Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 12-01-25_MONDAY_7AM

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

12-01-25_MONDAY_7AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausordrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. 10 minutes after 7-705-633, a little bit of open phone time here. Anything happens to be on your mind. Something that I was reading yesterday, and Kevin Sterrett over at Oregon Firearms Federation referred it to me, sent it over to me. me. He does a lot of reading on substack. I do a lot of reading of people on substack, too.

And I can only, I only have time to read about maybe 10% of what is actually out there. I probably get 30 or 40 a days. I don't know who has time. Maybe if I were completely retired, I would just, you know, devour everything. But there is something which came out that, and it has to do about what appears to be a day of rage. between the generations, the day of rage coming, and especially at the boomers. Now, you know, for the longest time, we've heard this term about, okay, boomer, like, all right, why aren't you boomers dying? Now, I'm a little sensitive to this because, A, I'm a boomer, and B, I'm still working,

and C, I'm probably going to keep working, but you can't help but have noticed how intergenerational hate seems to be on the rise. Not everywhere, but I'm just saying that there's an overall aspect of this. And Vox Day, who is younger than me, probably a different generation. I don't know if he's X or whatever it is. He put out a piece yesterday called, Oh, Nothing. And he ends up sharing a cartoon that shows a younger person looking at an older, elderly person. And I think this is the kind of representation of the boomer, the relative, the grandma, the grandpa who is in bed, and kind of the younger person looking at them as if waiting for them to die, that kind of thing.

That's sort of the intimation. That's the way I ended up taking it. But then Vox Day, rather, wrote about this. mid-November, by the way, when he put this out. And he says, the day of the pillow is coming. The day of the pillow. Now, you know what he's talking about when he talks about the day of the pillow? The day of the pillow being when someone gets the pillow put over their face, so to speak.

That's why I've jokingly referred to the Antonin Scalia, My Pillow version. Remember when he was found dead in bed, but there was a pillow, you know, on his, on his face, that sort of thing, or maybe it was on his chest, I forget. But in other words, a lot of resentment between the generations, and it says, The Day of the Pillow is coming, and most boomers simply don't understand why they, and everything they stand for, are so hated by the younger generations, each of which has its different reasons. Generation X has always hated the boomers, even before we had a word for it.

even when we didn't realize the extent to which they literally murdered a third of our generation and destroyed another third of our families through divorce. Something here before that was rare and virtually unknown, and we were aware of how they were suppressing everything from our music on the radio to what should have been our brief moment in the sun. This tells me that Box Day is probably a Gen Xer. Number one request, most requested, he says, for the 25th year in a row, stare away to heaven. Okay.

One would have thought that a generation that defined itself by its preferred music would have understood that the younger generation was as disinterested in their music as they were in their predecessors' music. But that was entirely beyond the boomers. and their refusal to retire or even make the same union benefits that they enjoyed available to us had a very serious negative impact on our employment prospects as well as our careers. I didn't realize that as a boomer who, by the way, I have never worked in a union job. I've never had union jobs or union benefits, but I guess it's boomer's fault that union benefits went away and that they didn't have, and that younger kids didn't have good benefits available for them. Okay.

So anyway, Vox Day continues. The millennials hated them for economic reasons. There's that Saturday night live skit, millennial millions summed it up beautifully. although I can't link to it because it's one of the last ones on YouTube. That was the first time I became aware that the millennials didn't like the boomers any better than we Gen Xers did. But the disdain for the boomers harbored by Generation X in the Millennials is like a candle before the raging inferno of the Zoomers' hatred for them. They don't even know what was taken from them exactly. They only know that the boomers were primarily responsible for,

the world that they lost without ever knowing it. It's the Zoomers that have made Boomer into a catch-all epithet, which is probably why that cartoon that he shared has been the most popular cartoon of the mall. And what I'm kind of curious about here, do you see that kind of building range, rage rather, between the generations right now? I've been talking about the necessity, the necessity, though, of getting our economic order back in shape because I was detecting what I thought was going to be a societal instability when you end up having just generations of kids that are waking up and they don't feel much positive energy for the future. I'm just kind of using a broad take on that overwall. But it has concerned me that the boomers, the baby boomer generation are being held out

as somehow at fault for everything that has gone wrong with youth today. is if everybody in a particular generation somehow holds sway to it. And the reason I'm really concerned about this intergenerational hate that seems to be getting fanned right now is what has caused a lot of these situations, especially the financial machinations, have been done not by generational people, but by social policies, by financial, policies. Not by generational policies.

