The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3541 The Affordability Argument W David Dayen

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

It's News Day Tuesday on the Majority Report On today's program: Donald Trump is well into his second term and still has no health care plan beyond a market-juicing scam that serves no one. In her first CNN appearance, Emma goes to the mat over ACA subsidies and makes a strong case for Medicare for All. David Dayen, executive editor for the American Prospect joins Sam and Emma to discuss the Prospect's affordability project. In the Fun Half: Trump is asked about releasing the full "double tap" video, something he previously said he would do, and snaps at the reporter, calling her obnoxious and insisting he never made that promise. The Chicago apartment building that was raided by a fully militarized ICE unit—only for agents to find none of the alleged Tren de Aragua members—is now evicting all tenants after being declared a firetrap. Tim Pool crashes out over his fellow conservative pundits not having the guts to stand up to Candace Owens. Sam Altman and Jimmy Fallon have an incredibly awkward exchange about ChatGPT. All that and more. The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: NUTRAFOL: Get $10 off your first month's subscription + free shipping at Nutrafol.com when you use promo code TMR10 TUSHY: Get 10% off TUSHY with the code TMR at https://hellotushy.com/TMR  AURA FRAMES: Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/MAJORITY. Promo Code MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com  

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It is Tuesday, December 9, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. this is the four-time, five-time awarding, Jordan Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, David Dayan, executive editor of the American Prospect co-host of the organized money podcast

on the affordability agenda. Also on the program today, Australia bans social media for kids under the age of 16. Meanwhile, after oral arguments, Republicans on the Supreme Court likely to overturn a 90-year-old unanimous decision on limiting presidential power. Speaking of presidential power, Trump passes the buck to Hegsyth on the release of the September 2nd. boat strike video incidentally they destroyed the October 10th video

that's things that innocent people do of course Trump's former personal attorney Alina Haba now former U.S. attorney from New Jersey Jasmine Crocker enters the Texas

Democratic Senate primary versus Tala Rico Colin Al-Read to drop out and switch to a congressional race. Washington Post reports Israel denying doctors' entry into Gaza because they don't like it when the doctors come back out and talk about the absolute war crimes that have taken place there. The same reason they've blocked journalists or killed them. Honduras issues an arrest warrant for its former president and drug kingpin,

who is just pardoned by Donald Trump. Trump announces $11 billion tariff relief, I should say, tariff relief bailout for farmers suffering at the hands of his tariffs. Federal judge blocks Trump's cancellation of wind energy permits. Politico reporting Brad Landard is going to declare his run against Dan Goldman, expecting a Mamdani endorsement. And the largest COVID-19 study ever shows vaccine lowers death from COVID by 74%.

It drops all-cause mortality by 25%. And there is no increase in four-year mortality. That is a survey of tens of millions of people in France. all this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. That was a little bit abrupt. It is... Newsday, Tuesday.

Newsday, Tuesday. Hello, Sam. Yep, hello. And here we are. Emma, last night on CNN. I don't know if you saw that. I was. I witnessed it. You know, I floated outside my body and watched it.

No, it was good. It was interesting. I haven't done CNN yet. It was my first appearance last night. So I'm a little bit tired because that show goes a little late. That show goes too late. Yeah. But it was fun.

I did the full hour and I got to, you know, interact with Scott Jennings, which was interesting. That sounds like a lot of fun. And near a tanning. And another bozo. I never heard of. Let's, well, before we, I want to play a clip of something that you did on that show that I quite enjoyed and is definitely timely. The Democrats this week are going to get the vote that they were promised

in signing off when Chuck Schumer caved on the Republicans' continuing resolution. And this is a sure-to-fail vote, but it will put the Republicans on record as voting against the extension of the ACA subsidies. Here's Donald Trump trying to float what is maybe going to be offered by Republicans as a replacement, which is a $1,000 to $2,000 subsidy to Americans under, I think it is like 500% of poverty, $1 to $2,000 that they can put into an HSA, which is a health savings account that is available only now if you have a very high deductible insurance program, they're going to allow for more

