Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Breaking Points LIVE FROM NEW YORK featuring Kyle Kulinski & Marshall Kosloff!

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Krystal and Saagar go live from New York with Kyle Kulinski and Marshall Kosloff to talk about Elon's Twitter offer, housing market, the lost healthcare debate, energy policy, geopolitical realignment, and labor activism!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is 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. 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. and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober 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. Cable news is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making it impossible to function as a society

and to know what is true and what is false. The good news is that they're failing and they know it. That is why we're building something new. Be part of creating a new, better, healthier, and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at breakingpoints.com. Your hard-earned money is gonna help us build

for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to get started here. It's a fun special edition of Breaking Points live here from New York City. A special thank you to WTF Media and Alex, who some of you might know from Andrew Schultz's podcast, for hooking this up. We don't usually do this, as you can tell, but this is going to be a lot of fun. So we're going to start, I think, with the news.

And then as a preview for the premium subscribers, you guys programmed the show. And Crystal and I were frankly shocked. Yeah. How substantive these responses are. We gave y'all a bunch. I was annoyed by it, to be honest. Yeah.

So, I mean, we gave y'all a bunch of options for premium subscribers that you could vote on. How many votes did we end up getting? About 7,000. Yeah, which is awesome. Thank you for voting. But also you guys like basically gave us homework because we put a bunch of super like you know sort of political

hot topics like let's spend a few minutes bashing the media or like talking about trump no you literally went for the most wonky substantive topics that you possibly could of the entire list. So what you all voted for is housing policy, healthcare, geopolitical realignment, energy policy, and the future of labor. And we're probably going to throw in some AMA there at the end and start with a little news of the day. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised because we've seen before that the substantive content is very appreciated, although I will say that's not always what people click on on YouTube. That's right. But I do think our premium subscribers are a little bit of a different ilk. So thank you to everybody who voted. We're excited to dig into these topics because these

are some of our favorite things to talk about. Yeah, it's amazing. It's funny, too, just because being here in New York, it actually just feels even more, it just feels so salient, the fact that we're talking about housing. But let's start with Twitter. Obviously, news broke this morning. I was scrolling my phone at like 6 a.m. and everybody's freaking out. Elon Musk, okay, he's put in an offer, $52 a share, $41 billion. Wait, $54.20, isn't it? Yeah, sorry. You get the 4.20 in there. Oh, gosh. All right, fact-checked. $54 per share, a total of $41 billion. So what he writes in his prospectus, which he had to file with the SEC, is he's very clear about his ultimate aim. He doesn't say anything about business.

He doesn't talk about the company being run in a way that he doesn't particularly like. What he says is that this is all about free speech. He says in the opening line of his letter, I believe free speech is vital to a democracy. So it's an interesting takeover that he's doing there. And Marshall, I'm curious for your view here on what exactly this means by Elon, because traditional past shareholder activism has to do with, I think this company is being badly run. This is not about that.

This is, I think that this company is not abiding by content moderation standards that I think are important. So what do you think? And then we'll get everybody else in here. Yeah, just real quick, super pumped to be here. Usually this involves a expensive train ride in a hotel or your couch. This is just an Uber.

We're on Marshall's turf now. Yeah, so this is awesome. That's why I'm not wearing a tie. Kyle's as well. Rebellion. That's right. No, so here's the tape we were talking about this morning. We should think of this more as Elon Musk buying a newspaper than Elon Musk buying a big tech company.

So Jeff Bezos, 2013. Yeah, I love it when billionaires buy newspapers. This is a long tradition. Oftentimes rich people will buy a company, a product, not because they think it's going to throw off all this cash, but they believe in the idea behind it. That's what Jeff Bezos does with the Post. He's like, look, there's obviously some tech things I could do here,

but let's get real. I believe in a certain ideology, broadly like center-left, like democratic politics. I think this has a long legacy within that side of politics, so I want to make it survive. Elon Musk, he's not coming in the way Paul Singer came in last year, where it's like, look, Jack Dorsey, love Jack. I think we all like Jack. Shouldn't be CEOs of two companies. It's kind of crazy that, let's forget the't be CEOs of two companies. It's kind of crazy. Let's forget the edit button jokes for a second. It's kind of crazy that this company has not shipped new products in the past three years, that Twitter is the same fundamentally as it's been since 2015.

I don't know personally, but – And this number is crazy to me. Twitter only made $350 million in profit the past two years. So it's kind of like wild how disproportionate, how big this company is relative to how little money it actually makes. Can I, I have an unpopular opinion. I wonder if you guys, what you guys think, but I actually don't want that edit button. I kind of like, Oh, I hate the edit button. Yeah. I like that. First of all, I like that people show that they're humans and they make

mistakes and like autocorrect and they say stupid shit and it's kind of funny and you just have it there, but also gets confusing if people like delete it and they're able to parse it and i like that it's just there and that's it and you can't edit it i would like it if you delete a tweet and then it's actually deleted because usually what happens is like you'll see it on your feed press it and then it's like it's not really deleted if you just and i don't even delete tweets often but it's one of those things where it's like at least make it so that it actually works if you delete it we'll get to that kyle should you delete tweets because i think i think i think deleting tweets you're talking to the guy i am like he's a purist the weirdly most principled man on this i i have

tweets up there if i ever stop doing what i'm doing now i will never be able to get a job again no seriously because i used to go in i'd be like high on percocet at the selling cars just like firing out tweets and the next thing you know somehow my show takes off and everybody's like tweeting back at me everything i said back in 2011 and i'm like you know what whatever i said it you guys have a right to see it i'll leave it up so i'm weird on that but I understand why other people might want to have that option of delete. I will delete tweets if it's basically wrong in the future. So I'll say, hey, I tweeted this. Yeah, it was wrong. And then I take a screenshot of it for posterity. I'm like, just so people know, I deleted this because I don't want to spread fake news on the other

instance where I would delete it. Like this morning, I didn't delete the tweet. But this morning we tweeted out the wrong live stream. Right right yeah and that's like you know I mean I just don't want the wrong information and it's not of consequence it's just an actual error something like that I agree with like the factual corrections is something that yeah of course yeah but even those sometimes like for example I we didn't talk about the andrew yang andrew johnson tweet oh yeah on the show kyle did but yeah i prefer that he left it up and then tried to like add to it it was funny it was funny yeah yeah i didn't say i didn't say he was good i'm just saying unity's good yeah but in that case it's like actually unity was really

bad in that case making the opposite point yeah exactly anyway i don't mean to get into a total digression here but kyle i want to hear because we haven't heard on your uh on breaking points your view on elon musk taking over twitter so i'm curious so i feel like first of all the thing that he's saying it's about is the thing that i care the most about in terms of twitter i do feel like first of all the thing that he's saying it's about is the thing that i care the most about in terms of twitter i do feel like they've gone way too in the direction of being censorious um but i don't think this is an actual solution to it i don't think we should like wait for a billionaire to come save us i think the only way to fix this problem is you have to regulate twitter like it's a public utility and basically expand First Amendment protections and

officially, legally recognize that this is the new public square in the same way that Facebook is the new public square. And even you could argue maybe Instagram and some others are the new public square. So any large social media outlets should be regulated like a public utility. And then you expand First Amendment protections. The thing about Elon is, and I might get in trouble for saying this, but I've been saying stuff like this about Elon for a very long time. I don't trust his motives. I mean, this is a guy who he paid 3.27% in taxes. That was what's called his true tax rate from a big expose from ProPublica. He strikes me as a lot like all of the other billionaires. And there are other ulterior motives as to why he would do this. He did some, you were talking to me the other day about how you read an article. He did some weird maneuver to make money off of the move in the first place. Explain that to people. So, I mean, listen, I don't know if it was intentional or it was just an oversight, but in any case, because he was late in filing a legally required form announcing that he had a significant stake in Twitter, he was able to continue buying Twitter

stock at the lower pre-Elon announcement price. So he netted $156 million off of that. And that's not the first time that he has personally financially benefited from his quote unquote free speech on Twitter. The whole long and short of this is, I mean, I feel very similar to what Kyle just stated. Do I think that Elon Musk will have a content moderation policy on Twitter that I personally think is better and important for a democracy and more in the direction of free speech? Yes. Do I think that in general, it's a good thing to be hoping that our class of billionaires happens to have incentives and personal financial interests that line up with what happens to be good in that moment? No. So I don't see Elon Musk in any

different way than I see Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or some billionaire hedge funder or anybody else. I fully suspect that they'll be working in their own personal interest. Occasionally, that's going to align with the public good and with what we would like to see happen, but it's no system to exist and to just hope for the benevolence of the billionaires. And actually, Marshall, I think your point is really smart of how to think of this as like a billionaire buying a newspaper because that is how he thinks of it.

And he wants his own personal ability to put out there whatever he wants to and if it has good impacts for everybody else and you know brings trump back on twitter and all of those things then that's fine it's just not a real answer go ahead kyle yeah let me just say the true test of whether or not elon actually believes in free speech is gonna be are you even gonna unban your ideological opponents because Because so you ask me, hey, should Donald Trump be unbanned? And I say, yes, actually, that's a relatively easy question. Now, I despise Donald Trump, but I think he should be allowed back on Twitter.

Is a Tesla union account going to be allowed on Twitter? Not just that. Another good example is there were there was a mass banning of like large, prominent Antifa accounts about a year or two ago. Is Elon Musk going to be the one who, you know, put his cape on and saves antifa i don't know what quick thing though like this is where i'll just be a bit of devil's advocate here like why should like why should those anti like hey i don't know what those antifa accounts were doing but like there was some bad there was some like so here's the problem here twitter is terrible when it comes to actual enforcement right so like why does the hunter biden story matter beyond just like the queer screw up? It matters because we all know that there would

not have been an equivalent that happened to the Biden campaign. That was bad moderation, a badly run company in a way that obviously benefited team Biden. But bad enforcement is different than no enforcement. And I don't think my position, like if Antifa people were put, wrote in violence on the platform, then they should be banned. And guess what? If it turned out that BLM was doing the same thing and they weren't getting banned, that's a problem, but that's different. I, I, all I'm saying is like the Antifa BLM violence takes are different to me than a union organization. So let me ask that. So it depends. So on the one hand, you're correct. Just because we believe in free speech does not mean that you can do direct threats of violence. Not only should

that not be allowed on social media, that's also not allowed under the first amendment. There are very few exceptions to this idea of free speech. You know, we got libel, slander, defamation, direct threats of violence. You could argue something like doxing is in there. Um, in my opinion, based on what I've seen, i think twitter has gone beyond this notion of direct threats of violence just that being wrong because we all agree that's wrong to even like general vague cause of violence are now considered a direct threat of violence and i don't agree with that i think you should be able to say you know i got pitchfork in my hand that i'm going after the billionaires or some shit that's vaguely violent but it's not a direct threat of violence

so i would just say we got to lean on this side of free speech. But yes, there are some clear lines. 100%. And I think that that's what this is actually about. Nobody actually wants 100%, you know, no moderation. Like child porn, obviously. Of course. Right.

And so like these are all things which are written within the law. The issue, obviously, is comes to enforcement. And when it comes to enforcement, I think Crystal's correct. This is probably going to align here. But one thing is we shouldn't present this as a fait accompli. So it's 1126 a.m. here on the East Coast. The Twitter board reportedly has been meeting for the last hour and a half. As far as I can tell.

