Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/15/23: Billionaire Backed Stadiums, Real Estate Expert Says 'Death of American Dream', and Interview w/ ER Doctor from Gaza

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Spencer Snyder looks at how Billionaire funded Sports Stadiums are killing cities, James Li speaks with a real estate expert about what he calls the 'Death of the American Dream', and Max Alvarez speaks to an ER Doctor who worked in Gaza. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator,

and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast,

so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here. And we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. A month ago, I was in Las Vegas with fellow Breaking Points contributor James Lee. We were

there attending various political events, met some very nice people. What is not to love about Las Vegas? The nightlife, the residents. In just two hours I was able to turn $40 into $25 and this permanent error message portending good fortune. But one of the first things I noticed flying in, sports facilities. Football, baseball, golf. To me, golf always seemed more like an immersive board game for rich people, but Las Vegas actually has a good amount of sports teams. The Golden Knights, the Aviators for minor league. In 2020, the Raiders moved into Allegiant Stadium, and in 2028, just in time for the Harris-DeSantis presidential debates, or maybe Newsom-Haley, or maybe Tulsi,

Liz Cheney as a Democrat. That's the one I'm gonna go with. I'll be reposting anyone in the comments who can conceive of a more cursed presidential showdown than that. Just in time for that, in 2028, Vegas might just be adding the Oakland, Las Vegas athletics to the roster.

But here's the thing, the move is unpopular, expensive, and has resulted in the athletics suing, of all people, Nevada State teachers. This is where the A's currently play, the Oakland Coliseum. It holds 57,000 people and it's been the home of the athletics since 1968. Now it was 2002 when Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill moneyballed the Athletics and so they were coming off playing some great seasons. This is what John Fisher inherited in 2005 when he bought the team for $180 million. But things have changed

in the last few years. The team's attendance never recovered after COVID. They finished last season with the worst record in baseball, and now John Fisher is trying to move the team out of Oakland. All I can do is say I gave everything I had to try and make things work. Oakland actually offered them quite a nice deal, which included $495 million in property tax kickbacks and $279.5 million from the state. Oakland also made a $180 million request for a federal mega-grant from Joe Biden's infrastructure bill. But note, the mega-program supports large, complex projects that are difficult to fund

by other means and likely to generate national or regional economic mobility or safety benefits. Which to someone like John Fisher, who is worth 2.9 billion dollars and whose parents founded the Gap, of course a new stadium for his baseball team for him would qualify as critical infrastructure. But as it turns out the Department of Transportation disagrees and didn't award the grant. And so what else could you do but pick up and move to Las Vegas? So the new ballpark would be where the current Tropicana Hotel and Casino stands. Tropicana's doors are going to close in April of this year, and they had limited time left on this earth to begin with, so the stadium only sped up the process.

And there are a bunch of reasons why this particular site is probably a bad plan, not least of which is this. The team currently resides in the Bay Area, which has 8 million people in it. Yes, they have to share the Bay Area with the San Francisco Giants, but still, in Las Vegas, on the other hand, they would be the only major league team

and Las Vegas would have no choice but to root for the A's, except there are only 2 million people in Las Vegas. So they are moving to a much smaller market. And then there is the size of the stadium itself. The new ballpark will hold about 30,000 people, the smallest park in baseball, and they plan on 8,000 of those people being tourists. That's 8% of all the tourists who come through Vegas in a day all going to a baseball game and what's really crazy actually they are currently averaging about 8,000 people to a game in total in Oakland. To make this plan work they would need to match

their average attendance in tourists every game in a market a quarter the size. Now the reason I'm talking about it is because the public is gonna have to help pay for it. How do you feel about $380 million of taxpayer money going to build a stadium? Well, I'll tell you about that, I hate it. I don't agree with any of them overrated sports anyway. What kind of stadium? Baseball stadium.

Oh, yeah, that's good. Don't support sports in general? No. Okay. Correct. Beneficial purpose in the long run, I think it'll be good. Don't support sports in general. Yeah. Okay. Right. Beneficial purpose in the long run, I think it'll be good. That's my opinion. I don't agree with taxpayers getting the rip for what rich guys are gonna make. Probably shouldn't be spending taxpayer money on it.

And the public doesn't have to help pay for it because, one, there's no evidence that stadiums bring the kind of economic development that they always claim, and two, he's a billionaire who could do it himself. And we know this because he said so. Fisher said he and his family have the equity to finance the more than $1.1 billion in private funds needed for the stadium's construction. Now let's remember something. A budget is a list of priorities. We have never prioritized education the way that other states do. Our funding formula up until a few years ago was archaic. It hadn't been updated since the 1950s.