That's the way I looked at it. Why did many boomers do so well, especially the older boomers? What was their benefit? In what fault did they actually engage in? You know, you were born, okay, you're born in 1945, 1946, and maybe in 1948, let's say you're in your mid to late 70s or so. What was it that made it most easy for you to have done pretty well in your life,

to have gotten a good job, to have gotten maybe a good house and made some investments and you did pretty well on it? What was it that probably was the number one factor that helped the boomers be one of the more successful generations in many ways? What do you think that is? to me it's very simply being a united state citizen after world war two isn't that it really after world war two the united states was the last economic power that was left standing everybody else was destroyed.

In fact, a lot of it was the fact that it was a great place to be in America. Remember, I even talked about it. You know, how the cars, you know, the big swagger, the brassy, the chrome, and the high fins and all this.

United States was on top of the world. We were unchallenged at that point in time. Right? Now, was that the boomer's fault? That they were born in a cycle that ended up being kind of advantageous to them.

Now, when it comes to what Vox Day was writing about the thing about, well, look at the destroying of the generations with divorce, et cetera, et cetera. Did the boomers create feminism in all of the other left-wing politics, the political theories? Was it the boomers that created that? Or were it communists? Communists and socialists and people from the left. See, I always thought that that came from the left wing, the left wing of societal people in pressures, you know, whether it's political Democrats, you know, most everything that has seemed to have been

having a bad effect these days. Whether it's on the family, whether it's various other things, have tended to come from political processes and political actions and political policies. But I'm fascinated that this is all being now blamed on generational policies. I'm not aware of any generations having policies that have been in control. If I'm wrong, tell me about it. I really did find it a fascinating substack, but it was more or less talking about, hey, the pillow is coming for you, boomers. Now, I know there are some generational policies.

Like if you're a generation Z, you were big on avocado toast for a while. Okay, I'm just having fun with you on that. Yeah, we know there are a few characteristics. But do generations have policies? Do you blame the boomers for what is happening to the Gen X and the Zs, the, you know, the Zoomers and the millennials? Is that it? Or are we looking at this point in our history, in the United States history, as we're just in this process of, well, we need somebody to blame. We need somebody to blame for having a fake money system.

someone to blame for having, you know, an empire which is teetering right now. You know, that's kind of really what I think we're reacting. And the fact that everybody else got smart, went to school, and is making stuff. Is that the boomer's fault? I don't know. But, boy, there's a real day of rage seething that I'm feeling with some of these so-called thought leaders from other generations. and is rather concerning to me because it's also where the Mamdani's of the world

tend to come from, where the demagogues will come from in the future. 722, I know if you have an opinion on that one way or the other, but Vox Day, like I said, Vox Day, and I've read a lot of Vox Day over the years. I think of him is a pretty good thing, but he's yet another person that blaming it on the boomer, and it strikes me as misplaced, but maybe not.

770KMED. I'd love to talk with you about that. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Good morning, Bill. It's a boomer. Well, hello, boomer. I won't put the pillow on you today because of that. You know, I've observed this, observed this happening. And one of the biggest issues that has caused the later generations to not function very well is the government, has made it so that they can't work until they're 18. I had my first job when I was 13. Steve, that's a very interesting point that you have made here,

because they're talking about this as if these are generational. No, the boomer generation did it. But no, politicians and policy did this what you're talking about. Isn't that right? That's exactly what I'm saying. And, you know, I remember back when I was in high school and college, there were something they called Anomi, A-N-O-M-I-A-N-O-M-I, is because of the Vietnam War and what was going on, people felt like they had no control over their life. And they didn't take advantage of the opportunities that were coming up because they probably were going to end up in the military anyway. And you're probably going to end up dead in the military, too, right.

Well, that's kind of what they felt like. And, you know, it was not an unfounded feeling at the time. Another point, as I got drafted and got out of service in 1971, and there was a recession, depression going on at the time. And I had to compete for a job with the greatest generation. And you talk about tough place to work. Oh, yeah. No, that's also a very good point because I really entered the adult workforce in 1980 is when I went in there, and there was a really bad recession then, too. Same sort of thing, like it worked for you, you know, in 1971. And by the way, it was, I was competing with one of the largest. In fact, I think my school graduation in 1979 was the largest one they had. That was one. It was like, the most number of people out there scrambling for very few jobs. And I didn't think about it as a boomer problem, although I'm a late boomer, you know, that kind of thing. But once again, is this a generational, is one generation praying on the other, which is kind of the intimation of Vox Day, yet others like him right now? It's concerning to me. Well, there's another issue there is a different take anyway.

