The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP #152 (Other Notable Stories) - KFC-Free Chicago, Student Loan Forgiveness, UBI Fails Again

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Join us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. This week: -Chicago’s KFC problem -student loans again -gig-work -the misuse of pandemic savings -wealth tax and so much more From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com ⁠Discord: ⁠https://discord.gg/VvCPubra A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠⁠https://easydns.com/⁠⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. With their new kyc-free options, there's never been a quicker, simpler, more private and (most importantly) cheaper way to acquire private Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

The Canadian Bitcoiners podcast is just two guys and maybe a guest or two discussing Bitcoin, Bitcoin equities, and the related macroeconomic space. It's not meant to be financial advice, so please, if you're doing any investing, after listening to our program, do your own research, do your own due diligence, and understand that any money you invest can be lost the show is meant for entertainment purposes only and we hope you enjoy the program great one hour 43 minutes we gotta write that down this time okay where do you want to start let's rip a little notable news here yeah let's do that because uh you ever heard of a kyc free before like everybody's heard of a KYC free before? Like everybody's heard of KYC free before, right? We all talk about it.

Well, how about... This is interesting because what about KFC free? Chicago? Yeah, so we have Chicago, right? It seems that Chicago, at least parts of it, may be a KFC free zone if this trend continues. So three KFC locations located in the south side of Chicago have closed down, and it's because of economic reasons. Now, these three locations were all owned by the same person.

They're franchises, of course, but the same individual owns these three locations and decided to shutter it rather than keep it open. And he says it's no longer economically viable and if you read between the lines here i just wonder how many times he has or his stores have been robbed in the process i mean you know you know we talked in the past too remember uh chicago they might be going into some sort of um publicly run grocery stores because grocery stores are closing down but they might have to do the same here and do some sort of publicly run kfc or chicken stores but looking at this story it kind of reminded me the kfc story it kind of reminded me a bit of remember the popeye story from several years ago when they ran out of chicken yeah you just needed the mean people to come in and just say what do you mean you ran out of chicken there's no chicken there's no kfc what the fuck

but there you go like enterprise free enterprise will not operate in an area that is trash if you're constantly getting robbed and there's so much civil problems going on outside your store they're going to close down so there's an incentive for the greater public to make things better because then you could attract businesses there they could stay there then they could beautify the area employ people and it just it gets it's a positive feedback loop but in this case in this case we're having a negative feedback loop where things are getting worse businesses are pulling out less jobs less incentive to live there and just gets worse and worse and worse but it's not going to stop it's only going to get worse moving forward touchy subject obviously i think for a number of reasons but

i mean if you have a low income area where crime is high what incentive do you have as a business to be there there's no none there's no policing i mean chicago famously at this point, is called Chirac for a number of reasons that are, I think, pretty sound. Laws there are lax. Chicago's mayor constantly bandying about the latest in virtue and justice and whatever, but people die there every day, basically. It's the equivalent of a mass shooting, I think, almost every weekend in Chicago. Most of it in people under 30, under 25, maybe. So what do you expect the guy to do? And I'm waiting for the local community leaders to be like, oh, this is an example of,

I don't know, white flight or whatever the buzzword is, or saying that it's somehow racist or whatever. This is the kind of stuff you hear in a lot of these communities unfortunately and it's just it sucks for everybody involved but i just again like the question we always ask on this show is what else do you expect the business owners to do they just hang around wait for the insurance to bankrupt them wait for the store to burn down wait for one of their employees to be killed in a robbery. There's no rationale to stay. And it sucks big time, but it's going to continue to happen. Chicago is not the only city like this, by the way. There are others in the United States and

probably here in Canada too, that we maybe are not talking about or haven't really heard of yet where this is happening. But I can think of communities in Hamilton where this is happening. Businesses are closing up shop because there's just no reason to be open. It's dangerous, drug use, homelessness, things of this nature that are driving people away. Happens in neighborhoods all the time. People move their primary residence to other places if they can, because they don't like the area they live. What do you expect this guy to do? Just sit on the sinking ship, switch the deck chairs chairs around i don't think so he's he's voting with uh his feet and his money and uh all the power to him glad to see it the city of new york they launched a 53 million dollar pilot project perfect what do you think this would be done let's see hard to say what i don't know what do i think

let's see what's on the list here i don't want list here? I don't want to get too notable, but on the short list. Subways. What about the tunnels that were recently discovered? Probably not the tunnels. Tunnels. Wow. We're really going for demonetization here. Okay. No, there were tunnels, right? I don't know. What do I think here? How about Statue of Liberty branded meth spoons? That sounds like $53 million to me. What do you think? Is that reasonable? Could be.