of those. This is a very good thing if you are 21 years old, are not on your parents' health insurance, and you are absolutely sure that you will not need any medical assistance. attention for years to come. But outside of that small cohort, it is a complete, like, it is a one-way ticket to more bankruptcies because of health care, people losing their health insurance, et cetera, et cetera. Here is Donald Trump. I want to give the money to the people to buy their own health care. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. The Democrats don't want to do that. They want the insurance companies to continue to make a fortune. The Democrats are owned by the insurance

companies. They want the insurance companies to get this trillions of dollars. We spent, we spent trillions of dollars goes to the insurance companies. I want that money to go to the people and let the people go out and buy their own health care. It works like magic. But you know who doesn't want it? The Democrats, because they're corrupt people, because they're totally owned and bought by the insurance company. It's weird that this magic has been around. Incidentally, this is the second term for Donald Trump. They have yet to come up with any type of alternative plan for health care.

This HSA thing is a scam because it is they will pay the money. It's basically like putting it into a 529. It is good if you are, it's going to be good for some people who are lucky enough that they will go through their life and never need any type of major medical help. Yeah, it's the Democrats that are in the pocket of the health insurance companies. Many of them are, but not as much as the Republicans. It's insane to say that when you also, outside of the ACA subsidies piece, you can't. kicked millions and millions of people off of Medicaid. That was also a part of what the Republicans did here.

So it's an all out of assault on health care. It's not like this is something that the private health insurance companies are crying about here. And Trump's populism is really thin. He's basically said previously, like, look, the health insurance companies are making too much money. They can still make a little bit of money, but we don't want to make them so much money. I mean, the ACA is insufficient, but part of why these subsidies need to be extended, and this was not when that gang of eight Democrats cave, they did not get assurances on this front, is that people still need their health insurance. It's just like their premiums are going to double. And many

people are just going to opt out of having health insurance altogether because they're not going to be able to afford it. And that means more of a burden on our health care system. Yeah. $1,500. Right. That if they don't spend annually, that if they don't spend, if they don't spend, we'll accrue on the stock market, assuming that just keeps going up. Right. Anything to funnel more funds into the casino that is the stock market. That's, I mean, it's a two-for for them on that end. But all you'll need is, you know, one or two, like a broken arm.

And all of a sudden, that $1,500 out the window. Sorry. Here is Emma Vigland on CNN last night. She insisted we play. She forced us to play. I'm going to get so red. She said no more eye contact with her. That's, I mean, no more I'm not going to be able to make eye contact with anyone for like a half hour.

I can watch these in private to critique myself, but that's because in private I can go like, stupid idiot. Well, we'll turn your mic. We'll turn your mic down. Here is Emma Vigland. And who is this guy you're sitting next to? Oh, he was a, Tim. I forget his last name, I'm sorry, but he was a Republican strategist. I was on with near Tandon.

This guy's the Republican strategist. Jeff Flake, former senator, and Scott Jennings. So this is part of that. This speaker is absolutely passed transformational legislation and is doing absolutely an amazing job on behalf of the American people. So these folks are entitled their opinion, but the results, that are coming out of this house, tell a totally different story. I would say, pause for one second. You could take that what he just said.

It was so general and vague. You could literally put that into any era at any time. Yes. It doesn't matter necessarily a Republican or a Democratic speaker. And in fact, you could actually put into a million context where it's not even referring to the Speaker of the House. It's just to a speaker at, let's say, a conference or something. He's a talking skeleton.

It really is amazing. There's such thin gruel. I mean, they did pass this massive piece of legislation. And can anybody point to any Republican who is trumpeting the benefits that we got from that legislation? Right. It was a very odd, like defending Mike Johnson's honor seemed to be what the thrust of this. I don't care about that, obviously, but it just goes to show a lot of these people, if you're in a Republican circle, you're trying to maintain relationships. And I just find it a little odd that that's at the forefront of news commentary.

I would say, yes, the legislation is transformational in taking millions and millions of people off of their health care. That is exactly what's going to happen. But the ACA was supposed to fix that? The ACA passed before. But wasn't the ACA supposed to be the magic pill that fixed everything? That's not my contention. I'm a believer in Medicare for all. There's 45 million people of health care.