We finally did update it in the 2019-2021 legislative sessions. Unfortunately, updating the plan didn't come with any new funding or revenue. Basically, you're just cutting a pie in a different way than you would normally cut a pie. Nevada is one of the worst states in the country in terms of K-12 education. And for Alexander Marks, this is a familiar story. In 2016, we got distracted with the Raiders Stadium, which is now the Allegiant Stadium. That was a $750 million giveaway for a stadium. Now fast forward a couple years, there was a bill that proposed smaller class sizes. No hearing. Universal lunches got

vetoed. A summer school bill got vetoed. A school safety bill got vetoed. But when it came to building a stadium, a special session was convened to vote on SB1, which committed $380 million to the new A's Stadium. We've got the Allegiant Stadium up the street. When that stadium was being proposed, they said public education would receive about $13 million in revenue from that. Well, we're $2 billion behind each year. Cannabis brings in $120 million annually. So pot gives more money to public schools than the Raiders.

But one fortunate thing came from this, and that was an unlikely alliance between Nevada educators and fans in Oakland who don't want to see their team leave. So during the regular and special session, the phone lines were flooded with a lot of California folks calling in. They started reaching out to me and colleagues and other educators in Nevada going, how can we help? How can we do whatever you guys are doing?

So we formed this like really unique partnership of Oakland sports fans and Nevada educators to try to kill this stadium deal. Unfortunately, the bill passed and that money is available for the stadium. But that's not quite the end. They are looking at two different paths for fighting this that would both hopefully default the team back to Oakland

and save $400 million or close to it for the people of Nevada. One is a constitutional challenge to the vote on the A's stadium, the idea being that the bill that made the stadium money available violates the Nevada state constitution in various different ways. The other is to actually ask the people of Nevada what they want. So Nevada educators filed for a referendum to be put on the ballot.

The goal was to put a statewide voter initiative to the people. So we did that through a ballot referendum we filed last fall. It's very expected that somebody would file a referendum challenge. It usually happens to everybody. So it's expected that we got sued.

We honestly weren't expecting the A's to sue. Yes, the A's are suing to keep the referendum off the ballot so that people don't have the option to choose whether or not they want to pay for the stadium. Because as we've seen elsewhere, when you put tens of millions of dollars on the ballot and ask people if they want to build a stadium with it, sometimes they say no. This move is probably a bad deal. People of Oakland don't want it. Educators in Las Vegas don't want it. They want money for education. The mayor of Las Vegas said the A's should stay in Oakland.

The only person who really seems to want it is the billionaire in the equation. And for the Nevada legislators who approve this stuff, you have a professional hockey team, a professional football team, maybe soon a professional baseball team, you have F1 racers on Las Vegas city streets, you've made hundreds of millions of dollars available for these sports venues but rank toward the bottom in education. I mean if the most complicated thing people in your state know how to read is the scoreboard, that's negative.

But you know, my dad's a Mets fan, he taught me to hate sports, so I'm a little biased. And that is probably where I should leave it. My name is Spencer Snyder. If you found this video interesting, make sure you are subscribed to Breaking Points. You also can check out my YouTube channel where I talk all about media and politics and things. Link in the description. Liking and sharing always help. Thank you to Breaking Points. Thank you so much for watching. And I will see you in the next one. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and

totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,

to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family.

I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves.

This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself. And I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first Black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people

who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And it's Wall Street. This is one of the neighborhoods that investors have really targeted. They're coming in, they're buying it at cash, and then they're going to hold them as rentals. In January, 33% of all homes purchased in the U.S. were bought by investors. Often Wall Street-backed companies with multi-billion dollar funds and rent them out, in some cases, to the very families who dreamed of owning them. Is the American dream officially dead?

My name is James Lee, and you're watching Beyond the Headlines on Breaking Points. In the aftermath of World War II, the United States witnessed an unprecedented era of prosperity and growth. The GI Bill and other government incentives made homeownership not just a possibility, but a cornerstone of the American dream. A home wasn't just a physical space, it was a symbol of success, stability, and a better future.

But as the decades passed, this dream began to drift out of reach for many. And today, the landscape of homeownership is starkly different. Skyrocketing prices, increased competition from institutional investors, coupled with stagnant wages and increasing debt have transformed the housing market into a challenging battlefield for the average middle-class family aspiring to buy their first home. This is why first-time homebuyers are so frustrated in today's market because what has happened in the past five years

is devastating. In 2019, the median household income in this country was $68,000. The median home price was only $260,000. You could put down just $8,000 to get this house, and the payment out the door was only $1,600 a month, including property taxes, home insurance, and PMI. In fact, you could actually make $50,000 if you had zero debt and qualify for this home with just eight grand down. What a great time. This is why millennials weren't whining and complaining in 2019. But why is it difficult in 2024? Well, because the income has gone up to $80,000 for the median household income. But now the median home price in this

country is $400,000. You now need to put down $80,000 to have a shot at qualifying for this and have zero debt. Joining us today to break down the future of homeownership and the American dream is Freddie Smith. He is a realtor in the greater Orlando area and also a prominent creator on TikTok and YouTube. Freddie, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So first question, kind of a broad one. is the American dream dead, at least in terms of homeownership? And if so, how did it die and why does it feel so psychologically damaging? Well, I think the biggest question of why we have this debate is people's definition of what is the middle class and what is the American dream is kind of different for many people. But I would

