The Iced Coffee Hour - “They’re Stealing From Us!” Adam Carolla Exposes Who’s REALLY Destroying The Middle Class

Episode Date: May 31, 2026

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The people that pay taxes go to work every day, create, build, have employees. We want freedom. We want to be left alone. But the people who want what we have, they want control, but they do it under the umbrella of safety. It starts foundationally with public safety. Where we're heading as a nation is safe spaces and octagons. So their new rules are aimed at making roads and communities safer. Who's responsible? All politicians.

What the conditions do is kind of lick their finger and just sort of put it in the air. When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. They keep coming up with ways to extract more money from people that are 10 times smarter than they are. And the people that are 10 times smarter than they are figure out a way to not give it to them, or they just move. What do you think is going to happen? If you don't own property, you're not really completely invested in America. You're just kind of floating around. impossible that you ever own a home. I don't know how that's sustainable.

Adam Carolla, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour. My pleasure. So I want to get your take on this. Ray Dalio just warned that the U.S. is entering years of turbulence driven by large deficits, widening wealth gaps, political divisions, and AI disruption. You're known for being the practical guy. What does this mean for the average person? I think what I told Dr. Drew many years ago, and not many, but I don't know, 10 years ago. And Dr. Drew always sort of come to me and said, like, what's next? Where are we heading? What's going on?

Because I've always predicted things with him. I said, where we're heading is a nation is safe spaces and octagons. They said, what does that mean? And I said, there's a group of people that are interested in safety and they're interested in the government and they're interested in all the social programs and the safety nets and, you know, 10 months off paid vacations for childbirth and all this kind of nonsense. And they're going to live in the safe spaces. And then there's the other group that likes martial arts and doesn't want to drive an electric car and likes zoning a gun and doesn't want to be taxed and doesn't like big government.

And those are going to be the octagon people. And so we're going to just segregate. or it's going to naturally happen, which it's already sort of happening now. People who live in California go, I don't like any of this crap. I'm moving to Texas. And they just go to Texas. And then they get to Texas and they go, I like it here because I like drive my truck. And I wanted to build something.

You know, the permitting process was easy and so on and so forth. So they like the freedom. The people that are producers like freedom. Like the people that pay taxes go to work. every day, create, build, have employees. We want freedom. We want to be left alone. But the people who want what we have don't want freedom. They want the government to get involved and give us, give them what we're earning, essentially. So we're going to just self-segregate into safe spaces and octagons. And then at some point, the safe spaces are going to start falling apart and

they're going to have to go to the octagons and go, we need your protection or we need your money. It's basically like Hockel. Hockel's going to drive everyone out of New York, and then they're going to go to Miami, and then she's going to go, hey, come back and help support all our generous systems that you don't benefit from. Yeah. And those people are never coming back. Now, you mentioned California. Has that become unlivable for the average person?

it's unlivable for the average person in that. I was looking at a stat the other day just online. It just popped up and it said in 1970, the average home, it didn't say in California, just in the United States, the average home was $23,000. And the average income was about $10,000. So it was a little less than half of what the home would cost. California, you know, where I'm at or in Los Angeles area, average home's like one eight, and the average income is probably $63,000, you know.

So what used to be half is now, you know, 20th or 25th or something. Like I don't know how that's sustainable, you know, like I would, I have and always had to have people that work for me, young people, sometimes people starting families or new families and stuff like that. It's like, I know what I pay you. And I know what houses cost around here. It's impossible that you ever own a home. You know, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. My grandparents bought a house in the 50s for 10,000, and they bought another house in the San Fernando, like a nicer part of what is now. nicer part back then.

It was like, you know, who cared. But about one house for 10, one house for 12. My dad bought a house in the early 70s, crappy house. But it was like $13,000. And he bought a house for $13,000 when he made $22,000 a year. You know what I mean? Like he was making more, he was like, you know, school teacher kind of thing. He wasn't making big,

bucks, but now people make 65 and the house is 2-2. Like, if it's anywhere you'd want to live that was safe or what have you. You know, it's crazy. Reminded me my grandparents, my grandpa was in the army, and then he sold appliances, and he bought his house in 195,2 in Culver City for $35,000. It's probably worth $1.350 to $1.4. Oh, yeah. And that was a nicest house back then. It was a trapped house.

I mean, they're all, they, he picked from like one of five floor plans in this little area in Culver City. And he got one of those houses. And that's it. And at the time, I think it was 1100 square feet. And they enclosed the patio space as part of like the living area. And that was it. One house. Yeah.

So we're going to have a lot of unhappy campers and then a lot of people that are flourishing. And the politicians are just kind of stoking it on. Who are the people that are flourishing in California? I'm curious because a few years ago, they had a net migration loss. Their population grew, but more people left the state than the amount of people that were new residents of the state. I imagine that they're still going to continue growing because of birth rates, but this trend is going to continue. And who are the people that are winning by living in California? I mean, it's really sort of tech guys and sort of ultra-billionaire types.

I mean, they're my estimation. at mass or well you know there there I mean there's a kind of a level of wealth where things don't really matter that much like when people go gas is 785 a gallon well you know if you make 70 million a year what's the difference between four dollars and seven dollars you know a lot of you know so look when they talk about a lot of that stuff a lot of those guys just don't care like I think in the passed, they were willing to kind of suck it up. Now, with the wealth tax and other things like they're floating, these guys are starting to get nervous and starting to realize they can move. And also, you know, it wasn't, when I was growing up in California, the idea of moving somewhere

else was kind of absurd. Like, people move to California. Like, you know, if someone had said, how about you move to Nashville? and people are like, what, and ride a horse? What am I going to do in Nashville? I don't even know what's, I don't know where Nashville is, really. I've seen something on TV. Like, when you're from California, you didn't even know like Montana, Nashville, these kind of places. Even Arizona's like, why?

Go live in the desert? That's not going to work. So you get this kind of mentality of people just come to you, you know? And it was true. Most of the people I knew, once I got out of high school, and, you know, once I got out of high school, And, you know, once I started in doing comedy, every single person, my comedy troupe was from Pittsburgh and that guy was from Beaver Falls and that guy's from Wisconsin and that guy's from Chicago. Like, there was nobody in an improv troupe that was from L.A. It literally, I can, I, you know how I know it

because whenever football season would come around, we could, no one ever liked the same team. Like, we literally go, let's go watch the Rams and they'd be like Rams. I don't like the Rams. I'm a Patriots fan from Boston. You know, everybody had their team. And, you know, L.A. doesn't have a sports, doesn't have a Rams sports bar. They have two Steelers sports bars because that's because everyone just came here from somewhere else. So now I think the elite and I mean, the only people flourishing in California are probably like NGOs and politicians.

and stuff that just keep stealing money. And then the ultra-tech kind of rich who don't care, I guess. So who's responsible for destroying California? It's the regulatory system and it's bureaucrats and it's gino-fascism, which is just tons of women worried about safety. Like everything is just safety. And so safety is kind of the slow-can. killer of society in a city.

So people, the thing about safety, and this is the thing about all their ideas, they sort of sneak them in the door under the veneer of something positive, like safety. Like, okay, so every single one of these groups, whether it's Somalians in Minnesota, or whether it's hospice care in Los Angeles. First off, all their names are like first step forward. You know what I mean? Angels, angels. And, you know, everything is all this euphemistic bullshit, right?

About children first, youth first, first. And then they're just ripping off everyone's money, right? So California became a very safety-oriented place. We want the hardest on COVID. we're the safest place. And now what happens is, is we have a lot of women in politics, and their priority is safety. And the thing about safety is it's stifling to growth because every regulation that they add on is in the guise of safety. Like I just, I'll give an example.

I have owned houses and done property in the area for, I don't know, 30 years probably. And I've done dozens of houses and warehouses and back and forth and all that. And I have a new house that I was working on and it needs to be appraised. So I said, all right, send their appraiser over. And I've done this a million times. They just walk around and make notes and they give you an appraisal. Well, I got the guy coming out. It comes back because I can't appraise it.