ACA expanded, covered, but it did not solve everything. We need to have a single-payer system that can change that, and that's something that I advocate for on my show all the time. So I'm not going to say that the ACA is a panacea, but the Republicans right now are not extending the 2021 ACA subsidies, meaning that people's premiums are going to maybe double skyrocket because of the Republican Party right now. So, yeah, it's transformational legislation.

That's the Republican Party's all. Yes, it is. That you control Congress. and you control the White House. So, of course, it's the Republican Party's fault. Who wrote the sunset? Who wrote the Sunset? Let me finish my point, please.

Let me finish my point, please. I want to go back to what Marjorie Taylor Green said. I want to go back to what Marjorie Taylor Green said about Mike Johnson. Okay, we moved the topic. But here's, I mean, this is their point about the sunset provision. And this is apparently something that they don't know in Republican circles. Everything sunsets. Everything sunsets.

They're going to be voting on the National Defense Authorization Act, and they're going to be doing that in two or three days because it sunsets. They had the opportunity. And first off, none of them voted for the expansion of those subsidies in the first place. Right. Never mind the sunsetting. They didn't vote for it to happen in the first place during COVID. And so the idea that they're going to get that by blocking the vote to extend the substance, subsidies that they're not responsible for the sun setting of it is absurd.

And I think they know that. Of course. Of course. But, you know, it's just a little bit of a game. It's, you know. They've loved trying that point out since John Federman basically like stumbled into granting it to them during the shutdown. And I also just think in these formats, too, not to get too meta about it, but it is interesting when you're not just defensive of a democratic policy and you acknowledge that there are

improvements and you say something like a single payer healthcare system is the way forward. It's almost disarming because as I was trying to alluding to before, a lot of this are people jockeying and trying to tow a line or represent a perspective of a, that's more partisan. And so you can make a much more coherent point when you just are ideologically consistent as opposed to. Well, for that dude who's sitting on there. Yeah. He's on there so that he can go to other clients.

Yeah. And he's got a two, there's really two parts of his job. One part is to butter up Mike Johnson so that he can go and take his lobbying clients there. And then two is to get future clients by saying, look how chummy I am on CNN. Exactly. But, but, good job. You got to get in on that, Emma. Good job, thanks, thanks, thanks.

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We'll be right back with David Dayne. We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on The Majority Report. What a welcome back to the program. David Dayan, executive editor of the American prospect, co-host of the organized money podcast. David Dan, welcome back to the program. Thanks for having me. You guys are doing an affordability issue, taking on the affordability issue.

Tell us what type of stuff you're covering in that. Yeah, so this is our latest print issue of prospect. And, you know, I think affordability now has, has become a word that means nothing. It can really serve as a justification for just about any policy that you already believe in. And so we had the idea of instead of looking at it from the perspective of this is why X is this high, This is why why is this high? This is why specific items have increased in price.

Or instead of saying, you know, Trump has raised prices and here's why, we wanted to look at the long-term drivers of affordability that we've seen over many years and that we are seeing coming into vogue in recent years. And we don't feel like you can actually get at the solutions to, the cost of living unless you're looking at the right part of the problem. And so that was that was the goal behind this issue. Well, let's talk. I mean, we can start with the energy. I mean, because that we've seen energy prices go up. And a lot of this is being driven by AI or what? Actually, that, We did something that used utility prices and electricity rates as kind of an avatar, but that was really about regulatory capture. So we don't think that it has been well discussed that the way that electricity rates are set,

typically is that each state has a public utility commission that, is supposed to act in the interest of ratepayers and only allow a minimal rate of return on the investments that are made in utility infrastructure. And, you know, basically deliver costs at the lowest cost possible. Because, you know, I mean, we don't have 20 wires going into our houses, right? It's a monopoly, sort of a natural monopoly. And so the only way, at least in the conception of the current system where 70% of America gets their electricity from an investor-owned utility from a private company, the only way to keep that company in check, because obviously they have this extreme monopoly power.