I'd love to be a fly on the lawn. I can't imagine. Total pandemonium. So I took one for the team. Oh, and just right now, Twitter will host an all-hands meeting with staff this afternoon to discuss Elon Musk takeover bid. This is from Sarah Fisher at Axios. She's a great reporter. The thing I do want to emphasize to people is that fiduciarily, this is a really tricky

one. So I took one for the team. I watched CNBC this morning as this was breaking, which, by the way, was amazing because they were just loving this. And so here's the way that they present it. It's going to be very hard for the board not to take this offer. The reason why is that if they reject the offer because of such the premium that he's put on the share price,

they will get sued because he has put in his letter that says, I will dump my stock, 9% of the company, if you don't accept that. That's obviously going to lower their price. So they open themselves up to a litany of lawsuits if they don't accept it, which would actually put them in pretty shaky legal reasoning. On the other hand- Because what you're saying is that they wouldn't be upholding their fiduciary responsibility

to act in the best interest of the shareholder and the company. Which is all you're supposed to do as a board. And so at the same time, they're in a real conundrum. Now, I did see from a leading corporate law expert that Elon may have actually played himself a little bit because he said in there that he will dump his stock if they don't take that. And so the board on legal grounds

could defend the rejection of the offer and say, well, he's trying to coerce us into doing this, which could put, regardless, this is a nightmare for the Twitter board and they're getting sued regardless of what happens in the situation. Elon himself also opening himself up to some litigation, but per the immediate reaction on CNBC

and per the Wall Street analysts that they had on at the time, they saw almost no world where the board would be able to reject this from a pure fiduciary responsibility, which they legally have to uphold, from a pure fiduciary responsibility, which they legally have to uphold, which puts them in a real bind, right, Marshall? I mean, it's like, they can't be like, well, this doesn't align with values of the company.

That stuff doesn't really matter. We had Alex Kantoritz on Breaking Points last week, where I did an interview, and he made this point. And this is really fascinating, right? So that number, $350 million of profit the past two years, aka if this company is not performing well, everything that Iwan is talking about, we need more free speech, we need more those different bits, all of those things don't actually align with Twitter doing better as a company.

So I'm not saying this is going to make it easy to stop the takeover bid. It's just a really interesting dynamic. So everything you're talking about, that sounds like a great newspaper. Like what you're describing, like people are free, there is speech, there is debate, people can be contentious.

But at the same time, like Alex was pointing out that how do most of the big tech companies actually make money? Google, like Facebook, it's ads. TikTok, ads too. Twitter, if you are a company and wants to buy advertising, the thing you are not gonna be super willing to do if you're a company who wants to buy advertising, the thing you are not going

to be super willing to do, if you're not willing to spend money already is, oh, by the way, Twitter's going to be even more open. So once again, it's just like newspaper side, great. Business side, I would not want to work here. Twitter's just a bad business. Yeah, that's the takeaway.

Aren't they experimenting with some premium feed? No one's paying for it. Who's going to pay for that? Crystal's most exclusive tweet. Who's going to pay for that? Right. I mean, I don't know. Crystal's most exclusive tweet. I literally don't know a single person who is actually using that function.

I don't know anybody. I will show all of you my nipple if you follow me on Twitter premium. If you even wanted to go there, OnlyFans would be a better use of your time. That's true. There's actually a, if the world needs this content,

we should make it of OnlyFans and be far more better than like a Twitter thing. All right, we'll table that idea. Yeah, we have to table this. It's 1130. We got to make sure that we... It's 1130

and we're already talking about OnlyFans. We're talking about OnlyFans. We have to cover the real issues. Because what the people asked for is some deep substance here. And so actually the number one issue, and I don't think it was that close in terms of the voting. Well, it was like, so the top two were basically tied.

Okay, so number one issue that you guys asked for us to talk about is something that we've covered a number of times on the show, but it's housing. And it's particularly relevant this week because, of course, we just got a sort of stunningly bad inflation report. And a significant part of that had to do with shelter costs. That's both home prices and rent. Both parts of that, obviously, incredibly significant because so much of people's paycheck goes to shelter. And also because, really, the only way to get ahead and have sort of the stable stable classic American dream in this country is to become a homeowner. And that's the way that we've set things up. The fact that asset prices go up much, much more quickly than wages do.

Wages are actually falling behind, especially with inflation, means that this is incredibly central to inequality, culture, society, the fabric of the nation, all of those things. So here's some latest stats to kind of get us kick-started. We're looking at a Bloomberg article. The headline is, Rent Inflation Shows That Landlords Have the Upper Hand Again, pointing to massive spikes across the country. It started in sort of the cities that people were fleeing to, the Sunbelt cities. That's where rent spikes started. But now it's become a nationwide trend. They also say right at the beginning of the pandemic, you see this radical shift where

the average rental cost in a city, if it's higher than the U.S. median rent, people mass exited that city. And if it's lower, people were mass entering that city. The places with the highest inflation right now are the ones that saw really significant demand shocks from changes in migration trends. So you're having now this sort of national increase in rent prices that are hitting people absolutely everywhere. Right here in New York City, and this is from a New York Times article, you had prices spike a third in a single year. So from January 2021 to January 2022, prices went up by a third. So you had a lot of people who thought, oh my God, I can finally afford to actually live in Manhattan or actually live in the neighborhood that I wanted to. They got in during the pandemic,

helped support those landlords who were going through tough times. And then when the renewal came up the next year, they're completely priced down. They don't have a prayer. And the other piece here is that home prices are also skyrocketing, not just because we've had a continued inflation of an asset bubble, but also because now with the Fed raising interest rates, that means that mortgage rates are going up. That makes home prices even less affordable for people, especially first-time homebuyers that don't have it all in hand in cash to put down or who can't get it from mommy and daddy. Well, what does that mean? That means those people, instead of being able to buy a house, are going to have to rent.

And that, again, increases the rent prices. The last trend that we've tracked, of course, closely is the fact that in some of these markets, it's like a third to a quarter of the, a quarter to a third of the buyers are not regular people. It's permanent capital. It's massive influxes of these gigantic companies that want to become America's landlord and to change the American dream from you own your own home till we'll rent you the home with the white picket fence. Yeah, let me just zoom in on one of the most important stats here, which is that the monthly mortgage payment that it takes to buy a typical home in the United States is now up by 55% compared from the start of last year. Jesus. Just the monthly mortgage payment. Yeah. Now, this is actually something that Chris Liebman really focused on,

which is when the Federal Reserve raising its interest rates and throwing kind of a change in all of the interest rates also that all of us are experiencing, is that we have had the sharpest rise in mortgage interest rates in modern American history. Just in the last two months, rates have gone up from 3% to 5%. You compound that over the lifetime of a 30-year mortgage, that's potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands of dollars in the average home market. Same thing in terms of New York City. My own

sister lives here in New York. Marshall, I'm sure you're hearing from a lot of friends. The COVID price got so many people into living situations. And given that work from home and all that has actually remained static, a lot of people are now going to have to bite a major bullet and potentially have to see a 50% or 60% increase in rent here in the city, even though their commiserate salary and all that, frankly, faced with inflation, has gone down relative to what they're able to pay. Yeah. I think the part that I want to pick up on you're discussing is the depressing narrative part of this, right? So like COVID, I shouldn't have to say this, insert is the worst thing that's happened in all of our lifetimes, obviously. But especially in the summer, once the lockdowns ended,

you had this story of, hey, COVID has now helped everyone realize that in a lot of professions, you don't have to actually go into an office and you don't actually have to live in New York. And we could have this bountiful future where maybe you want to live in Tulsa. Maybe you want to live in South Carolina. You could have this place where it's not as if the American dream of you buying a nice house on Long Island is probably gone. But guess what? The good news is the internet has made it so that you could basically live anywhere.

If you're a white collar. Yeah. Big if. But here's the key thing. Even that white collar story hasn't played out. That's what's actually really fascinating to me. Only the uber-rich are. What I actually recently heard is that more people have moved to

New York now than actually were moving to New York before COVID. So what you're really seeing there is that what you saw, what people wanted to have happen is that the internet would like disperse, decentralize, like weaken the power of these big cities, DC, New York, LA.

It didn't happen. And so I think it just, it's an important story. Even if you're like not a white collar person, because I'm not trying to claim a sob story about Google employees. It's more just that I think there are so many instances like this of us not being critical

and making, like how many books were written the past two or three years claiming that this wouldn't happen? How many takes were there? But like, no worries, guys, like all this is basically solved now. If I pick up on that, and this is fascinating before I go to you, Kyle, which is that people were like, oh, well, people will leave New York and people will go and they'll go to Boise,

which happened, you know, rent inflation in Boise is up like 50%. Well, here's what happened. Now rent is high here and in Boise. Now rent is high here and in Austin. Rent is high here and in Dallas. Rent is high here and in Tampa. Rent is high here and in Tampa. We had some of the places that there. So instead of what's happened is you've had the rich folks here who have had a massive increase in their price of their home. Also, the people who have the money are relatively fleeing, driving up the price in other cities. But it's priced out.

Basically, anybody who makes less than than what 350 000 a year that's like 96 percent of the u.s population average home price the average is now a half a million dollars right yeah that's insane fucking crazy so one of the things i remember there was an article maybe about a year ago that came out and explained how one of the thing that's things that's happening is like black rock and some other Wall Street ghouls are going around buying up all the houses and then just renting them back to people. Yes. Correct.

So in a way, we sort of reinflated the bubble just through a different path, the 2008 bubble that burst. So, you know, I look at that and I say, I, are we going to avoid it bursting again? Is it not going to burst because it's BlackRock who owns it and is renting it out to everybody? Or is it still going to burst? And the other fact that sticks out in my mind is that, um, one of the reasons why you've had this push from the government to get people back into the office is because the commercial real estate bubble was going to burst if people didn't go

back to the office. So there's sort of like a nefarious motive along those lines as well. Yeah, that's definitely the case. Not to mention bosses just like want your ass in a chair where they can like watch your every move, even if you were perfectly productive on your own time. Yeah, I mean, this is also a generational story because we already have the stats to know that millennials are hitting every financial milestone later than boomers and older generations did. So they're, you know, getting married later, they're starting families later and they're owning homes later. And this is I've come to realize that this really is central to sort of class dynamics in the country, perhaps even more so than wages and your work status, because the logic of the market has been home prices going up and up and up and up because this is a powerful constituency that benefits from that policy. So you are never going to be able to really get on the rung of that sort of stable middle

class life where you have a nest egg and you have something you can pass forward to your children if you're not able to get into the housing market. I mean, this is how middle class wealth is built in this country. And increasingly, to Marshall's point, even the white collar worker, two income white collar workers in expensive cities can't do it unless they have mommy and daddy's help. And this is, you know, this isn't just anecdotal. These are what the statistics bear out of that class that makes it. And it just exacerbates these massive divides in this country. And that has obviously massive implications in terms of racial wealth disparities as well.