see what I'm seeing from my comment section is that in my opinion, the American dream is kind of different for many people, but I would see what I'm seeing from my comment section is that in my opinion, the American dream, the middle-class is a working family working 40 hours a week and being able to comfortably afford the average home in America. And that was true from 1970 to 2020 for 50 years, no matter when you put, you can pick 1979, you can pick 88, you can pick 97, no matter when you pick a date, the median household income could qualify for the average home. So that was the heartbeat of the American dream of getting that house, building a family, white picket fence, and tire swing. As of 2021 going into 2022, the prices shot up 30 to 40% on houses, and the interest rates now went up to 7%. So this has now closed the door and moved the goalpost, where in most cases, you need

over $100,000 of income with very little debt to have a shot at the average house. So this is shocking to a lot of first-time homebuyers, because this didn't happen over 10 years, 15 years. We saw it coming. This happened drastically in just the past two to three years. So everyone's kind of just catching their balance going, I just want to buy a house. I've been working for 15 years. What happened? So to answer your question, is the American dream dead? I wouldn't say it's dead, but it's definitely on life support if we don't make a change. So then I know the interest rates have gone up significantly, but other than that, why has there been this shock in terms of the housing prices?

Because this historically has been, you know, housing always goes up historically, but not to this type of degree, this acutely. The interest rates played a huge part because in 2020, when the pandemic hit, they decided, hey, let's lessen this burden and let's lower interest rates so individuals can refinance, lower their housing payment. That's going to be really good for us. So they lowered the interest rates to 2.5%, which created a massive demand. So there were so many people, individuals and investors, all buying properties in 2021. That much demand rose the price by 30, 40% of most homes. So we went from only having a $1,500 payment in 2019 to now $3,500

for the average house. So it jumped about $2,000. And that's putting so much pressure on individuals because if you're spending $3,000 on mortgage or even $2,000 on rent, that's eating into a lot of your income that people need for groceries, for daycare, to try to pay off their student debt. So that's what's putting pressure on Americans is the three-layered cake, housing, daycare, and college debt. So I know you touched on some of the numbers there. Can you help us break down a little bit of how much money do you actually need to make to buy the average house? Also considering some factors like debt, other expenses that people might have, say, let's say in 2019, five years ago versus now in 2024, just in this time span. Sure. And I think this is really important for people to know when it comes

to qualifying for a loan, there's a difference on what you can qualify for and what you can afford. I want to say that one more time. What you can qualify for and what you can afford is sometimes two different things. And I always talk about how you don't want to be house poor. But let's talk about the qualifying aspect first. So typically, if you're a W-2 employee, a lender is going to use about 40% of your debt to income ratio. So that means they're going to use 40% of your debt to income ratio. So that means they're going to use 40% of your gross income minus your debt payments, your student loans, your car payments, and your credit card payments. Those monthlies work against you and come off your monthly allowance. So back in 2019, if you had very little debt, the average house was $260,000

at 3%. You could make about $60,000 as a family and have a shot at qualifying for the average house. That's amazing. Two people working together for 60K in America in 2019 is very doable. Fast forward to late 2022, 2023, and now here in 2024, you do need about $100,000 if you want to have a shot at getting into that 400000 house. The only thing you could do to help yourself is if you put a large down payment. If you are making $80,000, but you do have $100,000 to put down and you get a $300,000 loan, you're going to have a shot at qualifying. But in today's world, the 25 to 40-year-olds, it's very unlikely that they're debt-free or have $120,000 laying around to invest in a house. So that's really what's been the biggest change in the past five years.

I want to jump to the build-to-rent communities, specifically the single-family home communities popping up all over the country. Florida, I know, is a big market for this. There's huge development in this type of housing. But I'm wondering if you can explain to the viewers here the economics behind that. It's still the same single family house. So why are people able to afford to rent and live there but not able to buy these homes? Well, the rent price is actually way cheaper. So even if you look at some of these new built communities, the houses are 450,000. So your payment, if you were going to own it, is going to be about 4,000 out the door with property

taxes, homeowners insurance, HOA and everything, but they're being rented for 2,800. So it's actually cheaper to rent right now, but you're still spending $2,800 on rent, which just years ago, you could have a mortgage for $1,500. So that's kind of the position we're in. But if these investors are buying them in cash, they're able to cash flow at these prices. If you were to invest just as an everyday person, it would be $4,000. So you would have to rent it for $4,000 for it even to make sense. But if you're paying cash, you can actually make a cash flow by offering a little bit lower rent there. So that's what people are doing because if they know the average

American can no longer buy a home, what are they going to be stuck doing? Renting. So all the institutional investors go, oh, we're going to have a nation of renters. Let's get into the housing market and buy up a bunch of communities because we know we're going to have customers. So that's a problem that if you want to talk on a policy level or if Americans can get behind, I don't think the individual investor who wants to buy 20 homes in their life should be criticized. I think that's part of the American dream. But when you have institutions spending $3 billion buying out companies and taking over tens of thousands of rentals and you're drying up the supply, continuing to raise the price on everyday Americans is unfair, and it needs to be looked at quickly.