Don't give them ideas. That's a good one, I think. I think that's a good one. What about pamphlets for would-be thieves and violent criminals to discourage them? Like the Jehovah Witness guys who stand at the top of the Shiddok stairs to try and convert you while you're in the middle of like an hour of zone four cardio. Yeah, this is really the time I want to do that.

Is that it? 53 million for that? That could be- I want to hear more about this watchtower. The watchtower, you know, they might get you at the top of the stairs there. You just can't run away. You're exhausted at the top.

You just got to put your hands on your knees and wait until you get your breath back and head back down so anyways this 53 million it's going to be used to assist migrant families okay and this is from cbs news so i'm not picking this from some you know so this is you know this is normie news this is normie news yeah excellent yes yeah so these asylum seekers will be given debit cards so what they hope is so they can buy food and the program is expected to impact 500 families which are currently staying in short-term hotels and the max amount that could be loaded up on these debit cards is ten thousand dollars and these cards could be refilled every four weeks so you could who is refilling

them this is pilot project that's paying to refill it. Now, where the money comes from, I'm not sure. We know. Anyways, so $1,000 will be allocated to a family of four. So if you're a family of four and you're eligible for this Pilot Project, you're going to get $1,000 for this. And this will enable them to have 35 a day to buy whatever

food they want so if you add it up that's what it is per person so yeah so what i gather is this these debit cards can be used for anything right not just food it's not like that this is a cbdc system where you have a programmable money that you could direct where that money can be spent this is still a pre-cbc bdc system where if the debit card if they want to buy playstations they can't afford it obviously with this one maybe they could but they can buy it if they wanted to there's no there's no way to force them to buy food or something else to improve their lives this is we need cbdcs for this land we need the cbdc program to start now well we'll talk about that in just a moment actually so but yeah i'll leave this story i'll

close it off with that and if you want to talk about anything go right ahead but yeah i i don't know i do you know what fuck it i do want to talk about it. The New York AG, Letitia James, this clown, she's tweeting out every day the number know how many times you have to find Donald Trump to continue in perpetuity? And by the way, that 10 million number is about six months old now. Do you know how much money Donald Trump would have to pay you? And by the way, okay, he's not going to pay any of it. It's going to get dismissed by a higher court as it should. Okay. Do you know how much money you need from donald j trump and his estate to fund that cost or ten thousand dollars or a thousand dollars or whatever to every family of four you have to have up in a way you're putting up in hotels that were presumably private owned businesses until

a year ago that's a decision a month right if it's still 10 million if that's still number remains i've already gotten i've already gotten too worked up about how notable this is and then also you have to take into consideration the cost for litigation there's gonna be of course of course so yeah who the heck knows exactly it's pure insanity over there and like serenity now the the the state governor there the state governor getting on TV and saying, don't worry, we won't do this to your business. We just did it to Trump's business. Like, I hate that I'm getting political. I'm not even really a Trump guy.

I think the guy is funny. He'd be a better comedian than politician probably, but he's still somehow a better politician than most of the people he's running against on either side of the aisle. I just look at this and I think priorities, man. Here on CBP, we are about priorities. We're about opportunity costs. We're about deciding A over B and why. Can you really say to me that this is the best way to spend $10 million a day? Can you really say to me that these are the people we should be giving $1,000 to for a family of four? I'm not saying they don't need it. I'm saying that if you just give to everyone who comes because you think that they're more desperate, there's not enough resources in the world. This has always been the case that's made against unfettered migration do you think that

that's exactly it so i think the majority of the money and i could be wrong is spent on housing yeah for hotels putting them in schools and stuff like whatever i don't want to see these people on the street but the question is if you can't afford it why not just tell them not to like this is not for this is not a cbp topic but like come on what are we talking about here we can't this is not a it's not a feasible long-term policy is it i don't think that it is no when when you're increasing the amount of undocumented people in the country what is the number was it a couple of million people last year and a million and a half the year before yeah i think you know if you do that as many almost as many as us in us in terms of well would it all canada

what do we we had a i think we had more than a million last year right for a country that was a huge difference the population is approximately 10 times and eight times something like that still i mean whatever yeah that goes then that shows you why that, you know, the housing situation is what it is. And that's why the federal government is reacting. What the way they are, they're clamping down and study permits and so forth.