And all of these things become incredibly important. So the sort of asset owning, non-asset owning divide in the country has become almost more central than anything else. So what I'm wondering though is, I think we did a great job like setting up like the state of affairs, like what actually does one do now? Because to your point, Kyle, like thinking of, okay, there was this huge housing market crash in the 2000s the history here is complicated and like it's a little more than just like the big short story but part of the story there is that a huge priority for the bush administration very explicitly was hey like let's increase home ownership uh and there's a conversation about how like the way they ended up doing that ended up benefiting wall street and all these disasters but they start there was this actual startership of like bush framed as like you want the ownership society this was going

to be and this was part of their broad like privatizing social security pitch so like i'm not i'm not saying like this is a good thing but like we saw an attempt so like what what would be y'all's version of what how should we make this better then on On that, it's a good point. And really what it is is that we loosened the regs 2003 onward and made it almost too laissez-faire, both for the people who are borrowing, but worse also for the commoditization of that, and then did nothing about it. So the problem, I think, is that we've actually gone too far

in the other direction, which is that now we've put all of these onerous regulation on the banks. So what you just noted, Crystal, about the average home price is officially over half a million dollars. Well, that means that 50% of Americans now don't just have to qualify for a mortgage, they have to qualify for a jumbo mortgage, which actually the banks themselves have much more strict regulations in terms of who they're going to loan to, which makes you even more disproportionately likely in order to need your parents and their credit score in order to sign on for your mortgage application. Limits the amount of the pool of people.

So what I would say is that from the Federal Reserve, and this is a complicated story too, but on their front, they need to focus continually on the second part of their mandate, which is full employment. And when you focus on full employment and not just on interest rates as the only sledgehammer that you have, then we're talking about wages. And that has to be the number one focus of the administration. Also, I would note, I mean, this is a policy show more so than the current news, but there's a reason that Joe Biden has a 26% approval rating amongst young people. And like, this is part of it. Young people are like, hey, I cannot win in the current society. My solution to the extent I have any, which I'm not sure I do, but I think why not go back to the same regulations that when they were in place,

we had a generation of stability and economic security for the country, what's generally called the golden age of economic expansion. And so like, for example, the fact that when the crash hit no eight, it immediately in the aftermath of that, they didn't just put back in Glass-Steagall. And that was viewed as like, too extreme to go back to Glass-Steagall. Well, that arguably the separation of commercial banking and investment banking was arguably one of the things that, you know, kept the economy safe and functioning in a relatively safe way. So, I mean, I would just look to the past and the New Deal regulations and whatever worked in the past, you need to implement now. And then whatever new issues

arise, you have to come up with intelligent regulations. You've got to attack this thing at every level, because as we started off talking, you know, the fact that people cannot afford a home puts pressure on the rental market and then, you know, makes it difficult to afford even a rental home and then contributes to the massive exploding issue of homelessness that every single city in the country in small town. Frank, I mean, I see people who are homeless in my little tiny town in King George County in Fredericksburg, Virginia, that I never saw before in my entire life. So you have to start at every level. You have to have a massive influx of affordable housing. You have to have a radical rethink of homeless policy and move in the direction of housing first and getting people the services that they need on top of that so that you expand the pool in terms of the rental market. Obviously, right now, there's also a housing supply shortage because of the supply chain. So dealing with that is another

important part of the problem. I would be perfectly comfortable with laws that personally ban BlackRock and those people from buying up entire neighborhoods. But if people don't want to go that far, you could certainly have regs in place that privilege individual homeowners who get the first crack at the house. And it's basically like, if there's no one who will come in at the market price, you know, as an individual homeowner, then maybe we could consider a BlackRock bid or some other permanent capital, you know, larger financial institution. I think that would make a big difference, especially in some of these Sunbelt cities where you've got 20, 30% of the home purchases, single family home purchases are not from individual homeowners. The other piece I think you have to deal with is that lump sum payment. I mean, how many stories have we read about people who they're like, okay, listen, it's tough,

but I can do the half a million dollar house but i don't have half a million dollars literally sitting in my bank account in cash to put down so the government programs we have in place right now in terms of mortgages are all set up to help people to get the mortgage to be able to make the payment we have to have programs in place to help people get that lump sum payment down um who can't get it from mommy and dad that just goes to wages though no doesn't that that's what i would say that's part of it too i'll give a quick anecdote that speaks to this so like i'm you know i'm renting i got a i got a great pandemic deal and i've discovered and because once again

like and this is what's so toxic like i did not realize that like at 30 i could buy a home so i didn't think so i haven't thought but i just started thinking about addicted to Zillow. I can make mortgage payments. Like relative to what was spent. I live in Williamsburg, New York. Like COVID, like rent deals are over. Like I could easily get a mortgage. But guess what?

I don't have that lump sum payment. Right. So like that, that's, that is what it is. And it's kind of like, and that's the insane part. I just want to add one thing on this too. Sorry. Crystal, I'm glad you talked about Fredericksburg. Because I think we've been focused really on a national scale politics thing.

But the local thing, the story you're telling about affordable housing, the story you're telling about new construction, that's actually very local and very state-based. So I know that you and I disagree a bit on the yimby-nimby thing. And there's complications there. So for example, I understand why a local community would say, hey, we don't want to wake up one day and all of a sudden there's all these huge giant condos next to us in order to qualify as affordable housing. So this is a key task for local state politicians, which is how do we balance, hey, communities should decide what they want to look like with, hey, actually there's this generational crisis.

And what I don't think is happening right now is right now you have politicians who are worried about, hey, we don't want to have old homeowners get worried about their community changes. But they are not thinking about, hey, let's balance that with the fact that people like us, frankly, who are privileged in our own way, people who aren't even us, don't even factor in at all. I don't think there are basically any governors who are thinking that. No, they're not. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Yeah. governors who are thinking no they're not yeah i think that's exactly right yeah and i mean look it if you leave it up to the communities i mean i feel like nobody cares about homelessness enough to actually do a housing first policy because there's not much there's no money in that and

it's you know you're doing something that's almost purely altruistic in a sense if you do housing first and then add like rehabilitation also increase the value of your house what's that coming from la like look if they cleaned up skid row. It can also increase the value of your house. What's that? Coming from LA, like look, if they cleaned up Skid Row, like that would dramatically increase the value of like all the property. But cleans up means what? Does it mean criminalize them, crack down on them,

throw them in the bin? Good question, Kyle. That's a great question. And that's why it is what it is in terms of the status quo because it's easier to do that. It's cheaper to just criminalize, clean up,

do what Eric Adams is doing in New York than it is to actually have a housing first policy, which is complicated and difficult and expensive. I would say, just to put a cap on it, banking regs is a huge part of this. Because what you're getting to, and Crystal, you alluded to this, I have heard so many stories of people who have 10% down, but then they get outbid by somebody who has the entire thing in cash. So really what it is, is that there are certain regs, which already have this in place, in terms of the way that neighborhoods and others are allowed to discriminate, is you have to

make it so that the banks themselves cannot discriminate, quote unquote, against that as long as you're good for it whenever it comes to the mortgage loan itself, which would level the playing field. I think you've got to privilege regular people over permanent capital. And there's a big cultural issue here as well because you end up with a more transient population. Already we have communities that are just completely sort of rootless and degraded and people feeling adrift,

and I do think that's part of sort of the core rot and degradation of the country. Another issue. Yes, number two. Number two on the list. We solved it. So we figured out housing. We're going to tackle health care, guys. So the specific language we put in that you guys voted for is basically like,

what happened to health care? I mean, we had this entire certainly the well, even going back to Trump's time in office. I mean, the Republicans were very focused on health care in an extremely deleterious way. John McCain gives this famous thumb down and they decided basically like, you know what, we're actually we're not going to do anything about health care at all. And then you have a Democratic primary that really centers around the debate between Medicare for all and, you know, expanding Obamacare. And the voters routinely said, we want Medicare for all. But then they also went ahead and said, but the number one thing we care about is beating Trump. And we believe Joe Biden can do that and not Bernie Sanders. But then you have a pandemic that hits. system vis-a-vis the rest of the developed world, that that would increase the political pressure

and impetus to actually have a decent health care system where people are able to afford and get care. And in fact, the exact opposite has happened. And it's even worse than, you know, the most basic, obvious, popular among 90% of Americans reforms like decreasing prescription drug prices and allowing the Medicare program to be able to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies on prescription drug price. Not only is that off the table, but I was looking this morning. The lever is reporting that they're proven to have much higher rates. They got to get their profit margins. So much less money is going to care and much more is just going to fatten their bank accounts and fatten their wallets. So it's not even just that health care has disappeared.

It's that things are actively getting worse. And then the last part of this that is also very disheartening is the one thing that Democrats did when they first came in and they passed the CARES Act is they included in there some subsidies for Obamacare so that people could more easily afford their health care premiums. But just as with the child tax credit, they made it temporary. So now in October, right before Election Day, millions of Americans, most of them like older middle class Americans, exactly the type of people who vote in the midterm elections. In October, they're going to get a letter informing them that their health insurance premiums on the Obamacare exchange market are about to skyrocket. So it's like worse than doing nothing. If you ask Americans, Kyle, they still will tell you health care is if not their inflation

is number one probably now, but health care is always number two, number three on the list of their top priorities. And yet the political class has abandoned it entirely. Yeah, look, this is, I'm a simple man. I'm a straightforward man. I'm not a genius. What I did is I went and looked at the various studies about the various healthcare systems around the world and consistently time and time again, the answers are clear. When the Commonwealth Fund does their study, which they do like every other year or something like that, we came in 11th out of 11 of developed countries for our healthcare system. So it's not like we don't know what the answers are. Of course

we know what the answers are. Now, is there room for some debate? Of course, you could have a debate about what kind of particular universal healthcare system you want to have. You could look at the British system, for example, which is public funding of public hospitals and doctors. So everything is public, everything is nationalized. Or you could look at a Canadian style system or like a French style system where it's public funding of some private institutions and private doctors and private hospitals. That's all a reasonable debate and discussion to have. But that is really the Overton window that makes sense in that conversation. What we do here with our private health care system is a private health insurance system is a total mess. And the only

reason why we haven't gotten to a place where we've implemented one of the systems that works better is because of the influence of the health insurance companies they buy republican and democratic politicians and so what they're buying is um the status quo the ability to continue the status quo they can keep making a tremendous amount of money even obamacare that was an idea that was originally birthed by the Heritage Foundation. It was a right-wing think tank that came up with that. And it used to be supported by Chuck Grassley and Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. And then the Democrats moved to the Republican position. The Republicans said, well, now our position is let's not do anything at all. And so those are your options now. Your options are,

you know, a very corporate plan and the complete status quo. And so it drives me crazy because this is one of those things where I see the answer. I know what the answer is. And the reason why we don't do it is because of the corruption in D.C. I will say this, though, and this is actually also the meta question which we asked, which is what happened to health care debate. I think the culture war is what happened in the health care debate, which is that. And Crystal, I think we talked about this on a more recent show, but I was alluding to this. It's like, look, the current, look at the public health bureaucracy

and the current level of trust in that, zero. And it's like, oh, and then somebody wants to empower them. So the amount of trust that you're gonna have to win back with the American people in the current health infrastructure is immense. And I don't know- I don't know if I agree with that, though, because people still very much like Medicare.

I mean, Medicare is still- Old people like Medicare. Medicare is still very popular. And still, if you poll people, I mean, they're on board for certainly lowering the Medicare age significantly. They're certainly on board for, you know, the really incrementalist changes

like the negotiating the prescription drug prices. So I don't know that, like, distaste for Fauci you know, the really incrementalist changes like the negotiating the prescription drug prices. So I don't know that like distaste for Fauci has lessened people's interest in having affordable health care. Go ahead, Marshall. But it's like you said, though, Kyle, and this fits in with what you just said, Crystal, that's the status quo. So no matter what, like, so yes, like, and you even said incrementalist too. So the problem, so I guess here's what I'll say. So one quick question to you, Kyle, and I mean this in total good faith.

