate
things because they thought that people were
going to get out of hand and they wanted to make
sure that things were fair. But then the government
grew too big and became a problem with human
beings in general. And this is my perspective.
Human beings in general. But hold on a second.
Human beings in general have a problem when they
have power. power over other human beings. And
if that power is absolute, like the power of
the government, if that power is absolute, like
the power of the police, if that power is absolute,
that's where people have a problem because human
beings just in general have a problem with having
absolute power over other people. And if you
add that to government and business, absolutely.
That's the problem. And it fucks up when you
have politicians. Right. Yes. And maybe term
limits would help this if we could have some
term limits or something like that. You know,
maybe, you know, you can't you can't be in government
for more than, I don't know, five or 10 years.
We need to put these people on mushrooms. It's
not a career. But these these these bureaucrats
get in office and they want to stay there. They
like it. They enjoy, of course, the perks, the
privileges. So what they do is they go out and
they try to raise money to get reelected. So
they go to somebody and they say, give me money
to help me. And it's like, well, what are you
going to do for me? What's in it for me? All
right, well, I'll give you this special tax break
or I'll do something to protect you. And so this
is what happens. So people are bribing politicians
to use their power to benefit them or to hurt
their competitors. We need to disarm the bureaucrats.
We have to take the power away from Washington.
Washington needs to live by the Constitution,
which limited federal power. Almost everything
the government does today is unconstitutional,
yet they do it anyway. Yes, that it's the fact
that they can wield this unconstitutional power.
I'm giving you a magic wand problems. Peter Schiff,
if I gave you a magic wand, what do you do with
it? How do you fix things? If I say, Peter Schiff,
I love what you're saying. If Trump pulls you
into his office, Peter, love what you said. Phenomenal,
tremendous. And he pulls you into the Oval Office
and he says, what do I do? How do I fix this
mess? Yeah, well, again, you know, he's not going
to like the truth. What if he did? What if he
did? There's an old expression that you shoot
the messenger, right? Nobody wants to be the
bearer of bad news. Maybe he's open -minded.
Yeah, it would have been better if he did it
on day one. It would have been a lot more effective
if he had told the truth rather than lied for
three years and now come on. Okay, I've been
lying to you. Now I'm going to finally level
and tell it like it is. Do you think that he's
been lying? We can't solve a problem. Do you
think he's been lying or do you think it's been
a disagreement the way you look at it versus
the way they look at it? No, I think he's been
lying because, look, there's no way that Trump
as a candidate said the real unemployment rate
was 30 or 40 percent and the government numbers
were a lie, a fraud. Right. So if he actually
said that and now all of a sudden he's president
and the same exact Labor Department that was
coming up with the same five percent unemployment
numbers that he said was really 30 or 40. And
now he says, oh, the unemployment rate is four
percent. And that's magically what it is. He
knows that he's lying. Either he was lying as
a candidate or he's lying as president. But these
statistics don't mean anything. We don't measure
unemployment the way we measured it in the past.
Because in the past, if you were unemployed and
you were no longer looking for work because you
were discouraged, you were still counted as being
unemployed. If you've given up looking for unemployment
because you don't think you can get a job, you're
not in the statistics. So, you know, you're not
looking for a job. I mean, you're unemployed,
but you're not counted. Or this happens a lot.
Let's say somebody had a good job and they lose
that good job. And so while they're looking for
another good job, they accept a shitty part time
job. Right. They're still looking for a good
job, but they're making ends meet with this crappy
part time job. In the past, that guy would still
be considered unemployed. Because he was still
looking for a job, even though he took a part
-time job to help make ends meet. Today, if you
take a part -time job, and even if it's one hour
a week, and you spend the rest of the week looking
for a job, you're not counted as unemployed.
So when you take the statistics from today and
compare it to statistics from the 60s or 70s
or 50s, you're comparing apples to oranges. Because
back then, all those people were considered unemployed.
So if this is what Trump meant when he was a
candidate, if you actually measured unemployment
today, the way it was measured back then, we'd
have an unemployment rate well above 10 percent.
I don't know where it would be. It probably wouldn't
be as high as 30 or 40 percent, like Trump was
saying as a candidate. He was probably exaggerating
that. But his basic premise was right. The numbers
were a lie. The same thing about the stock market.
How is it that the stock market was a bubble
while he was a candidate? And then all of a sudden
it was in a bubble now that he's president. It's
the same bubble. He was criticizing Janet Yellen
for keeping interest rates too low. Then he criticized
Powell for raising them and demanded that they
go to zero. In fact, he actually wants negative
interest rates. He is actually saying that rates
should be negative when he was criticizing Yellen
for having them at zero. Now we think zero is
too high. So negative means you would get paid
if you bought a loan. If you got a loan, you'd
you'd get paid. That's what he wants. But, you
know, where's that money coming from? Exactly.
You know, Donald Trump, I think, you know, one
of the speeches that he gave, he's like, you
know, I don't know how this is, you know, how
this is happening. You know, who's who's making
these loans. But we want some of that money.
He's like, we should be able to borrow at negative
rates. Well, that means somebody has to be losing
money. Well, the only one dumb enough to lose
the money is the Federal Reserve. Well, that's
the American public. You know what? Why should
the American public go deeper into debt, you
know, so that we can basically steal money, which
is what Trump is advocating. Look, we need higher
interest rates. As I said earlier, the reason
that we were so ill prepared for COVID -19, the
reason that families couldn't get by without
a paycheck for a few months, the reason that
businesses couldn't get by without revenues is
because nobody has savings. We had savings once
upon a time before the government screwed up
the economy. Americans saved their money. They
were self -sufficient because they weren't looking
for the government to take care of them. But
we talked about this. They saved money for their
own age. They saved money for a rainy day. But
this is four months. That's a long time, Mr.
Schiff. You know what? It's not. But it is. To
live a normal life with a car payment and a mortgage
and a Verizon bill, that's a lot of money. But
you know what? People shouldn't have car payments.
They should own cars that they can afford. You
son of a bitch. But what if I can get a 2020
Corvette right now? What if I can get a 2020
Corvette right now? Look, if I'm working at fucking
UPS and I'm making 60 grand a year and they go,
you're qualified. I'm like, holy shit, I'm getting
a Corvette. I'm not waiting to save up $85 ,000.
If we had a free market in lending, if we didn't
have government guarantees and we didn't have
artificially low interest rates, no bank would
lend you that money. And interest rates would
be much higher. I'm glad they're going to lend
it to me because if they lend it to me, I can
get a Corvette. Yeah, the government is subsidizing
these auto loans. The government is the government
is buying these loans. The government is making
it possible. People who can't afford expensive
cars to buy them. That is not capitalism. Explain
that. How is the government subsidizing auto
loans? Like if I want to buy a 2020 Corvette
and I make $60 ,000 a year and they hook me up
for some $85 ,000 loan, how is the government
subsidizing that? Because the government is buying
those loans. What happens is so your car company
doesn't actually keep the loan. So it doesn't
give a damn whether or not you actually can repay
it. Really? So it loans you the money, right?