When I had to compete for a job, I didn't say, poor me. I said, I can compete, and you can't compete with me because I have tools that you don't have. Very interesting. Steve, I appreciate your call. Thank you. I want to make sure I get out of people's opinions, too. But thanks for the quick one there. Let me go to next line.

Hi, good morning. We're talking about this war between the generations. And what do you think? Do you have a take on it? Welcome. Hey, Bill, it's your boomer buddy, Brad. Well, hello, boomer buddy, Brad. Boy, I'll say that five times fast and trip over it, but what do you thinking, man?

Hey, you know, I've got to take on it for you. You know, again, I grew up in blue-collar southern Oregon, you know, ranching, farming, logging, you know, the blue-collar trades. Every kid I went to high school. Well, I'm not going to say every kid. I'm going to say 80% of the kids I went to high school with went to work right out of high school. My father, who was a very successful businessman, never went to college. My mother, who was a very successful businesswoman. ever went to college. And I would say, Bill, that one of the biggest problems that we

have intergenerational is between my generation and maybe the couple that came after is spending gigantic amounts of money and putting kids into debt for college educations that do not raise their earning profile. Agreed. But you see, that was once again a political push, too. In fact, I remember Governor Kulengoski came on my show 15 years ago, I think, somewhere hey everyone's got to go to college and I said but it doesn't make sense no everyone's got to go to college and of course now they went to college and they went to get a degree in gender studies or whatever the thing is and then they're wondering why they're broke but they're you know in debt to an incredible amount but that's a policy is that a is that the boomers though

is that the boomers fall or was that something else um it's it's probably a little bit of both It is? All you have to do is look at Germany. Germany, when kids are about 14 or so, they have to decide which way they're going to go if they're going to get a technical education or a vocational education. And, of course, we know that Germany has some of the most highly trained people in the world when it comes to, you know, building things. Yeah, but the bottom line is, though, we only went in one direction, and that was the non-technical, wasn't it?

That's exactly right, Bill. That's exactly right. and going back to my experience, you know, I grew up with, well, most of the guys I hung out with were iron workers because my dad had a steel building business. So, you know, those are who I hang out with. I hung out with welders, iron workers, concrete finishers, and those are the guys that taught me the skills that I eventually used to feed my family. Yeah. You know, I was thinking about mortgage rates, and I know mortgage rates are what, six, seven percent right now, and that's high traditionally, but not traditionally as it was. I remember I was paying about 11% back in

my 20s from my first thing. So there's a part of me, I, there's a lot of things interacting, though, but I don't think that it's the generations. These are policies outside of generational control. These are political and policy controls, aren't they? Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Welcome. Hi, it's your favorite hippie chick. Hey, hippie check. Take it away. Since it's all your fault. It's all my fault. Yeah, it's all your fault.

I'm pure evil. Evil incarnate. Okay. So a lot of, you have to understand that what was going on with, you know, the boomer generation. There was all kinds of government programs going on. The CIA, or I should say the CIA, you know, they're pushing of the drugs. And have you ever read Dave McGowan? he does

weird scenes inside the canyon about Laurel Canyon oh yeah yeah Laurel Canyon yeah the I've read that stuff that's really thought provoking stuff that in other words what even happened to the boomers

ended up being programmed by government intelligence right that's what I'm trying to say yeah the musicians like you know David Crosby and Jim Morrison and almost all of them yeah all of them had

all of them had parents in the military Yeah, I know, interesting. I read that. Yeah, not just in the military, high up. Okay, so you're saying that the boomers are a victim of the government, too? Really? No, what I'm saying, no, I'm not going on. We're victims, you know.

What I'm trying to say is the times that we lived in were not just, it was not necessarily a natural progression. It was something that used the natural progression of younger people wanting to reject, you know, their and the the parental moral moors and going to know in other words the forces that once again and not maybe not even from the global left then but you just call it globalism in general about breaking down the system right well yeah i think it's all related to you know the technocracy all of this this stuff has been planned for a long time to destroy the the norm of you know society of the nuclear family and all this stuff. Yeah, you break that down, and then the kids there have less of a, less of a future.