And I said, why not? He said, well, it needs to have the smoke detectors up. And the deck's built, but it doesn't have a railing on it. So it needs to railing. I said, well, just to appraise it without the smoke detectors. Like, once you back off 80 bucks for the smoke detectors. Now, the house has to have the smoke detectors in place. and then we need the railing on the,

I go, just appraise the house like you would appraise the house if it didn't have a deck or it was incomplete. And they had to keep coming back. Did he want money? Because I posted a similar story and everyone, everybody was just like,

give the guy $100. That's what he's getting at. He just wants a hundred. I didn't even talk to him. He just went back to the office and said no appraise. The whole whole thing. point is I used to do this all time. It was five pages and we're done. Now it's a whole bunch of rules.

It's a whole bunch of rules. And you go, all right, well, safety. All right, but this guy's now come back and forth five times in my house. I still don't have my appraisal and the bank isn't getting to refinance. And it's all just regulation. And when I bought, I was saying the other day, I bought my first house, the paperwork was like seven pages. I bought this house a year ago. It was 157 pages. Well, every time there's a lawsuit now, you have to add in a different section. This had three different sections on was I discriminated against racially on the loan.

It wasn't just once. It was like 17 separate pages about discrimination. They just word it differently each time. It would just come up again. And I'd be like, no. And so anyway, what happened? So women are safety oriented. Safety-oriented people don't really think about downstream consequences of their safety.

When COVID comes around, shut the schools. Where am I? Stay inside. Don't go to work. We need to work. You don't need to work. Stay home. We are totally safety-driven in California to an insane amount.

If you go online, it'll go ships to 49 states except for California. And you go, what's the different? Like I've said, I try to buy glass railing. and it was like the laminated stuff is cheaper than the non-laminated or whatever it was, tempered or something. And I go, all right, well, give me the laminated stuff. And I go, yeah, we don't ship to California. And it's why you ship everywhere, every state, and it's fine.

They got a rule in California. They don't let us use the laminated stuff. And it's like, all right, so then you got to use the safety glass, which is more. And then the building costs that much more. They're overregulated. It's mostly chick think and they're fucking up the city and the state. And that's basically what's going on. Between the podcast and all of the different businesses we run, I was seeing a lot of very sensitive personal information of me being leaked online to websites I have never even heard of. It's honestly scary how much data these companies have on you without you even knowing it until it's too late. That is why we are so excited to partner with their sponsor Incogni. Because for those unaware, Incogni is the ultimate fix for protecting yourself and your privacy online.

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I mean, this is that real? It looked real. I mean, you can't really tell with AI these days. It is a goal of our administration to lower the speed limit across the city to 20 miles an hour. That, however, is something that can only be done with a local. law change to the city administrative code. And we do support the city council taking those efforts. How new or old is this?

I just saw this last night. Oh, okay. It was on Twitter and I was scrolling and I saw a video of Zora and Mbani saying, yeah, like we're going to try to decrease the speed. What's the point of that? Safety. But then I read through the comments and a lot of people were speculating that they have these like traffic light cameras and apparently they can detect if you're going

above the speed limit so they can collect more tax revenue from people speeding. They want control, but they do it under the umbrella of safety. So no one goes, listen, I'm a maniacal dictator and all I want is control. They go, all I'm looking out for you and safety. But the safety costs you and it gives them more control. I got to show you this. Speaking of safety, Los Angeles City Council passed a motion unanimously restricting LAPD, traffic stops from minor violations, including expired registration, non-functioning tail lights, cracked windshields, broken mirrors, illegal tint, loud exhaust, missing plates because they say it's discriminatory against people who can't afford those fixes.

And so the people who can't afford it get the most violations driving their car. And so this is real. This just passed. Well, they're really saying it affects black and brown people at a higher rate because they decriminalize jaywalking because it affects black and brown people. Whatever it affects black and brown people, they just go add. Granted, jwalking, I don't even know why that's a law. And here's another thing. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this and just cut me off if I'm not.

But apparently on the drive over here, Graham came to a red arrow to turn left. And you just said, allegedly. Yeah, allegedly. And you said, just run it. I run every single one, have been for 25 years, never gotten a ticket. Yes. I told Jack, that's going to change my life. Where's my camera?

Is it that one? Yeah. Run them all, baby. You'll never get a ticket. Now, let me say this. I do not necessarily endorse this. However, I started doing it coincidentally about three months ago. In order to get to our new studio, there is a left red arrow.

I run it every single time. It seems to me. And it's weird because I'm going down the main road and you have these cross streets and one has a yield on left. One has a red arrow on left. One has a yield. And it's like it's just random. If they want to let you yield or if they just randomly will have a red arrow. There's no, there's no method to match. I'm going to tell you the problem like this of what you just said. Okay. The problem is that we're common sense, guys. We could see a car coming and say that's not safe to do. I'm not, I'm not going to make this left. We could all agree. We're going to. We're going to. We're going to do it safely. But the problem is when you tell a few hundred thousand people now, it's okay to run the light. It's not running. It's treating it as a yield as opposed to. But the average person is probably not good enough to be able to do that safely. That's an insane point. I agree. Why do you disagree? Why do we have? Why do we have yield on 1,000? Why do we have yield? Why do we have yield? Okay. What per cent? What percentage of intersections have a red arrow? I don't know.

I'm just saying I don't trust the- Less than 20%? I just think the average driver on the road is probably not that good. Hold on. You're making two arguments. Your argument is insane because that person safely turned left in intersections that had no arrow all day before they got to the one with the red arrow. So they're able to discern when it's safe to turn left because that's what we all do. Because you're acting as if the intersection with the arrow

is the norm. It's not the norm. It's probably way less than 50%. Now, some areas are newer and they have more or whatever. You grew up, I grew up, I never saw a red arrow until I was 40. So, and neither did our parents. They turned left when it was safe to turn left. It would be a green light, right? And then you just inch out. Also, if you don't inch out when you're in the left-hand turn lane and you have a green circular light. I hate you. I'm so sorry. No, I agree. I totally agree. Please pull out because you're ruining it for the people behind you. We need to deconstruct this. Everyone is capable of turning left when it's safe because that's what you do all day, every day, and that's all we ever did. All these arrows are like 10 minutes old.

I would say there's a percentage of arrows out there that are there for a reason because maybe there's not good visibility. Okay. Now that's another point. Because it exists, it must be for a reason. I would say some of them. I would say for some of them. Some of them. I agree with that. Okay. So let's let's get granular here. Okay. You are correct.

Some of those arrows are there because there's a hill and you can't see the person coming over the hill and people come at a high rate and all that. And that, once again, is what you're going to have to figure out when you're driving. Look, when you're driving on the freeway, every time you change lanes, you're making a decision. You're looking to see if their cars around. you're putting your blinker on, you're checking your mirrors. Like every second you're behind the wheel, you're making a decision that could involve you making contact with another car or brick wall.

So that's part of driving. That's fine. And there are some arrows that are there for safety, legitimate safety reasons. Like there was a bunch of accidents at this intersection because the car, there's a blind hill. I get it. But they started spreading out to all. intersections. And the intersection that we're talking about is a straight line for as far, it starts, the earth starts to curve and eventually the horizon dips down. And you cannot see,

you can't see anymore. But this line is a straight multi-mile line. And you sit there and I'll put it, I'll put it to, I'll put it to you to do a little experiment. As I told, if you don't want to, if you're a little freaked out about going against the red arrow, take your sun visor and put it down. Take the SunVisor put it down. It'll block the arrow out and then you'll just see a green light in zero cars and then you just turn. Part of it is a psyche problem. Now, I now expanded, I expanded my repertoire to driving through red, red lights. I drive through red lights now. So I haven't quite got there yet. I've done it only a couple of times when it's like ridiculous. Like for example, if you're south in Vegas, you're by South Point and it's just like open road

like you said for miles, there will be a light when there should just be a stop or a yield. No, I'll tell you something. Civilized societies and you have this, I'm trying to think if it's in like Henderson or something, but you drive around and you will find civilized cities that just blink. So the arrow is either green or it just blinks yellow, which means turn when it's safe. but it never turns red. Like Pasadena, California does that. It should never turn red if you think about it.