It's going to be a kind of stoke is going to take a beating moving forward as a result of the changes, right? Like whatever. I don't know this New York story just to put a bow on it. Like there's other things you need that money for um not the least of which is preventing crime in your city but hey you know spend it however you want and suffer the consequences people go out with their feet

and they're going to do that here too if only eric adams did buy bitcoin and took his bitcoin maybe he could have used the proceeds to help fund did you Did you see that Eric Adams video from when he was, um, like a, uh, state representative or state cop, whatever. And he's like, this is how he's, he does his video.

I saw it on the real flies, Twitter account. I tweeted it out. I'm not going to go back and look for it, but it is so like tragically funny. He's talking about how to search your child's backpack for drugs and other like, you know,

illegal paraphernalia. And he's like, if you find a crack pipe in your child's backpack for drugs and other like you know illegal paraphernalia and he's like if you find a crack pipe in your son's backpack it might be time to have a conversation with him like buddy we know but that was tell me let's be honest that was probably i don't want you know i'm defending him here because when was that you dare do you know don't you dare it's taking the context was that done in the 90s like he he could have been it doesn't look like it looks like okay i don't know and so you gotta take it go search go to my twitter profile you listeners and viewers i don't know how to do it on computer but you can just type in if you just type in crack pipe or something i'm sure you'll find it if you find anything else when you search crack pipe on my profile i'm in deep shit but pretty sure that's what you'll find. Well, let's do another acceleration story.

Because last one I think was. And this was another example why UBI is not the answer. And this is from the Washington Post. Again, what you described is normie news. So I'm not cherry picking this shit out of thin air. So a pilot program was launched by the District of Columbia, D.C. And in this, 132 new and expecting low-income mothers were given $10,800 over a year. And why was this done?

It was a study to show how unconditional cash payments could improve their lives, essentially a UBI. And it says here, some of the funds were used to set up their first savings accounts or to buy baby formula others use it to live the lives as they have always dreamed for their families such as helping cushion their savings to buy a new home or this is where it really gets derailed okay or just live large for a week like a new hairdo a trip to miami and new outfits every day for the children oh man give me those flowers man so here we go this lady kanithia miller miss miller

she's at home 27 years old with her third child and she says i wanted to blow it i wanted to have fun she said her kids got the experience something that they would never be able to do if they never got this money. So they did a five-day, $6,000 trip to Miami. Holy Christ. Yeah, they had it all over there. There's no helping these people. They were even joined by the children's father. And they had a nice boat tour to expose them to the million-dollar homes and luxury yachts that, well, that area has to offer.

And not only that, she spent $180 ahead of this to do her own hair and nails. So accelerate, accelerate, accelerate. Does anything say I'm stupid? Like I used my $10,000 to give my kids exposure to something they'll never experience, like a nice house and a trip to Miami? Are you stupid? I said this before, and I'm not going to sugarcoat this, even though I know we're trying not to be so pointed. There's no help for these people. People who need UBI and debt forgiveness

and these things, the problem isn't that they're in debt. The problem is they don't understand how to spend or save money. Period. End of story. These UBI programs don't work. They're inherently inflationary because everyone just spends every penny. They don't know what to do with the money. Now, you could make the case to me, and I think it'd be a fair case to make, that if you do this for six months, you're not giving people a chance to learn how money can serve them if they do the right things with it. I think that's fair. I would honestly grant you that, but the expectation can't be that you give someone $10,000 and just say, okay, go nuts.