And now it has this loan. And it sells it and
the government buys it. Or some government guaranteed
entity buys it. Or the Fed now buys it. This
is assuming that you don't pay it. But the bank
doesn't lose any money. Assuming you don't pay
it? Assuming you don't pay it, but what if you
do pay it? Like if you have a loan and you pay
all your payments on time, the government doesn't
assume that loan, does it? They don't know which
loans are going to default and which are going
to pay. They just buy all the loans. There's
a lot of this stuff. The government buys the
loans that are viable? The mattress store is
going to say you can buy this mattress, no payments,
no interest until 2022, 2023. You ever see these?
No payments. Nothing down. Walk out the store
with a $1 ,000 mattress. Not specifically, but
I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Well,
the reason that this is possible is because the
company takes that loan and sells it on the secondary
market to get the money. And so it doesn't care
if the person who bought the mattress can repay
that loan because it's going to sell the loan
as soon as it's originated and get the money.
And so the loan gets bought and packaged and
structured and it's all on, you know, securitized.
But all this is being propped up by artificially
low interest rates and government guarantees.
If we had higher interest rates and a free market,
consumer loans would be much more expensive than
they are now, much more expensive. And so most
people would not borrow money to buy stuff. They
would save up their money and then they would
buy stuff. They would buy less expensive stuff.
And that's what we want, because we want savings
going to businesses who will invest. in plant
and equipment to make the country more competitive
more productive to provide services to create
goods to provide jobs we don't want to squander
savings on consumption but you know because when
you borrow money to buy capital equipment the
capital equipment makes you more productive generates
more income and that income helps you liquidate
your debt but when a consumer goes out and borrows
money to buy something They don't get an income
-producing asset. Nothing services that debt.
They have to service the debt at a future consumption.
So now they're out of work. They can't make their
car payment. They can't make their other loan
payments. This type of bubble society never should
have existed in the first place. And it only
exists because of government. Because before
government got involved, people had savings.
And it's not that the American people changed.
It's the American government changed. And when
the government changed and created all these
perverse incentives, then behavior changed. Government
policy manipulated behavior. And it made us behave
badly and recklessly. And it set us up for the
fall that we're about to have. I completely see
your perspective. However, I look at your perspective
as a guy who actually understands economics and
you're a mature man who's had a successful life.
I'm looking at it like if I was a 19 -year -old
kid working at UPS and they told me I can get
a Corvette. Okay, let's do it. That's the problem.
It is the problem, but it's not the problem.
Look what we've done. But it's not the problem
because that kid gets a Corvette. And his summer
will be immeasurably better with that Corvette
than without that Corvette. And maybe that will
propel his emotions and his future and his ambition
further than he ever anticipated because he had
that great summer with that Corvette that he
shouldn't have got the loan for. I see what you're
saying. If you were my dad, I'd be like, Dad,
I know you're right. Because he thought he'd
get laid more if he had a Corvette. Or because
he's a man and he's American and he enjoys a
Corvette. It doesn't have to be negative. I don't
blame the kid. I blame the system for making
it possible for him to borrow the money and his
parents for not teaching them better. But look,
the problem is I was that kid. I was that kid
and I would be like, fuck you. Let's get that
car. It's good. I'm willing to pay the money.
Let's talk about student loans, right? Because
right now, one of the big political issues, especially
among the left, right? They want to forgive the
student loans. And they want to make college
free. Right. That's like a big thing. Like we
have all these students with all this debt and
it's bad, which I agree. It's a terrible situation.
But what the left doesn't want to accept is responsibility
for creating the situation in the first place.
It is government's fault that all these student
loans exist. Without government, there would
be no student loans. You know, once upon a time,
people didn't borrow money. go to college. Nobody
borrowed money to go to college, right? My father
went to college and his parents were poor. I
mean, my dad said they weren't sure if they were
upper, lower class or lower middle class, but
his dad was a carpenter. And so he went to college
and his parents didn't have any money to send
him to college and there were no loans. So how
did my dad go? He got a summer job and he worked
his way through school. which is what most people
did. You worked your way through school. So here's
what happened. You know, around the 1960s, once
the 18 -year -olds could vote, this was a big
thing. They lowered the voting age from 21 down
to 28, right? So now you have all these 18 -year
-olds that are about to go to college. And so
here's what the politicians said to all the 18
-year -olds. The Democratic politicians. They
said, you know, you shouldn't have to work your
summers. You shouldn't have to have jobs while
you're in school. You should just be able to
go to school and enjoy yourself. And we're going
to make it possible for you to borrow money to
go to school by guaranteeing the loans. Because
normally the bank wouldn't lend you any money
because you have no credit history. You have
no assets. So you're not going to be able to
get a loan. But we're going to guarantee the
loan. And that way you'll be able to get the
loan. Now somebody else won't get it. Some businessman
won't get the loan because we're going to make
them loan it to you. And now you won't have to
have that summer job. And then. When you graduate
and have a good job, you'll just pay back the
money. And it sounded like a great deal. Hey,
I want to party now. I don't want to work. I'm
going to have a good time. And when I get my
college degree and I'm making a lot more money,
well, it'll be no problem to pay back the loan.
So that's how it all started. The government
came in and they basically created an incentive
for banks to make loans to kids with no assets
and no credit history. What year was this, Peter?
What year was this? Maybe the 60s. I don't know
the exact year. Oh, okay. But anyway, so then
once the colleges saw that all these kids can
borrow money to go to college, well, they were
like, this is great. I'm just going to raise
prices. So all of a sudden, tuition started to
go up. I mean, for a long time, you can look
back in history, college tuition used to be pretty
stable. It didn't go up very much until the 60s,
until the government really got involved. And
so as soon as these colleges saw. that the kids
had access to all this money they started jacking
up prices and then of course the university started
competing who's got the best gymnasium who's
got the best you know house all kinds of other
incentives and then everything became bloated
and they kept raising their prices and then in
order to get the votes of the students the government
kept raising the limits on how much loans they
would guarantee So it became this self -perpetuating
cycle where the more money the government guaranteed
that the students can borrow, the more the colleges
could charge in tuition. And so tuition kept
skyrocketing. And then as tuition goes up, it's
like, oh, nobody can afford to go to college.
We need more loans. So the loans themselves became
the reason that people needed the loans, because
the loans were why college was so expensive.
And so now you needed a loan to go to college.
But without the loan, tuition would have come
down. You see, if there were no student loans
at all, and right now the government has actually
taken over. They don't just guarantee student
loans. They loan directly to the students. If
there were no student loans at all, if the government
just said no more student loans, all of a sudden
the colleges would be, oh, my God, we need to
cut costs. Otherwise, we'll have no customers.
Nobody can afford to go without these loans.
And they would cut costs. They would start looking.