Appreciate the call. Thanks, hippie chick. Let me go to the next one. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Good morning, Bill. How are you? Fine.

This must be a horse lady. Hello. You got it. I'm an old boomer. I'm just about the, the pillow's coming for me. Oh, no. Not the pillow. Not the My Pillow version, I hope.

All right? I'm just old. One of the problems that I see is your age and younger didn't get scared by 29 in the dirty 30s. That's a very interesting point. I got scared. My folks got scared. They were down to their last 25 cents. Luckily, Grandpa owned a ranch, and Daddy went to town and got a 25-cent box of 22 shells and shot rabbits.

for meat. They didn't have squat without grandpa having a place to live. And a lot of these young people have always had a way to get bailed out. Mom and dad, the government, take your pick. That's an interesting point, too. Thanks for making it, horse lady. We go to Tom. Hello, Tom.

How are you? Welcome. Thanks, Bill. I'm glad you're asking the big questions because they're not asked often enough. So, well, you know, I think what's going on now has been building for generations, not just one generation over the next, but, you know, you go back to the American Revolution. It was about money. It was about taxes. It was about England saying you can only send us raw products and you can not build.

Yeah, you couldn't build things yourself. Yeah. So today, the big arguments about money. I'm glad you had to talk with a previous fellow there because basically what's going on is government has used its ability to print money on demand and take all the power and gravitate it towards itself, and it's basically end up gutting the American population. And so our zoomers are millennials or Gen Xers then, and even the young boomers, like myself as an example, or on that lower end of that curve as time goes on, right? Yeah, we've basically been pillaged in favor of big government.

So what do we have? We have endless wars. We have all these corporatism. So, you know, with the big money able to buy elections. But once again, though, this is not the generations doing it to one another, is it? No, no, it really isn't. It's like, you know, the upper 10% of particular. the upper 1% has basically stolen the tool of government and using government to further its

feather its own nest to end. And it's doing it by a major theft of everything that's going on. Look at electricity. You know, the electricity bill has doubled many times over. Why? Well, it's just favoring certain people over other people. Government has, government has really become the tool of exploitation. That is a great takeaway. Tom, thank you for the call, but it's still, that policy, that's not a generational thing. It's an institutional aspect of control that you're talking about. Huh.

I'll take one more call, then. We'll have to let this go for the time being, but, yeah, please. Hi, good morning. Who's this? This is Minor, Dave. Yeah, Dave. Yeah, my thought is, you know, the CIA is part of five eyes. And it's been confirmed those two clowns from Afghanistan are CIA operatives.

So there we go again. It's the British, you know, causing all the problems. And you know. So you're saying it's the British then? It's the British. Yeah, they're the ones that are the old. So it's not the boomers. Now is it the boomer, now is it the boomer British, though, at the core of this?

It's the British and the monarchy In all of it Gee, that's so funny because I kind of look at the monarchy Is it anachronism, acute anachronism isn't that quaint I don't see the power there But maybe I'm not looking at it deeply enough, Dave Gotta go, but I appreciate the call Thanks for making that. KMED and 993 KPXG

Talking about that war between the generations here We'll take a break from that for a bit Well Burns Weapons is your friendly gun, suppressor, and ammo dealer Come by The Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. So here it is Cyber Monday, and spending over the weekend was pretty insane for what I'm saying here. Paul Oster joins me.

It's spelled OSTER, but it's actually Oster, Paul Oster, and he's America's Credit Repairman. You can find out more about him at betterqualified.com. That's better qualified.com. Paul, I'm glad you made a few minutes here to come on because the American consumer is consuming big time and just going nuts. You want to understand, huh? What's the downside? Possible.

Yeah. Bill, you and I have spoken about this. The American consumer is resilient to a fault. They don't really understand what they're getting themselves into. Credit card debt is the worst form of debt. And if all of that spending was cash or debit cards, then I would be singing the praises, but it's not. They're putting this, they're putting this holly

a debt on their credit cards. And that hangover that happens in January and February is the worst of the worst. Boy, here it is. You know, everyone was really happy. It was a great Black Friday weekend. And you're raining on the parade here, Paul. You know, depressed people are going to be. Well, I'd rather rain on the parade than, again, deal with the hangover after. So consumers have to realize this. If you still have credit card debt from last year, which a lot of, you know, consumers do, then don't spend another dime on presents this year. You've got to set some reasonable expectations.