What it should do is go green or it should just go blink yellow. Hey, if it's safe, if it's four in the morning on Sunday night, why are you sitting there to red? There's nobody out. Like it should just blink. And there are certain societies that are evolved enough to do that. But I want you guys to understand it's a human, it's a foible, sort of a human foible thing. So listen to me, I now drive through red lights, mainly in Malibu,

because everything's a kind of T, and I just go down PCH, and I just, there's nobody around. Check your rear view. There's no cops. Go ahead. What other things do you do like this that, like, maybe break the law a little bit, but are convenient? Well, I'll tell you what I do, and I'll try to expand this alone. Yes. Okay, so let me try to expand this. I tell people, go through that red arrow. And they go, not going to do it. And I go, why not? I don't want to get a ticket.

I go, there's no cops anywhere. They don't, they don't camp out there and have ticket riding parties because nobody does it. There's nobody. Look in your rear view. You didn't look in your rear view. I did. Oh, you did. Look in your rear view.

If there's no cop behind you, then turn. Who cares? All right, but hold on. So people go, no, I'm not going to do it. I go, okay, you drive to Vegas. Yeah. Do you just go 65 the entire time? No.

probably like 80, 85. All right, you're speeding. Yeah. You're going to get a ticket. Yeah, it's not. You'll go from L.A. to 80. You'll go to L.A. to Vegas. You'll be speeding the whole way. There's planes in the air. There's cops all over the place. There's radar guns. And you'll do that, which is breaking the law the entire time. And you don't really think about getting a ticket, although you have gotten tickets. Everyone's gotten pulled over. But you won't go through the arrow will you never get a ticket. That's human nature. And that's the problem. And that's the And you have to overcome that. And like, for me, I race race cars.

I have a six-way, when you get a race car, you have a six-way harness. It's not like a shoulder, whatever. You got straps, head stuff, fire suits. Like, you got everything in a race car. I absolutely do it. I would never, I mean, they wouldn't let you do it, but I would never get in a race car without, like, flame-proof everything. But your general idea is that just because a rule exists doesn't mean it's a good rule. and you should think on your own

and break a rule if it's a dumb one and don't just assume that something is fine because everyone's doing it because everyone speeds, no one does the left turn, but they're both probably like, it's of less threat to do that. That intersection existed for 30 years

before somebody put an arrow. Everyone who lived here 30 years ago just drove to that in. It wasn't as busy. Every, I know, it's not as busy. We sat there, there's no cars coming, right? You could see no cars. no cars. So I said turn. So how do you apply this philosophy to other areas of your life?

Well, for me, it's a kind of ultimate pragmatism. And for instance, I was like, I was doing shows in Phoenix and I was staying at a very nice resort with a very nice spa, expensive, like a bunch of well-heeled skinny white people staying there with me. And I went down to the, workout room. I went down to the locker room. And the lockers, I'm really bad with any tech, whatever. And I also, I realize I have some sort of disability because the thing will say, like, put your contents in the locker, then hit pound, then make a four-digit number, then hit pound, then hit pound, and do the four-digit. I've tried it twice my life. It's always like, I got to go get the janitor. I lock my shit in the locker. I can't get my locker

open, right? Okay. So I look around, I go, this is a five-star resort, a bunch of rich people here getting super expensive massages. And I just put all my crap in the locker and I just shut the door. And I never lock it. I put cell phones, wallets, shoes, everything. Everything, I just shut it. And I go, first off, there's not that many people here. Secondly, if somebody opens this locker and just see shorts and a cell phone and stuff, they're just going to shut the door and walk to the next locker. That's who these people are. Now, I'm not. I'm not doing this everywhere. But look at your environment, assess it, and then go, well, how about you take a little extra time to lock your locker or learn how to lock your locker?

And I go, it's not worth it. It's such a low percentage that anyone here would ever touch any of this stuff. And so I never locked my locker and I've never had a problem. I agree with that. It's kind of like people locking or not locking. front doors in like a more affluent neighborhood as opposed to a more poor neighborhood. The same way that I feel, because I'm a member at two gyms, I go to Planet Fitness and I go to Lifetime Fitness.

At Lifetime, I don't feel compelled to lock my stuff up in a locker. At Planet Fitness, I do. Yeah, yeah, you have to assess that. And you also have to know how people and what motivates people. Like, story I've told a few times, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. sort of goes way back in the human motivation department. I was about 25, maybe 26, and I was moving into my girlfriend's apartment in Hollywood. And Hollywood was pretty dicey at the time. It is, now it's dicey again, but it was dicey then. And we didn't have garage parking. We only had street parking.

and I knew I was going to have to park my truck on the street. And the only thing I had to my name was really that truck. It was a Nissan standard bed, whatever, mini pickup truck from the 80s. But it was still all I had. And I needed it for work as a carpenter. And I didn't have it, I didn't have enough money for insurance. So it was uninsured. And everyone used to break into everyone's car.

and steal their stereos. And there was a lot of stealing of mini trucks in LA back then. So I knew this truck wasn't going to make it two weeks in front of this place in Hollywood without getting the stereo stolen or the truck stolen. So I thought, well, what can I do about this? Because I don't have covered parking and I don't have insurance. I am going to have to park on the street. So the first thing I did is, I was like, who wants a car stereo? I was like, well, junkies want car stereos. Like, people don't steal car stereos to listen to car stereos. They steal them to fence them immediately and get drugs.

And like, you take like a $300 car stereo and just get $40. Yeah. This car had a digital Sony car stereo, which was pretty cool back in the day. And I knew it was gone immediately. So I was like, I'll tell you what I'm going to do with this car stereo. I'm going to paint it brown. So I put a piece of tape over the little digital readout and I just, I just painted brown. And then everyone goes, why did you paint your car stereo?

I go, you can't sell a brown car stereo. No one's going to steal it. So I desecrated my car stereo essentially. I wasn't selling it. I only listened to it and painting it didn't stop me from listening to it, but it would stop you from fencing it. So then the second thing I did was I was like, I'm just going to do a fuel cutoff switch. in this car and I just figured out the fuel pump was in the back. I just clipped a wire and ran it under the seed,

just put a toggle switch under it. And I just shut the fuel pump off when I got back into the house. And the thing that was also funny is the thing had carburetors, which had float bowls in them, which meant it would run without the fuel pump for like three blocks. So, because it had a little fuel sitting in the float bowl. And it would run off of that. So I started finding out where it would,

start cutting off and I'd be two stop signs away from my apartment. I'd reach down and flick the pump off and kind of ride it in on the float bowl. So it would be empty. So the car was stolen two times. And each time I was just like, which direction was I facing? I was facing this way. And I just started walking. And I found it like 100 feet down. And next time it got stolen again, I said, what direction wasn't facing. I found it. And the stereo was left in it each time. It was stolen. So they never stole the stereo and they tried to steal the car. So for literally for like under $10, I, I theft proved my truck. But you have to understand what people are, what motivates them? Like, what are they doing? And if you can get into that mindset, you can solve a lot of problems.

But you have to think about motivation. I genuinely love running a business. I think it's one of the most rewarding and exciting things that you can do in life. But unfortunately, of course, there comes a lot of unrelated tasks and just things you got to do when you run a business that take a bunch of time and effort. As we've grown the ice coffee hour, we have poured hours into things like billing and writing contracts. And believe it or not, those are not my favorite things to do. And that's why we are so excited to partner with Claude. Claude is the AI for Mines that don't stop at just good enough.

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You mentioned looking at people's motivation to be able to apply corrective behavioral things or whatever you want to call it. I'm curious, what do you think someone like Zoran Mamdani's motivation is when they make a video like this, knowing that things like a mansion tax in California have been economically not productive, and yet they still talk like this. Today, we're taxing. I'm thrilled to announce who secured a piettaire tax, the first in New York's history. This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million, whose owners do not live full-time in the city.

Like for this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million. This Pia de Terre tax is specifically designed for the richest of the rich. Those who store their wealth in New York City real estate but who don't actually live here. But even so, they're able to reap the huge financial rewards of owning property and, dare I say, the greatest city in the world. And most of the time, these units are sitting empty, since again, they don't actually live here. This is a fundamentally unfair system that hurts working the workers. Now, it's coming to an end. This tax will raise at least $500 million directly for the city.