They would streamline their business like everybody
else. I mean, any business. that could charge
whatever the hell they wanted because the government
could borrow the money. If you had a restaurant
where the government was going to guarantee to
pay the bill of everybody who dined there, I
mean, shit, the restaurant could charge whatever
it wanted. Oh, a hamburger is $1 ,000. Oh, the
government's going to pay? Yeah, what do you
care? It's because people are paying with their
own money that they got to keep the cost down.
And this situation has been going on for so long
that it's just now how they do business. Right.
But now see, college is now so expensive. Kids
think they need government to afford it. And
they don't realize that the only reason it's
so expensive is because of government. That's
the Harry Harry Brown cripple you and then give
you a crutch. You're freaking me out, Peter.
College so expensive. You're freaking me out,
man. Jesus Christ. Here's an easy solution. OK,
get rid of the loans. Get rid of the loans. You
know, let let colleges. Lower their tuition.
Well, that might be reality anyway. And let people
go back to what my dad did. Work your way through
college. No big deal. We're in this crazy situation
where a lot of kids are going to have to go back
to school through Zoom, even Harvard. They're
talking about having these Harvard kids do school
online for $40 ,000 a year. Wasn't that what
you did? Well, I know. Look. Yeah. Higher than
40? It's more than 50? Jamie says fifty thousand
dollars a year to do school online. That's hilarious.
Education at this point is a racket. I mean,
most people will never recoup the cost of a college
degree. I mean, the colleges are out there perpetuating
this myth. Right. That, you know. Going to college
is your ticket to success that you have to go.
And if you if you don't go, I think I mentioned
in the video on your show, the podcast last time
I was down on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and
I was interviewing all the people there that
were working that had college degrees, but were
doing menial jobs, you know, a bartending, bouncers
and strip cubs, pedicab drivers. They all had
college degrees. Some of them had two or three
degrees. And, you know, they were doing stuff
that, you know, you didn't need to go to college
to do. And so the colleges perpetuate this myth.
Look. With the Internet today and the access
to online classes and self -help, you can educate
yourself. You don't need to buy this overpriced
certificate that says that you graduated from
some college to prove that you're competent.
I mean, it doesn't even prove anything now. In
fact, the government did two things. They made
a college degree very expensive and then they
made it practically worthless because before
the government started subsidizing college. Fewer
people actually went because only the people
that could really benefit from the degree went.
And so then if you had a college degree, it actually
meant something in the marketplace. Now, since
everybody goes to school because, you know, you
get the money from the government, everybody's
got a college degree. They mean nothing. So now
you've got to get a master's degree. You've got
to get a Ph .D. You're in school till you're
in your 30s. It was ridiculous that we spend
so much time. It benefits the bureaucracy. It
doesn't benefit the kids. So this bubble, this
is a gigantic bubble in higher education. It's
a bubble in lower education, too. I mean, some
of America's wealthiest men, they didn't go to
college. In fact, way back when, they didn't
even go to high school. A lot of these billionaires
dropped out of grammar school. But today, with
the Internet, it should be even easier for people
than it ever was. Because one of the things that
the colleges had is they had the libraries. They
had all the books. So if you wanted to get access
to these books, you needed to get into these
libraries. Well, it's all on the Internet now.
They don't have a monopoly on anything. And believe
me, you see how much they charge for these books?
It's crazy. It's such a good point. Professors
write these books and they and they force the
kids to buy these books, paying one hundred dollars
for a textbook. I mean, it's ridiculous. It is
a racket. And it's all supported by government.
And the problem is, if you come out against this
educational racket. Oh, you're a bad person.
You're anti -education. I'm not a bad person.
I care about the kids who are getting ripped
off, who are getting indoctrinated, not educated,
and who are being saddled with a mountain of
debt. And the government says the solution is
free education. If you think education is expensive
now, wait to see how much more it costs when
it's free. Do you think that the current state
of... When we think about colleges today, we
think about social justice warriors. We think
about these kids growing up in this weird future
where they're going to graduate online. Do you
think that the extreme liberal socialist bend
that you see in colleges would be different if
there was a free market? Do you think people
would be more realistic? In terms of all universities
were free market based, do you think people would
be more realistic in terms of their expectations
for other people in the future and not look towards
the government as being this piggy bank that
they could dig into and pull things out? I think
so. And I think one of the driving forces is
a lot of these universities, they always want
to hire professors, especially when it comes
to economics or some of the political science.
They want to hire people who have worked for
government. And they want to see some of their
professors go to government and then come back.
And the only economists that will get a government
job are the Keynesian economists who want to
pretend that government can actually help the
economy. I mean, there is no role in government
for a free market economist who says, leave it
alone. Let the market function. Right. That guy
is not going to get a government job. Right.
The government wants to hire people that are
going to justify more government spending because
that's how they buy their votes. So you get these.
big government Keynesian economists who go between
government and academia, and they go back and
forth, and so it perpetuates this cycle. But
there are, look, you can find some examples of
universities that teach real economics, free
market Austrian economics, but they're in the
minority. Not that many of them. Is that a problem?
I mean, when we think about educating kids, I
mean, is part of it's really is a weird look.
It's a weird way of looking at it. Right. The
idea that the government paying for everything,
making everything more expensive is going to
make more people that are dependent upon not
competing and being a part of this weird system
where you think you're owed things. Right. Yeah.
I mean, look at AOC. Right. I mean, she was an
economics major. But look, she's completely ignorant
about basic economics. I mean the thing is she
thinks she knows a lot. She doesn't know anything.
It's like a lot of times when people learn economics
in a university, they end up knowing less about
economics after they graduate than before they
enroll. They end up – they lose their common
sense, and they get spoon -fed a bunch of nonsense,
which they end up regurgitating throughout their
careers. I hear what you're saying, but hold
on a second. It's done a lot of damage. I think
when you – I mean she's 28, right? I think what
she is is an idealist. I think she's a kind person
who has this visionary perspective of how she
wants the world to play out. And when she says
those things, I think she's saying those things
because she feels like she's a force of good.
I don't doubt that. She's just a great politician.
Yes, but I think that economics are complicated.
And I think most 28 -year -olds don't really
understand it. I think it's really complicated.
And I think we get idealistic or ideologically
based in like, you're a left wing, you think
this way, you're right wing, you think that way.
And we get very rigid in how we look at things.
But if you want to look at what you're saying
in terms of... Competition creates the best solution
for everybody because the most effective and
viable method is the one that rises to the top.
And that's the one that people support with their
money if they have total freedom. But if you
have the government that steps in and dictates
that you have to go this way or that way or cost
this much or that much, then the government itself
becomes a business. And the problem is it needs
to justify its own existence by creating more
and more regulations, more and more problems,
more and more impediments. impediments to freedom
freedom of competition yeah every time the government
writes a regulation or passes a law we are less
free because those regulations and those laws
are limiting our freedom because they're restricting
our choices right but to bring the two of us
together to bring everybody together don't you
think that like maybe there's an opportunity
where people can recognize like that doesn't
mean you're a bad person you're just looking
at the actual game And there's a lot of bullshit
going on where people are pretending what's happening
is different than what it is because they want
to feel better about the results. I think most
of the people on the left are not bad people.