Do you talk to Republicans about, and I just mean like normie Republicans about healthcare? Well, I mean, I have some Republicans in my family, but we don't talk about almost any of that stuff. Sagar, you and I, just through DC, Social Circle, the Republicans who deeply oppose changing the healthcare system are not bought off by big pharma. Oh, with the Republicans, it's also ideological. Yeah, yeah.

But we can't ignore their Blue Cross Blue Shield donations and things of that nature. I'm not saying you can ignore it. He's talking about lawmakers. No, I'm talking about lawmakers. I'm not talking about the people, to be clear. But here's my thing. I promise you that if you, let's say you just magically snapped your fingers and Blue Cross Blue Shield just cannot donate money, I guarantee you,

and this goes to Sagar's culture point, that is not determining the broad opposition to it. I think we're in the middle of this. I think it is. Really? In D.C. for sure. In D.C. for sure. With Republicans, it is ideological

and corrupt. With Democrats, it's just corrupt because they all know that the right answer is Medicare for all. But even in terms of your broader point, some polls have a care? We spent $7 trillion on war, but we can't give everybody health care in what's supposed to be the richest country in the world. And people have a gut instinct, and they're like, well, of course everybody should have health care, and that includes Republicans. No, definitely true. But once again, this is where the culture war comes in, and if you ask those people, what's their fear?

Centralized authority, right? They're like, well, I don't want these people telling me that I can't do this, and I have to get a seizure. But it's an insurance company that does it now. But let's just be clear. an insurance company that does it now. But let's just be clear. Republicans aren't in charge right now. True.

That's right. Joe Biden ran on public option and he ran very much. Democrats have been running for literally more than a decade now on Medicare negotiating prescription drug prices. And furthermore, it's a pandemic. And Joe Biden has the authority to use emergency powers to expand Medicare during a health emergency. So Libby, Montana, for example, almost all the residents of this small town in Montana have Medicare and they love it. And by the way, it's a bunch of Republicans because their senator, Max Baucus, who was very opposed to Medicare for all at the time. But he fought to get that provision put into Obamacare because they were poisoned by industrial company mining and asbestos.

And it was a total mess. They deserve Medicare. The entire country deserves Medicare. So when we're asking the question, what happened to it? The Republicans at this point aren't really relevant to the debate. I think much more illuminating is what happened in California. Correct. With Gavin Newsom. I mean, in California, you had Democrats who have a super majority in the House and the Senate. They've got the governorship. Freaking Gavin Newsom, not only did he run on Medicare for all, he castigated other Democratic politicians,

mocked them relentlessly for pretending they support single payer and then getting in there and saying, oh, it's this, I can't and it's just too hard, et cetera, et cetera. And then when it came down to it, ultimately they got massive donations in from the health insurance companies. He was giving out favorable pandemic contracts to some of these same people in what looked like blatant pay to play. Democratic Party was getting direct donations. And lo and behold, they don't even take the vote. So you are right.

Republicans have an absolute ideological opposition to single payer health care. No doubt about it. Elected Republicans. No doubt about it. There is a significant strain of Republicans generally at the grassroots level who are mistrustful of the government, although those people also really like Medicare. Correct. But in terms of right now, what happened to the health care debate? That's all about the Republicans and being more concerned with their corporate donors.

I mean, the Democrats. I mean, with the Democrats and being more concerned with their corporate donors than ultimately what they ran on and what their base and the American people want. The one area I will spotlight on this is the prescription drug thing. Like, that's crazy. Like, even Democrats. I mean, sorry, even most Republicans actually agree with me. Like, like in terms of. It's like literally 90 percent.

So why don't any of them do it? It's like Crystal said, it's all about the influence of the money. That is actually where I will say that's where the influence comes in. And that's what happened under Trump. If I recall, it was a titanic fight just to get a change in the HHS regulation in order to require. It was like approval on pharmaceutical advertising on television and this was a huge thing within the Trump administration it was like an all-out fight Alex Azar versus Kellyanne Conway who I think was on the right side of this issue weirdly enough uh TBT but even she's a poster yeah right it's not a shocker but she'd be on the right I guess yeah not ideological so that's good

let me give trump a little bit of credit here one of the things they did pass was this transparency and pricing like it's a sort of like libertarian idea but this is you know okay low bar worth worthwhile to be able to know like this hospital is going to charge me ten thousand dollars and this one's going to charge me a hundred thousand dollars and sometimes the prices varies are that great well guess what? The hospitals just said, nah, we're not going to do it. Like we know this is literally legally required of us and we just don't really give a shit. So a bunch of the hospitals didn't even do it. So again, as like the lowest bar possible, this is something that Biden's HHS could go after. And are they?

But also I feel like that whole debate is so misleading because it's like it's not nothing really comes of that in the same way that they have these laws about, you know, you have to show who your donors are and who funded your campaign or who funded your super PAC. And so the debate we're having is like, I want to be corrupt and secret and not show who's paying me. And the other ones are like, I want to be corrupt, but show you who's paying me. And it's like, let's just not be corrupt. Because agreed. Yeah.

Obviously agreed. And you and I are obviously on the same page in terms of health care policy. But, you know, I think about the potential stock trading ban. Sure. That the reason that's even on the table is because some transparency and disclosure, the Stock Act was passed that required members of Congress to at least expose what their conflicts of interest are and what trades they were ultimately making. And because we had that information, then you had unusual whales picking up on that and diving into the data and say, oh, look, look at what Nancy Pelosi is doing. Oh,

look at what Dan Crenshaw is doing here. Look at what these lawmakers are doing during the pandemic. That sparked a real mass populist sort of uprising and disgust at that corruption. And that has helped create an impetus for change to where now I just saw, you know, just this morning, there's an additional movement on a potential stock trading ban. So is transparency the end all be all? No. Can it be a helpful tool for galvanizing public support and political pressure for doing the right thing? Yeah, it can be. You're undoubtedly correct about that. But all I'm voicing is the frustration that we're taking baby steps. It's like we're running 100 yard dash. We run five yards and start celebrating that we

ran five yards. It's like I'm like, I want to get to the 100 yard line. And so it's just frustrating that like we have to take these baby wins in the same way that with Obamacare, you could say, look, you start changing the system a little bit and then maybe you'll pick up momentum and change it more. And it's like, yeah, maybe. And that's a good thing. And I'm happy that millions more people got healthcare. What about the 30 million that don't have it right now? So I'm just voicing my frustration that it's like in Washington, they need these baby steps. Whereas we're sitting here. And if you look at it objectively, you're like, can you just stop with the baby steps and take a couple leaps, please catch up to the rest of the world? Yeah, I think a lot of that requires political

consensus, unfortunately. And like that is where I that's where I just always come back to this. I'm just like, man, like when you're this divided, look, I mean, we talked about child tax credit, right? Like at the end of the day, child tax credit expired, millions of people went more into poverty. But like, do you see a mass a mass uprising now i'm not saying it didn't hurt them on the democratic base but a legitimate mass uprising no like it's not happening but the people are there though that's right it did hurt them in the polls certainly and that's what i'm saying the people are there but they're not marching in the streets over the you know the extent the extended child tax credit going away but this goes to sagar's point though and this is the problem polls aren't consensus so like

something I'm I've never heard like a perfect answer to this question. So I'm not expecting one. I will give you one. Like yeah, setting that up. American politics when we passed like Medicare, Medicaid, like the policies that obviously we're not like we're allowing them and we support them on a policy level

but they're also politically popular. American politics was corrupt as hell. Like actually like LBJ was like fundamentally corrupt at a level that like, you think Nancy Pelosi stock trading is bad? Like, yeah, he's like bags of cats. Yeah. Yeah. Like literally bought his way into the Senate yet, even in that system of corruption, you pass these popular consensus-based policies. So the question I just really want to understand better is separate from just the polling. And this is what you're kind of getting at.

Why is there not... Because let me put it this way. And maybe you guys are going to push back on me when I say this, but I actually think if the people of West Virginia actually wanted, deeply in the streets, wanted Medicare for All, then Joe Manchin would support it.

Because yes, Joe Manchin, you could say he's corrupt. You could say he cares about donations. He cares about power. He wants to get reelected. That is all Joe Manchin would support it. Because yes, Joe Manchin, you could say he's corrupt. You could say he cares about donations. He cares about power. He wants to get reelected. That is all Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin would much rather be in the Senate than get like a 50K check. No, here's why I disagree.

There was a poll on Build Back Better in West Virginia of likely voters. And it wasn't just the majority of Democrats and the majority of independents. It was even a majority of Republicans that liked the original Build Back Better proposal. And so that was the case. And Manchin stuck his middle finger up because he had another thing he could do to garner support, which was a little bit of a bait and switch and a culture war trick. He was able to posture like,

you know, I'm against the leadership in the Democratic Party because I'm a good old West Virginia Democrat and I'm more moderate. So as long as he takes that line and doesn't get into the specifics of what he's actually against, then he could still have a political win, even though he's doing something that's deeply unpopular when you get into the specifics of it. You see what I'm saying? It's too easy with the media that doesn't educate people enough about what really is going on. It's too easy for him to mislead people into thinking like I'm the iconoclast maverick who's doing the right thing. When if you look at the specifics of what he's doing, it's actually deeply disliked according to the numbers.

Joe Manchin has a direct financial interest in maintaining the energy policy that we have right now. I mean, direct, like status quo equals Joe Manchin makes more money. And do I think that that impacts what he does? A hundred percent. Now, what I will say that is, you know, gets the point of, well, why is it now that none of these big things can happen anymore when, you know, it was pretty corrupt back in LBJ's day as well? culture war and the fact that because you've had this neoliberal market-driven consensus now for 40 years, which has been on both sides of the aisle, there isn't any sort of belief that, yeah, that the government can actually deliver for you in a meaningful way. And so instead of like people being in the streets for Medicare for all during a pandemic. Instead, you know, they're much more focused on these sort of like culture war signaling fights because they don't think either of these parties is going to deliver for them.

They're right. And so instead, they're like, well, at least I can like show my support for the one that doesn't have contempt for me and who I am that I feel like is on the right side of these sort of like cultural signaling debates that ultimately are very low stakes in terms of the day-to-day life. Let me just say though, I think it is more corrupt today because it's institutionally corrupt today. So there were a number of Supreme Court decisions that started in the 1970s and number of cases related to that continue up till today. You know, the most recent ones like Citizens United and McCutcheon, but I'm talking going all the way back to like Buckley versus Vallejo and First National Bank of Boston versus Bilotti. These are the original cases in the 1970s

that basically started to legalize money as speech. And so you're allowing for legalized bribery and huge campaign contributions from corporations and from billionaires. And it's as a direct result of that, that's why we are where we are today. Yeah, it was corrupt back in the day, of course, with LBJ. I mean, politics always been corrupt. I'm sure you've seen the movie Lincoln, where the way he had to go about, you know, the central plotline. Yeah. So like, it's always been

corrupt, but now it's institutionally corrupt where like, in order to even win in DC, it's like, you have to take money from all these different lobbyists and all these different industries. And then you're first and foremost representing them. Whereas back in the day, at least with the Democrats for an extended period of time, there was a time when they didn't take corporate money. I mean, that was what Bill Clinton and the DLC was all about is like, now we're going to be more like Republicans. We're going to take the corporate money. There was a time when they only took like union money and teacher money and lawyer money. It's hard to challenge corporate power. It's hard to change the economic status quo.