Everybody's in the same boat. You know, you have to realize the Joneses are in the same boat that you are. So maybe this is the year that we do very small gifts or, you know, gifts that homemade gifts, Maybe we do things that we give our gift of time, right? So you invite people over for dinner instead of buying them a gift. They're going to remember that. Memories are, you know, better than gifts. If you ask your gift list, which we've now come up with a good strategy, it should be a gift

strategy, not a gift list. Do you remember what I gave you or you gave me last year? Most people don't even remember. No. So you're not going to be ostracized. you're not going to be thrown out of the group. Your family's still going to love you. But I'll tell you what thing.

You know one thing that my wife did that was very nice that people do remember when she made them special, you know, Christmas loaves, you know, breads and things like that and a whole bunch of things. Yeah. They remember that stuff. Isn't that interesting? They remember that. No doubt.

Creative memory, you know, again, host a potluck dinner. Yeah. Plan a trip. plan a staycation in the future so you can defer the expense because, look, it's not just the gifts during this time. It's travel. It's all of these other hidden expenses that come up during this period, and people don't plan for it. So just defer the expense and say, hey, you know what, we should all go somewhere in the spring and start to work on it together, you know, as a group. So, again, we talk about the gift strategy.

It's not a list. We used to just put a list of names. Then we figure out a gift, and then we don't even know what the price was. But you have to reverse engineer it. Figure out your price, first and foremost, then the category, small to medium-sized gifts, maybe anything under 20 bucks, and then put a name to it. If you do it the other way, then you find your story. yourself with the hangover. So gift strategy, not a gift list for sure. And I get it, right?

Especially if you have young ones. Use the three gift rule. What is your child want, right? And you might not be able to give them that, but figure it out. What do they want? What do they need? And then give them something to read or experience. Again, we've gone away from that and it's unfortunate, but our children need to keep reading and experiencing things. So what do they need? What do they want? Give them a gift of reading or experience for sure. I like your idea, Paul. Paul Oster wants to get America's Credit Repairman, and he helps people out. There's a lot of free information up on his site,

which is betterqualified.com, betterqualified.com. Before you came on, Paul, I was talking about a substack I read in which there was, I think it was Vox Day. I don't know if you heard of Vox Day or not. But he was talking about these insane jealousy or resentments that have been building between the boomer generation and generation X and then the millennials and spilling down to Gen Z. I can't help but wonder if one of the things that might be causing more tension is that the availability of credit for today's generation is. so much easier, so much more available. It doesn't matter how bad your credit is. There's someone willing to loan you money right now, someone willing to give you a car loan, someone willing to do a buy now pay later on you, that I didn't have the temptations that a lot of people did

at earlier times. Because you know how easy it is to sit on Amazon on the weekend and see something fly by and how easy it is just to click, add it to your cart, how simple it is? You don't think about it. So, Bill, you're spot on with that. So it's become so easy to get approved. And you mentioned the buy now, pay later programs. Well, they make sense for 2% of the people, right? If you can make those payments in three, four easy payments,

instead of paying it off all at one time, at zero percent interest. But you have to ask yourself, why do I need to do that in the first place? If I can really afford this gift, why wouldn't I just pay for it now? And then the other problem is if you open up two, three, four of these buy now, pay later programs, because they're all different accounts. And that shows up on your credit report as a new account. And if you open up new accounts rapidly, it's going to damage your credit score. Sure.

So you're not really saving anything because your credit score is going to cost or save you money for every other single financial transaction. And then when you have young folks that are already maybe close to the bone, and then putting their DoorDash on Klarna or some of their Buy Now Pay Later. That's a warning sign, wouldn't you say, Paul? It's happening, Bill. I laugh, I scoffly, but it's happening. Young people are sitting at home, ordering DoorDash, and not paying on a debit card anymore.

Now they're using Karna, a firm, all these other Buy Now Pay Now Pay Later programs. for DoorDash to get food delivered to your doorstep. So we've sacrificed a tremendous amount of our security, data security, and our money for convenience. And it doesn't end well, Bill. It doesn't end well. Paul, that's why you have your site better qualified to try to either get people out of their debt problems or to help avoid them better to help avoid that in the first place.

It's betterqualified.com. I want to ask you a serious philosophical question now. Do you think it's time for a usury law in the United States of America when even someone with when credit card rates are in the 30% for most people, even with decent credit these days? Bill, the time has passed. It should have been, this should have been in place, right? The guy, the mafia guys, the street guys, who used to the loan sharks, were very much held accountable under usury law. but we allow banks.