I agree. They're motivated by good intentions.
Kindness. They just don't understand the bad
outcome. Yes. And this is the interesting thing
because a lot of people of my persuasion, right?
We look at the left and we don't think they're
bad people. We just think they're misinformed.
You're talking about Puerto Rican Jews? The people
on the left actually think people like me are
bad and evil because we don't agree with their
programs. We must be mean people. We must be
heartless people because we're against. all the
good that they want to do. Okay, but stop. You
know that that's a reductionist argument. They
don't understand the rational thought because
they don't have those thoughts. Right, but you
know that's a reductionist argument that doesn't
really make any sense, but you'll entertain it
even though you know it doesn't make any sense.
The people that are really paying attention know
that doesn't make any sense. It's not that you're
a heartless person. You're not heartless at all.
You're explaining what is actually going on in
terms of government subsidizing education. You're
talking about competition in terms of the free
market. None of what you're saying, just from
me to you. is in any way conveying a sense that
you're a heartless person. But that is the narrative
when people don't agree with what you're saying
because they have in their head an ideologically
based alternative to what you're saying. Yeah,
and look, I watched the interview that you did
with Jon Stewart, right? And Jon said a lot of
things that I agree with, like a lot of the problems
on Wall Street and the bailouts, all that's true.
But again, what he didn't understand was that's
not capitalism. That's wrong. That was an example
of socialism that never should have happened.
But then when you guys were talking about it
and you said, yes, I mean, you'd be willing to
pay more taxes if it would make the problems
better. Yes. The problem is paying more taxes
is going to make the problems worse. We're paying
a lot of taxes and the government is spending
even more money. And that spending is the taxation.
Government has never spent this much money, and
the problems have never been bigger. But hold
on a second. If spending money solves problems,
we would have solved them a long time ago. Yes,
I agree with you. But can I stop you for a second?
When I'm saying that I would pay more money if
I thought it would fix it in taxes, I'm not thinking
of the government as its current entity that
ruins everything. make a solution i would be
willing to do it i'm not saying that it would
work that way i don't know if it would work that
the way i don't understand economics at all and
i don't understand the government why not joe
when i say why not cut out that why not cut out
the middleman right because you think hey if
i can give my money to government and maybe they
do good with it there's no example of government
doing good with money because it's not their
money they don't give a damn i don't disagree
with you i don't disagree with you what what's
stopping you joe rogan you from giving more money
directly to causes that you think are worthwhile.
You don't need the middleman. You don't have
to cut into government on your charitable giving.
You can do it yourself. That's true. And you
know, one of the best things that you can do
for people is employ them, provide them with
a job, grow your business. So if the government
taxes your money, you can't invest in growing
your business. I have a fucking manageable business
with a skeleton crew and you're not going to
fuck this up for me. All right. I'm not making
more business. Settle down, buddy. But you can
also, Joe, you can invest. Let's say a friend
of yours came to you. Right. A good friend of
yours and said, hey, Joe, I got a great idea
to start this business. I had a business plan.
And here's what I'm going to do. I say, hey,
I'll invest in your business. And then all of
a sudden the government takes that money in taxes.
Oh, I can't afford to make that investment in
your business because the government just took
the money in taxes. So now you can't start that
business. I completely understand what you're
saying. When I was saying it, and I don't disagree
with you, when I was saying it, I was saying
if I could give more money and that money, if
I didn't have to think about where to put it.
If I knew that that money was going to be managed
by ethical, knowledgeable wizards who know how
to take care of the world's problems and they
just get 5 % more taxes from people that are
doing well, I'd be willing to do it. It wasn't
saying that I'd be... I think it's a good idea
to give more money to these people that we elect
that we don't even know. I mean, I don't know
Gavin Newsom. I make fun of him all the time.
I bet he's a nice guy. I don't know Mayor Garcetti.
I bet he's a nice guy, too. It's a fucking impossible
job. I don't want that job. That that benevolent
government doesn't exist on this planet. Right.
So, you know, there's no point. It's like saying
I was willing to give money to government if
they would use it wisely. Right. It's like but
it's like I'd be willing to give my 10 year old,
you know, more more money if I thought he would
spend it wisely. I mean, they're not going to
do that. And, you know, to the extent that you
want government to have money, it should be local
government, the closer to the actual source.
So if you want government to have more money,
it should be your local government, your city,
your county. Don't send it to Washington, D .C.
You're in California. That's 3 ,000 miles away.
What the hell are they going to do about your
community? They don't know what's going on. They're
so far removed from the money they're spending.
It makes no sense to do this. I think that's
a really good point. Of money and such a waste
of resources. That's a good point. That's something
that Hunter S. Thompson had said in the 70s when
he's running for sheriff in Aspen. He said you
can affect local community, but the people in
Washington, they really don't affect your day
to day existence. It's a myth. The more money
that you send to Washington, the less money you
can send to your local government. I mean, initially,
the federal government didn't have any taxes.
I mean, I mean, and so the taxes were local.
OK, again, but now it's the government is the
government takes everything. And now all the
towns have to beg to get the money back. And
now the government has all kinds of strings.
The federal government says, if you don't do
this and you don't do that, we're not going to
give you highway funds. We're not going to give
you student funds. So now the government is taking
control. The federal government is taking control
of all the states. Let's take the power away
from the federal government and put it back in
the states where it belongs. But don't but you
don't let the federal government take all that
money. out of the local economy. And now you
free up more resources for local governments
that would do a much better job with the money
than Washington, D .C. So essentially, it's like
we all we need some sort of rules to get along.
But you're saying that we should agree upon those
rules in the free market and not have some government
entity, some group of people that's no different
than our own selves. controlling us and telling
us what we can and can't do because it's written
on paper somewhere because somewhere in the halls
of justice people agree that you should be able
to control people in a certain fashion and acquire
some percentage of their income and you'd use
that money at your own discretion with no receipts
whatsoever is that what you're saying yeah and
here's you know here's an important point though
that i really want to get across uh in in you
know in this podcast Because, you know, we are
headed, as I said, for a massive economic crisis.
I mean, what we've seen so far is nothing. Right.
What happened in 08, what's happened since COVID.
This is a dress rehearsal for a much bigger show
that's coming. That's going to be much worse.
It's going to inflict a lot more pain. And I'm
not happy that this is going to happen. If I
could stop it, I would. I'm just like watching
this train wreck in slow motion and I can't do
anything about it. But I know what's going to
happen. It's going to be blamed on capitalism.