Those things are difficult. It's easy as hell to get on Twitter and send out some, on the left, some super woke identitarian thing that ultimately is signaling that I'm a good person, but I'm not actually going to do anything about the issues that I claim to care about. And on the right to jump in on the don't say gay bill or whatever. Stop the steal. Those things are easy to do anything about like the the issues that i claim to care about and on the right to jump in on like the don't say gay bill or whatever like those things are easy to do it's a it's easy to kneel in kente cloth it's a lot harder to like actually unionize amazon workers and make sure that black lives actually matter in this country and so the fact that politicians have been rewarded for those cheap and easy culture war displays, well, then that's where the incentives lie. And like I said, I don't think that's the fault of the American people. I think they're right to be skeptical that any of the material projects that they might be interested in, that they might feel really benefit their families, are very unlikely

to come to pass. And, you know, this past year with the complete crumbling and dissolution of Build Back Better is as good an example as that's ever been. Yeah, I'll square the circle and I'll say I think it's corruption. And I do think it's also just lack of lack of political consensus overall. And the reason why Joe Manchin gets reelected is because at the end of the day, political consensus among who? Well, amongst, frankly, the people who vote and i think that's the other problem which is that per what you're saying a hundred i mean i don't see but like fifteen dollar minimum wage there's a huge political consent there's a huge political

consensus for the prescription drug that i mean there are plenty the stock ban like there are issues that have a mass political consensus a lot of of them. And it just doesn't matter. But then they don't vote on that, unfortunately. Consensus is different. But they do when they're asked to directly vote on the issue as such. Like, remember, Trump won the state of Florida, but 60% of the Florida voters voted for the minimum wage. I totally agree with you. What I was just saying is that from what I've seen with Trump, and this is what really broke a lot of the way I look at politics,

is you can get 10 million more votes and just piss off libs. And that's a sad but powerful lesson, which is if you're an aspiring Republican politician or a Joe Manchin, what do you learn from that? Which is that I can literally win re-election and not do anything.

That's kind of crazy. The sideshow is powerful. You're 100% correct. And that's kind of crazy the sideshow is powerful yes you're 100 correct and that's easy to do the material politics do move voters i mean the people who lost the child tax credit they were in favor of democrats in the midterms and now they're in favor of republicans they shifted more dramatically or not voting than any other group so it's not that material politics don't influence people or that they don't vote on it. It's that the other stuff is so easy

that that's where all the incentives are for politicians. The sideshow is strong. I'll agree with you. I know you're trying to move us on, but I just want to say a quick thing off of what Crystal said because I think what we're really getting at here at a meta, meta, meta level is just like a deep dearth of political talent.

Because what you are describing, Crystal, is the ability to say, hey, it's like the cookie. It's like the marshmallow test, right? There's this super obvious thing. But if I wait a second or I think a little deeper, there's this deeper thing. There's this amorphous, and that's what political greatness is, right? For example, LBJ, LBJ, we're turning this into LBJ, he could have just rested on, hey, I'm Kennedy's guy. And I just won the biggest presidential election in American history. I am going to chill. The thing that makes him great, despite Vietnam, despite all the mistakes towards the end, was really his belief that there is this great society. And I'm going,

look, that is what greatness is. And I don't, I do not see that. He had a vision. Yes. He had, this reminds me of the conversation we had at State of the Union. Yeah. He had a vision and he used whatever was handed to him to make that vision reality. And a great president right now has every crisis at his disposal to use

to galvanize the American people behind a true transformational program. But that's not who Joe Biden is. And frankly, it's not what he has ever been. And it's not really what he was elected to be. 100%. And, you know, you talked about Lincoln. It was the same thing.

The central premise of that movie was Lincoln was like, no, I need to pass the 13th Amendment right now because I foresee all of these political pitfalls in the future. And so I'm going to use this, you know, lame duck Congress in order to pass one of the most transformative amendments in the future. And so I'm going to use this lame duck Congress in order to pass one of the most transformative amendments in American history. LBJ is an example. Great political talent from, let's say, what today rhymes the most with is probably the Gilded Age and the Age of Acrimony post-Civil War. Well, politics then sucked. Remember Rutherford B. Hayes? Not really. We don't. Most people don't. It's like on a literal level. I am a Rutherford B. Hayes? Not really. We don't. Most people don't.

That's like on a literal level. I am a Rutherford B. Hayes fan. Grover Cleveland. He's got the posters in his room. It's adorable. Grover Cleveland, super cool, right? Like, nobody talks about these people for a reason. And it was because at that time, we agreed on nothing.

We actually got almost nothing done. Calvin Coolidge and all of that was, you know, kind of the median center of how people thought about politics. Sorry, not Calvin Coolidge, Hayes and those politicians. But then what happened is that a political genius, Theodore Roosevelt, comes in and rescues America from the Gilded Age by creating and transforming an entire new era with the progressive era, bringing in this type of energy and change and shock to the system, which changes everything forever. And that is actually what we're missing more than anything.

So I'll move us on to the next one, which everybody requested here, which is energy policy. And this actually fits very neatly like a glove into this entire conversation. So I'm reading here from a tweet from Heather Long. We've discussed this on the show. Crude oil prices right now have fallen in the past month, but the average gas price is still above $4 a gallon. Why? Gas stations actually make the most of their profits when oil prices fall. I'm not going to sit here and demonize family-owned gas prices because this is a broader, bigger structural issue. The issue is that right now, we have no political talent or thinking as to the long-term problem of how do we drop the actual gas price? And then beyond that, how do we make sure we're never in this situation again? What's fascinating is that the current drop in price has nothing, nothing to do with Joe Biden. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve and all that, as we predicted at the time,

was gonna have extraordinarily limited amount of impact on the long-term effect of oil. The reason why oil prices are down is because of the Chinese lockdown. Guess what you can't bank on for energy policy? China's gonna remain locked down forever, which is going to drop our price. So we have no current strategic thinking in the White

House as to, and look, we've talked a lot on the show, Crystal, about nuclear energy. I'm a basically nuclear maximalist. But there's no discussion of this from a national policy perspective. By the way, I actually even checked, Tim Scott, the state of South Carolina, gets a huge amount of their power from nuclear. There's actually pro-nuclear Republicans who are out there. I'm not saying they're not cringe in many other ways. However, there's no political talent in the White House beyond taking months to arrive at, oh, let's tap the SPR. I'm like, oh, what a genius move. That's what you should have been doing a year ago. They should be taking the current cringe rhetoric around Putin's price hike,

take it away from household goods inflation, and focus something purely and have a real national debate in terms of both on gas, in terms of long-term energy, and in terms of also pointing out the fossil fuel companies who are raking in profits right now. Go ahead. So we're the number one producer in the world of oil and gas. Do I have that right? Yes. The number one producer. The issue is we outsource most of it.

Yeah. We ship the, not vast majority, about half to the global market. And this is the other problem with oil, which is oil is truly global, is set by global supply and demand. Part of why the movement towards electric is important because the concept of energy independence

kind of doesn't really make any sense when you have a global market. Electricity is something that has to be generated here and then we can deal with what are the sources of that electricity. So let me just say, given that fact, why not nationalize it? I mean, there are a lot of other nations that have, yeah, oil that's nationalized.

And they have the Sovereign Wealth Fund in Norway, for example, right? I mean, the whole country is like phenomenally wealthy and the standard of living is so high. And it's like, it's so weird that we have oil that's under the ground on our public land. But then a private corporation gets to come in and buy up the rights for pennies on the dollar and be like, well, now this is ours. And then they make a colossal amount of profit on it. Why should we allow that? Because not only do they do that, then they capture our political system. We end up with, you know, Joe Manchin and all the many more bought off politicians like him driving policy instead of what is actually in the national interest.

I mean, this is Matt Bruning's argument. And let's put aside the political realities and whether there's consensus around this, because we all know that this is not really on the table. But if you're just blue-skying, what would be the best solution? You have this situation where in the short term, you actually want to ramp up production to deal with these price spikes. And in the long term, medium to long term, you want to ramp down production. So sure, could you come up with some elaborate system of tax credits and incentives that basically amount to more giveaways to oil? Yeah, you could do that. Or you could directly manage

it because this is now a market that we don't want to just be subject to market forces and gas company executives doing what they think is going to be most profitable because we have competing priorities. In fact, their incentives are exactly the opposite. Right now, because they got burned during COVID, they don't want to invest in producing more. So it's not a problem with pipelines and permits and all this other stuff. It's actually the gas companies don't want to produce more right now because they got burned during COVID. They don't want to invest the resources. And of course, over the long term, they will do anything possible to kill what might be, you know, price efficient and sensible renewable solutions to include, you know, the entire array

of renewables, including nuclear. So the most elegant solution, you know, sometimes the simplest solution is the best. Like if people are poor, give them money. That's UBI, right? If people are homeless, give them housing. That's kind of what it is with the oil companies. The most elegant solution is just to nationalize and manage it directly. What do you think, Marshall?

The thing that's hard for me is I know absolutely nothing about energy policy. So I won't. And Crystal cheated, not cheated, but took my put- good sense of taking the table she preempted um so wait what did i what did i you're like it's not gonna happen so you're right you can't say that one i mean it's true it's not gonna happen so i'm still the answer i'm quasi left without a take escape route so i'll just take a different tact and basically just say

here's what i'm actually frustrated by what I'm actually frustrated by is what have we known since basically 2015, 2016? Brexit, Trump, COVID, Putin's war in Ukraine, all these different bits. Crazy events are going to happen out of nowhere. And I feel like we are so reactive. So my reluctance around the nationalizing the oil company debate, not knowing anything about the topic, it's not even about the practicality. It's not about the socialism, whatever. It's more just we are doing this in response to this short-term event, and I don't know what that fits into what a long-term vision of what American society should look like. So, for example, with the supply chain issue, the way I think about it is a good or supply chains and then housing. I'll do both. So one supply chains, Sagar, you want to buy something

for your kid for Christmas. It will show up. Like that is the society that I want to live in with housing. We all agree on this from different perspectives, but like, Hey, like if you have, I don't even say if you have a job, but basically if you are a young person, you do not have to think it's crazy that you could get a house someday. Those are what visions we want to have. I don't see a similar vision for energy. And if it turns out that a nationalization strategy could further whatever vision that is, I can have that conversation. But that's just what I'm like. Let me tell you what the vision was. The vision was the Green New Deal. I mean, that is not only... i don't know what the

polling is now because it's been so demonized and they messed up the rollout and they messed up the rollout and they made it easily and it was a grab bag of just every left-wing idea it's not the original idea the concept of the big concept of like this is a national project we're all going to engage in the concept of we're not going to leave coal miners behind we're all going to engage in. The concept of we're not going to leave coal miners behind. We're not going to say, learn to code, good luck, right? We're going to have a holistic transformation of our economy that moves us away from what is not only bad for the planet, but is a disaster for our national security. That framework is actually a good framework. That is what we should be doing.

It's just, yeah, the left failed on some of the specifics. It gets completely demonized by everybody across the board. And so now if you propose anything that even looks like it, you're considered foolish and ridiculous and absurd and all the rest. But the reality is, this is, even if you don't give a shit about the planet, I think everybody should be very clear that this is a massive national security issue for us right now. And the fact that we're like, oh, we care about human rights, so we're not going to have Russian oil, we're going to think probably the same thing that you think, which is like, let's do this gigantic nationally mobilizing project where you... I love the idea of making the US infrastructure number one in the world by a mile. I don't just want to update it.