Like they don't know what to do with it. They've never had $10,000 before. And so naturally, they don't know what to do with $10,000. The idea that you would set up a savings account with 10K tells you all you need to know. Savings account is the dumbest thing on the planet. But it's a step in the right direction i'll give them that it's barely fucking barely because all it is is a place for you to you you tell okay listen i'll give you give you the

rationale if you put it in a savings account you know it's going to be depleted over time because the money you have is not going to be enough to pay for everything you might as well leave it liquid and at least collecting whatever interest you have so the next month when you have to buy baby food formula sorry diapers and shit like that you could draw upon that next month and it will be a little bit higher less than inflation but you're still better off so that's when i look at that in that situation i gotta say good for them they're using whatever knowledge they have with the fiat world to apply something to make it better for them moving forward they're not spending it on a trip you're spending it to try to make ends meet to pay for food and shelter and whatever the fuck else they

need what was the uh do you know what the means testing was for that 10k any idea you had to submit an application and provide a story along with it. So she was saying with her, in her case, this lady with her child, she's having difficulty paying everything and having a child at home. It's harder for her to get a job that's working around schedule and so forth. So gig work or was it temporary work? That's it's just hard for her to get a job that to work so she needed the money it would help her out i just have so many things to say that i just cannot say on this air but i mean the the the incentives are lined up in a way that they just don't make sense and you see this kind of thing all the time i i don't know how like there's there's no

polite way to say the things i want to say, but they're obvious to everybody, okay? You can't have three kids without a job and then worry that you can't get a job because of the three, like, this is not, that's not a rational person. People are making poor decisions. Of course. And then when you give, and then, okay, so like we, this is the thing I don't get about the UBI crowd. I got to ask Floyd about this when he comes on. If you need UBI to live, chances are you got in that situation by making irrational choices, not just one or two, but like dozens, hundreds compounding over a decade to get into that

situation. And then when you give someone that money, do you expect them to change the train of thought, the sort of decision-making model that they have? Well, they have money, so clearly they're going to make better decisions with it. Well, this is the thing I don't get, right? Like someone's got to explain this to me. That's why I think there's a case to be made

that if you give someone UBI for six months, it's not going to work. But if you give it to them for three years, maybe they figure it out. Or you give them the UBI and say, look, to keep getting the UBI, you have to meet with a financial professional once a month. How about this, Joey? How about a CBDC system that UBI, where the money can be and only be spent? It's coming so much faster than you think. I'm of the camp it's not going to take place for a long time. I'm still camp it's coming so fast i got i'm going to tell you why when we get to gig economy

i'm going to tell you why i can't wait okay i'm curious okay anyways we'll talk about student loan forgiveness because it's all the acceleration acceleration they're giving money away again to people who just don't know what to do with it i put the student loan crowd in the same boat as the i need ubi crowd. I say what you want, but it was $1.2 billion in student loans were canceled just last week. And when I say canceled, it's not that, you know,

the loan got reduced or it's wiped off. It's not collectively. It's now going to be shouldered by everybody. It's no longer one person's job. So it's not the person that applied for the loan. It's everybody. And unfortunately, so,

so far $138 billion in student loans have been forgiven and is that not mind-numbing to you that number i'm gonna give a little more color here 3.9 million people now this if you wanted to figure this out that's roughly the size a little bit more the size of los angeles to give you perspective on how many people los angeles is the second largest city by population i believe in the united states that's how many people that were given loan forgiveness so and this is not the only time they're going to continually do this we talked about student loan forgiveness i think two weeks ago and now we're talking again and i don't know how they're able to get around this because wasn't there some sort

of judgment by the supreme court so i'm not sure what's the mechanism required exactly something that's being done there for sure by the white house right yeah so they're able to achieve this not to the same broad degree they wanted to, but it's still being done. Slowly but surely, they might ship away at this to get to where they were going to get the pass before the Supreme Court decided to strike that down. This is all, remember, part of an election year two. So this I could see continually moving forward. I can't see why they would stop this. But unfortunately, it's other people's

money they're not going to do anything with it this is the word the worst part is they're not going to do anything with it like period end of story that's that to me well this will be the story in 10 years that they're just they didn't do anything with the money except blow it they didn't save it they didn't buy homes they didn't start families with the money except blow it. They didn't save it. They didn't buy homes. They didn't start families. They spent it on nonsense. I understand that student loans, everyone in Canada is like,