They're the only one who is sending power to your home so they can raise the price. at will, unless we have this process of these public utility commissions that are supposed to keep rates in check. However, the problem is that these public utility commissions have been captured, both in terms of literal capture where lobbyists who used to work on the commission are lobbying for higher rate approvals for specific utilities, but also in the sort of mind share concept of capture, in that the economic models that are used to justify rate increases are ridiculous, and they are used in a way that maximizes the amounts of rate increase an investor-owned utility can get.

And it really is a problem on the investor-owned side. Studies have shown that private utilities ask for and receive much higher rate increases than publicly owned power companies. Why, I mean, why wouldn't we just have publicly owned? I mean, if it's a natural monopoly, I mean, I imagine there may have been a time in the government's history where the government didn't have the money to invest in this in the building of the infrastructure needed, although I'm skeptical, but let's just grant that. But that's certainly not now. And if the theory is that we know we need to regulate the rate

increases and maintain a specific ceiling on profits, although it seems like the ceilings on profits don't really go. That's more theoretical than in practice. We could also say like, okay, we're just going to buy this from you one time. We're going to build in whatever the profits that theoretically you're supposed to get, and we'll buy you out, and then we'll just have the government run it because it seems like the government's having to do just about all of this anyways, we'll contract out to you, maybe some of the work, and that's it.

I mean, all you have to do to look at the fact that this system isn't working is to look at the stock prices of these major private utilities. I mean, this is an industry that is supposed to have to go hat and hand to the government when it can increase its rates, and it's supposed to be a lot of, allowed this rate increase under a very strict formula. So that is not the makings of a superstar stock, right? I mean, that that's not a company that's going to be earning wild profits. Right. That's not, we don't have 100x potential on this. It's a tightly regulated utility. It's a, you know, and yet, you look at the stock rates of

these private companies, and they are earning well in excess, many multiples in excess, their stock rate is higher than what their projected earnings would be. And what that shows is that this system of, okay, a private company can own the utility, but we're going to keep it in check with this public utility commission. It isn't working. It was set up this kind of regulatory structure was set up by the investor-owned utilities themselves. I mean, that's originally when they started buying out public power companies. They said, oh, okay, well, you'll help keep us in check by putting in place this regulatory structure. And it's clearly not working. And so, yes, in that piece, we talk about many campaigns across the country that are attempting to essentially

move these private companies back into the public sphere. And we've seen this in many areas of the country. Ann Arbor, Michigan is going to have a vote on this next year. Maine had a vote in, I believe, 2022, a vote which failed, I should say. And then other municipalities led by DSA's Power to People program are attempting to un-privatize, I would say, these investor-owned utility. Is there an opportunity for the federal government to do this? I mean, because one of the problems is we don't have really a cohesive and maybe not even coherent national power grid. And it feels like we are going to need one, particularly if we're going to pursue. energy sources that are renewable.

And, you know, it would be nice to be able to, like, we have a lot of wind in this part of the country, and it can generate more electricity than we need. We can send some of that down to another part of the country. Well, I really think these are the right questions to be asked. And, you know, it's one thing to sort of say, hey, electricity rates are going up, and we need to freeze those rates for a temporary period

time or we need to, you know, reduce the use of data centers, and maybe there's a good reason for that. It's better to look at, okay, why is this a problem? Like, why are these electricity rates going up? And what does it say about other facets of the economy where these instances of regulatory capture exist? And so instead of saying, here's what we need to do on electricity, I think the better question is to say, well, in areas where there is clearly a disconnect between the regulatory system and the reality, we need to dismantle that regulatory system and figure out another way to deliver this good or service. And it could be public provision.

Certainly the Tennessee Valley Authority, which was established in 1930s to electrify rural America, has operated in such a way as a public power generation system that has been very beneficial to the millions of customers that it serves. And we can look to that as a model going forward. Where else do we see regulatory capture create runaway prices or in affordability? On affordability. Unaffordability. I think it would be on.