I don't want to just want to improve it a little bit. I want to have the number one infrastructure that's the envy of the world. So I think about that. And I think about transitioning to green and renewable technology, definitely open to nuclear uh i'm not sure if the technology is there yet but thorium is supposed to be like nuclear but meltdown proof so there's also little mini reactors now which are even cooler see like there's a million things we can do and should do down that path but i'm sorry the progressives screwed it up to the high heavens because the bill didn't even end up being what I just described. The bill ended up being, let's just put every single left-wing policy into it

and call it the Green New Deal. And it was ripe for attack. Now I would defend almost every individual piece of the Green New Deal on its own merits, but you can't just put it all together and say, this is the Green New Deal when the original idea wasn't supposed to be that at all. So I'm actually really frustrated with the Democrats on this because you had an idea that was a good idea that was polling it like 80 plus something percent and then you shot yourself in the foot and made it easy for idiots like sean hannity go to go out on his show every night and just destroy it let me let me also throw this into the mix because gallup just did some polling on um support for climate change policies and even i've even seen you know even in west Virginia, which is like

caricatured as, oh, they just want to stay on coal forever. Like even in West Virginia, that's not at all the case. They want to have jobs. Yeah, sure. But listen, anybody whose family members have worked in a coal mine is not dying for their kids to also work in a coal mine. I can assure you of that. So on, you know, these basic measures, providing tax credits to Americans who install clean energy systems like solar power in their home, 89% favor. Providing tax incentives to business to promote their use of wind, solar, nuclear, 75%. Setting higher fuel efficiency standards, 71%. Establishing strict limits on the release of methane in the production of natural gas, 62%. Providing tax credits to individuals who buy electric vehicles, 61 percent,

and spending federal money to increase the number of electric vehicle charging stations in the U.S., 59 percent. If you pull overall on some of the, you know, top proposals to move us towards renewable energy and away from fossil fuel, it's very popular even in states that would be, you know, that where they have significant jobs dependent on the current status quo. So this, again, comes down to an issue of corruption and capture of Washington because the politicians are not at all responsive to that sort of polling. What they're ultimately responsible to is the fossil fuel industry. And that's why it's not just that their incentives are misaligned with what we actually want to see and do energy policy in the short term and the long term. It's that their capture

of the political system makes it impossible to move in a better direction. Go ahead, Marshall. A quick, this question for the two of you, super curious for your answer, because there's a point of tension here between the Green New Deal vision point, which is very well taken and where this started, which was the price of gas is too high. Because like you're right to, in the context of this conversation, say, let's put aside people who are like, oh, a collaborative change. But like, that's actually part of the issue, right? And if you talk to people who are in climate policy, scientists, et cetera, a big issue, once again, right-wing listeners go away for a second. A big issue is actually gas probably should be more expensive because part of the way that we transition to a clean energy future is that we focus away from those sorts of policies. So I'm

just curious about the contradiction between Green New Deal's image of a world where we're using just less gas in general. I think the gas should be more expensive view is sort of very libertarian. It's like we're going to force people. Yeah, we're going to force people like through their suffering to get off of gas and drive less. That's not the only direction that you have to go in. I mean, you know, an alternative example, which is very simple and something that Biden has talked about, but of course they haven't really done, is making the price of electric vehicles a lot more affordable. And then by the way, when you reduce consumption of gas, gas prices go down. And so it makes it easier for working class people who are still dependent on fossil fuel driven vehicles to be able to survive and

get to work and do the things that they need to do. Quick thing, Krista, what you're really saying is that I am so captured by neoliberalism that even in my attempt to be a lefty climate-splainer, I actually was just on the market, Krista. Yeah, I've been bribed. I'll say this, though. That's an important thing, and this gets to a real dynamic. Whenever I hear the grassroots Republican response to Green New Deal, it's like they want to make it more expensive for me to drive. That's the number one. They want to increase my energy bill.

And this is where I would just point – Or some, like, they want to make it so I can't eat meat early. And there are legitimate strains of that. I don't want to downplay it. There's like some restaurant, the best restaurant here in New York, which apparently doesn't serve meat anymore. But more what I'm pointing to is that cost is still king for the majority of consumers. So this is where you can't let idiocracy get in the way of it. So we're here in New York City. I've talked about this before on the show, but they closed by Cuomo at the pressure of environmental activists closes the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which was supplying a decent amount of power here to the city. And now Con Ed is doing natural gas fired

plants. And oh, by the way, because of the whole Russia thing, it's also more expensive for consumers. So consumers got screwed. And I'm not blaming, look, I will blame the blinders of the environmental activists. But what I'm pointing to is that one of the key points from this is that through federal government subsidy, let's be honest, we already subsidize these fossil fuel companies dramatically. One of the problems that we have right now is that we don't have technology neutral tax credits. So right now, a lot of the tax credits that go for renewable energy go towards solar and wind. I'm not saying solar and wind are bad, but from a capacity perspective, they don't compete at all whenever it comes to nuclear. So let's just make it technology neutral, obviously exclude fossil fuel, make it so that you have to hit a certain carbon threshold, which is below natural gas, and let's see who wins. And these are the

types of things where I actually, well, maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. I think you could probably pass that in some form. The problem that we have right now is that, to Marshall's point, the secret, the dirty secret is that a lot of people, neolib kind of climate people, will basically say, yeah, you have to make it more expensive. So, by the way, this isn't just neolibs. Okay.

Like, even a lot of lefty climate. Right, right. Like, there's a weird conversion. Behind closed doors, they're like, no, we need to make gas more expensive for people so that they are forced to buy electrical. And like, I just reject that 100%. Well, but my point, and your point as well, in nationalizing it,

is that you nationalize the industry so that you can do the things that make sense with it. And one of the things I would do is make sure gas prices, in the interim, until we get on renewable technology, make sure it's cheap and affordable for working people. Or the most likely to drive. Right.

Which connects to our housing conversation too, by the way. There may be people who disagree with me on that, but I don likely to drive, right? Right. And have to drive long distances. Which connects to our housing conversation, too, by the way. There may be people who disagree with me on that, but I don't even think it's that many, to be honest. I think most lefties who— Well, let me say also there is a split, kind of a generational divide in the environmental movement, which I can't say that I'm deeply steeped in, but I have enough of the understanding of the contours of it, which is, you know, originally the environmentalist movement when it was Earth Day and all this, it wasn't, climate was one of the things that was just starting to come to the surface

as a major issue. And there was more of just a sort of anti-development stance in general. The younger generation, the Sunrise and the Green New Deal type of folks, well, first of all, they're laser focused on climate as the number

one issue over and above all else. And so they're much more into like building, right? So, you know, the opposition of the activists in New York was basically like, we don't want to build stuff, anything, because we're just generally anti-development. Whereas, in fact, if you're going to transition to a different energy source, you're gonna have to build a lot of stuff. You're gonna need a whole new infrastructure to your point to be able to support that. So there's also this kind of like ideological and generational divide within the environmental movement. And I think the younger generations have a much better

sort of grasp of what would actually be required. And also, by the way, I think I think are better on the issue you're talking about, Marshall, because what I really found appealing about the Green New Deal to start with is the fact that central to it is we are not leaving people behind. You know, in other in the social democracies that people like Kyle and I love to hold up as great examples, they do have a different orientation towards these things where they're not obsessed with the jobs. They're obsessed with the workers. The workers are central. And so if an industry, you know, is damaging to the country, damaging to the world, they're okay with it going away because their commitment is to the workers and they know they have a safety net and program in place to make sure those workers are going to be okay and i think that's the way we need to think about things

more in america rather than holding on to oh my god but if we have single payer then the health insurance ghouls are not going to have a job no if you have a commitment to the working people and you make sure that they're going to be okay then you can phase out industries that are damaging to the population overall. Yeah. Let me just say real quick, just to rewind for a second on the nuclear point. So I always viewed myself as relatively agnostic on the issue of nuclear energy. And I mean, I guess in modern times, maybe I'm leaning slightly more towards, okay. I mean, all the other options seem to be worse, but you have to acknowledge there is sort of a PR problem for nuclear because when people think for nuclear. The only problem

is PR, and this is why I get pissed off about it. No, but it is also a real problem. Okay, hold on. How many people died in Fukushima? You have Three Mile Island, you have Fukushima, you have Chernobyl. Three Mile Island didn't kill anybody, by the way. Where were we going to buy Chernobyl in the past few weeks, Kyle?

Okay, we don't live in the soviet union we don't have rvm no no a problem with nuclear this is a widely understood problem with nuclear is that one of the big issues with it is political instability and incompetence and i'm not naive enough to think that this thing that we're doing right now in the united states is definitely on solid ground and gonna last a really long time i mean for all we know this thing could crumble apart within just a couple of decades so all i'm saying is that's a big asterisk on let's do nuclear power. You need to have a very high level of competence and you need to have political stability. And right now the world is definitely lacking in political stability.

That's not to say that the other things are better because they're not, but it is to say there are issues there. I hear your point. Natural gas is still worse. Natural gas also has instability in its markets, releases 50 something percent more carbon. And if you look at this on the industrial scale, more people have died from smog, pollution, other chemical accidents. And look, am I saying that it's not scary? Yeah, it's scary. Understood. But I'm saying it's a false dichotomy that we should be like thorium. Like I said before, if they could get the technology on thorium enough to the point where we could do these thorium facilities, then I'm all in. Listen, you've persuaded me on nuclear, but there is also an issue with cost where.

It costs a lot. Yeah, it's there have been massive costs. Now, I understand because we talked to lovely. What's her name? Meredith. Meredith Angwin. Nuclear grandma. I think made some wonder.

She was lovely. And she made some great points about how. Yeah, because when you're creating a one-off, like if you build just one car, it's going to cost millions of dollars. If you're doing this routinely and you have a process and you have economies of scale, then it could be more reasonable from a cost perspective. But that is also another legitimate nuclear concern. Totally legitimate. I would just say that, yeah, it might be cheaper to build low-cap capacity power like wind and all that, but then you still have to have natural gas in order to back it up. Right. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense. One of the things that people wanted to hear about our premium subscribers was the geopolitical realignment. And I think that in

terms of the top line stories that are coming out of it, we've talked on the show about NATO expansion. But I think the more interesting meta point is, what does the balance of power in the world look like right now? So previous to this, we would have said previous to the Russian invasion, Russia, number 11, largest GDP in the world, literally less than Italy. America is moving away from this. The European Union plays a central role in terms of our cultural ties, but let's all be honest, that's not really where America's focused on. It was all China all the time. In terms of our discussion right now, it feels very much like it's 1972. Like we're talking, it's all Russia. It's all NATO. It's all

detente or rollback. We have to decide on like how we're going to confront this. And yet at the same time, we have India, the largest democracy in the world, not joining with us in terms of their sanctions, not really joining the Western bloc. We're still focused on NATO expansion. China and the China lockdown, as we're seeing in real time, massive impact on our economy, on our supply chain in a way that didn't exist at all. So I feel like we're seeing in real time, massive impact on our economy, on our supply chain in a way that didn't exist at all. So I feel like we're living in this parallel world where our foreign policy, media attention, and focus is living in one year. And then on the same time, our actual interests are fading away with an almost on autopilot without any of the sort of debate

and things that we need in order to avoid a possible conflagration in the future. Go ahead, Mark. I want to push back on your frame. Sure. So A, I did an episode of Bridge Colby on this. So, you know, a friend of the show, obviously, and I don't want to claim we can do everything all at once. What we can recognize that what happens in one theater affects another theater so for example this just happened yesterday and they're like reporting this is a little inconclusive so I don't want to overstate but the

flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet was just at a minimum it probably wasn't sunk but at a minimum it was taken out of the fight so the fire's been out but it's been effectively taken out of the fight. So the fire's been out. Yeah, the fire, but it's been effectively taken out of the fight by a... It's a Neptune missile. By a Neptune, by a Ukrainian-built surface to water missile.