There's companies out there. If you're a small business owner, this is really, really important. There's a loan. It's not considered a loan, right? So they circumvented the law because it's an advance against future receivables. And Bill, do you have... Oh, is that factoring, what they call factory? Yeah.

What they call factoring. Yeah. So it's not considered a loan. So it falls under, it's excluded from those laws, and the APRs, the percentages that those companies are charging small business owners, definitely over 100%. We just, we just help a small business owner get out of an MCA loan. He was paying 206%. The average, he barred $150,000 from a couple of different companies, he was paying over 206%. APR. I've never heard such a thing. I didn't know that. I didn't know that could exist in the United

States. It's bad enough, like you just said, it's bad enough that the credit card companies can charge people 30 percent. Again, that is usury. But what happens is they're, you know, they're big banks. They have lobbyists and they, you know, the government allows that to happen right under our noses. And the average consumer is drowning in that credit card. debt. But you see, there's an example, once again, which it's not the boomers' fault. It's not the boomer. It's not one generation praying on another. These are institutional policies, which have come into play over the years, isn't it? And political issues, right? Well, it sure is. It sure is. So nobody wants to ruffle the feathers of the big banks. And I get that, but the reality

is this trickles down, trickle down economics to us, you, me, every consumer. And If you're, look, if you have a $5,000 credit card bill and you don't want to stop paying it, so you're making the minimum payments every single month, it could take you 20 years to pay off $5,000 at 30% interest, 20 years, and you wind up paying about $20,000 on a $5,000 credit card debt. So I'm not saying we should have debt forgiveness, but I'm a big proponent of, what you just said, we need to reduce the interest rates for people that have gotten into this kind of debt. Look, they should be held accountable.

You know, definitely have to pay it back, but not at 30%. Yeah, I just don't know if I could have made it out of my childhood unscathed, even though I did have some credit problems back when I was a young man. You know, and a few of that. Even then I got into trouble, but it was a lot harder because you got a lot less given to you, you know, at that time. And now, you know, a college kids goes into school. You're a freshman in college.

Here's your credit card, right? Bill, it happened to me. So I graduated in, I graduated high school in 1988. I went to freshman orientation, and American Express was on my campus, and they were offering a free pizza just to apply for the credit card. So if you got denied, you still got the pizza. Free pizza, cool, right. I love pizza.

So I applied. I got approved, Bill. No income verification, no job. How did I get approved? And I went home and my mom said, Paul, cut that card up because you have no idea how to handle it. I wound up defaulting on my first credit card, America's credit repairment. Well, you know, at least you know your subject then, right from top to bottom, right there. You've been there, in other words, Paul, right?

Yeah, I'm not just the owner. I'm a client. Paul Oster, once again, if you're looking for advice here to how to handle this, the temptations of the holiday spending, just go to Better Qualified.com, and if you need more serious help, well, then you're certainly welcome to oblige, isn't that, right, Paul? Exactly. We'll give you all the do-it-yourself, the tips, the tricks, you know, we can guide you accordingly, but if sometimes you actually need to pay for the professional service, and that's okay, too. All right. Now, I want every member of Congress to go through you when it comes time for budgeting process again. How about that? You good with that? Bill, Bill, I've actually spoken at two different government affairs conferences. I've been on Capitol Hill. And let me tell you, our legislators are clueless when it comes to fiscal literacy to how this credit reporting industry works. We asked them point blank. We gave them dummy credit reports. and can you, Senator Smith, can you tell me on page three, this account, what does that mean? If you, if someone pulls their credit report and they look at it, can you tell me what that means?

Not one of them can answer the question. And these are the people in charge of the budgeting. Great. Exactly. Exactly. Great talk is always. The problem. Great.

Great talk, Paul. Paul Oster once again, better qualified.com. Thanks for being America's credit repair man. Take care, Paul. Thank you, Bill. Be well. Very Christmas. It's 753, KMED, KBXG.

Honey, we're out of water again. 0.7 KMED. Yeah, I tell you, those doors, excellent. End up getting, what was it? Forget their brand, but it's incredible. Just look at my house. You're driving by, okay? Let me go to Dave.

Dave is on the road. Hello, Dave. You want to talk about the gift-giving thing. Go right ahead. Yeah, Bill. You know, look, we, you know, my wife and I, you know, we do all right. But, you know, at Christmas, we just try to keep things in perspective in terms of gift-giving. We really, you know, we want to focus on, you know, what the season's really all about.