Yeah, let's talk about that for a second. Maybe this is veering into conspiracy. Maybe it's not. But some say that homeownership as a pillar of the American dream itself was a psyop. So banks could make money writing mortgages, selling mortgage-backed securities, financializing housing, basically. And now today, maybe banks are at the point, they figured out, oh, perhaps it's just more lucrative to buy and own these buildings and we'll rent them out. So lately in the past few years, I've seen more of this narrative that you just talked about.

Renting is actually better in many ways. A nation of renters, you have more flexibility, they say, less to do, save on some of the other costs of home ownership that many people don't talk about. What are your thoughts about this? If we had rent control, I would be a lot less concerned because if you could rent, if the average apartment or the average home in America was a thousand bucks and you could no longer buy a home, it was going to take you 10 years longer to buy a home, but you could rent for a thousand dollars. It's kind of like, okay, it's frustrating, but that's not bad. When you are blocking people from buying a home, but also taking 40% of their income for rent, that's a double-edged sword. That's when it becomes a problem. But it is cheaper in some instances to rent.

But if you look back, even historically, anyone who bought a home, even if you bought a home in 2006, before the crash of 08, if you never sold your home, you'd be positive right now. So over the past 100 years, when you bought a house, your house is going to be worth more. And some people will debate that. And I understand from both ends, like why would you pay off your house and tie up 500,000 when you should put that money to work? But it's also really nice if your property taxes and homeowner insurance is only 600 a month and that's your housing bill. Like that's amazing. It frees up your income to be able to do other things. So it just depends on what path you want to take in life. But I do advise people, even as a real estate agent, I say some of you should be renting.

You really should. Some people should be renting to save money, but make it count and try to put a plan together because I don't think you're going to want to rent forever. But if you have to rent the next two to five years, that's okay. But try to make the most of that just so you can set yourself up for the future. So if we do turn into this kind of nation of renters, is it a possibility that we could see kind of an erosion? That's what goes into my head is an erosion in the neighborhood because we know that numerous studies have shown that home ownership has some really positive effects on the community itself.

If we own something, we're more likely to take good care of it. So as a whole, what do you think the impact of that is on society? I think it's twofold. I mean, one, with these institutional investors, they're buying up entire communities. So the entire community is renters. So that way, when it comes to the quality, but even in my neighborhood, there's probably only 10% of people who are renting here and it's a beautiful neighborhood and people take care of it. But I think the main concern for the renter's economy is that where are we? And I don't want to sound like dystopian or anything, but I lived in Los Angeles for 15 years and I saw the one bedroom apartment go from 1,000 to 3,700 over a 15 year period.

So I'm like, is this a foreshadow? Even in Canada, the same thing's happening. Is this a foreshadow to all the medium cities in same thing's happening. Is this a foreshadow to all the medium cities in the country? Is Orlando, it once was 1,200, it's now 1,900. Is it going to be 3,200 in 10 years? What happens to the individuals in 10 years if they keep raising the rent? That's my only concern. So will they create rent control? Are people going to be forced to migrate? So that's the thing that I can't really put my finger on because I can't think if there's 100 million renters and they keep raising the price, what does that do?

You know, it's okay if LA and Miami is expensive because if you can't hang, you got to move. But if Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Raleigh, Austin, Phoenix, Orlando, you know, if every city starts to become two, 3,000 for a know, if every city starts to become two, 3000 for a studio, what does that do to our country? So that's the thing I'm just kind of waiting to get more data on in the next few years to kind of see where we're headed. You brought up rent control a couple of times. So I wanted to ask you, where are you in terms of letting the market dictate prices versus having some kind of, I mean, rent control is a government intervention.

Well, it's twofold because again, if you're a landlord and your property is going up in value, that means your insurance is probably going up, your property taxes are going up. So all of a sudden what you thought you were going to cashflow is being eaten away and you want to be able to raise the rent because that is fair market value. I understand the supply and demand aspect, but there are places that do have rent control. So it's not a new concept. There are states that are rent control where they can only raise it at maybe 3% a year. And that's, I guess, a little more fair if you want to look at it that way.

But again, this wasn't a problem four years ago. So with all this new discussion, there's really nothing to point to because we've never had such a sharp uptick of rent prices with housing prices. So we're all just trying to figure out in this new world, how do we manage this so that people aren't stressed out? Because everyone's trying to buy a home. Even when I'm reading my comments, we're treating primary home ownership like timing Bitcoin. Everyone's on, they're going, at 7% interest rate, it's 6.5%. No, it's 6.2 today. It's backed up to eight. It's like for 50 years, you just worked hard. It was hard. You had to work hard, save a down payment, pay off your debt. It was a serious thing to buy a house, but it was possible. Now it's become this, we're betting on our primary residence, which is unfortunate because

most of the wealth that people hold is in real estate. The boomers hold most of the wealth of this country, I think over 50%, and their biggest asset is their home. So we should look at that as a government and say, well, what do we want for young people? How about a 30-year fixed rate so they can build their life and not have to wait every year for their apartment to put a letter on the door and say, hey, you can renew your lease for just $4,700. And then you got to keep moving. It's like we need to help first-time homebuyers in our young generation to alleviate the stress of the cost of living. So there's got to be some sort of intervention, but that also doesn't create too much problems for the mom and pop landlords. I think that's a good point. And before we wrap,