Not the technical term, obviously. Here's why this matters for the China issue. This is the definition of something that makes the Chinese, when they're thinking about a Taiwanese invasion, that would involve an amphibiousibious aspect is actually deeply important. Because the number one takeaway from the Ukrainian conflict, now this, and by the way, I am not a, I'm like a moderate interventionist, I need to be very clear. So no, no fly zone. I didn't support the MiGs, no NATO boots on the ground, all those different bits.

But China is seeing so much of the past two months. And the very clear implication is, wow, like invading another country in the year 2022 is a shit show. And there's been very good reporting that this is almost certainly affecting how the Chinese are thinking about this. So I want to agree with you that, and once again, there are people on my side who probably talk this way and they say like, ha ha, all these people say that we're going to pivot to Asia.

They are stupid. The future is in Europe. The future is not in Europe, but what happens in Europe affects Asia. And that should're going to pivot to Asia. They are stupid. The future is in Europe. The future is not in Europe. But what happens in Europe affects Asia. And that should drive how we think about this. That should, for example, what debate should we be having right now? From my perspective, the debate should be, hey, if you're in the Taiwanese government right now, how are you getting the equivalent of Neptune missiles to make sure that your country is kept safe so that the Chinese do not invade in the first place and you have actual deterrence?

I think that's a good point. Oh, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, honestly, if China wants to take Taiwan, they either do it and just get away with it, or it's a similar situation to what we're seeing now in Ukraine where they're just bogged down in an extended fight. That's all. But in terms of what can the U.S. actually do about it? Well, I mean, we're learning now with what's happening in Ukraine. Like when you're talking about Afghanistan, when you're talking about Iraq, when you're talking about countries that we can basically bully into submission, like, yeah, then we go to war. But when it's a cut, like Vladimir Putin has more nukes than we do. And so we just, we can't do anything except, you know, arms on the ground or whatever. And so

I think that that's, that's the reality of the situation in my opinion. But to your question about basically unipolar world versus multipolar world, um, I think there's no doubt that it's really the unipolar world. The U S is the world's sole superpower. That's definitely going away. And what you're seeing now is Russia is reliant on China, uh, in order to really just function. Yeah, I mean, we had, when we put those swift banking sanctions, then they immediately, China immediately welcomed them into, you know, whatever their equivalent for banking is. And what you're seeing also with the Belt and Road Initiative is basically China is doing empire through, in my opinion, a more evolved means.

That doesn't mean it's good. It just means it's a slightly more evolved version of imperialism, Cause what we do is, you know, we have basically puppet dictators that are in countries that allow then our corporations to exploit the natural resources in those countries. And that was an evolution from like the British way of doing it, which was like, they just show up in India and they're like, this is ours now. And so, but what China's doing is a step further. Hey, what if we gave you some material wellbeing through building out infrastructure in your countries, and then you allow us to exploit you in return. And so, yeah, I think that if the long-term trajectory, yeah, the sun is setting on the American empire, it's eventually going to be probably, you know,

a Chinese empire, and then they'll rise and fall to just like every single empire. Uh, but it is very strange to live in as tumultuous a time as we do right now because i mean you're actually seeing a rapid decline of the american empire in my opinion well wait but why like if you think why what like so what's defined like once again like american empire is a we'll have different definitions of that but like nato's stronger than ever um they're not gonna do shit though well they're not supposed to do shit they're saying i agree right no but no but no but this is the point though like the american empire wasn't in ukraine in the set beyond like supplying weapons we're doing that now you like nato as an institution is now safe um and there was serious about whether or not nato was an institution would sunset nato

is almost certainly going to expand to finland and sweden um the u.s's actual perception in western europe is the highest it's been in a long, long, long time. If you're a European right now, you're not thinking about what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, as terrible as those things were. You're thinking, wow, I'm glad that there are US troops there. Our relations with Poland were going like this. Now they're back up like that. So you don't think the American empire is in decline? But what you call American empire, I call a US-led, a US led world order, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like there's like, we could like quibble

if like the specific ways we call it, but like what I would define as the status quo is the US has allied countries who we support militarily, fiscally, whatever. Like we're going to get even deeper in with Japan. We're deeper in with South Korea. We're deeper in with Europe. Like we're even getting deeper.

But on the other side, they're more united too. Would you concede that? That now China, Russia, Iran, I mean, we could go down a list here. Even India now is sort of wobbling and going more. India pursued nukes in the 80s and 90s. Like we had, we had sanctions.

Like I did, I did a good job. India is always doing whatever. Yes, non-alignment is. So, but, I'm sorry. Well, I was just going to say, I think there is a clear hardening of, it's, it is almost like a new iron curtain. Well, I was just going to say, I think there is a clear hardening of it. It is almost like a new Iron Curtain. And, you know, so there's a few things to say about this.

So, first of all, our financial economic warfare against Russia, which it has gone so far that it definitely is that it definitely having an impact on the Russian economy, creating great suffering for the Russian people. No doubt is that. It definitely having an impact on the Russian economy, creating great suffering for the Russian people, no doubt about that. But it also has strengthened those alternative systems and strengthened the motivation for China and even Saudi and other countries to say, we got to make sure that we're never going to be in a position to really be destroyed by American sanctions. So there's that part of it. But I think if we zoom out, oh, one other thing to say about that, it actually reminds me of these sort of like increasingly difficult loyalty tests from Trump, where it's like, the more outrageous and obnoxious he is, he's able to see who's really with him. And that's kind of what Russia has done

with China, right? Like they basically have created this test for China of like, all right, are we really in this together? And effectively China has said, we don't love what's going on. We're not going to like directly back you, but basically, yes. So that is part of what has created that hardened iron curtain being drawn sense of the world and then the media censorship and all of that plays into it. Part of why I view American influence and empire as being in decline is because the ideology behind it has basically been exposed as morally bankrupt and wrong. So the McDonald's in every square theory that if we just get free markets into Russia, then we're all going to be friends

and democracy is going to follow and peace is going to reign supreme. Well, that was a fucking fantasy. So that ideology has been thoroughly indicted. Then you add on top of that our blatant hypocrisies and own routine violations of the supposed international rule of law that we supposedly care about in Architect. And you add on top of that, you know, the mass populist uprisings that we've seen around the globe that have continued, that have challenged the neoliberal economic status quo, which is part and parcel with this foreign policy worldview. Yeah, the American neoliberal like shock doctrine and we're going to have democracy around the world and we're going to install it. All of that has been thoroughly dismantled as an ideology.

So that's why I think the American influence and empire is in decline. And even just Trump and Biden getting elected, these people, they're like symbols of a decaying society. To have any situation where Donald Trump wins the presidential election, and then Joe Biden, who's half dead, wins the presidential election as a backlash from Trump,

that's not a healthy society. That's a society that's in severe decline. Quick response. Yeah. So the quick response is a, like Richard Nixon, literally like committed severe crimes at Watergate as the Vietnam war ended in defeat. So I don't think we should over read into bad leadership at the top here. But what I would just say, Chris was, I actually don't disagree with your, like, we're dunking on Thomas, let's say his name. Like we're attacking Thomas Friedman. We're talking about like two countries with the McDonald's have never gone, like we were wrong, totally wrong. Yeah.

But my underlying point is I agree with you. But what I am countering is that dynamic will only make what we call, what you call American empire, US troop presences overseas, US like funding of militaries, et cetera, et cetera. That is only going to get stronger. Japan is now openly saying, we could see a world where we have American nukes in our country. That is what I think you would call an example of American empire. We now have a world where the polls are saying, good, more American troops. If Bill Biden called up the presidents of the Baltic countries and said, hey, we'll give you 500,000 troops, they would be dancing in the streets right now.

That is what I mean by American, so correct, because we're debating a couple of things. American influence, yes, down, but that's been a downward trajectory since the Cold War ended. See, it's actually interesting because what you're just highlighting is that unipolarism made it

so that having to pick the sides and increasing tension was supposed to go down. That was the promise of McDonald's. Now we're actually back in a system of a duality and a challenge of world, which increases tension and increases the likelihood of war. I mean, I agree with you, Sweden and Finland are probably going to be in NATO. I think that's fucking crazy and we should not do it. That being said, the current trajectory looks like we almost certainly are, which is going to make it so that the tension does increase. My fear is that we get bogged down in some bullshit war in Europe defending Finland or Swedish territorial integrity while the entire world's GDP and future is being led in Asia. And I do not

think that- Why don't you call it, like, honestly, like, real talk, like, a war that got so big that involved Finland and Sweden isn't bullshit. No, I disagree with that. I mean, first of all, we didn't go to war in World War II in order to defend Finnish integrity. So what I'm saying is what you should- So I'm saying define bullshit. Yeah. What I'm getting at is like- Okay. A war where that war happens is a fucking disaster. I agree you for the and look and this is where i know i sound callous i'm really sorry but the integrity of the finnish border which has been invaded by the russians many times throughout history is not in the nuclear interest of the united states which is essentially what it means in order to admit them to nato same with frankly i also believe the baltic

states but we've already signed that treaty yeah it is what it is. But when I'm talking about Sweden and NATO, once again, which are very much within a traditional Russian sphere of influence, that doesn't mean that they deserve to be invaded. And if they were invaded, I would support doing exactly what we've been doing here with Ukraine. Do they deserve the nuclear guarantee and the nuclear umbrella of the US? Absolutely not. And so what drives me crazy about the current debate is it's like, oh, Sweden wants to be in NATO. So it's just de facto. Well, hold on a second. What you want is immaterial. What we want is supposed to be material. Go ahead. Okay. But I mean, the point has to be made, though. Russia should also stop giving Finland andeden a reason to want to be in nato of

course i don't disagree i'm with you i'm not saying that i agree with you too i agree with you too i if i'm being a hundred percent honest am i or anybody i know and love are we am i gonna go fight and die or risk nuclear war over fucking kiev or some city in Finland or Sweden? The answer is hell no. There's no way. But I just feel like the other point had to be made too. The last thing I want to say about this, because I think it's clarifying about what

we are doing in Ukraine and why I said this is hardening. It's a new Iron Curtain. It is a new sort of Cold War. It's a dividing of the world. It is a new sort of Cold War. It's a dividing of the world. It's it is, you know, sort of bolstering American empire in the ways you're talking about, Marshall, while the ideology itself is thoroughly discredited. And it certainly is giving reason for the other side of that multipolar world to strengthen as well. Ron Klain got asked about, hey, what about what are you doing to create an exit ramp for Putin? And Klain being a top White House advisor, I think he's more or less running the show.

Chief of staff. He says, yeah, he gives progressives pats on the head and they fall in line. That's what he does. He says, I don't want an exit ramp for Vladimir Putin. I don't think that's our concern. That's like our concern is punishing the Russian aggression. They're not distinguishing between Putin and the Russian people, by the way, and defending the rights of the Ukrainians to have the kind of future they deserve. And that's what our military support is enabling.