But, you know, when we give gifts, you know, we have, you know, I get my wife like a few things that she, like, really, really want. And I'm not saying that I don't do whimsical things for her, you know, as my wife and, and so on and so forth. But, you know, we don't make a, you know, we don't go overboard on that. And it's so much more, it's just so much more. enjoyable. Money or no money. And yeah, we might get something, you know, a little bit more on the expensive side at times. But, you know, it's like whatever we get, we pay for, you know, we pay for our account. I think that's so important, you know, cash in hand, cash flow in hand rather than, all right. Well, yeah. The other thing about credit is, is I, a couple things.

First of all, I do agree that, that, you know, these credit card companies are, they're just, they're just loan sharks, you know, that have, they've been, they've been legally allowed to be loan sharks, and, and something really, really should, there's anything, you know, I'm not a big government, you know, control person, but something, you know, should be done about it because it's, it is completely out of hand. But the other thing is, I think when you talk about, you know, younger people and credit and, you know, all this stuff, they, they, they, I'm not familiar here with any of those services that you talked about with DoorDash and. that they're using now. Yeah. But I think, you know, the younger generations, they don't understand business. They don't understand economics. And that's, and that perhaps is, you know, older generations' fault. But one thing I will say, though, is that there are so many more temptations now. It is so much easier to get yourself in over your head than when I was a kid.

Yeah, it was easy for me, too, when I was younger, but I would just say this. Somebody, if I was talking to my kids, I would just say, look, that company, whatever it is, DoorDash, whatever, the other things that you mentioned where they pay over time. Those companies, I mean, the credit card companies and the banks behind them, they're businesses. Okay, they don't operate, they don't last, they don't survive unless they make a profit. Okay, and this is how they make their profit. You know, people tend to think of credit, especially younger people,

as like some magic thing. And it's exactly the opposite. Good point. Dave, thanks for making that. Kevin is here. Kevin Sterrett, and Kevin, thank you for that Box Day article. It was so thought-provoking. A lot of people had a lot to say about that this morning. Well, you know, it's interesting. Your last call I brought up credit cards. And, you know, there were no credit cards when I was born, okay?

I mean, the first credit cards came out, I think, in like 1958, around that time, 1960. And that's an excellent point is that there was a time when you really couldn't buy stuff that you couldn't afford. And now it's just assumed. I mean, Yeah, well, they would make sure that you didn't get it. And, you know, like I had mentioned, I'll be honest, I've had some credit problems in my past, especially as a younger man. I didn't use it wisely.

Had to dig out of it, you know, and I started to figure it out after a while. But there are so many more temptations in the current business operating model, especially the online thing. Kevin, you know, all you have to do, you get your finger over the click to buy it, you know? Yeah, I mean, I know a young man, he's a friend of my younger sons, who is $100,000 in debt. He's in his mid-20s. He's $100,000 in debt. How do you get $100,000 in debt in your mid-20s?

I asked that same question. Toys, apparently, you know, quads and motorcycles and forerunners and stuff like that. But, you know, that whole article that you shared was, it was. was so fascinating to me because there is no question that younger people are facing serious challenges. Yep. And that is, that is an unfortunate reality and certainly what we saw in the last few years with government policies with Kate Brown, shut down businesses, robbed kids of their

graduations, the chance to see their grandmothers pass away, all that kind of stuff. The hideous, horrible things, robbed them of their schooling, you know, their ability to get a decent education. That's all true. But, you know, I think if you really analyze this stuff a little bit objectively, I remember when I was like my kids' age, mortgage rates under Jimmy Carter were 25%. And I remember thinking at the time, there's no possible way I'm ever going to be able to afford a house. So this is not a new phenomenon. And, you know, the same thing with, you know, I remember, well, it didn't matter what the cost of gas was because I couldn't buy it because I was sitting in line to get it. So these kind of change. challenges have always existed, but there's no way that you can pin this on a particular generation. And if you look at the people who are now, who is embracing the worst possible policies, the kind of policies that got us into this condition in the first place, the welfare state,

feminism, all that kind of stuff where, you know, women are not supposed to be home. You know, you were talking earlier about how good people had it after the Second World War, and I would say a lot of people didn't have it that good. Well, no, when I say good, though, I'm talking about the United States as a whole, though, was in a... Certainly. Yeah. Remember, in those days, most women did not go to work because they didn't have to, because the man could afford to cover the bills while the wife became, did a hard job at home. No one's, no one's questioning that.