The politicians are going to say, you see what
happens when you don't have enough government,
when you don't have enough regulation, when you
have too much greed. And the public is going
to buy this nonsense just the way they bought
it. about the financial crisis. The reason that
I was warning people for years about the housing
bubble and the financial crisis, the reason I
was able to write a book and lay it out exactly
the way it happened, the reason I was doing all
these lectures around the country, warning people
about the disaster that the Federal Reserve was
creating, was because I understood economics.
I understood the mistakes that Greenspan was
making, and I knew the consequences that were
in store for us. Well, the mistakes that have
been made by Bernanke, by Yellen, by Powell,
dwarf the ones that were made by Greenspan. It's
the same mistakes, just on a much bigger scale.
The country is in far worse shape now than it
ever was at any point in the past, you know,
structurally and with all the debt. And this
crisis is going to be a currency crisis where
the dollar crashes. We're going to have massive
inflation in a weak economy. They called it stagflation
when it happened in the 1970s. The Keynesians
didn't know what to do with it because it violated
all their rules of economics because they don't
understand economics. Well, this is going to
be much worse. And I want to make sure that people
understand where to put the blame. It's not capitalism.
It's not freedom. It's government. And government
is going to try to sell us on another bowl of
goods, that the solution is to give government
even more power, to give the Federal Reserve
even more power, when the only solution is to
take away the power that they have. But I also
want to make sure and this is what I'm doing
personally. I do two things. Right. I try to
educate people so they understand the economy
and so they know where who to blame for the problems.
But I'm also trying to make sure to spare as
many people as I can from suffering the financial
consequences. Right. I said earlier in the podcast
that the government is financing these expenditures
through inflation. Inflation is a tax, right?
The government is aching your purchasing power.
We don't feel it that much now because foreigners
are subsidizing us with holding our dollars in
treasuries and other instruments. But when the
dollar crashes and prices go through the roof,
people are going to get wiped out by this inflation
tax. A lot of people who are retired are going
to see their life savings just evaporate. I mean,
they'll still have their money. They just won't
be able to buy anything with it. And what I'm
afraid, too, is that we're going to get price
controls, because when the government starts
to see prices really going up and the public
complains, just like Richard Nixon did. And although
inflation was only four percent when Tricky Dick
put on wage and price controls. But I mean, it's
going to be way higher than that this time. But
they're going to create shortages. They're going
to create black markets. There's going to be
blackouts, food shortages, ought to be riots.
You think the riots are bad now. Wait to see
how much worse they're going to get. Right now,
people are getting placated by all these checks
that the government is sending out. But when
the checks bounce because they don't buy anything,
that's when you're really going to see the civil
unrest. But I want to make sure that people do
something. That's what I'm doing with my clients,
that they get out of their dollars to escape
this inflation tax. I want as many Americans
as possible. not to go broke like you. I want
to make sure that you just signed a big check
with Spotify. You should have had a gold clause
in that contract because it's over 10 years.
Five years from now, you're not going to get
anywhere near the money you think you're going
to get because that inflation is going to destroy
its value. So you got to do something. A lot
of people. Let me hold on a second. Hold on a
second. Stop. What would you have done differently?
And what can we do now? Like, what would you
have done differently if you and Trump were homies?
And he said, hey, Peter Schiff, I'm thinking
about shutting this thing down. What do you think
I should do? What would you have done differently
that would have somehow or another preserved
at least a modicum of our economy? And what would
you do? What would you advise they do going forward?
What would you have done differently? I don't
want to preserve. I don't want to preserve the
economy we had. Right. Because it was what would
you have done? And so trying to preserve that
is a mistake. Right. But what would you have
done? First thing, you know, this is coming.
We need higher interest rates from the Federal
Reserve, not lower interest rates. We don't need
any more money printing and we need the government
to cut spending. OK, but the opposite of what
we've done. A disease is coming, Peter Schiff.
We've got to shut down the world or we're going
to kill people. What do we do differently than
what we did? Well, again, first of all, I think
we would have handled our response to the disease
better if we actually realized the cost of what
we were doing. I think that we've acted so cavalierly
because we believe we're getting all this government
for free. We believe it's OK for people to stay
at home and watch Netflix and receive government
checks. We don't understand the greater damage.
See, what we're doing now, this monetary policy,
this fiscal policy is going to impose far more
harm on average Americans than the coronavirus
ever could have. So we have to get that, that
our cure is so much worse than the disease ever
could have been. We got to we got to we got to
understand that concept and we got to understand
the concept that we had a bubble. We need to
let it deflate. That is the best thing you can
do with a bubble. Don't try to blow more air
into it. Okay, okay. Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Let me take this from this alternative perspective.
The problem with what you're saying is that people,
if the government didn't step in and ensure that
some money went out so people could provide basic
needs and necessities, people were going to die
because they were going to have to go to work
and they were going to die. Well, that's what
we were thinking. But, Peter, that's what we
thought in March. We did think that in March.
But hold on. You know they thought. Did you not
think we were going to die in March? Did you
not think we were going to die? Do you not think
a certain percentage of people you knew were
going to die? Well, there's always a certain
percentage of people who get. The flu died. Obviously,
I knew from the beginning that the people who
were dying were the people who were 80 years
old or higher who were dying from all sorts of
things. I mean, that's when we start dying. I
mean, not many of us live much further than 80.
That's about life expectancy. That's not necessarily
true, though. I know I have a good friend that
almost died. My friend Michael Yeo, who's a comedian,
has been on this podcast, who's very healthy.
He almost died from it. But how does the Federal
Reserve printing money? save somebody's life
i'm not saying it does what i'm saying is when
it happened it just creates a new problem i'm
saying is when the pandemic occurred we were
all scared so if you're sitting here saying they
should have done this in a way at least it's
an unfair version of monday night quarterbacking
because or monday morning quarterbacking because
we didn't really know what this disease was in
march i was fucking scared of it i was really
nervous but i've had nine that's what i'm trying
to do my point joe is that our economy was such
a disaster before COVID. I understand that. That
we were vulnerable to anything that came out
of left field, any problem. See, this is another
financial crisis. It's like the 08 financial
crisis. Why is this a financial crisis? In 2008,
the reason it was a financial crisis was because
real estate prices went down because they were
a bubble created by the Federal Reserve. Fannie
Mae, Freddie Mac, Moral Hazard. I mean, I wrote
a book. I would lecture for years and years about
the housing bubble and how the government nurtured
it, right? And so because we had this housing
bubble, once real estate prices went down, people
who borrowed money didn't pay back their loans.
They no longer had any incentive to make the
payments because their house was worth less than
their mortgage. They just mailed in the keys.
They called it jingle mail, right? So now the
banks were in trouble because the loans went
bad. And now Wall Street had packaged up these
loans into pools of subprime securities. I made
some money shorting those back in the day and
some other people did too because we recognized
what was going to happen. But the crisis started
when people defaulted on their loans. Well, what's
happening now? Way more people can't pay their
loans than in 2008. It's not just people with
mortgages that can't pay. Businesses can't pay
their rent, right? Companies. can't repay their
debt. We have a corporate debt bubble in addition
to a consumer debt bubble. We have record credit
card debt, record auto loan debt, record student
loan debt, record corporate debt, record government
debt. Everybody is loaded up with debt and now
nobody can pay. It's all a financial crisis.