It'll help fund things like free childcare, cleaner streets, and safer neighborhoods. As mayor, I believe everyone has a role to play in contributing to our city. Some, a little bit more than others. Happy Tax Day, New York. Happy Tax Day. Yeah. Well, it's never going to work because it can't work. I mean, there's a couple of things that I don't think politicians understand,

but I've been saying it for a long time. You are trying to get one over on people that are much shrewder than you and smarter than you because they work in the private sector. So there's like a big issue where you go, this guy's a politician, this girl's a politician, they're kind of career politicians, and then they're going to try to outwit billionaires who hung their own shingle, worked their way up, and crushed it in the private sector. Those guys are all 10 times smarter than Karen Bass or Mondami or any of these idiots who have no experienced. They couldn't run a taco stand without ruining it in 20 minutes, right? So they keep coming up

with ways to extract more money from people that are 10 times smarter than they are. And the people that are 10 times smarter than they are figure out a way to not give it to them or they just move to Florida, which is what he's going to do. But it never works because there's a kind of, you're playing chess with people that are chess grandmasters and you're kind of dim and they think they're going to beat them every time but they can't beat them because the other person's so much more evolved you know and they're dim wits like they're dopes like like viragosa in l.A was the mayor for eight years people run L.A. one of the biggest cities in the world one of the most important cities in the world we elect mayors and when they term out and they leave we never hear from them again.

They don't start super successful businesses. They can't. They're dopes. Who do you think has the highest IQ between Zoran Mamdami, Nithia Raman, and Karen Bass? It's kind of weird, you know, because Nithia Raman went to Harvard in MIT, which is insane. But she has a huge logic problem in that she was the one that was blaming Toyota for making their catalytic converter so easy to steal. I don't know if you guys ever seen it. I saw it.

It's the greatest. It's the greatest player. So I guess what it would be is first, if we have to make a distinction. So you go, my IQ might be fair to Midland, I would guess. I don't look at myself. I don't think of myself as a high IQ person. But if you're insanely pragmatic, you can have strokes of genius like painting your car stereo that those people would never have.

So there's people that have IQ points that are 20 points higher than mine, but they wouldn't figure out how to save their mini pickup truck in the middle of Hollywood, right? So she may have a high IQ, which may have gotten her to MIT and Harvard, but then she blames Toyota for catalytic converter theft. So it means she's kind of a baseline dope. So IQ is kind of bragging points, I guess. I mean, it's sort of like we're stranded on a desert. Island and there's a guy who goes, I got a perfect score on my SATs. And I'm like, I'd rather have

that guy dropped out of the ninth grade build us a shelter because he can actually do something. You're just talking about your SAT scores. So Nithia Raman is kind of dangerously dopey. And I don't, I don't know about her IQ, but she's wildly impractical. Mondami's sort of kind of, it's got kind of far east newsome like he's kind of a slick dude who can string words together and kind of put together stuff that sounds good that'll it'll never work none of it works but he's got a lot of sort of like newsome in him he's kind of a swarthy newsome like good looking knows how to talk has a lot of confidence and certitude ruins cities and states but but sounds good good and the ladies love him, you know.

Karen Bass is dumb. She's just kind of, you know, she doesn't really make sense when she talks. I mean, that's why Spencer Pratt was able to mop the floor with them. It's not that Spencer Pratt's a master debate or it's that these women are dumb and they have horrible, horrible policies. So what is your thoughts on a wealth tax? I don't like any taxes, although there's obviously a baseline of tax that people need to pay. because we all are protected by our military and use our streets with their super expensive red turn arrows that we need to pay for. So first off, by the time they get to the wealth tax, that dollar's been taxed five times before it even gets to the part where they're going to tax it again for the wealth tax.

It gets taxed on the way in. It gets taxed when you make it and then it goes, somewhere and then they tax it again it is absolutely none of their money and none of their business is the way is the way i i feel and they're going to ruin their cities and the guys who are wealthy enough to be the recipient or i should i guess the recipient is the right word i mean those who qualify for the wealth tax are going to be smart enough to figure out ways around it And that's the way they always do it. Like in LA, they started doing a, if your house is $5 million, you're going to have to pay

4% on the sale. Well, everyone starts selling their house for $400,000, $4,999,000 because that's what business. What else would a business person do? I'll sell it to you for $5 million. And $1 so I can pay 4% into a bunch of incompetent idiots. They're going to waste my money. So they intentionally create that. And now it's just getting the point, I think, where people are like when it comes to Manhattan, people are going to leave.

But also, you can live anywhere now. It didn't used to be that way, you know? Like there is, I would say to everybody, you know, they go, where are you going to move? I go, if you have P.F. Chang's, a top golf and a Spearmat Rhino, I can, I can move there. And then people go, you like golfing Chinese food and strip clubs? I'm like, eh, not really, but that just means they're on the map. You know what I mean? Like they got a civilization there.

I might swing by, get some Chinese food and a hooker, but I'm saying, I'm saying that means they're there. Listen, I play every city in this country. I go everywhere. And the first thing you say, because you think you're going to Oklahoma City, you're like, oh, man, we're going out to the sticks. I hope they have running water and stuff. You go to all these cities, you look around and you go, no, too shabby. Pretty nice, clean, nice.

I could live here. Like, you can live anywhere now. I don't think it was that way 25 years ago. So what's your strongest argument for why wealth inequality is becoming a problem? Wealth inequality is becoming a problem because of human nature and character. and a lack of religion, a lack of character, lack of golden rules, a lack of sort of biblical standards and 10 commandments and things of that nature. So what it is is kids are all born into a situation where we lack character and that needs to be instilled. So, you know,

you go, when you're a kid, you go, well, look at Johnny over there. He's got all. He's got all, all is M&Ms. I want some of Johnny's M&Ms. And then someone goes, Johnny mowed Mr. Johnson's lawn over there, and he got paid $2, and he bought those M&Ms.

Those are his M&Ms, because he mowed the lawn. You know, and you go, okay. And kids are like, I want those M&Ms, and they go, well, then go mow the lawn. I don't want to mow the lawn. I want the M&Ms.

And then you basically teach that. You say, sorry, he worked hard. Those are his, but you can m&Ms too. All right. And that's the way we rolled. And we instilled values, like parents, parented. A lot of it is religion.

We had religion. We had, you know, discipline and golden rules and all that kind of stuff. All the good stuff we used to preach, you know, all the good character kind of issues. And then at some point, we decided that it was being mean to the person that didn't want to do any work. And then we started electing people that went, hey, Johnny, I'm going to tell you to give him half your M&Ms, otherwise I'm going to lock you up. And he's like, well, why is that fair? And then this guy went, yeah, I'm going to vote for this guy because I'm going to vote for the guy who gives me M&Ms and I don't have to m. And then the politicians really got involved.

And the politicians, all politicians do is kind of lick their finger and just sort of put it in the air. You know what I mean? Like you go, Barack Obama, he's against gay marriage. Okay. He's for gay marriage. What changed from age 47 and a half to 53? You know what I mean? Like you think about Joe Biden.

Joe Biden was against and for a whole bunch of stuff in his 60s, in his 70s. And now he's 80 and he's changed his mind. You think you're going to flip-flop on anything from age 65 to 81? No. They're just doing whatever they want, you know, Kamala Harris. She was against fracking. Now she's for fracking. She doesn't even know what fracking is.

She doesn't care. Politicians figured out there's a lot more dumb people who don't want to mow lawns than there are motivated guys who will mow lawns. And it just, they stoke the fire of these people. And they basically, you know, they tell them like these guys have everything. You know, it's like as if he has all the M&Ms and he took your M&Ms. There's an infinite number of M&Ms. Go get some M&Ms.

