The Chaser Report - Woke Is Dead

Episode Date: February 9, 2025

As DOGE cut all funding from USAID, only The Chaser Report has the economic comprehension to explain to you how this will impact Australia. Buy tickets to WANKERNOMICS in Sydney here:https://events.humanitix.com/wankernomics-work-in-progressWatch OPTICS on ABC iview here:https://iview.abc.net.au/show/opticsCheck out more Chaser headlines here:https://www.instagram.com/chaserwar/?hl=enCollect your inheritance from a foreign prince:https://chaser.com.au/support/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello, and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. Another week back in the saddle. Are we sure we're doing this daily? Like, we talked about options. We did.

We're back daily, aren't we? We're back in, because we took a long time off. But there's so much news, we probably should. Yeah, and also, I miss chatting to you, Dom. Oh, yeah, and we definitely don't chat, just like, as friends away from the podcast. It's like that will be wasted conversation. I can't actually talk to you anymore. We can't monetize our just personal conversation.

Yeah, and I ran into you the street the other day, and I was so annoyed. I didn't have some sort of podcast recorder with me. I might carry some sort of portable microphones with me everywhere I go just in case. But if there are any sponsors out there who do want to monetize our personal conversations with each other, that would be, I mean, I think actually there's not enough monetization in modern life. That's true, actually. There's so much, I mean, my sleep, I never. There's no ads in your sleep.

No ads. That's such wonderful territory to develop another revenue source. I can't believe Elon Musk hasn't thought of that yet. But he's a bit busy at the moment, isn't he? Which we'll talk about today. Yes. If you're wanting a really depressing listen, please stay tuned after these ads.

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Details at fizz.ca. The old-fashioned ads brought to you, you know, not in your subconscious. But actually, it's a good point, Charles. I mean, if you hear commercial radio or whatever, particularly commentary, they really shoehorn sponsors in all kinds of places. Like there's a chemist chain that sponsors the boundary. I remember listening to one the other day. And so whenever someone hits a four, oh, it's hit the such and such boundary.

It's a pharmacy for less boundary. Well, whatever it is. It's got the four in their name. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a pharmacy for. Ironically, they're not the sponsors. But no. And so that's fine.

I mean, that's sort of verbally dexterous. But what if we did that in everyday conversation? Like, why don't I just say, Charles, it's been so long. How are you brought to you by Coles? It's a peroni hello from me. He's actually literally drinking a parotian right now. Yeah, so that is.

Hey, hey, Apple, watch it. Don't come on. Oh, gosh. It could be really... Can we just say, Charles, what have you been doing lately brought to you about optics? I'm screening now on ABCTV. Yeah, exactly.

Well... I mean, you do plug optics in every conversation you have anyway. That is true. Although I should also plug... We're doing a Wayne Canomics Live Show tour across Australia and the UK. Oh, it's stopped being fun now. But I should just mention that we've put on to work in progress shows in Sydney. You know how professional comedians do work in progress shows?

I've seen, like, Daniel Kitsen going and, yeah, work in progress. Yeah, and Ricky Javar. We were on just after Ricky Javeh was doing his work in progress show at Lester Square last year. So subtle, how they mentioned that? Yeah, anyway, but, um, so we're doing a couple of work in progress shows in Sydney in early March. Surely Wank in Progress. Oh. Did you not call them that?

I think that they would have got a different rating. That's true, actually. So, if you want to come along and you're in Sydney, it's very cheap ticket. It's like 15 bucks because there's no guarantees around its quality. But that'll be on the 4th and 5th of March and just go to Wankanomics.com to get tickets. But let's talk about Elon Musk and his cuts to USAID. It's quite cute, actually. The United States Agency for International Development, Aid.

See what they did there? Very good. That's the kind of woke thinking that Donald Trump has now said he's dead. He said he's killed woke forever. Yes. Have you heard this? This is one of his big... Oh, really? He's killed it. He's killed it.

Woke is over. He said, you know, the other side spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Woke. I've just killed it. Woke is over. We're all asleep, Charles. It feels like Woke is sort of not murdering people. Like, anything that, like, doesn't involve directly leading to excess deaths is now considered woke. Right. Like, because USAID was all about saving lives, you know. Millions of lives. Millions of lives. Quite an extraordinarily large number of lives.

Famously, AIDS, you know, from the George W. Bush, that very woke president. that we had. Yeah, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that bleeding heart Democrat, George D. Bush with his, like, he, he, he never, like, you know, declared wars unnecessarily with no evidence and killed, um, countless people in, I don't know, in Iraq or so. Like, he was, he's a wokester. He's a, he's a, he's a hippie. Yeah.