But again, the only reason that this economy
is so screwed up is because government policy
screwed it up. And the solution isn't to increase
that policy. Just like I said earlier, if you
have a drug addict, the solution isn't more drugs,
bigger doses of drugs to try to keep the guy
high because eventually you can kill him. He
could overdose. And that's where we are now.
The amount of monetary stimulus that the Fed
has now crammed into this economy is a monetary
overdose. They are going to kill the economy.
Peter, I see where you're coming from when it
comes to the 2008 loan crisis. That makes a lot
of sense. But the difference between this and
that is these people didn't make any poor decisions.
They're just thrust into this crazy world where
there's a disease that forces businesses to shut
down. But this is my perception. As a community
of people, shouldn't there be a way, at least
the government does its best at organizing people
to donate money that could go and help people
that are in this situation? Don't you think there's
a balance? People would organize themselves.
You think they would? There would be private
charities. Nobody would starve. And nobody was
starving in America. Before all these government
anti -poverty programs, when poverty was on the
decline, nobody was starving. Right, but hold
on a second with starving. People right now are
in a real peril. They could lose their house.
They could lose their car. They could lose their
education. There's a lot of weird shit going
on right now that's through no fault of their
own because businesses are shut down. This is
why I disagree that it's the same sort of situation
that happened in 2008. For sure, what you're
saying makes sense in terms of economics, about
the foundation of our economic country, the way
the economy was was fucked up already. That makes
sense. But the same thing happened in the Great
Depression. COVID happens. their own. People
were unemployed, but the government didn't come
in and bail them out. During the Depression,
Roosevelt initially got some relief. That was
the first time we had welfare. They called it
relief. It wasn't a lot of money. There were
no bailouts for businesses, really, cash bailouts
like we have now. Look, if the government stayed
out of this, let the free market, let landlords
and tenants work it out among themselves. I mean,
the landlords know they can't evict because there's
no other tenants. Let employers and employees,
everything will work out in a free market if
you let people voluntarily interact. People aren't
going to be kicked out on the street. People
aren't going to be left hungry. The market is
going to be able to solve the problems. The government
comes in and creates a whole new set of problems
that are far worse because the government doesn't
have anything. All it does is print money now.
It doesn't create anything. It just prints. It
just creates money out of thin air that doesn't
have any real value. I understand what you're
saying. In the process of doing that, they destroy
the value of the money that exists and they screw
up the economy immeasurably. They make the economy
less productive and less efficient. And so that
means people are going to be poorer. Government
makes people poorer. It's free market capitalism
that makes them wealthier. I understand what
you're saying, but in this situation, isn't this
really unique where no one can work? We're in
a situation where for months and months we have
to stay locked down. A lot of businesses are
not essential or labeled essential. Whoever gets
to decide that, I mean, shouldn't that be something
we vote on? What's essential and not essential?
I mean, that seems a little crazy. Yeah, I do
think that all that government telling people
what businesses can and cannot open. Look, I
disagree with a lot of these policies. And again,
I believe that governments would have acted more
responsibly if they didn't think they could put
the cost on the Federal Reserve, which is what
everybody is doing. I think if each state had
to shoulder the burden of its own policies, they
would they would have a more rational approach
to COVID -19. This was what everybody thought
it was free. And we had this huge moral hazard.
Yeah, this is what I asked you in the beginning.
And now again, we've created a situation. Look,
you've got all these school teachers. They don't
want to go back to work. They want to get paid
not to work. We've now created a situation where
so many people, oh, I'm not going to go to work.
Oh, I don't want to risk getting COVID. Just
send my paycheck to my house. Why'd you single
out school teachers? I mean, this is ridiculous.
Why'd you single out school teachers? Why'd you
say school teachers? Well, because I was just,
you know, the unions are, you know, they're out
there saying, but it's not just school teachers,
right? There's a lot of people who want to say,
I don't want to work because I don't want to
get COVID. And so, you know, but meanwhile, people
take a lot of risk. I mean, maybe someone who
doesn't want to go get COVID, they go out mountain
biking, you know, or they go skydiving or who
knows what, or they smoke cigarettes. You know,
they do all sorts of things that risk their health.
But now all of a sudden, no, no, no, I'm not
going to, I don't even want to go if I have to
wear a mask. I just want to stay home because
we're giving people an easy way out of going
to a job that they'd rather not go to. I mean,
I don't blame people for not liking their jobs.
I don't blame people for enjoying leisure, but
we can't set this situation up. But what makes
everybody think it's possible is because we don't
think there's a cost to all this printing money.
It's all this modern monetary theory nonsense
that we can just print money. We can have whatever
we want as long as the Federal Reserve prints
the money to pay for it. I see what you're saying.
This is a disastrous way of thinking. I see exactly
what you're saying. I think it's interesting
because I don't think it's either or. I think
there's definitely a lot of people that are going
to just never go back to work again if they get
that money, if they get free money from the government.
But I also – hold on a second, Peter. I also
think it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world
if we could figure out a way to get food to people
and make sure they don't starve to death. I see
both extremes. The free market will do that.
You know how cheap food is now thanks to the
free market? The government has screwed up agriculture.
We never really got to my question. Joe, we pay
farmers not to farm. We pay farmers not to grow
food to diminish the supply of food. That's a
corn thing, right? Do you realize that we do
that? Yeah, I've heard about that with corn subsidies.
So the goal of the Department of Agriculture
is to keep food prices high. That is the stated
goal, right? What they want to do is restrict
farming so that less stuff is farmed so that
food prices are higher. That is what the government
is actively doing. They are pursuing a policy
to make food more expensive than it otherwise
would be. To make it less abundant. What kind
of asinine policy is that? When they describe
it, how do they describe it? When they state
their business model, how do they say it? That's
your version of it. They're saying that they
want to protect the farmers from competition.
Or because they could have bad weather or bad
crops. They just want to keep up. Farm income.
Do you know where these subsidies came from?
Again, let's start with the New Deal. Right,
but it came from World War II when they needed
food, when they needed to supply the troops.
They needed money for food. A lot of what happened
with farm subsidies, they recognized that we
could get into a situation where we don't have
enough food, especially if farmers go under.
So they decided to subsidize farms. I'm not an
expert on this by any stretch of the imagination,
but I read a piece on it once. And the way they
were describing it was like people like to look
at subsidizing farms as being this like frivolous
thing or thing that doesn't really benefit the
people. But the idea came about because they
were worried about one day having a food shortage.