So, you know, certainly you look at the health care system. I mean, we have a regulatory structure that is woefully unequipped to deal with the large private interests that are dominating American health care. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services does little to know quality control on the various things. that it oversees. So, you know, I mean, just go down the line. I think look at the Department of Education and how it's been unable to keep higher education down, even though it has tools to say that, okay, you're only going to be able to participate in the student loan system if you keep down your bloated administrative costs or whatever

other cost bloat is in the system. I mean, I think that the failure of these regulatory structures calls into question why we should continue with them. There's two dynamics, right, when we talk about these failures. One is, like you said, with the Department of Education, it is a failure to use the sort of like to condition the carrots, right? Because it's a carrot to higher education institutions that the federal government is facilitating loans. So if we're going to do that, aside from like my issues with us profiting off of those loans, but essentially if we're going to subsidize the universities in this way, we should get a return on that investment that we're making, which is you can't, if you're spending too much on capital improvements because you want to have a nicer dining hall, we're no longer going. you're not going to be accredited under some, you know, accreditation rubric, affordability credit

creditation. You're not going to be available to participate in our loan program. That's the carrot side, right? And the stick side is supposedly, I guess, on something more like the electrical grid is where we're supposedly constraining what these companies are doing. but that seems like a sort of a snow job. I mean, it sort of just reminds me the dynamic of like, we're going to buy your electric company,

but you'll still get to constrain us is sort of like the debate I have with my son where it's like, oh, get me an iPhone and I promise you can limit my use of apps. And then all of a sudden it's just like off the races. Within six months, you're just like, I can't, I can't keep up. Yeah, I mean, I think everything you need to know about the inadequacy. of the regulatory system as it relates to electricity is in the fact that private equity firms are now moving headlong to buying utility companies.

So in Minnesota, we saw Black Rocks infrastructure arm purchase elite, which owns, it's sort of a consortium that owns several utilities in Minnesota, and I believe also Wisconsin. We have a story coming tomorrow. about Blackstone, the world's largest private equity firm attempting to buy a public power company in New Mexico. There are smaller private equity firms that are trying to buy the biggest gas company in New Mexico. You know, private equity doesn't go into these things thinking,

oh, these must be low-margin businesses that, you know, are tightly regulated by the federal government. That sounds like a good business for me to earn my oversized returns. I'm definitely going to go into there. They're going in because they know they can dominate this regulatory system and they can earn these outsized returns that their investors want. Outside of this sort of either regulatory capture or just regulatory failure, what else is, would you say, is the premier driver of unaffordability? Well, we tack. We tack. I tackled it from a number of different angles. So we did a piece on middlemen that have been inserting themselves into various transactions in the economy,

everywhere from real estate to health care in a big way. So example, being pharmacy benefit managers, which get sit in the middle of pharmacies, health plans, and drug companies. And as it turns out, take a bunch of profit off the top for themselves in the middle. drug prices higher. So that's an example, middlemen. We did another story on wages. I mean, low wages is one of the reasons why people can't afford everything. There was a great RAND Institute study that showed that wages as a share of national income have gone significantly down over the last 50 years. And if they stayed at the level they were at 50 years ago, the American people, the American worker,

would have 79 trillion more dollars than they did under the current circumstances. And that includes $3 trillion just in the last year studied, which I believe was $203.3.9 trillion more, just if wages stayed at the level they were at in 1975. Just I want to make this a little bit more explicit for people so they understand. That is when we talk about wealth inequality, that's what we're talking about. because the economy is still generating this wealth it's just a question of how it's being distributed right and in nineteen seventy five

it was distributed far more broadly when the economy made a hundred dollars uh... you know ninety five of it went to uh... the the the the people in five dollars maybe went to uh... the the top five percent or ten percent uh... or i should say the you know uh... the top one percent Sometimes we talk about this in terms of the wage productivity gap. So productivity is sort of a measure of how much the economy is producing at any one time. And for decades, that tracked right along with wages in a very tight, you know, separation between one another.

And that started to break off in the late 1970s. and ever since, productivity is kind of soared while wages have stagnated. And that leads to this huge gap that we're talking about. We got this gap right here. And I think, but again, it's important, somebody got that money, right? Like the delta between the light blue line and the dark blue line, the light blue line is wages, the dark blue line is the amount of money that's being generated. Somebody got that money.