He's a painter now. He paints, painting, like a, like a little lefty. But, uh, disgusting. So there's, so there's, so we're recording this on Sunday afternoon. And, uh, already there are food agencies across sub-Saharan Africa that have shut their doors as a result of the fact that USAID has stopped operating, right? I hope they've put on the door, America first. Just to really get the message to.

No, I'm sure all the people who've turned up wanting food have gone, well, at least woke is dead. Like, you know, like, they'll be actually probably laughing to themselves about how great it is that Trump has killed off woe. Charles, why should American taxpayers fund starving people in Sub-Saharan Africa? Like, make the argument. You're woke stuff. this is where I think it's really interesting right and this is what I want to talk about which is

imagine the world economic system didn't operate exactly as was advertised on the box that was just slightly different right uh to to what you sort of think of of but it's sort of like actually you know this is how it works right so I'm going to give you this potted summary of how the macroeconomic system works across the world and I do this on the basis of having done economic social science for four years at uni. My lack of clarity about what Charles is talking about brought to you by contact lens cleaner. Get it today.

So the point is, every country in the world prints its own money, right? Pretty much, except for Europe, but, you know, and we have the loveliest colourful plastic notes. The problem with printing your own money in every country except for one is that if you print too much money, you get a thing called inflation.

Right. And the value of your money goes down because suddenly everyone goes, well, hang on, you're just printing money. These are actually worthless bills, and you end up, you know, eventually with a sort of Zimbabwean economy or whatever. Footnote, that reminds me of the 7 millionth listener competition, which we announced and never ever sorted out. I've still got the $7 trillion sitting on my desk.

Yeah, yeah. So we might be having very soon an 8th millionth download, and I think we might need to pay that one off. So stay tuned for another baffling competition. Yes. Anyway, but in terms of, we should check. Let's check our numbers, because it'll be close to $8 million soon. Okay, I'll just quickly check now.

All right. You keep talking about economic theory from 30 years ago, and I'll look at the numbers. No, no, which is, but there is one country that can literally print as much money as it likes and has done for literally 50 years, and there are no consequences, right? They run massive deficits year on year on year on year, except for a brief moment in the 1990s where they ran a couple of surpluses. And it doesn't matter because they are the world's reserve currency, right? There's one country.

Do you know which country that is? I certainly hope it's the People's Republic of China, Charles. It is the USA. So the reason why there's these relatively small in terms of the size of the US economy and in tiny, skill in the size, in terms of the size of the world economy, the reason why the US is the primary giver of all these little sums of money to stop everyone starving or dying of AIDS and things of that is because literally it is the only country in the world that can just print a little bit more money and give some to the provos and nobody notices. Everyone else has to go and say,

you know how we're giving an extra 100 million? Like if Australia did that, oh, we're giving an extra billion to the povos, right? Peter Dutton would turn around tomorrow and go, hang on, woke's gone mad. We're going to have to, because the taxpayers, you actually have to balance your budget everywhere else in the world. Speaking of, speaking of very high, ridiculous numbers, we are currently at all-time downloads on the Chaser Report, 7,994,149. So this week, the 8 millionth download will take place. Unless everyone, and this would be hilarious. if you did it, but also devastating. If everyone just stopped listening

to the book, like Steve Smith. You know, I was at the SCG when he got out on 9,900 career ruds. He looks so frustrated. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore?

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I was really sad because I thought Oh my God I really wanted to be here for a 10,000 But I actually thought No this is much better Being here at the moment When he failed

Yeah Anyway and he scored several centuries insane All right so just stopped down later We don't want to get over $8 million We want to keep the Zimbabwean trillion dollar banknote Yeah, we should.

Anyway, so your point is it costs them nothing. They're the one country. They're the one country where, electorally, it actually costs them nothing because they don't actually have to, they can just print the money rather than tax their citizens to get that money, right? And that's why when you turn around and go, well, other countries should just step in and replace USA. Like, European Union, that's rich country.

Australia, that's rich. You know, like, they should step in. The problem is that they're all going fascist anyway. Like AFD is about to take over Germany. He probably has this weekend. I just saw the Spaniards have just, all the Spanish right-wingers have met in Madrid to make Spain great again. Yeah, great. So the point is, you know, like every other country is sort of constrained by electoral considerations.

The other thing is that if you run the world's global economy and the world's global currency and you have this immense privilege, which by some estimates represents about a 30% boost in the wealth of your nation to be the printer of the reserve currency of the world, right? The one thing that you also have an interest in is people having fairly good relations with you, liking

you, wanting you to continue having that position of privilege in the world. And the one thing that you shouldn't do is cut everyone off and make everyone, like, there were people in Canada. Like, they had a big football game in Canada, you know, Australia, America versus Canada.