And this happened post -World War II. Are you
aware of that? That's the nonsense, right, that
the government wants you to believe. Look, you
can go back. You know, we subsidize tobacco,
right? The government gives subsidies to tobacco.
tobacco farmers. And actually, if you go back
when they talked about it initially, because
they say, hey, why are we subsidizing tobacco
farmers? Because why do we want to make it easier
for people to smoke? And they actually agreed
that the subsidies are restricting the production
of tobacco and making tobacco more expensive.
And so by subsidizing tobacco farmers, we'll
actually have fewer smokers because we're making
the cost of tobacco higher. That's what government
does. Government comes in and makes the price
of food. higher. That's their goal. To make food
more expensive. That's an industry that kills
people. How heartless is that? That's tobacco.
You're talking about an industry that knows from
the jump. But tobacco is different, man. They
know they're killing people. No, no, it's the
same. I understand financially. We shouldn't
subsidize tobacco farmers. But they said we're
doing it because it makes tobacco more expensive.
Well, it's the same subsidy for wheat farmers.
But it wasn't originated – The goal was to make
a price higher. Yes, but that's not – that wasn't
the initial goal. The initial goal – Well, of
course, they never say that. They're never honest.
The government is never honest about what it's
doing. But don't you think post -World War II
– But it's trying to get the votes of the farmers.
The farmers want higher prices. I understand.
But don't you think that post -World War II they
were seriously concerned about having food supplies
so they could feed soldiers and feed – people
in this country if the shit hit the fan you think
it was really all about economics you know joe
one of the things they did during the great depression
was they destroyed food so that was like one
of the big programs of fb what i'm saying is
just propaganda because we had too much of it
so it's just propaganda what i'm saying is just
yes i got a whole they they hit me they hit me
with their propaganda i'm reciting it yeah it's
all look there people always want something from
government look people who are selling a product
want high prices right consumers we want low
prices But if you're selling something, you want
high prices. But competition brings prices down.
So what you do is you enlist government to help
you. And government helps you get higher prices
than you can get in a free market. So government,
private companies have an incentive to get the
support of politicians so they can make more
money than they could in a free market. The problem
is we need to take away the power of the government.
to grant those special privileges to any business
there should be no subsidies for businesses you
know corporate welfare does as much damage maybe
more than welfare for individuals right all of
this has to go and we need a vibrant free market
economy and hopefully when this whole thing collapses
and it's going to collapse and we have hyperinflation
or very high inflation and we wipe out the savings
of the vast majority of americans and we go through
a really really you know hard, deep economic
time period. If we could do a reboot, if we can
resist the temptation to fully embrace socialism
and go all in on the ideology that destroyed
us, if we can go back to free market capitalism,
we have a bright future. I mean, with the tools
that we have today, if we can have 19th century
capitalism with 21st century technology, I mean,
it's amazing what we can achieve. I watched your
interview with Andrew Yang, who's afraid of technology
destroying jobs. Look, Technology is going to
liberate labor. It's going to make us richer.
People have been advancing Andy Yang's analogy
probably ever since the wheel was discovered.
There's always some politician that says, oh,
this new technological advancement is going to
put somebody out of work. Yes, we want to save
labor. We want to free up labor to do something
else because labor is scarce. And if we can free
it up from a mundane activity, that labor can
do something else. And now we can have more.
We can have more stuff. We can have a higher
standard of living. So all that is possible.
But I want to make sure that there are people
who don't go broke. That's why I'm telling people,
you know, get out of your dollars. I'm buying
gold. I've been telling people on your podcast,
you know, gold is now over eighteen hundred dollars
an ounce. I think when I started coming on, you
know, it was closer to a thousand. But I think
it's going to $5 ,000, $10 ,000, $20 ,000. And
it's not really gold going up. It's the dollar
going down. The dollar is going to lose its value.
This is where people are at today. One of the
concerns with the way our country is going is
there's a lot of people that are just... They're
leaning towards what they feel is the right way
to go, where all their peers agree is the right
way to go, and it's going to lead to a better
future. But a lot of the people making these
decisions don't have a lot of life experience.
So you've got a tremendous amount of momentum
for 18, 19, 20 -year -old people. And when they
hear something like free market... Free market
capitalism is going to fix the world. One of
the things that bothers them the most is that
they associate free market capitalism with greed,
with greed and money over people. And this is
what the problem is, the way they promoted themselves.
Yeah, I agree. Someone says, like, I'm a libertarian.
There's a lot of people that automatically say.
I think the socialists are doing a better job
of selling their ideology than. the capitalists.
And capitalism is getting blamed for a lot of
the problems that socialism is creating. But
when people are saying, again, somebody is greedy,
we're all greedy in the sense that we all want
the best for ourselves and our families. We all
want to go out and make money so that we can
have a better life and buy more things that we
feel will make us happy. Again, what people have
to understand is capitalism channels that greed
in a very positive way. Because in order for
somebody to enrich themselves in a free market,
they need the voluntary cooperation of other
people. They need to be able to provide goods
and services that are better, lower cost, higher
quality than somebody else. And they have to
provide employment opportunities. They have to
provide people with better jobs than somebody
else because they – usually you can't have a
company unless you can get people to work for
you. Peter, I'm agreeing. So you have to have
good jobs and good products. Peter, I agree with
everything you're saying. And so it benefits
the customer and the worker. I agree with everything
you're saying, but what I'm saying is that –
In the general public's view, when you say free
market capitalism, they equate mean. When you
say socialism, they equate kind. This is the
problem. There's a problem not even nearly as
much as philosophy or fact or history of, like
when you're talking about the free market, but
rather the way the public perceives it. When
they think of socialism, they think it's good
and healthy and warm and loving and inclusive,
and they think that's the future. I don't know
what socialism has done to market themselves
so well. And they have to understand that socialism
is just legalized theft. Whatever socialism has
done to market itself so well. And there's nothing
benevolent or caring about theft. Yes. I don't
care if the thief is well -intentioned. It's
immoral. Capitalism is moral. It's honest. And
it's what lifts people out of poverty. The world
is littered with examples of socialists that
have impoverished people. And there's various
forms of socialism. There's communism. There's
fascism. millions and millions of people have
been slaughtered in the name of this failed ideology
and every country that has embraced it it has
impoverished everybody right they don't share
the wealth they destroy the wealth they make
everybody equal by impoverishing everybody but
peter why is it so attractive the rich people
under socialism are the people with political
connections why is it so attractive then why
is it so attractive Why are so many young, progressive,
ideologically left -wing kids attracted to the
idea of socialism? Why is it so attractive and
why is capitalism so negative to them? Why do
so many five -year -olds believe in Santa Claus?
Because you lie to them. It's a nice idea. Some
guy comes down the chimney and gives you a bunch
of presents. Right, but you're agreeing you lie
to them when you tell them about Santa Claus.