Has it always been that way, though? Have we always had more people that are too lazy to put in the work and yet they want the reward? Or has it been getting closer to that side of the spectrum? Everybody wants it. Everybody wants it. But we created guardrails and scaffolding and our society and we wouldn't let it happen. When I was a student in junior high in high school, I lived. literally had like fantasies about the records room burning down because my grades were so subpar

that I was kind of like hoping there'd be a fire in the school or something and that any records would be erased of my scholastic, you know, disability. And I remember like having those fantasies, you know. And I wrote in a book, written a few books. And I don't know if this was in 50 years, will all be chicks or president me or something like that. But this is more than a decade ago. And I wrote in it, I said, look, in the old days in this country, a father and son might be walking in their neighborhood and a big, long Mercedes would drive by. And in the past, the father would say, there goes Mr. Johnson. And that's a beautiful car. And hey, son, son, you work hard and you study you eat your weaties and you you get out there and make hey well the sun shines

and one day you're going to have that car and now the guy in the big Mercedes pulls by the father and the son and the father says the son let's go find a rock so we can throw it at that car and that's basically where we're at somehow the message of you work hard and you can get that car too has been lost to let's go throw a rock at that car. But when you say somehow, how would you say that's happened? It's a lack of religion. Religion kind of keeps people, you know, in line. And they have values.

You know what I mean? It's a lack of values. It's a lack of discipline. And it's a lot of politicians enabling lazy people. And meaning it's this. Okay, everybody wants to go. By the way, it all goes back. to whatever a nine-year-old thinks, you know.

So, you know, there's a running race, and nine-year-old Tim came in last, and he asked to feel shame, and somebody should say to him, you've got to practice harder, you've got to stop eating so much junk food, you've got to work harder. At the same point, somebody steps in and goes, you know, those other guys only beat you because they're mean, and doesn't your ankle hurt? And he goes, yeah, my ankle does kind of hurt.

They go, just sit down. I'll get you a trophy, too. And they go, thank you. And then we vote for that guy. And politicians have figured that out. That's interesting. So you said that we've put these guardrails in to curb how most humans by nature want the reward without putting in the work. And so we created capitalism or whatever boundaries we wanted in order to curb all of those parts about humans that make them nonproductive.

So you would argue then that culture is downstream from politics. It actually starts with the policy. and then that is what then determines the way that the people behave. Well, yeah, I always use this example, which is dogs at the airport. So I traveled extensively all through the late 90s. And I've been traveling my pretty much the last 30 years, pretty much nonstop. And for the first 10 years, I traveled, 15 years I traveled. I never saw a dog at the airport.

There were like two dogs you saw at the airport. There was the police dog. And then there was the seeing eye dog, like a dog with a handle on it. And then at some point, somebody said, there's such a thing as an emotional support dog. And if you get a note from your doctor, you can then travel with your dog. And then I started seeing little Pomeranians on 18-foot bedazzled leashes out in front of the Nutty Broad who was walking behind it. Now, what happened? She wants to travel with her dog.

But we didn't let people travel with her. dog because it had to be a seeing eye dog and not that many Americans are blind who travel. But then we opened it up and we said it's on the honor system. Like, look, if you really need a dog to fly, by the way, if you need a dog to fly emotionally, you're not and you need therapy. You don't need your dog. But they said, and all of a sudden a whole bunch of people, not criminals, none of these people are criminals. People pay their taxes. They love their country. They love their kids, but they want to

fly free with their dog. And now the airport's filled with dogs. And that's who we are. So if you want to open it up, people will come in. Do you think people need therapy? Like, do guys need therapy? Or do you think they need to read some Dostoevsky, like, you know, old classic tales of like struggle and like grinding through things, like watching David Goggins? What is it the young people need in order to become a self-actualized, hardworking, disciplined guy? No, I don't think they need therapy, and they sure don't need pharmaceuticals and SSRIs and things like that. Like, they do not need any of that.

They need ordinary misery. They need tough things to do that don't feel that good, where they would much rather be playing a video game and ordering Grubhub, but sorry, you got to get out and shop. some wood and it's hot outside. Like you've got to go. It's like a little ordinary misery. And a lot of it is just like you need to take hikes. You need to sweat. Like you need to move. Like a lot of it is a physical thing. You know, it is not about sitting in air conditioning and talking it out. It's about physically getting on your feet and like trucking through the desert, like in breaking a sweat. You know, you need that. Like that's going to

solve a lot of what's going on with everybody in their heads. And then there's going to be a lot of like self-discipline. Like we have to start bringing back like, hey, man, I know you want that donut, but you eat that apple and you get that donut after the hike or whatever it is we need to do. It's all real basic stuff. You know, like I always tell people, you know, diet and exercise. And I'm not talking about losing weight.

I'm just talking about life. You know what I mean? Like everyone's on OZempic, everyone's looking for some life hack, everyone's doing some bullshit. First of what do you need OZemic for? Don't eat junk exercise. You don't need it. What is it for?

It's to get me to not want to do this thing. How about you control your own self? How about you have some agency over your own behavior? How about that? What do you think is the biggest risk in today's economy. The biggest risk in today's economy. I don't know.

I don't really thought about that. What about the Henta virus? No. It's a haunta. Is it haunted? He literally asked me early. I keep calling it the hentai virus. I know.

Drew does that too. I listen. I now will not believe anything that comes out of the, you know, medical establishment or the, or the, you know, what's funny. Yeah, the World Health Organization. Yeah. They all lied through COVID. Yeah, this is interesting.

In January 14th, 2020, the World Health Organization tweeted, investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus. Right. All right. So here's the moral of the story. And they're saying the same thing now about the Hantavirus. Right. So here's the moral story, whether this exists or not.

If you're going to be the WHO and you're going to lie all through COVID, or you're going to be Rochelle Wilinski. or you're going to be Fauci or you're going to be Sanjay Gupta on CNN. And you're going to lie all through COVID, then I'm not going to listen to you when the next thing comes around the bed. And that's not on me. That's on you. You shouldn't have lied all through COVID. How are you investing your money in 2026? I don't have any experience in that world.

And I don't have any history in that world. I have things that I sort of like and know about, and I have like property and cars. And I make, I don't even know if they're called investments, but I have cars that are worth a substantial amount of money, but I also race them and use them. So I like sort of being tangible with them.

Like I guess if I was to think about it, you go, well, if you bought this stock or that stock 10 years ago you'd be up this much. And then I go, well, I didn't buy that stock and that stock, but I bought a warehouse and I bought a couple of old race cars. And those are up the same amount, except for I've been racing and wrenching on them in the warehouse. So I'm really not good at that. I just sort of know what I like. And I also know that I have enough experience to go, that warehouse or that house or that car will be worth quite a bit more in the future. And people kind of go, that's like an old race car.

Like how does that work? And I'll give you a quick example. Nick Mason, who's the drummer for Pink Floyd, still is. Original drummer for Pink Floyd is Nick Mason. Nick Mason has a pretty substantial car collection. Nick Mason bought a 63, could be 62, Ferrari GTO in 1976 for $60,000, which was a lot for a car in 1976. That car is $85 million today, and he still owns it. So there is a way to make money off of things like cars or Pokemon cars.

Is that luck or skill? You know, when I look at his collection, I go, this guy's picking the right cars. You know, there's a version of this where people just buy a brand new Rolls Royce and put rims on it. And they paid $3.50 for it. And it's going to be worth a buck 75 and nine years. And you're going to lose on it. But there are cars. I could tell you what cars to buy that would have have upside.

Oh, we got to know about this. I have my own cars that I think are going to be worth a lot. I think the SLS AMG are all my favorites. I think the Z8s are underappreciated. And I think stock. BMW? Yeah. Yeah.

And I think the stock Honda S-2000s. The Japanese stuff's going up a lot. The Z-8s were like, you know, 150 new, but they put a premium on them. The dealer premium, they were selling them for like $2.25 or something like that. They've always kind of trickled up, but not really. and maybe they're about 240 or 250 now. And they're cool car, V8, you know, BMW. But they're not, you know, they're not that.

They're just kind of, if you bought one for 250 today, it'd be worth three in six years, you know. And that's like okay. But I bought a Lamborghini mirror for 300K and it's worth 25 now. I sold it to buy another race car. But, I mean, there are cars you can buy that I'll go. What do you think of the Ford GT, the original one, the 2005? Those cars are good.