oh my God, in America, you get these huge student loans. Yeah, but you also make fucking 70 grand working at McDonald's in the States. I just want to, don't mean to interrupt. Boomer says one thing, and he's right. There's something here that has to be said institutions like harvard and i didn't want to name them but they did fleece them for sure they fleeced them 100 they they are they took they're sitting harvard and i forget the exact number it's tens of billions of dollars they're sitting on in in dowry so they're just sitting on it it's just and they're not the only

one other institutions are doing this that money got paid to them yeah they got the money now they should pay that back because everybody is now going to be subjected to paying that why should they keep it and everybody else pay the bill there's gonna be changes yeah there's gonna be changes in the way that these things work i think um student loans especially you know if the universities are willing to take you on for underwater basket weaving then they better be willing to pay some of your debt forgiveness down the road when it's politically convenient to do so. Yeah, I don't know. It sucks, Len. But like, again, it's just, it's an acceleration moment here that everyone is kind of just sitting by and watching, right? You're kind of, you've never seen an environment like this where everything is on the table as far as getting votes.

The border is wide open. Loans are forgiven. Cash for everyone. UBI. Everything is on the table. You could tell me anything in the next story. If I didn't look at any of the stories for this week, you could have told me anything, and I would honestly believe you. There's a UBI program starting in new york every citizen who uh you know is under

under 50 years old is going to get ten thousand dollars a month for the next six months i would be what if i identify as somebody that's under 50 does it oh yeah you get double you get double there's another uh there's another allowance another allowance for people who identify as anything. Well, talk about notable stories. Too notable. Moving on. Notable North. There was a beauty of an article that came out from CBC. It was talking about the pandemic

and the savings people had accumulated during that time. He's even mentioned in a chat that CERB is talked about there, and there's also CIVA loans. So there was money that was being given to people because they're not able to either keep their operations open or they were forcibly telling people as employees to stay at home.

So CERB and CIVA came into existence. And this article mentions that those savings collectively in Canada ballooned to $300 billion, over that those savings collectively in canada ballooned to 300 billion dollars over 300 billion dollars in fact and uh so and it got to the point where we just reached a i think the record high in terms of savings so anyways economists were expecting those savings to translate into a big boost for the economy for when the money was eventually eventually spent and the economists they were puzzled as to why all this spending of the money didn't result in what they predicted in the weird yeah so well so it just goes to show you that you may have the

you may have gone to school you may have learned about it, but you feel over you overlook one fact that if you increase the money in a system, you have more money chasing the same goods. And so the price of those goods are going to go up. And now the money that is there, it's not like they are more wealthy. It's they're just treading water as a result. So, yeah. So total household savings has gone down since then, obviously. And it's noted that the people that do have savings now are people of means. The people that are in lower class or even medium class, they are the ones that don't have middle class.

They don't have the money in the savings accounts. And it's been drained for the most part because everything has gone up. And they have to tap into their savings. And and then worse they have to put it on credit yeah so yeah i don't understand why that they don't they can't seem to understand this didn't take place a boom in the economy but the reality is come on guys you flood the money you flood the market with money there's no way around it there's going to be an increase in price and the money becomes devalued. It's a zero sum game. And I don't know.

I have nothing else to say about this, but these people just got to realize the reality. What else can you say? It's like basic understanding of supply and demand and the goods, the goods market reacts to those market forces maybe more quickly and more precisely than any other free market in the world. It's not that hard to figure this out, but as always here on CBP, we're available for consulting. Low prices, going to be cheaper than what you're getting. More accurate information too. Just give us a call.

Hit me up. DMs open as they say. Actually, I've helped a number of people in the past few weeks with uh technical issues cold card and shit like this and it's all free man it's all free free so yeah i don't charge anyways i'm not sure if you saw this article i think you did the mark fossette article from the obviously i saw fossette fossette's like a we got that's another guy i would actually have him on the show but anyway let's go ahead well he, he says that Canada needs a wealth tax. And because the top 100 best paid CEOs in Canada made 246 times the typical employee took home in 2022.