It just wasn't workers. Wasn't you. And that actually leads to what I think is one of the most interesting pieces that's in the series. And it's about how inequality drives on affordability. So you say that, you know, somebody got that money. And those people that got that money are spending it at higher rates and at more pronounced rates than the people who don't have barely have barely enough money to, you know, gain basic necessities. Sometimes what this is called is a plutonomy, which is kind of a portmanteau of plutocracy

and economy. That was something that was coined 20 years ago by Bank of America in a research note. And they advise companies, well, look, the rich are doing all the spending. So you should cater, you should target your prices and you should target the services that you provide to the rich. And we have seen studies since more recently that say that the top 10% of income earners are doing up to 50% of the consumer spending. And so this leads to a concept in marketing called premiumization. So instead of a hairdryer costing 15 bucks, there's a premium Dyson hair dryer that it comes in different colors and apparently dries your hair better. I

guess. I've heard about this thing. It costs much, much, much more than just a basic hair dryer. And the problem is that the rest of us who aren't rich aren't immune to those marketing considerations. And so we see the same ads. We feel, you know, this same premiumization that goes on in the economy. And it interacts with social media in a way where, you know, influencers and people who are trying to sell products like that, they present kind of a depiction of the economy where you deserve the finer things in life. And ultimately, this ends up raising prices where we're paying more for things that are, we're told are premium, whether they are or not, we're told that they are premium products.

and whereas we would have settled for something different years ago. So, yeah. And isn't there also a dynamic, though, that in the market, I mean, it doesn't, obviously maybe not so much in the hairdryer market, although I would imagine, like, look, if I have a store and I have one product that is going to make me a 20% markup, you know, the premium hair dryer, I'm going to give that shelf space. So I'm going to limit the options for ones that may be less. They may not serve the same purposes for others.

It might be the only thing you sell. It might be the only thing I sell because why am I going to, I'm paying the people to stock. I bother with a discount good if most of the spending is happening at the very top. And so that limits access to other people. And this interacts as well. This is a really great, really complex piece by Emma Jansen. This interacts as well with the access to cheap credit that we have. So we have kind of this FOMO economy, right, where you see all these experiences and you feel like,

hey, I work for a living. I want to be able to experience, you know, some of these finer things. And the way I can do it is because there's a buy now, pay later thing that tells you, oh, don't worry. You can buy that in several installments and you can pay it off over time and you don't have to worry about it. you can get what you want. You can get the things that you deserve right now.

And you put this all together, this access to cheap credit, this premiumization, and then this social media marketing in this FOMO economy. And it ends up raising prices over time and constraining the cost of living. And doesn't it do that also, I would imagine, in areas with the real estate market. because if you have somebody who's coming in, you know, I'm going to compete against this other person to buy this house or rent this apartment. And there's just basically a race to the top. And then you can fill, it creates this sort of like a vacuum. You can slowly creep up.

I mean, it seems like it creates upward pressure on prices. Yeah. I think that is the case. And then that interacts with the piece that I actually did for this issue, which was about technology as a driver of this affordability crisis. And companies have gotten much more sophisticated about individual personal desires, personal needs, your shopping patterns, when you buy things, why you buy things. And they are exploiting that through the use of. of big data through the use of machine learning, through the use of AI. We had a piece that just came out.

I wasn't involved with this, but groundwork collaborative, which we've partnered with in the past, just did a story today that was also in New York Times and I think consumer reports was involved, where they got 20 people to shop for the exact same goods at the exact same time from the exact same location on Instacart, and the prices varied by up to 20%. Wow. So basically, personal characteristics, or even not personal characteristics, and just a bunch of testing is done, millions of changes, little changes in prices to test what does well and what doesn't and how we can maximize that willingness to pay.

this level of pricing is not just about supply and demand anymore. It's become very, very sophisticated, and they're not doing it so they can offer discounts to everybody. They're doing it so that they can maximize and exploit the amount of earnings that they can get off every single good that they sell. The other thing, I just want to turn back to one moment about the sort of the inequality and how it drives prices up. But also, do you think that this is why there has been a real inability to assess how the American public is experiencing the economy?