They're about a buck 65 new. And they went up. They kind of trickled up. And then they shot up. And they got to like 550, maybe 600, maybe 700. It was a Gulf Heritage. And then they just kind of stopped and kind of settled in to like the 5-475 to 5-5. 50 range and they just kind of stayed there. They're kind of like the BMW. If you bought one for

500 and hung on to it, you're not going to lose. But it's not a hot stock. So what would you buy? What do you think right now is a good car if someone says, money's no object? I just want to make money on a car. Well, it's kind of like, do you have $4 million to spend on a car or do you have $125K? Um, Ferrari 550s from the late 90s, early 2000s, stick shift. Uh, those are nicely kind of trickling up. Also sort of from the same era for our 355s are been a pretty steady, steady climber. Uh, I'll give you a hot ticket.

It is never popped and it's a ton of car, but they just won't move past like 550, but I swear they're gonna, which is a jag 220. which is their super car from the later 90s. Those, I think, are going to start to move. So do you own no stock? I don't know if I own stock. Who would know? When I got into this business, I immediately got a money manager because I was like,

I don't know anything about this world and I don't want to be responsible for it. And I'm going to end up being arrested by the IRS if I put myself like in charge of this. And I don't want to deal with any of it. And so I got a money manager, pays all the bills, pays all the taxes, does all the stuff. And all I do is just work. That's how, when did you get the money manager? Literally, like day one in showbiz. So he has to have invested stock.

Yeah, yeah. Do you have any idea where you're at financially? Like, no, I only know. Well, yeah. I mean, I know what my warehouses are worth. but you don't know what your net worth is. Um, I would say... This episode is in partnership with Airbnb.

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ethos.com slash iced coffee. Again, that is ETHOS.com slash iced coffee. The link is also down below in the description. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. But you don't know what your net worth is? I would say my net worth is tied up in my properties and in my cars. I always, whenever I made money, I just got another warehouse or got another car and I never put it into the stock market. He, you know, got retirement accounts and stuff like that. But no, I can, if I want to figure out my net worth, we would have to go to my warehouse and go, what is this warehouse worth? And then go to another warehouse and go, what is that worth?

And then go to a house and go, what is this worth? and then go walk every car and go, what's that car works? But that's assuming they have smoke detectors. Yeah, and I can get them afraid. Are these income producing assets? I have a warehouse that I'm currently renting out. So I do get income from that warehouse. The other stuff just kind of goes up.

Like, I don't know what, you know, you go, what's income producing? Well, I bought a Murrah Lamborghini for $325 and I sold it for a million bucks. I bought a Lamborghini 400, 2 plus 2, 60s, 67 probably. I bought on eBay for like $117,000. I called the guy. I went, what's it going to take to get the auction shut? He's like, give me $117,000. I said, I'll do it.

I bought that car. I sold that car like six years later for like $7.85 or something, something like that. Now, that's a happy story. Sometimes. And whenever you get these wind, falls from selling these assets, you immediately parlay that into a new car, warehouse, or real estate or whatever. Yeah, I mean, generally, generally the money goes into something else like that. So what's the best investment you've ever made? You know, I bought my first house for like

$3.50. Put a lot, fixer upper, but a lot of sweat equity. Had to do a lot of work on it, but I think it's sold for like 2-2 or something something like that that's probably good um i mean percentage wise something like the lambourgine 400 one up like a hundred you know i mean i walked away i didn't walk away with millions of dollars but from a percentage wise and a time-wise that was probably pretty good um some of the warehouse i bought a warehouse for like one nine and I put a lot of sweat equity in it, but just like this, you know, paint and scrubbing stuff. And, you know, I used to build so it was not a ton of dough. And I got sold for like seven million bucks or something like that.

So it's not okay with just sticking with kind of the warehousy and the, you know, properties and cars. The cars, it's hard to tell the value of a lot of them because there's no comps. You know, we can figure out a comp on a Ford GT and oh, fine. I mean, I can, I don't even own one and I don't even, I shouldn't say I don't like it, but it's not my car. I mean, I don't, I know, I don't dabble with them. I've never bought one. I've never traded one. I've never done anything, but I just told you what those cars are worth.

Yes, and you're pretty accurate. Because that's what those cars are worth, but you can't tell what an old Paul Newman race car is worth because they don't, they don't trade. But when you buy those cars, is it ever with the intention? of saying, I'm going to make money with this? Or is it, I like this car. I don't care what it's worth. This is cool. I buy them to, because I like them and I buy them to race them and I buy them for, you know,

pretty pure, you know, the motivation is good. You know, like I like it. I want to be a custodian of this car. I want to get in this car. I want to drive this car. I want to race it. You know, that's all good. But there have been cars like I own Paul.

Newman won four national championships. I own three of those cars. And there's a guy who always owned the fourth car who was kind of nuts and a little bit of a douche. And he used to come at me all the time and go, I'll sell you this car for $3 million. And I'd just go, that's not a $3 million car. It's not worth that much. You know, and he'd go, do it now or I'm sending it to Dubai or whatever. And I'd go, I can't tell you exactly what it's worth, but it's not worth that much money. So I'm not going to buy it. And then I'd tell them, put it up, take it to Pebble Beach, put it up on auction, I'll bid on it. And we'll find out what it's worth. And he's like, he never did it because he's an idiot. But the point is, is, I, no, I'm not going to just sort of blindly go,

I'll give you way too much money for a car. But would you say most of your net worth then is in cars? Yeah, I would say that's a safe statement. Wow. That's incredible. Most of the people we bring on this podcast, they're all like buying stocks and, I don't know, or running business. this like very fast flow and it's very rare that like they're just they've completely negated that area of life because we're more actually of a finance podcast where we discuss stuff like that. So that's that's really interesting to note that like you've actually done quite well for yourself, but you've invested in a completely alternative way to most people we have on the show. Yeah, because I don't really look at it as investment.

I just go, I worked, I swung a hammer. I was on a job site. I wanted to make money so I could get myself. some race cars and go racing and I got in a show business and I made some money and I bought race cars and I went racing. How important do you think it is for the average person out there to invest in property? I think it's real important. I think it's real important and for generational wealth as well. But also if you don't own property, you're not really completely invested in America. You're just kind of floating around, you know, and that's where the Mondami's of the world

takes seats because they're talking to those people. They're not talking to owners. They're talking to renters. And they're talking about controlling the rent and lowering the rent. And, you know, you have to have some skin in the game. And when you own property, you have skin in the game. Yeah, there is something about owning a house where all of a sudden you care about what your neighbor is doing too. Right. Like if they don't upkeep the landscape or they have some trash in the front yard, it looks bad on you. Yeah. And also, like, what percentage of violent crime is committed by property owners? That's a good question.

Close to zero. Yeah, but is that the property itself or is that the fact that the people who are making money don't need to resort to crime and petty theft? A lot of people commit crime, like they don't have anything to lose. Like you've been arrested 17 times in four years. Like, yeah, who cares? You know what I mean? But when you own something or you're invested in something, you're like, I can't. I'm going to get sued.

How much of that, those circumstantial versus a personal choice? Like, if you're growing up in an area and all you've seen your entire life is people just stealing. And that's your only reality of life. It's like, oh, that's normal. Like, people run in the red left arrows, normal at a certain point. Yeah, there's a lot of environmental stuff. There needs to be interventions, obviously. I would argue that all of the...

of those people do understand the difference between right and wrong, though. They have stuff they don't want stolen. You know what I mean? Like, they get it. You know, we go like, oh, that guy's claiming insanity. Well, he did try to get to Mexico after he murdered the guy. I'd say he knew what he was doing because he's trying to get, we caught him trying to get into Mexico. Like, yeah, but he's insane. Well, not so insane that he didn't know what he did because he's trying to get to Mexico. You know, These people all have stuff they keep, all have stuff they want, all while stealing other people's stuff. So they get it. I mean, most of it is just not having a dad in the house and no politician wants to talk about that.

But that's really the big problem. There needs to be like a disciplinarian in the house. I grew up amongst, you know, these kind of people, not not street thugs, but like kind of poor downtrodden people. and most all the people I grew up with, including their parents, they all did it to themselves. Like I was saying to somebody when I was driving here today to work yet another weekend, I said, no one I ever knew worked a weekend. My dad never worked a weekend. My mom never worked a weekend.