I wanted to ask you about the economy in general. Just over the last few years, I've come across many narratives, everything from there's going to be a certain recession to, oh, we're going to have a soft landing to a vibe session. The economy is doing well. It's just that people aren't feeling good about it. I think that's maybe potentially a Biden talking point that they've latched onto. There's also the silent depression. I know you've talked about this, where traditional economic indicators are positive, but it's not capturing the daily struggle of the masses of people who are just trying to make ends meet. You're on the ground. So what do you see as the reality of the economy, specifically in the past couple of years, but also maybe projecting the next 12 to 24 months? This is the best way to paint the picture of our economy. And I wish a leader or

politician would actually say this. For half the country, the economy is wonderful. And that is good for our country. But for the other half, they are struggling. So what differentiates the dip between these two? If you bought your home, this is how wild this is. If you bought your home before the year 2020, you most likely have a 3% interest rate and your payment is probably around $1,500 for your house. Somebody who bought after 2020 probably has a $3,000 payment or is spending $2,500 on rent. If the people before 2020 have no college debt or their

children are out of daycare, they also don't have those expenses. So you can have two neighbors living right next to each other in the same neighborhood and one person's house is $1,500 and their payment is $3,500 plus $2,500 for daycare plus $1,000 for student loans. So this person saying, I can't make it off of 120 while their neighbor is being like, you're overspending. I make 65 and I'm crushing it. Well, your payment's 1500. You got no college debt and your kids are grown. They're spending 7,000 on those three things. You're only spending 1500. So that's why you're going to Applebee's, you're traveling. So the economy's booming, but that's where we're pinched. We basically are living in two different worlds. It was the people who set themselves up before 2020 and the people basically after 2020, unless you're a multiple six figure earner, then that's, you know, you're doing well.

But those are the two economies we're in. And I just haven't seen people address that correctly because we are living in a dual economy of good and bad. And we just have to try to figure out a way to help the people who are struggling and make it more, you know, aware as a talking point. And I know we've talked this whole segment about the American dream dying, but obviously housing transactions are still happening every day. So if one of your clients, I know, I think you alluded to this earlier, you talked a little bit about this, but if, if one of your clients still has this aspirational goal of buying a home, what kinds of advice would you give them in terms of financial planning and building a strategy around being successful in today's economic environment?

The number one thing, if you ever want to buy a house, is to become educated on the topic. I always recommend, even before talking to a real estate agent, talking with a lender so you can understand your options. What are your down payments? What kind of loan are you going to get? What are you going to need? Do you need to pay off your vehicle? Do you need to pay off debt? Do you need to make more money? Understanding exactly what you need makes it easier for you to make a plan. So you just don't want to put your head in the sand and go, ah, this is frustrating. It's like, figure out what it is so you can work towards it. Or this is not popular. Don't, don't, don't come at me.

This is just the truth. I think we're going to see a massive migration into different parts of our country if home ownership is important to you. Because if you and your family are making 80, 90, $100,000 a year, and you can work remote or you can transfer to Michigan or Ohio or some other places in the South, you can get a nice, charming white picket fence home for $220, $250 in different parts of the country. But are people going to want to uproot their whole life? At least it's an option. So I tell people, start looking at different places around the country on your spare time, work on paying off your debt, and really focus on,

where is my career going to be in five years? Am I going to continue to make money? If not, and I want a home, what do I have to do at this point? So it's just being educated and writing down on a piece of paper with your family, what are your goals and what are your obstacles that you can put a plan together? Okay. Yeah. I think that's sound advice. So if viewers want to hear more of you, Freddie, where can they find you? Yeah, Instagram or TikTok is probably my two. I try to post as much educational stuff every day. So even if you spend 20 minutes on one of my pages and look through, I kind of give advice more nuanced on all of this and see what kind of works for you. But myself and there's many others who give advice on lending, on buying homes. So just kind of take advice from all of us and put a plan together what best suits you and your family.

Awesome. Well, Freddie, thank you for coming on the show today. Really appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks, James. I appreciate it. That's it for me this week. If you'd like to learn more about housing in America, I've done an investigative deep dive

on the private equity takeover of entire neighborhoods of single family homes in America. The video is posted on my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee. Head on over, check that out, give me a follow. The link will be in the description below. As always, I'd like to thank you for your time, and I'll see you in the next one. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets.

Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame Thank you. outgoing voiceover. I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together.

How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration

in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first Black sailor to be awarded the medal,

to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor-in-chief of the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, and this is the art of class war on breaking points. We're recording this on March 8th, 2024, five months after the Hamas-led attacks on October 7th that killed over 1,100 people.

Five months into Israel's genocidal assault on the open-air prison that was Gaza, which has killed to date at least 30,000 people. 75 years into Israel's U.S.-backed occupation of historic Palestine. There was some vague hope this week that at least a 40-day ceasefire would be implemented ahead of the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan.