So, for instance, you know, we just, Black Friday record number of dollars spent, not record number of, goods bought. And if we know, if we apply what we know about the top 10% buying 50% of the stuff, it suggests that like we look at these top line economic numbers that have always, you know, we've always relied on to get a sense of how the economy is doing. But it's really only telling us how the economy is for a very narrow band of Americans, that the rest of Americans are sort of left out of the economy in many respects. I sometimes call this the tyranny of aggregates. So we, and this has been, you know, how many presidencies in a row have been taken down by this, where they say, look at the aggregate economy. Consumer spending's good. Unemployment's low,

et cetera, et cetera. And yet a large majority of people or a large segment of people feel like they're not getting ahead. And when you aggregate the economy, you know, the old joke is that if there are three people in a room and two of them don't have any money and the other is Bill Gates, the aggregate of that room is very well off. But it neglects, you know, the individual circumstances that are involved. So I think that we have a problem with this often. And it does tend to mask what is actually happening to certain groups of people. How do we fix that? I mean, how do we fix now?

I mean, like, how do we fix that specific dilemma? Because, I mean, I remember, you know, back when there was going to be a peace dividend, when Clinton, Bill Clinton came in back in like 92, 93, you could read a bunch of think pieces about how we're going to recalculate. I think they called it the GNP then, not GDP, how we're going to recalculate the GNP to include the opportunity costs that may be associated with economic activity or the externalized costs that might be associated with economic activity. Somebody breaks into my apartment and steals my TV and bust my door. The GNP goes up at that time, but there's no accounting for the fact that like maybe my productivity goes down.

is I going to miss a day of work? Or maybe I am just bummed out. Or maybe we, you know, to replace the wood table that got busted, we got to cut down another tree and it adds to global warming or whatnot. And that went by the wayside. Is there even a movement now to look at other economic indicators that give us a better sense of, oh, wait a second. 70% of the population is sort of suffering here, as opposed to it looking like everything's rosy.

I mean, I think there are a lot of ways to measure an economy. You can look at distributional analysis instead of just, you know, is the line going up? You can look at what different deciles, what is happening to the bottom 10%, what's happening, the bottom 50%, what's happening to the bottom 90%. A lot of that information is there. Like, we measure it. Like, I wouldn't have that statistic for you about the top 10% doing 50% of the spending. If that information wasn't available, the question is how is it presented? And so, you know, I think every, from political standpoint, every administration is going to try to present that information in the best light for them.

But it is incumbent upon the rest of the media and commentators like that. Well, the media is not going to do it. the media's not going to do it because they're all like they're completely incentivized to do the opposite just told you about it um well no but i'm saying i'm saying the mass commercial media i mean with all due respect to you and to and to me you know like uh we're going to turn on cable news they're not going to be talking about it very much because um that's just not the business they're in um certainly not going to happen on the business channels um it it seems to me that there has to be we need hear about it either more from politicians or there needs to be, I don't know, think tanks,

but I don't know who's going to start that. How many times does this disconnect have to happen before the political system writ broadly? And I'm talking not just about politicians and think tanks and policymakers, but also media, I think, gets put into that equation. How many times does, do we have to have this conversation? How many presidencies can be taken down by this disconnect between aggregate statistics and the realities for large segments of people on the ground? How many times does this have to happen before things change? So they can continue to operate along the same lines that they always have, and the public will continue to be angry,

and they'll ping pong back and forth between the parties and throw everybody out every couple years. you know, if you want a durable majority, you need to speak to those needs in the ways that I think the more successful candidates this year did. Yeah, I mean, you know, it seems like maybe we're sliding into a different era, but I still remember like this sort of the major talking point about our healthcare system was princes and kings come here to get their surgery. And like that, you know, like that's, we got the. best in the world. That's why princes and kings come from everywhere. But it, you know, like,

maybe it's starting to occur to people that, like, only princes and kings can really afford the good health care and everybody else gets screwed is not necessarily the flex you think it is. Right. I agree. I mean, I'm trying to think of the other, the other big piece that we had in the issue looks at a topic that is woefully, I think, neglected in the course of all of this in terms of a long-term driver of affordability problems. And that's climate change. We have stopped thinking in the terms of the cost of inaction, but it's not just extreme weather patterns that knock out infrastructure and that then has to be rebuilt, but it's changing weather patterns that change. The nature of crop yields, for example.