None of my friends, parents, whoever worked on a Saturday back then. And it's like the answer is nobody. Well, they weren't that motivated then. You know, I mean, they weren't getting their side hustle on. They weren't trying to better their position. And they knew they knew that studying harder and getting good grades and going to college. If they knew that was a way out, they just didn't want to do it. No one I grew up with, they just, they wanted to go to the reservoir and drink beer and cut class.

And they knew what it took. They just weren't, they weren't going to do it. And they weren't going to put in the time and they weren't going to put in the work. It's not like they didn't have the information. And it's the same way, you know, when you say these people, you know, these poor people, they're fat, they don't have the information. They have the information. They know the difference between an apple and a McDonald's hamburger. They do.

But they don't have the discipline to eat the apple and not have the McDonald's burger because they want it. And delayed gratification is a big problem. They can't push off the gratification. They need it right now. And we made it real easy for them to get it right now, and it is weakened them. And they're not going to flourish. And somebody has to start telling these people the truth. And instead of making excuses about lack of information or, you know, food deserts or school to prison pipelines or whatever bullshit they're cooking up this week.

Did you know more than 50% of the people that bought tickets to Coachella did it on credit? Did it on credit? Not like credit card. Yeah, what was Quarna, the buy now pay later, or a firm? It's interesting because we back in the day had layaway. And you guys are too young to remember layaway. But layaway was an interesting, you guys don't know what to layaway. I've heard the term.

Yeah, I've heard the term, yeah. You've heard the term, right? Layaway would be you would go to like Sears and you would see a bicycle or a wagon or something you liked. And what we're going to do is we're going to make payments every week or every two or any period, whatever. You're going to mow lawns and you're going to babysit. And when you get $8, we'll give it to Sears and it will be that much closer to paying for that wagon.

And then when we pay for that wagon, you're going to get a new wagon. But you don't get the wagon until we pay the wagon. And you were then motivated to go out and mow lawns every weekend because you wanted your wagon. And that instilled a great work ethic in people. Now we get the wagon day one. We're done with the wagon, but we still have payments to make on it. That is really interesting.

I wonder if a company like that could succeed in today's environment if they kind of put it behind the veneer of being like psychologically more healthy than like, you know what I mean? There's no way. There's no way that would work. When you have a firm, you have two options. Well, the whole Ramsey thing is like upon being psychologically healthy, it's like you pay on debit, you know. Who would want that? It's kind of like bucketing your money and then paying with cash.

I like anyone would take it. I think they would go under. No, what you would have to do is you could get the wagon today and then pay it off for credit for 50 bucks, but for 40 bucks, I'll do it on layaway. Yeah, that's interesting. You'd have to give them some incentive to go,

all right, I'm going to save 10 bucks and do it on layaway. Yeah. What other policies like that have you seen that have changed over the last few decades? I mean, there was a general civility. There was a general trust in people to kind of be responsible and kind of do the right things. You know, like it was like when I was a kid, if you went to the beach, there wasn't a sign with 15 things on it that you couldn't do on the beach. You just kind of, you were trusted to go there if you wanted to drink a beer.

You could drink a beer, but clean up the bottle with you if you want to start a little. campfire and roast some marshmallows, you could, but put it out when you leave. Like, you were just kind of trusted to do, now it's a long list of no Frisbee and no football and no dogs and no cigarettes and no whatever. So we're like trying to police everybody now. But back in the day, people just kind of police themselves. What are we supposed to do with the people that are overweight, that want to, by now, pay later, door-dash their meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And and they just don't care about, or maybe they don't have the motivation

to be productive in society, the people that are quietly destroying it and bringing us back, what do we do with those people? Well, you have to incentivize them to do the right thing. You can't just say, here's some, you're on snap, you get free food, you don't have to work,

everything's got to be carrot and stick and motivation and incentivizing. And people do this, the right thing pretty fast when they get motivated. But if we don't motivate them and we basically just say, look, is your kid on the spectrum? And they go, I don't know. I don't know. I think he's fine. What if I said, I'll give you $1,600 a month for every kid you have who's on the spectrum? And I go, okay, I got three kids on the spectrum. We can't incentivize people to do that. That's what we're running into now. You're going to have to take care of your own shit.

And by the way, there's no way you're going to, first off, you're poor and you're fat. So you're figuring out a way to get a lot of calories while simultaneously being poor. You know what I tell people, I tell everyone, you want to run a little experiment. It's always called my $10,000 rule, right? I say to people, like I had a guy who was sharing my warehouse many years ago, like an old flunky friend. And he had this old piece of crap, Ford Bronco, gone up in value. But it was a husk of a car. It was just a roller, and it was sitting in my warehouse.

And I had to, like, climb around it to get everywhere. And I'd been there for five years or something. And I just said, Don, what's it going to take to get this wear, this Bronco out of this warehouse and, like, into the parking lot? You know, I got to move some stuff and do some stuff. I said, all right, I'll tell you what. You tell me, when is this going to be out of here? I'm not going to set the date.

You set the date. He goes, two weeks. You give me two weeks. I'll have this thing out of here. I said, I'm not going to bug you. I'm not going to bother you. I'm not going to keep coming up going, hey, what's going on with the Bronco? You got two weeks?

You got two weeks. You got it? Got it. Okay, here we go. Two weeks came and went. Bronco hadn't been touched. I said, don't. I thought we had a deal.

What went on? You know, it's pretty busy and I had a bunch of stuff come up, so I didn't move it. I go, what if I said to you when we're having our initial conversation, if that warehouse, if that Bronco isn't out of the warehouse, if it's out of the warehouse, if it's out, I'll give you $10,000. He goes, I would have moved it. I said, okay, well, we now figured out it could have been moved if you'd got $10,000, which by the way, it just means you could have moved it. It'll work both ways. You owe me $10,000 if this Bronco is still here in two weeks. It's moved. You get $10,000 if it's moved. It's moved. So don't tell me people can't do stuff. They can do whatever they want, but he wasn't incentivized to move the Bronco one way or the other. In the past, dignity would have incentivized him. He gave me his word. He would move it.

But that's out the window now, so he doesn't care. What do you mean dignity is out the window now? Every third billboard is for some lawyer. Want to know if you're discriminated against it, the workplace or whatever. Everyone's just cashing in. Dignity prevented that in the past. You had a word. You had a bond.

You had a handshake. You were an adult. You were a male. You didn't do. You didn't engage. and that kind of stuff. The warehouse that my studio's in, when I bought it,

there was a tenant in there, and he had nine months left on the lease or something, and I was anxious to get in there and start making it into a wood shop or car shop, you know? And so I said to the guy who was the tenant, I go, you got nine months left on your lease. He goes, yeah. I go, I'm ready to move in whenever you're,

ready to move out. So if you want to cut out early, you can cut out early. And he said, I'm actually looking for a place and I would like to get out of the lease early. I said, well, whenever you're ready, I'm ready to cut you loose. Came to me, I don't know, three weeks later, I said, I found a place. I said, that's good. You're free to leave. He said, I'm going to need you to sign some paperwork to get me out of the lease. I said, we don't need paperwork. I said, you could leave. You can leave. I'm not going to circle. back and see you for past rent or anything, go ahead and leave. I'm not leaving without the paperwork, because, you know, I said, look, I looked in the eye, shook your hand. I said, you can leave. You can leave.

I'm not leaving until we signed the agreement. I said, well, I'm not signing an agreement. So you can either leave or you can stay for another nine months and pay me rent, but I'm not signing anything. And he left, and that was that. And that's how we kind of used to roll. But we don't anymore because dignity prevents all that stuff. I told you this. That's my word. But the issue is that we don't have that level of dignity anymore. And yet you almost have to protect yourself.

Like there are so many deals in real estate, so many that I would love to say, hey, you know, if we put this in writing, it's going to maybe create some image. Why don't we just shake on it and this is what it is? But you have to trust the other person with your life. they could easily turn around and just get you right back. That's where we're at now. We didn't used to be there, but now we're there. This was totally unnecessary in the past. And now we're there.