Maybe, by the time you see this, a ceasefire will be in place, but I doubt it. But whether a permanent, temporary, or no ceasefire is reached, the damage, as we say, has already been done. What was once Gaza is now largely rubble. What were once so many men, women, and children with lives and thoughts and futures are now pieces, ash, dust, and bone. The horrors wrought upon Palestinians in Gaza will and must rightly remain burned into our history as one of the greatest failures of humanity to defend

life itself. And whatever comes next, we need to stare directly into the darkness that has swallowed this land, this people, fueled by our tax dollars and our country's endless political support. Dr. Thayer Ahmad is a Palestinian-American ER physician, and he witnessed firsthand the carnage in the Gaza Strip during his recent medical mission at Al-Nasr Hospital in Khan Yunis. He is here with us now. Dr. Ahmad, thank you so much for joining me today on Breaking Points. Thank you for having me, Max. I appreciate it.

I appreciate you, man. And I can't imagine what you have been through and what you've seen, but we're going to try as best we can in the next few minutes to get people to listen as closely as they possibly can. Dr. Ahmad, you yourself, can you describe for viewers your journey first into Gaza, what it was like getting into the hospital and what it was like to try to provide emergency medical care in those conditions? I've interviewed health care workers like yourselves in so many other contexts. I truly can't imagine what it's like to try to do that kind of job, to provide that kind of care in this kind of environment? Can you just tell people what that was like? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think you bring up an interesting point here, Max. I know I'm a part of an NGO organization that does medical humanitarian

relief called MedGlobal. And, you know, we've been to the Gaza Strip several times. I've been to the Gaza Strip prior to this occasion four times. We've been to Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Venezuela. I mean, we've seen sort of humanitarian crises all around. And when October 7th happened, we knew that there would be this ensuing sort of disaster that would take place in the Gaza Strip, just because we had a feel for what the situation was like. People should keep in mind that the Gaza Strip is not an easy place to access. I mean, it's been under siege for over 17 years. And so anytime we would try to get in in the past, prior to October 7th, it was always a struggle. You either had to enter in through the northern border with Israel or through the southern border with Egypt. And neither of those borders were necessarily streamlined so people could get in and get out. And so it already created this sort of

humanitarian, tenuous situation in the Gaza Strip. So when this broke out, we've been trying for months trying to get in. We had a team of doctors who wanted to bring in supplies, but the borders from both sides were totally closed down. Nobody was getting in and barely anybody was getting out unless you could pay a fixer thousands and thousands of dollars to get you out of the Gaza Strip. And this fixer generally was Egyptian. So when we finally got word that there was a chance that we would be able to get into the Gaza Strip, this was already January, months into what was taking place. We had already heard in November about the food insecurity that was taking place on the ground. We had heard about the bombing, and we had heard about how many kids had been amputees at that point. We had heard about how

many people had fled to Rafah, the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip. And so we thought that we were ready for this journey. We thought we were prepared. We knew that there was a humanitarian catastrophe taking place in the midst of a war zone where F-35s are dropping bombs and tanks are rolling through neighborhoods. And there is a ground invasion city by city. But what really set the stage for us is as we're approaching and we're going through the Sinai Peninsula and we're approaching the Rafah border, we really start seeing lines and lines of trucks right outside of the border. And these are humanitarian aid trucks. I mean, they've got infant formula, they've got medicines, they've got tents, they've got winter socks, they've got blankets, and miles and miles backed up, you see them all across the side of the road on both sides of the

road. And so we really started to kind of get this, you know, sense of frustration and anger, because you know that once we cross that border, what we're going to see are people who desperately need the things that are on these trucks. And so we get through the border. And the second that you cross into the Palestinian side of Rafah, you're just overwhelmed with the amount of people that are sheltering in this area. Again, I had been there prior to October 7th. This was an area that housed 250,000 to 300,000 residents. And when we first showed up in January, there were already 1.2, 1.3 million people. There was a sea of tents.

And you could, you know, as it was getting darker at night, the only thing that we were able to see is just kind of was what was visualized to us by the light on the truck that was taking us to the office. It was just people everywhere, kids everywhere. There's no electricity anywhere you look. You look to the right, you see a tent. You look to the left, you see a bunch of kids out on the street. And so, you know, it was a very overwhelming feeling. It was not the Gaza

that we had seen when we had left a year earlier. I was there in March of 2022. And so it was it was quite overwhelming. The following day, we were told, OK, we're going to go to Nasser Hospital. It's the largest remaining functioning hospital in the Gaza Strip. It's in Khan Yunis. Khan Yunis is in the midst of a very heavy military assault by the Israeli military. It is essentially been de-conflicted. It's a word that we heard a lot that I found means nothing. But essentially, what we're told is that the hospital is OK. There is this coordination taking place between the World Health Organization, the United Nations, the Israeli military, the Egyptian authorities. The hospital is fine. And so we made our way to the hospital. And just walking through the

perimeter of the Nasser Medical Complex, there are about four buildings that make up the Nasser Medical Complex and the Nasser Hospital. Again, it just hits you. There are 10,000 people sheltering inside of these buildings and around these buildings. There are tents everywhere. As we're trying to make it through the emergency department, you have to walk by a destroyed ambulance, an ambulance that was hit by a missile. And you cannot take two steps at the entrance