And that number, I think, has probably gone up. 2023, we don't have that. He says that by implementing something like this this would impact fewer than 100 000 families nationwide and would raise more than 32 billion dollars in the first year and he says within a decade it would hit 51 billion dollars for a cumulative total over 10 years of 409 billion dollars he says this is money that could be used to solve real problems and help a large number of Canadians. But the problem I have is when you institute something like this,

you are then incentivizing those people to relocate to a different jurisdiction where those tax laws don't apply. People of means are able to move elsewhere. People that have nothing, they can't. They're stuck where they are for the most part. So I understand what he's trying to achieve here, but in terms of the forecasting, it's not, I mean, I'm going to argue,

it's not accurate. That number is going to go down. And as it goes down, then it's also going to impact the economy because you'll have less of these people here these well-paid people here doing the job and so you have almost a drain brain so somebody else will have to replace that and then so overall the just industry as a whole will be less productive and so it just it's you look at that and that's a negative feedback loop and it just gets worse and worse over time i understand what they're trying to achieve we have a progressive tax

system already in canada the more you make the more you pay in taxes there may be loopholes i suggest trying to close those loopholes as much as possible maybe that way you could have people of means pay their fair share of taxes rather than circumventing it through tax loopholes. But this is something for other people that I don't have a clue how to fix, but that's my thinking. Get rid of the sales tax and put in a wealth tax. And I'm in. I'll play your game. Sure.

No problem. I don't want to pay 15% of everything else. You can charge me on wealth. And then you're really attacking the problem you seem to think exists, that the wealthy are getting too wealthy, while the people who are kind of the hardest done by are falling too far behind. Easy. Get rid of the sales tax, just charge, just charge the wealth tax. And I'll at least entertain the notion. The problem I really have here, and I, you know, Mark sent us this article. That's how we, we saw it. This is interesting. Okay.

As to concerns about capital flight, he means people leaving the country with all their wealth because they don't want to pay the tax. Hemingway suggested, Hemingway is not Ernest Hemingway or whatever that guy's name is. Is it Ernest Hemingway? Yeah. I think you're right. It's Alex Hemingway who works for CCPA. I don't even know what that is, nor do I really care. Hemingway suggested the Canadian wealth tax could be paired with an exit tax for anyone trying to flee its provisions. Say something on the order of 40% on expatriation that was proposed by Bernie Sanders or Warren in their 2021 proposal in recognition of the contribution of Canadian society to creating huge fortunes. I'm sorry. The contribution of what? Canadian society creating huge fortunes.

I don't think so, guys. That's a bridge too far. Well, I admire Fawcett for the engagement farming that he most certainly had in mind when he wrote this article, because there's not much substance here. It's all just kind of nebulous ideas and stuff that he's not really considered or given details on. My big problem remains the same. The idea that giving more money to quote-unquote solve problems is the answer. I would just ask what problems have been solved to date with extra money. That's all. And if you can show me that we're getting better services for the money that's going

to presumably quote-unquote solve those problems, then yeah, let's talk about it. But I've seen a lot of the opposite and I'm not willing to give more, I don't think, to these sorts of things. Also, 10 million is relatively low as a baseline number. If you start calling land wealth or LLCs wealth or Bitcoin, or your stock portfolio wealth, I would guess, Len, that a lot of people in their 60s and 70s, people who had good jobs, maybe have a couple of homes, let's say, if you have more than one or two properties, you might find yourself in that range. Who gets to decide what that stuff is worth, right? Do you get to decide? Does the bank get to decide? Does the government get to decide? I don't know. I don't really want to play in that arena. And again, I don't think this is a serious

proposal. I don't expect it to get any traction. But then again, tyranny of the majority continues to creep up on us here in Canada. And anything is possible, like I said before. So I'm not suggesting hiding your wealth, but I will say that playing outside the system in assets like Bitcoin, I think, is increasingly a good idea because there's a lot of stuff coming down the pipeline here. I think in France, you didn't even have this on the list, but in France, there's a politician talking about how they can't afford to risk losing the battle against climate change and the war in Ukraine. And so they want to start talking about seizing French savings accounts. Like, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so. I don't have the list.