Yeah. But the reason why was because if you look at the tax rates at the time, they were so much lower, you got to, the guys got to keep the money. money that they made. So they jack up the taxes that forces women to go to work, which means the kids have to be in daycare. And then you have the Federal Reserve, printing, printing, printing, so you can have the welfare state, right? The Federal Reserve was not the product of boomers. And so, you know, it's really a tragic and dangerous thing that you prefer, forever, the big establishment oligarchs have done everything they can to turn people against each other, whether it be racial, whether it belong, along gender lines. Now it's generational. Now it's, we got to, instead of

identifying what the actual problem is, okay, so who voted from Mondami in New York? Young white women. Young white liberals, in other words. Right, who embrace the policies that will destroy them. It's so much easier to look around and say, I'm going to blame grandpa because every grandpa, of course, is living large on a golf course in his plaid pants, a considerably large number of people in that age range are really suffering because they have to pay exorbitant property taxes for a home that they ostensibly own. Yeah, there's a lot going in there, but it's not the boomers, it's not the Gen Xers, it's not, you know, I'm really concerned about this intergenerational war that many are trying

to ignite. Well, it's actually already burning in some ways. If you looked at some of the comments after that story, the story itself, I mean, to start the story with the implication that we're going to be smothering people was pretty vile. I mean, that's really, we're getting into the praising the death of Charlie Kirk area here. But then when you look at the comments and the comments where this is all true, my parents never wanted to watch my kids, my grandparents just wanted to sit on the beach. I have no doubt that people have experienced horrific parents and grandparents, but I think that's kind of been going on since the beginning of time. Indeed. Hey, Kevin, thanks for the suggestion.

I really do. Thanks for reading that story on. It's really thought-provoking. Really helped. Absolutely, Bill. Thank you. Be well, my friend. KMED, KMED, H.D.

H.D. Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass. Hello, caller. You've been waiting a little bit. Who's this morning? Hey, Bill. Good morning. It's Ron from Eagle Point.

Hey, Ron. I've been listening on my, drive to work. I take care of customers. And I have more of a, what would you call it, a Bill Meyer style of critique. And even though I think it's good to have the subject matter and discussion, I'm going to take the stance that in regard to both subjects that you're talking about, the generational stereotypes as well as the use of credit, both items are falling under the deflection technique for dealing with it, and therefore it will not be dealt with. It'll just be deferred to another range of potential solutions, but none of them are actually solutions. So real

quickly, I'll tell you that relative to the stereotype, when it comes to Gen X, Z, boomers, it's all of us. All of us are in those categories, but it is the high. It's the high. administrative, and this would include the older generational that have formed the policies reinforced by the younger generational's willingness to engage in those policies because they benefit from them. So it's the disease called yesitis, yesitis without critically thinking about what you're saying yes to. Relative to credit, same thing. Nobody, I don't think in America, that we should pass a law against usury, although personally I do implement my own morals when it comes to how much of an advantage do I take of somebody.

But still, were we a worse country back when we had usury laws? Because we used to have them. I don't know. In a free society with a free market, if you sign the dotted line that agrees to 200%, that's called choice. That's called personal responsibility. So why do we depend on the government to protect us from ourselves? Because the government is there to, well, actually bails out the same financial system that is supposedly, you see, they're kind of hand in glove right now.

I think that's why, because you can't say that we actually have a free financial system. It's under huge government control right now. You get that. Yeah, yeah, I still defer to my personal responsibility. And, you know, it's a marketed term used by the left, but my personal choice is if I accept the responsibility of something, I have got no room to complain. I understand what you're saying, but I've navigated 44 years of self-employment within the boundaries of the rules. and I have credit, but I don't have any continuing paid debt. It's because I have personal choice exercised in the form of,

I see the downfall and the downside to extended credit and terms. Some of those may be acceptable to me for personal management. Some of them are not, but my point is basically the same in both categories of discussion. it's the willingness to say yes for personal benefit that has got us in the situation that we're in now. All right. Ron from Eagle Point. Appreciate the call. Good one there. As always, KMED, KMED, H.D. H.D. H.D. Eagle Point, Medford. KBXG grants pass. Fox News coming up. And then we'll take a little pallet cleanser and take a break. Do a little history here with Dr. Dennis Powers. The outdoor report is every Friday morning.