without bumping into somebody. All of these families are sheltering in the hallways, in the corridors of the hospital. Every single floor is occupied by people. The second I'm trying to get into the emergency department, into an area we call the resuscitation bay, where we get the sickest patients, the patients who have been traumatized by some sort of bomb or shelling or shrapnel. You have to make your way through families who are laying on a very thin mattress on the floor, just kind of, that's where they've been sheltering for months. And I remember the first day that we get there, I put my stuff into the call room because I was going to be sleeping

at Nassar Hospital. And I walked into the resuscitation bay. And already there was this young man, 20 some years old, who was being treated on the floor because this hospital normally can have 300, maybe 350 patients, but it was already taking care of a thousand patients. And so we didn't have any hospital carts to be able to treat people. And so we had to lay them on the floor and get to work. And, you know, this particular young man was hit by shrapnel. He had been walking next to a house that had been bombed and he his whole body was sprayed with shrapnel. I had shown up and, you know, I got down on my knees to start working with the doctor, the Palestinian doctor who was taking care of him. And it was clear that he was really, really sick. And eventually, he lost the pulse and we were doing chest

compressions and we were working on him doing different trauma procedures. But it was all, you know, it was all futile and he ended up dying. But I remember looking up and realizing that his family was right next to us, was right next to his head, just kind of watching what we were doing. And they had seen us stop doing chest compressions on him. And I was just kind of taken aback by the overwhelming nature of all of this. There are, you know, this room, this resuscitation bay can normally have four patients in it. And there were 20 people in there at that time, you know, seven of which were on the floor. And then there were their families scattered in these corners, just kind of watching their loved ones being treated. And then this family saw their son die in this process. And, you know, it was, it was really, really tough to

process because, you know, there was nobody there that can kind of help them take through this process. After we sort of communicated this information and they grieved for maybe a minute, they had to pick up their son in the blanket that they brought him in from the house and go and find a place to bury him. And, you know, for me, that was, you know, just coming from working in Chicago and watching that sort of hit me. It was something that, you know, I still struggle with. And that was sort of every day while we were at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunus. Every day, every few hours, you're getting a rush of 15 to 20 people coming through our doors. Every day, you're seeing, you know, kids who have been underneath the rubble who did not survive, you know, that sort of blunt injury that they suffered. You see people who have chronic medical

diseases who are dying because they didn't get the care that they needed. They didn't get the medicine that they desperately needed. They did not get enough dialysis because the dialysis facility is overwhelmed because everybody's displaced. And so it's not able to treat people. It was certainly something that I think, you know, I don't understand how people were still able to operate in this setting. And when I looked around at my co-workers, my Palestinian colleagues, the doctors and the nurses, and just hearing their stories, it was this additional sort of layer of trauma that they were dealing with. So not only were they displaced, not only did they maybe lose their home or they lost a loved one, not only were they hungry, hoping that there would be an aid distribution

in front of the hospital later in the day, or hoping that World Central Kitchen or Anero would deliver a hot meal for the day, but they were also being tasked and asked to serve this community that was suffering immensely as well. And I don't know how they were able to do it for four months at that point. And now we've reached five months. And they're doing it with a shortage of everything that you can imagine, a shortage of all of the supplies that is needed for a hospital to function. On any given day, they may not have the antibiotics that they needed. They may not have Band-Aids. I remember there would be days where we would walk over to wash our hands after treating patients, and there would be no water that would come out of the faucet because the tank

at the top of the hospital had emptied because it was such a busy day. We had used all of the water that was there. We could not have scalpels. So we were using razor blades to perform some of these procedures. We did not have pain medicines on some days. So we had to improvise and they did a phenomenal job. They did such an incredible job because they have been in this position multiple times. And somehow the brilliance just kind of comes out in those moments. But you ask yourself, you say, why are we asking them to go to this level? Why are we asking them to perform at this superhuman level? And, you know, one last thing I'll mention to you just

about Nasser Hospital is eventually the bombing came to the perimeter of the hospital and the hospital was surrounded. And on one of those days, I was evacuated from this hospital. And ultimately, Nasser became just like many of the other hospitals in the Gaza Strip. It was raided. It was surrounded. It was rendered inoperable. The electricity was cut off. Many people who were very sick died unnecessarily in the process. And many of the co-workers, many of the health care workers were abducted. And some of them were actually injured or killed as they tried to flee the hospital or as they walked the hallways of the hospital by either a drone or a sniper, who knows what it was. But I just hope that that can be put into some perspective. That was the largest remaining hospital. That was one of two referral

hospitals. There is no other hospital like Nasr now that can accommodate the sort of trauma patients and the injuries that we see. There is no other facility that can have multiple operating rooms running at the same time. Make no mistake, this will result in hundreds, if not thousands, of unnecessary preventable deaths. The fact that Nasr has now been rendered inoperable. And I also think about my colleagues who, and the people who were displaced there, who have been displaced yet again, who have had to flee again, sort of continuing that cycle of trauma that they face. I know to everyone watching and listening, this is extremely hard to hear, but I am begging you

to open your ears, open your eyes, don't look away. Dr. Ahmad, I know we only have a few minutes left. I have so many thoughts, but this is not about me. I want to use the time we have to ask you this question. People here in the West, as you know, are seeing a lot of the pain and horror that our fellow human beings in Gaza are going through, through their social media feeds. But you have seen it, experienced it, heard it, smelled it, felt it up close. I'm not asking you this question in like, give us more gory detail sort of way. And we will not reduce these people and this humanitarian tragedy to salacious gore.