Yeah. So what I want to say is that Bitcoin, how many people, if such a thing becomes a reality, especially in exit tax, how many people are going to be then purchasing Bitcoin and memorizing their 12 or 24 words? Because at that point, then it's... By the way, okay, the wealth tax as described here, especially that exit part, is outlined in depth in a book to my left here, Sovereign Individual. Clamps will come down as people leave these oppressive uh jurisdictions and i mean if you think galen weston is going to subject himself to this i mean you're dreaming

it's never going to happen so anyway fun to talk about though good content for us well there's an interesting article from the global mail and it's done by two individuals one uh emily baril she's a doctoral candidate at york university and the second person that contributed to this opinion piece was stephen tufts and he's an associate professor at york university so just to give some context of who wrote this so they penned this opinion piece and it's talking about the gig economy it's stuff stuff like Uber Eats. Everybody knows about this stuff, but the really,

the gist of it is talking about the exploitation of workers as a result, because the fact that they are preying on cheap labor and flexible hours, and they think this is obviously a bad thing. It's just a bad way for businesses and corporations to take advantage of people. The reality is there is a need to do these jobs a job there would be no money for it if the job didn't exist and there are more people in canada and it's hard to find regular work because you know if you go

look at any type of job fairies just flooded with people there's more people than jobs than there are jobs available so they're forced to do shit like this and why while it may not be glamorous and they're working crazy hours sometimes even the middle of the night to deliver food or whatever there is a need for it if there wasn't there'd be no pay there'd be no money for it so and it's just this is really this it's capitalism more than anything and it's too bad people are forced to do these type of jobs in order to make ends meet they would i would imagine they wouldn't want to do this they want to do something that is i don't want to say better but you know they like pays more gives them more um more uh it's more

consistent along those lines it's just you know these guys i think they're painting it in the wrong light they should be looking at there is a need for it people are doing it because they have no other option they're not being exploited it's just that's the reality of situation i mean there's reasons that they feel this way presumably the gig economy has been such a topic for us like such a busy sort of hot topic for cbp what we do is a gig economy you and i this thing i mean this is a side hustle for us right and and you know right we're doing something on the side here like yeah i don't i don't view it as like a gig economy job but you're right so you know in some economic data reporting for sure this would be um you know a second job the thing the problem i have is that the policies

that lead to and i like i'm gonna speak a little bit out of line here or out of pocket, but Tufts is a geography professor. As far as I know, that doesn't really give him any credentials as far as I know geography is not the thing you'd be looking at for labor data. I just think that, like you said, we have all these people who come to Canada looking for a better life. We can't give it to them. I think that's fair to say. We can't. You may think that the immigrant population, you may think that this of the you I'm talking about here is the immigrant population. You may think that this is something that you want because you were sold this false bill of goods, but you come here, you're going to find out pretty quickly that's not

what you thought it was. And to your point earlier, Len, about the job fairs, I mean, some of the job fair videos online at grocery stores, the one from the airport a couple of days ago where there's like fucking three, 400 people at least, and the guy at the airport is having to clear them out. This is not conducive to anything but more gig work. And so the question isn't, why are we exploiting gig workers? The question is, why are workers willing to take those jobs that you view as exploitive in the first place? And the answer is because there's too many people. And Uber doesn't have to raise their rates to get drivers. And McDonald's doesn't have to pay their people more to get burger flippers. Tim Hortons doesn't

have to pay anyone any extra money to fuck up my double-double and burn the shit out of my coffee anymore. Used to be just a couple of high school kids working in there. Now it's like full grown men and women. The jobs are only exploitive insofar as people don't want them. But like you said, they want them because there's nothing else, right? What do you expect them to do? This is a problem that I've heard in the States before, and I'm sure we've talked about this on CBP in the past. People who want to raise the minimum wage, minimum wage or force Uber workers to unionize,

it's not feasible because it takes away that job from the market. And Peter Schiff makes this case all the time that minimum wage actually prices people out of jobs. It doesn't allow more people to make more money. And he's right. That market force forces those jobs out of the market. You just won't pay as many people to do the work, right? Or you won't have as many hours or whatever. And you just wind up with more of the same problem. I'll ask you, I mean, it's a big question for the end of the show, but what is the alternative to gig work for people who come here and want jobs and can't get them? I don't know the answer.

Social support is the answer. And it's just more money out of pocket for Canadians. And it's just, it's not doable, man. It's not doable. And I think a lot of Canadians now are, are voicing opinions that they have held for some time, but about the immigration numbers and that, that whole kind of program, it's unfortunate that it's come to this, but I think, I think it's fair to have an adult conversation about what the plan is here because there is something to be said about exploiting people who come to

Canada or, or, or, you know, perceive perceiving this exploitation in jobs like Uber or taxi driving or whatever. There's no easy fix fix now is the problem. We're kind of past that point.