That's a willful lie. But you don't have to tell
them. They figure it out. I mean, eventually
the kid is old enough. So this is this is what
happens with socialism. When you're a young guy
or a young woman and you don't have any real
life experience, you haven't worked, you haven't
had a business, you haven't been out in the real
world, you live with your parents, you go to
school and socialism sounds good. I mean, in
theory, it sounds great, but you don't have any
real life experience. By the time you're older
and you've been in the real world and you've
paid taxes and you've seen the consequences,
you start to understand more. And then you give
up your childish beliefs. The problem with a
lot of these older socialists like Sanders, it's
like a kid that never grows up. It's like somebody
who's 70 and still believes in Santa Claus. Like
they never figured it out. Right. So that's Sanders
never figured out that there's no Santa Claus.
He thinks there's Santa Claus and it's the US
government. And we can get all this stuff for
free if we're just nice. I would love to lock
you two together in a room and film it for like
six hours, just have you argue about shit. I
would debate any big socialist that you could
get on your show. I'm sure you would, Peter.
I'd love to do it. Listen, Peter, we just banged
through three hours, if you can believe it or
not. No, we could keep going for another three
because there's so much stuff that we could actually
talk about. No, I think – but I just want to
say this before we wrap up. I think you provide
some very honest and brave insight. You buck
the trend of sugarcoating things, and the way
you describe your version of free market capitalism
is very honest, and it doesn't seem mean. I think
this is what's important about it. There's a
lot of people that think that – They have this
thought in their head, this is what I was trying
to get across, that if you say capitalism, if
you say someone who's ambitious, you equate that
and success to mean. And this is a part of the
problem with the marketing strategy that's been
employed by capitalism. It's not a real strategy,
but versus socialism. Socialism has a really
attractive, even though it has what you were
saying before, it has all these deaths connected
to it and no success. It's got this really –
like maybe if we just try it one more time. This
is really attractive. It's something that's inside
of people that are compassionate. They're like
maybe we can try it one more time and get it
right. Yeah, and it's not my version of capitalism.
That's capitalism. What we have now is not capitalism.
When I'm saying your version, I mean the way
you describe it. People who are mean, actual
mean people, don't succeed in business. They
piss off their customers. They piss off their
workers. They lose their customers. Their employees
quit and they get better jobs from people who
treat them fairly. Customers go where they get
a good deal. Right. And so I want to put my faith
in individuals and the free market, not a bunch
of bureaucrats. Right. These guys are out for
themselves. Don't think they're there to be public
servants. They're there to enrich themselves.
That's who you have to be suspicious of. That's
where greed is damaging. When you take greed
and combine it with political power, that's when
it's a problem. In a free market, it just helps
me. It's government that hurts me. But look,
I want to point out, I talk about this. I got
my own podcast, not nearly as popular as yours.
But, you know, I would certainly welcome the
people that listen to Rogan to go and listen
to the Peter Schiff show. I do a couple of podcasts.
You could listen to him on Schiff radio. You
could listen to him on YouTube. Tell people your
Instagram too. You have an Instagram? Instagram.
What's your Instagram? Yeah, you know, I just
started Instagram. Crazy enough, my wife was
like, you got to go on Instagram. How many people
do you have on it right now? Well, I only have,
you know, a few thousand followers. I just started.
Let's see what we can do. I've got. I've got
about 250 ,000 Twitter followers. They still
haven't verified my account. That's outrageous.
Whatever it is, I can't get verified. I've got
a quarter million followers. I'll tell you exactly
what it is. It was the Occupy Wall Street videos.
That's what it was. They fucked you over. Those
Occupy Wall Street videos. You can watch that
on my YouTube channel. I've got about 350 ,000
subscribers on my YouTube channel. But I'm talking
mostly economics. I do a little politics. I touch
on some of the social issues. I talk a lot about
the markets. And again, I think it's important.
I mean, I have an asset management business.
I'm trying to get people to get out of U .S.
stocks that I think are overpriced, out of U
.S. bonds. I think we're headed for a major crash.
And unlike the crash we had in 2008 and 2000,
the Fed is not going to be able to bail you out
with a printing press. It's not going to be the
third time's the charm. It's going to be three
strikes, you're out. So you've got to get your
money. out of U .S. markets. I'm investing money
around the world in countries that I think are
relatively free. They have less regulation, lower
taxes, more economic freedom. Their markets are
not overpriced. Their currencies are going to
retain their value. We're buying gold. We're
buying gold stocks. I'm doing everything I can
to preserve as much wealth as I can for Americans.
So that when the shit hits the fan, we can bring
that money back. And help to rebuild this country.
You're an animal. Listen, how many people do
you have on Instagram? I want to see how many
we can bump you up to. What do you have right
now? Well, as I said, I just started it this
week. But what is it? What's the number? And
I'm going to start putting up. It's my Peter
Schiff is my handle. But I want to know how many
you have because I want to see how many we can
get you. Look at it. I just look at it. Jamie,
what does he have? Yeah, 35. Jamie doesn't know.
He's going to find out momentarily. I want to
see if we can. Yeah, but see if you can get my
Twitter up to a million or my YouTube channel.
I mean, you know. Listen, people will go everywhere,
Peter Schiff. Listen, I appreciate you. I appreciate
your honesty and your perspective, and it's always
a good time talking to you. And I appreciate
you sharing your information with us because
from a real experience perspective of someone
who really understands what you're talking about,
I really appreciate it. The one thing I want
to mention about that Occupy Wall Street, I did
that Occupy Wall Street and I got two and a half
million views on it now on my channel. And it
had millions and millions of views before I posted
it. I posted it a couple of years ago, right
before I went on your show. Yes. So I can point
people to it. But even though I did that, like
in 2009, every single day, I don't think I miss
a day. I get an email from somebody, some young
person from somewhere in the world. It's all
over the world to say that that video, that two
hour video of me. addressing the occupiers, that
that is what changed them and put them on the
direction of going from socialist to free market.
That after they heard me talk, they did some
more research, they educated, they did a complete
180. And they went from being total government
socialist to being complete free market capitalist
because they saw that video. And that's why I
went down to Zuccotti Park. I didn't think that
I would necessarily change the minds of the occupiers,
but I knew that the video that Reason was doing.
would change more people's minds. So the more
people who see that, you know, who look at that
interaction and share it with your friends and
people who, you know, who look at me, listen
to my podcast or look at my tweets and share
them. And we got to spread the truth because
there's so many people spreading lies. There's
only me and a few other people spreading the
truth. So we need help. We need the public to
help disseminate the information that I'm putting
out there. I don't charge anybody for this information.
Everything is – I don't make any money off the
podcast. I'm trying to get it out there. Sometimes
I get clients. People become clients of mine
that I make some money. But the vast majority
of the people who are listening to my content,
they don't have enough money to fund an account
with me. But I'm influencing them in the way
they think. And I'm helping them influence others.
Thank you. They tune out all the nonsense. Thank
you, Peter Schiff. Thank you. Peter Schiff. Thanks,
Joe. All right. Stay hard. Thanks for having
me on. Thanks, buddy.