You know, my word is my bond. You know what I mean? I look a man in the eye and it shake his hand and that's that. But see, the issue too is that they could mean it in the moment. And then they turn around to talk to their buddy who says, hey, wait a second. You know, he actually did this. Yeah, but that's where the dignity part comes in. Like, you know, you go, well, I don't feel that way.

anymore, but I did tell him that. I got to stand by my work, you know. Well, in terms of policies like this, what's something that you feel like he could improve on? And what do you think his chances are of winning in Los Angeles? You know, it's insane about, you know, Los Angeles because they always vote Democrat, no matter how bad it gets and no matter how far we keep going into the abyss, they always vote Democrat. So there's a part of your head that goes, they just always do. Like, no matter how much you think this is going to help or be better. This Rick Caruso is better than Karen Bass. They still vote for Karen Bass.

They just, they don't care. They're kind of dumb. And it's a kind of gad sad suicidal empathy kind of thing they got going on over there. Spencer's, yeah, all we need is someone is half pragmatic and semi-normal, not a socialist. And, you know, the other two are kind of socialist who just have some sort of pie in the sky thoughts, insane thoughts about it. everything. So all, I wouldn't, all we'd need is somebody normal to,

to just be mayor. It wouldn't take, you could take a farmer from the 30s and just make him the mayor of Los Angeles and it would work out fine. It would be completely fine. Literally, guy's never even been inside, uh,

downtown Los Angeles. Pull up a guy from Iowa off a farm and from 1933 and he'd come in and run Los Angeles a lot better because he'd just go, whatever's pragmatic. You know, he'd go, How much you're paying for the homeless people? You know, 110,000 a year.

What's your average income in it? 63. You're waiting. You're paying more for a homeless guy than the average income of people are working. And he, that's all it would take. Yeah, just a pragmatist. What do you think his chances are of winning? He seems to have all the momentum.

And he's running against two dangerous dopes. But there is a democratic machine in Los Angeles and in California. And that machine always win. And it's kind of weird like you go, is it all mail-in or is it voter fraud or like what's going on that they just always win even though everyone seems to think the other person's going to be better for the state or the city? So there's a part of me that goes, I love the guy. He's got all the momentum. Everyone seems to be pumped up about him. On the other hand, the machine always wins.

You know, and so I have to kind of balance those two thoughts. I think it's going to be different. Now, what's interesting is I'm looking at the polls. And when I see Nithia Raman at the top leading, I just tend to think that is manipulation. That is someone on her side that's placed in a big bet, moving the odds. She gets way more than, let's say, if that bet were a $50,000 bet to move the needle. She gets way more than that with free exposure.

Everyone says she's leading. Everyone's, oh, let me look into her. Well, but what you're talking about is, part of the machine that I'm talking about. It's not all just fake votes. It's like part of the entire gestalt of the democratic machine in California. I think he has a really good shot of winning and I think he's going to upset a lot of people who think he doesn't have a chance. I believe you, just as a person, it's like, you know, It's 2007 and your team's playing the Patriots, and it's the fourth quarter, and you're up by 11 points, and you go, I think we got this one.

No, you don't. You know, you don't. You think you do, but you don't do because what happens every time, you know what I mean? And there's a little bit of that with the machine in California. So I hope and I pray, you're right. And I thought that way about Caruso, and I thought that way about Larry Elder. Gavin Newsom and the machine kicked in and they just got blown out. Who is the machine?

I think at this point, it's teachers unions, labor unions, all the unions, all the NGOs, and all. I mean, you think about the teachers unions get the governor elected, then COVID comes around, then the governor shuts the schools down. And then the teachers don't want to go back and do their job. So they tell the governor no opening schools. Meanwhile, the parents want the schools open. And the governor may want the school open, but the union that controls them is calling the shots. And that's kind of the machine, if you think about it.

Should be illegal. That's interesting. Now, I have noticed because I was back in Venice a few months ago, I was surprised to see that some areas were beginning. to clean up. Mm-hmm. I was surprised. It's the nicest I've seen it in six years. When it gets to critical mass, at some point, there's enough outcry and outrage where

like somebody does something, sometimes temporarily. They clean up a park. They just go, all right, we're going to clean up MacArthur Park. And then they do it one day, by the way. It's like, the funny part is when they do it, you go, well, why didn't you just do that five years ago? Like, it only took you a day to come in there and clean the whole park out and you just did it. And it worked.

So why not just do that? They do little dribs and drabs of sort of... It's to show they're doing something. Like, look. What happens also whenever the Olympics goes to a specific town. Yes. Then they clean up the entire town beforehand. And then every resident is wondering, hey, why was this not done beforehand?

But this is like a common theme. Like, it's happened several times. So we need the Olympics every year basically. Yeah. Or the president of China needs to swing by San Francisco and they'll clean it up. You know, they will clean it up of a dignity. is coming in. Yeah.

Or World Cup or whatever. If you were to make some predictions of the future, because you have a tendency to be right with your predictions, what do you think is going to happen? Just crazy, ludicrous, maybe moonshot ideas that you think have a higher likelihood than most would think of coming true. I think we're going to create a sort of superclass of sort of dudes

who are doing like lots of hacks and cold plunges and lots of supplements and anti-aging stuff and all the routines that go along with that. And like people like really living their life, like space tourism and stuff like that. And then there's just to be another class, which is just like Calcutta poor streets, you know, teeth falling out. Like this chasm between the haves and the have-nots is going to like get grow, you know, by. the day and then I think we'll have some sort of return to nature where like people will start to understand that kind of grandpa was right that all the sub all all the ozempic and video games and grubhub and streamers it was all the sort of the digital world was just sort of a dream that

was being sold that turned out to be a nightmare and that it's the analog world that that we need to get back to, you know, and there's like more people are going to grow their own vegetables. You know, I was like people used to grow vegetables and they had victory gardens. And then at some point, supermarkets populated every corner and they went, you'd be a fool to grow your own tomatoes and everyone went and bought everything. And then they got kind of miserable because they were like indoors and they're buying tomatoes that had pesticides on or something. And then there was some sort of return to you, the mom and the four-year-old girl and the garden. you know, together in the soil, getting their hands dirty.

You know, the dad's building a tree house with the son, you know, versus ordering it from IKEA and having the tech, you know, the guy from nerd wallet or wherever the task rabbit come put it up for you. You know, I think there's going to be the dad going, no, I'm going to do it with my son. I think there's going to be a return hopefully to values in kind of old school, you know, Like, son, let me show you how to handle these tools and let's build a treehouse together. And then there's going to be ones who go off further. There's more tattoos, fatter and dumber.

But you're generally optimistic. I am in that if you would like to just work hard, it's a pretty good time to be alive. Like, you can get a lot done. But there's always going to be a group that. just does not have enough agency or self-discipline for that. What about AI? People speculate that robots, humanoid AI robots, are going to get so cheap. Everyone will have access to one.

Then you'll have people that are the, you know, very poor, can have access to the nicest meals, daily massages, that they will put up whatever TaskRabbit was going to put up. Like humans will not have to do jobs like TaskRabbit because labor will become so inexpensive. you know, there's always been technology and it's always, you know, there's always a to cry of, oh, we're going to put these saddle makers out of work if we start driving cars around. And there's always that and then there's always progression. Now, in this case,

it's kind of about speed, you know, to go from a horse store car. They've taken 35 years, you know, this is going to happen in three and a half years, you know. So the speed is the sort of the wild card in this. in general, if you are adaptive and kind of willing to work hard, I think there's going to be a place for you in our society. And I don't think self-driving trucks are going to mean that we're going to have millions of people that are living in squalor because they used to drive a diesel. That's very positive. And finally, to end on a negative note, who are the top villains that are hurting humanity the most right now? The ones that are hurting, the grievance politicians that are telling young black people, you know, we live in a systemically racist society and essentially they're not wanted here.

The grievance politicians that are basically trying to convince women, blacks, Hispanics, that they're not wanted here and they're never going to be able to really achieve anything because the playing field is tilted and it's not in their direction. those people are causing the most damage in this country. I'd agree. Thank you. Really appreciate you coming on the podcast. We'll link all of your information down below in the description. And for the members, thank you so much for supporting the channel. You get early access to the entire episode before we post it.

No ads, no sponsorships. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you. Thanks for having me guys. Until next time.