And whatever we decide to do is going to be painful for some percentage of the population. And I don't look forward to the outcome, but there is an outcome on the horizon here that's going to be a big part of the next political campaign for all three parties, right liberals um conservatives and bloc quebecois i don't know if there's another party in canada that's going to be relevant in the next election but those three will be fun to listen to the block is going to be mostly irrelevant to their fun though he always gets on the debate stage there eve johnny for whatever his name is blanchette yeah but still it's it's irrelevant yeah whatever of raising minimum wage anybody that wants to raise it i just want it to dive deep into them and so the person i understand you know maybe that's somebody that's on minimum wage would like to get paid more i totally understand that but for somebody that is not like say they're in any type of job or even in a position of power, if they're talking about raising minimum wage, I'd love to know if they're paying anybody minimum wage.

And if they are, then their whole argument is null and void. Null and void. If they were paying people above to the point where if they say $25 is what people should be paying, then if that person is paying everybody $25 at the very least, then we'll talk, you know, then we'll talk more. I would expect that whatever business you're in would probably be not as profitable as a result.

I mean, it's not like this is even an academic exercise. We just did. When did we do UPS two weeks ago? Oh, and we were, um, I don't know if we were,

we're given additional information it was two or three weeks ago yeah the people that were laid off were managed in management position and non-union positions so those ones that actually scored those 170 something thousand per year jobs that's including what would you call what would you call those people who are in union or sorry non-union positions working for ups would you would you say that they who are in non-union positions working for UPS? Would you say that they are closer or further from this sort of, quote unquote, exploited class? These are the people who suffer. When you try and force the market to do something that's not natural, you get a response, right?

It's just the way things are. There's butterfly effects on every time you try and fuck with the invisible hand, okay? Shout to my man, Adam Smith. There's always going to be a reaction. There's always going to be a response. And it's unforgiving and unrelenting in markets. It's always this way, right? It's always going to be this way.

It's just the nature of the game and i just want to add one point is for people that come here so newly landed immigrants and i'm not saying that this is a good thing but it seems historically it's always been the same way they were never they always look employers always looking Whoa, look at 55,230. Does that look right to you? Whoa, we're flying, buddy. Yeah, wow. 55,230, wow. Great. Just before I was about to make my buy, thanks a lot, people.

For whatever reason, this has always been the case. Employers were looking for Canadian experience. So people that come here with degrees and experience from back home, it's just not recognized here. And it's not, this is a recent thing. This has been going on for decades and it's just, it is sucky to be in that position that, you know,

you were back home, you were doing something, you come here, you're cleaning floors and you're trying to make ends meet. It sucks. But I don't know if there's a way to fix that as well. If it, but by doing this you're kind of

drawing in people that a lesser lesser uh valued individual so to speak like you know if you want to draw the best people here you want to give them the best opportunity or else by you know by not giving them that you're going to get a lesser individual it seems yeah okay that's it for tonight good show then a couple of agreements couple disagreements as always uh i appreciate the chat lit during uh during the whole fucking time yeah i mean it's incredible the support we get from you guys on a monday night uh we got different numbers yeah but yours just refreshed so i'm at 55 100 years yeah it's 55 one something i just looked 55 113 it's good 55 you motherfuckers i was gonna buy soon and then now

for a lot now you're now you're destined to a life of servitude and serfdom instead thank you very much thank you now i have to work for another few extra years just because you actually no this is a good thing and but the funny thing is the european central bank says it's fucking worthless i don't know man it can't be fucking worthless for a heck of a lot of money god bless everybody come back for wednesday len will be here with the boys from high hash rate and uh until then take care of yourselves don't't be a cuck. Okay, wait, don't say anything. Don't forget, everybody, lots of other stuff on CBP Media Network,

including Two Whites in the Blue. Me, Joey, my brother-in-law, Mike, and our friend Will talk about all the problems millennials are having with finance, romance, and just getting by. If you like CBP, if you like the NHL 94 podcast, I guarantee you'll like that one. Search for it.

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