So he is straight out saying. We don't want peace. We don't want peace. Right. Our goal is not peace. Our goal is to make Putin pay a price. I don't want an exit ramp. Our concern is punishing Russia.

So, I mean, they're saying it right out like and we've had reports of this before. Biden, I think, let the truth slip when he said we cannot have Vladimir Putin in power. He cannot remain in power. We already had aides who were leaking. Basically, the only game here is effectively regime change. They aren't in this to help Ukrainians secure a peace, which is what I want to see. And I think everybody here wants to see they are effectively forcing that division, that new Iron Curtain and some sort of Cold War competition. And so I think that's what, you know, that's what their goals ultimately are. We are rolling the dice.

Some people say this is hyperbolic. I assure you it is not hyperbolic. We are playing with fire and nuclear weapons are on the table. And I think people need to understand that and realize that. And so the instability that's created by now, the fact that there's a multipolar world, the downfall of having the unipolar world was, of course, like we wantonly violate international law on a Tuesday before breakfast. You know what I mean?

Like we can invade 73% of the world's dictatorships are backed by the United States of America. Look at what we did to the Middle East, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Those are the downsides of, you know, the unipolar world with the chief hypocrite leading it. But the downside of the multipolar world is like potential World War III and the nukes in the air and endless instability and armament out the wazoo on both sides. I just said the word wazoo. Because we only have nine minutes left. Yeah, so final word that I would say is, look, I think the exit ramp is already getting taken.

The only thing that made Putin pull back his ambitions to now just focusing on the east and the Donbass and those places were the fact that he was basically militarily defeated in front of Kyiv, which happened because the West supported Ukraine. So I would say that I think the current policy is working. And I think the only way you get peace, quote unquote, is Putin is convinced that he doesn't achieve the political military objectives that he wanted to have. He thought he could take Kyiv. He can't take Kyiv. He's pulled back. That part of the conflict has de-escalated. It's going to settle into a 10-year horrible, horrible war. But we had that before. We had that for eight years after 2014. That didn't prompt Western intervention. I think we are moving the right

direction. And I just think at this point, the ball is in Putin's court. And the way that you get him to peace is Ukrainian victory on the battlefield in specific situations like the battle around Kiev? I think we have gone so far that there is no political will or desire even to ever lessen the sanctions that we've imposed on them, even if they were to come to some sort of negotiated settlement. And so now the reality of the world is you've got another pariah state, you've got another baddie country that we are, any time that we can get a chance at regime change in there, we're going to be messing around, maybe not directly on

the ground. And to me, that does not help to preserve world peace or stability. So it's a, it's a, in my view, a very dangerous landscape. All right. We got eight minutes, Crystal. All right. Last one. Okay. Because we have to talk about labor or else I'm going to melt down. All right. We are here in New York City. And as you guys know, Staten Island has just done something incredibly historic, which is to vote for the first ever Amazon union in American history, led by Chris Smalls and Derek Palmer. They have another election coming up here in nine days, I believe, which is another building on Staten Island.

And frankly, I think it's going to be as impossible as the first victory was. I think this one may be even harder. First of all, Chris and Derek both came from the other building, so they had really deep local networks there. But most importantly, Amazon is now going over the top with union busting. I think they were caught a little bit sleeping, just like many people they underestimated, Chris Malz and his team. They are not going to make that mistake again. And so Vice has some reporting from within that facility saying Amazon is forcing workers to remove union banners. They're confiscating union lit. They got audio of Amazon reps disciplining a lead organizer.

So the union busting tactics there are ramping up. And at the same time, Starbucks, Howard Schultz, is losing his mind about the union victories that are unfolding in an unprecedented way there as well. I mean, the Starbucks union movement has spread like wildfire. Their last four victories, union victories, were unanimous. Not one worker voted against the union. And that's at the same time that they have massively escalated their tactics. So they fired the old CEO because he failed to stop the unions. They fired their union busting general counsel. They brought back founder Howard Schultz. He

immediately announces, I'm so freaked out about this. I'm not even going to do stock buybacks anymore, which is a big move. He starts giving speeches talking about the union's assault on corporate America. They start, they ramp up firing of organizers. There's, look, these companies always do union busting. The number of NLRB violations that Starbucks has been accused of, a supposedly progressive company, is truly extraordinary. But, the thing that's

really interesting is some of these tactics, not only do they not seem to be working, they kind of seem to be backfiring. I mean, again, since Schultz is back and they've done all this stuff, not just victories, unanimous victories, and more and more Starbucks continuing to file for union elections. So, Marshall, I'm actually curious for your perspective, because I haven't heard from you on this issue. Do you think that this is a flash in the pan?

Or do you think that this truly presages a new era of labor politics? Yeah, it's interesting. You haven't heard from me on this because I know nothing about the subject. But as a consumer of Amazon and reluctantly Starbucks, which isn't that great anymore, I will give my opinion. So I think the two situations are different. Yeah. So I see a world where as a category, Amazon is almost certainly able to make a lot of union, anti-union victories. I think that they can. Once again, I don't know what the word union, I'm not in a bad way.

I don't know what union busting means in the year 2022. But I think there's a world where Amazon could in good faith convince people not to do it. In Starbucks, I don't have any understanding of how given, how social media driven it is, given frankly the clientele, because I think what I would actually probably bet is that people who go into Starbucks probably like it that Starbucks would be unionized. But in

Amazon's case, and this is what's toxic about Amazon, people just want their two-day thing, even if it means people are like pissing in water bottles. Well, it's more invisible. The labor at Amazon is more invisible. So I don't know what, I don't know what Starbucks does. Cause this is like, I say social contagion, not disparagingly.

Yeah. But like once you see a picture of a Starbucks unionizing, I do not see what possible argument Starbucks could make to other Starbuck is around the country that would dissuade just seeing that image. It's just, we're going to fire you, but that's not going to work. Here's the other thing, Kyle, that I've been thinking a lot about is like a lot of the Starbucks workers in particular, but also a good number, the Amazon workers are also young and many of them were also Bernie people. Like part of why you have this movement right now is because of the consciousness that the Bernie campaign helped to build. They interviewed some of the first Starbucks union organizers.

And they were like, I learned how to organize on Bernie Sanders campaign. So not only do you have a labor landscape that has been dramatically transferred by COVID and where it became really clear to people that my boss will literally let me die and not give a shit if they think that they can make more profit. So you have that. You have the fact that there are a lot of jobs available, but they're shitty, low-wage jobs. So people are saying, I'm not going to leave. I'm going to stay here and actually make this a good job because that's the thing that matters to me. But then you also have a generation that is historically favorably inclined towards unions and who have received a kind of labor education that we have never given people in through the education system by their proximity and awareness of the Bernie Sanders campaign. Yeah, I mean, that's that's probably part of it. I think the biggest part of it is just necessity, because, you know, we're living in an era where, I mean, the government really doesn't do much of anything to help people anymore. You know, like whatever remnants of the New Deal and the war on poverty are there just like slowly eroded over time. We've been in this monstrous and neoliberal era for so long now. And I think people looked around. They realized there's no Calvary that's coming to save us. Like we got to save ourselves. And so one of the ways you do that

is you look to your coworkers, you hold hands in solidarity and say, let's try to form a union. Let's try to get better wages and better benefits and do this in a more direct way. If nobody's coming to save us, we need to save ourselves. So I think it's probably necessity is driving a lot of it. And, you know, that's why I hope that you get victories across the board. I know you told me before this that, what was it, the last four Starbucks union elections? Yeah, unanimous. It was unanimous?

Yeah. And what is it, 20 states now? 29. 29 states. 29 states. The Amazon Labor Union has now received inquiries from more than 200 buildings. And just to keep in mind the scale, as I mean, both of these movements

are extremely exciting and transformational. I think because they are really recognizable brands that the upper middle class uses like literally every day, that's part of why these things are so incredibly powerful. But you've had 200 plus buildings across the country reach out to Amazon Labor Union about organizing. Now, they're not going to win all of those, but a single building in Staten Island, that's 8,000 workers. So the entirety of the Starbucks movement thus far, I think it's 19

stores maybe that they've organized thus far doesn't come close in numbers, although it has a lot of cultural cachet to what you could ultimately do at amazon on the other hand saga like the laws are still extraordinarily rigged against them it's still a very difficult climate the things that bosses can do to try to threaten and persuade you and lie to you basically um about the union still makes it very very hard so i think while this thing is very nascent and very exciting, it's far from a foregone conclusion that ultimately you're going to have this wave continue. Yeah, that it's not a foregone conclusion. I would just look at what I find most fascinating

is that no matter what, there is still some change being sparked here. So Amazon, obviously, trying to raise their wage. They're trying to be like, and this is what Marshall said, I think it's what most likely they'll do. They'll be like, okay, fine. We'll go to $21 an hour. We'll go to this. As long as you don't unionize, as long as you do what we say.

I'm not saying it's a good situation. But they have literally hundreds of billions in order to throw at the problem. Starbucks is also, as we pointed to, they took the extraordinary step of saying, we're not going to do stock buybacks anymore. We are now going to invest our profit in our people. That's a direct response to the unionization.

Well, and they went further now and said, we're going to give benefits, but only to the non-union workers, which is possibly illegal, by the way. Yeah, I don't know how that's legal. And that's up to the NLRB. And that is where law also matters a lot. So at the very least, we're in a huge sea change for the labor movement and for worker politics in general with the great resignation with so much of bargaining power, which is dramatically blue collar. And I think that's on balance, an important thing. That's why I do think we're entering a new era. It's not going to look the same as 1910 or, you know, in the fires and the

strikes, but it will be very interesting. It will be driven by the internet and we're going to have to find some sort of new consensus. So unfortunately that's time because I know you guys also have to get out of here. Thank you all, everybody who, the tens of thousands of you who watched for some of the fun super chats. Did we beat CNN Plus? We did beat CNN Plus. For our producer, I think we beat CNN Plus within about two seconds of going live. So shout out to you, Chris Wallace. I hope you enjoy interviewing James Cameron.

Thank you everybody so much for watching. This was a fun experience, new formats. Thanks to all premium subscribers, especially you guys programmed an amazing show. By the way, this was fun. It was fun. And by the way,

if y'all didn't like the topics and you're not premium subscribers, listen, become a premium sub and the next time you get to vote. was on the table. I forgot to put it in there. That's actually my-

Saving time debate. Oh, you forgot to put it on there. I forgot to put it in there. I thought they overlooked that. No, that's my fault. But they definitely would've voted for that. They would've overlooked it. Maybe.

I don't know. Let's be real here. They went for all the deepest topics. They did go for all the deepest topics. No, that's my fault. But they definitely would have voted for that. They would have overlooked it. Maybe. Let's be real here. They went for all the deepest topics. They did go for all the deepest topics. They went for the deepest stuff, and that's why we love them so much. Shout out to Alex with W2F Media for helping us put this live stream on.

If you guys are ever in New York and you need similar services, it's a great spot. I really love the studio. They shoot Brilliant Idiots here, by the way. Yeah, Brilliant Idiots. Great show. Andrew Schultz.

We're some Andrew Schultz, so shout out to Andrew Schultz as well. And it's been really fun coming to you live from New York. We will see you guys later. Love y'all. Back on the show on Monday. See you next week. We'll be right back. 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. 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 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. This is an iHeart Podcast.