But in the remaining time, I wanted to ask if you could impress upon viewers the scale, severity, reality, and human cost of the pain and horror that Israel has wrought on Palestinian men, women, and children. No one who hasn't experienced it themselves can truly know this pain and horror. But if you could transfer your experience to others, if you could grab people by the arm and have them experience for a moment what you experienced, what would you most want them to see and understand? I mean, I think it's important to realize that every aspect of life in Gaza has been destroyed, damaged and disrupted. And I'll try to take it through a normal day.

I mean, you are not able to get up and have breakfast because of the severe food insecurity. And we saw this not just at the hospital, but everywhere. Everybody's hungry. Everybody's concerned about where their next meal will come. There are lines around the block for the partially functioning bakery, hoping that somebody can get a loaf of bread for their family. There's no ability to rely on telecommunications. I was there for eight days of a telecommunications blackout. We could not communicate with each other. We could not communicate with our families. We could not communicate with other doctors. We could not let people know this is what we needed. So

many of these aid organizations are guessing what the people need because they're not able to get that feedback. In reality, the kids have not been in school for five months. They are waking up every day and they are not being able to go to school where they can learn and they can kind of start working towards their future. Nobody is able to work. Not even the doctors in the hospital were getting paid, the nurses, the doctors. None of these people are getting paid regularly. The banks are not open. You cannot go in there and just withdraw whatever money you had in your savings and try to figure something out for your family. This is all happening under the guise, under the backdrop of bombs being dropped, of houses being destroyed, neighborhoods being leveled.

I saw a statistic yesterday that came out from UNICEF that one in six children in the Gaza Strip are severely malnourished. That means that their growth is going to be stunted. They're going to have irreversible damage to their mental development, to their physical development. They are not going to be able to be to focus or to learn like they normally would have if they were not starving to death, if they were not thirsty the way that they are. There's no clean water. So there is infections running rampant through some of these displaced shelters and the camps that are there. Hepatitis A, that's a diarrhea illness

that many kids are suffering from. And we don't have the capability to get them rehydrated, to make sure that they get back on foot. It's literally going to kill some kids because we just don't have what it takes. And there are already 20 children who have died. You know, there's another statistic that came out. 37 mothers die every single day in the

Gaza Strip. There are over 25,000 unaccompanied children. There are a thousand kids who've lost a limb, at least one limb in the Gaza Strip. Every single part of society has been disrupted. There's no fuel getting in. So most people are relying on donkey carts to pull them up and down to get to where they need to go. The sanitation facilities have been damaged and destroyed. An ICU doctor who I work with, to me was complaining about how his mother is in one of these internally displaced camps, and that she has to walk 15 minutes just to use the bathroom, and that she already is not stable and that he can't get her a walker because none of that stuff is entering. You know, there are over 6,000 kids under the age of six who get formula fed. And they are at risk because we hope that those trucks that are waiting outside of Rafah

on the Egyptian side can get in and bring in that formula that they need. I mean, every aspect of life has been disrupted. And now we're talking about the potential ground invasion in Rafah. There are 1.7 million people there. You cannot cough without coughing on somebody in Rafah, there are 1.7 million people there. You cannot cough without coughing on somebody in Rafah. You cannot do anything without bumping into somebody. And we're talking about a ground invasion. It's going to be a bloodbath, but these people have suffered so much already. And the final thing that I'll say is that everybody has lost something. Nobody has

been untouched. Everybody has been affected by this, but they haven't even gotten the chance to sort of process that, to grieve the loved ones that they've lost, to think about the homes that have been destroyed. And we keep pushing more and more trauma on them. There's a war after the war. That's what everybody in Gaza says hope there's one tomorrow, the work doesn't stop. In fact, the work is just beginning. And it's going to require all of us to do everything we can to provide some relief for people who are immensely suffering and who have not been given a chance at life. So that was Dr. Thayer Ahmad. Dr. Ahmad is a Palestinian-American ER physician here in the United States who witnessed firsthand the carnage in the Gaza Strip during his recent medical mission at al-Nasr Hospital in Khan Yunus. I want to thank Dr. Ahmad for joining us, and I want to thank you all for watching this segment with Breaking Points. Please do subscribe to my news outlet, The Real News, for more coverage like this. You can find links in the description of this video.

I'll see you soon for the next edition of The Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Fight hard, however you can, to stop this. Solidarity forever. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. who's not the father?

Well, Sam, luckily it's You're Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up, they could lose their family and millions of dollars. Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.