And the Canadians booed the U.S. when the U.S. anthem came on. Yeah. That is unheard. Like, they're basically the same country. I mean, that is, well, hang on. Hang on. It's like us booing New Zealand. That's a small issue, Charles. They're booing them to make the point that they're not the same country. This is because of Donald Trump's charming habit of calling Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, governor, and talking about Canada as the 51st state of the U.S. Now, just a slight sidebar on that. If they became the 51st state of the United States, the Democrats would win. in the House of Representatives forever.

Oh, yeah. And the Senate. And maybe universal health care. No, no, they'd have to cancel that. Oh, they'd have to cancel that. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, you couldn't do that. But, no, if the Act actually did get Canada in,

and some people are saying the provinces could correspond to states, it would completely destroy the Republican Party. Because Canadians are so much more woke than Americans. Just a quick sidebar on that. Well, except that Donald Trump has now killed Woe forever. Oh, that's true. Yeah, work's gone. So it won't happen.

So, Charles, I must say, this whole abstract discussion, about the reserve currency and its impact on aid funding. See, this is why... It's a great way to stop a scanning 8 million downloads. I think you've really nailed it. Yeah, thank you. But don't you agree on that... I mean, I know that that's not the point of the thing,

but there's just such a lack of subtlety in their understanding. The other really interesting thing that all the experts have been surprised by, which is it doesn't really affect our region that match, right? So the US accounts for about 6% of all foreign aid flooding into the Pacific at the moment. And that is because literally for the last 20 years or so, the US has forgotten about the Pacific. So Australia is by far the biggest giver of aid to Pacific nations and things like that. But I think the point is, I think it's interesting that if there's one region where it's not going to have a huge impact, it's surprisingly actually outreach.

Oh, I'm sure the people in the Pacific will be normally. Honestly, please. But I was thinking, one thing that we could do, Dom, in Australia, is we could just swoop in, do all the USA thing. It would be far less than paying for orchestra. We could just cancel our orchestras. Can I just make a small point on that, Charles? See, you're a bit late. Nice idea.

Australia is just swooping in and taking up what the rest of stuff. And then just own all the soft out and start printing the reserve currency. It's just that we've just, Charles, just on the weekend, just yesterday, we've just paid them $800 million. We've just paid America the first. tranche of Orcus. The shakedown has begun. And this has brought us immediately, Donald Trump's approval. Because money's flying from other countries into America.

Yes. And this is what needs to happen. Do we get anything for the 800 million? I think we get secondhand submarines down the track, don't we? Isn't it? Oh, right. So we don't get anything now. They don't even give us a certificate of purchase or something.

Yeah, they'll definitely give us a lay-by certificate. No, but isn't the plan, if I'm wrong? It's probably like a bar, a QR code in the... in your app. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. You are owed. And it gives you a little tracking delivery date. I think it's just an email.

It's just an email receipt, yeah. But no, isn't the plan that we get secondhand American submarines next decade? And then ultimately we get British made new submarines that haven't been designed yet. Yep. Like, that's the plan. So I found out the other day that, so McLaren's are made in England, right? The cars, yeah. The cars, yep.

And guess how many kilometres you can drive. them before they conk out. It's British. I'm going to go with 200. 40,000 kilometres. Every 40,000 kilometres, you've got to replace the engine. Oh, that's actually, for British standards. That's quite good.

Which makes me wonder, Charles. How is it that the world runs on Rolls-Royce plane engines, by the way? Yeah, yeah, I don't know. This has been a really random episode, isn't it? I can see why 8 million people have downloaded this podcast almost. Yeah. Okay, so... The point is... But the point is, I'm not...

I'm not sure. Like, when the British finally make their sub, you know, it's, what, 13,000, at least 13,000 kilometres. Oh, you've got to go probably via average. Oh, I see what you're saying. I think it's probably going to be like 20,000 kilometres. You wouldn't be able to get there and back in the same sub, would you? And you did a little pit stop. Change over the engine. Change over the engine. Just surface. The one thing is that it's not meant to do. He just brings to the top. Actually, if you went via China, you could get a much better engine in China. I think... Just go via the South China Sea. While I appreciate the insights into the national aid system gained from studying economic social science in the mid-1990s, I think it was a very valuable use of the podcast today.

I think the message to the world's poorest countries is very clear and they need to understand it, which is that what they need to do is what Australia has done. They need to pay the United States a massive amount of money. Yes. That's the problem. See, they've been expecting the US to give them all this aid money to buy food so that they don't die of starvation.

What they need to do instead is pay... I'm not going to call it, I'm not going to call it protection money. Yes. But it's what it is, because that was saying like a criminal sort of shakedown. I'm going to call it money for protection. Yes, money for protection. And it's almost sort of aid to the US. You could almost call it US aid.

Yeah. Or maybe aid US because it's going in the reverse direction. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay. We're part of the Iconics network. Catch you tomorrow. Thank you for your patience.

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