I mean, one of the things we're talking about the most in terms of affordability is groceries, right? Well, you know, coffee prices were at an all-time high before the tariffs. And they were that way because of the changes in where you can actually grow coffee, which is migrating away from the traditional growing regions. the expansion of pathogens in a hotter climate environment has been a major factor in cattle, a thinning of cattle herds. It's been a major factor in wiping out a lot of the orange groves in Florida and a number of other problems.

Literally, you look like every week there is some different pathogen, whether it's bird flu, or there's some different because of a drought or because of an extreme weather pattern or flooding. There's some wipeout of crops somewhere around the world that produces 50%, 70% of the world's product of that particular good. We don't talk about this at all. And yet it is a definite factor in the increasing lack of affordability of groceries. I want to turn to what's going on with Netflix, but I just got a question. Steve Austin asks, Sam, please ask David Dayan,

and where one could pick up a copy of the December affordability issue if they currently don't have a subscription just yet. That would be at prospect.org slash donate or slash subscribe. And you go there and go get all of our issues. We put out six a year. And we usually throw that in with a monthly donation. So it's probably, you can get the archives, right? I mean, you can access the archive.

You can access whatever we got, yeah. All right. Let's turn to the Netflix Warner Brothers' Paramount deal that's happening. You and I met in show business. I don't know if you remember. I wouldn't call it that, but okay. a student film. But it was more show than business.

It wasn't so much business, but it was definitely, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't even that much show. But be that as it may. What are your thoughts on this act? I mean, outside of this is more media consolidation, people don't seem to be as worried about it because it doesn't necessarily involve news. I mean, come on. This is nuts.

Could completely close around the country. I don't know. Yeah. These are, I mean, if you're talking about Netflix or whether you're talking about Paramount, these are both illegal mergers. And this real kind of poverty of imagination has led people to believe they have to choose between one of them or the other that, oh. Paramount is horrible because we got like a full on right winger who's literally

using his money to dictate, like, is installed Barry Weiss into CBS. They just hired a promoted Tony Docapul, by the way, the guy that said the thing about the Tonnyi C. Coates and the backpack of a terrorist. But, you know, she's like interviewing Erica Kirk on a town hall type of situation. I mean, that is, and so people are like, I'm glad it's not Paramount, but even still, I mean. I mean, the two things. it's not like there's this binary setup. There's this sort of conceit that there is because the idea is that, oh, the Trump administration is going to put their thumb on the scale for Paramount over Netflix, and we're going to have to endure all of this.

And that's really just a very improper and incomplete way of looking at this. Now, we can talk about why these deals both have very similar impacts, both on consumers and on producers and talent in Hollywood. So Netflix is the number one streaming company in the world. HBO Max, which is part of Warner Brothers, is the number four company in the world. Number three is some Indian streamer that isn't available in the United States. So you're talking about number one and number three, combining. And we have seen Netflix, I believe, has raised prices on its streaming product over the

last five years by about 120%. So if you liked that, expect more of it if they're combining the number one and number three streamers in the United States. Well, it would be insane to think that they are not that this is going to be in any way expand offerings to us, right? I mean, it would be a claim that they're going to keep HBO Max going, but in the very next sentence of the announcement, they say, and Netflix subscribers will get the benefit of all of the library of HBO and Warner Brothers material. So why in that case, I'm going to definitely have both services. I'm going to definitely pay for both services. Why wouldn't I? It's insane. So, and not only that, but as Emma correctly said, if you, you know, Netflix is, is famous for limiting theatrical windows,

for bringing things directly to streaming. That lack of offering at the box office has already, we've seen in this consolidation era, had a definitive impact on how many screens basically are financially viable. When Disney bought Fox assets, we already saw this sort of take place. And it's very likely, whether it's paramount and, and Warner Brothers combining one studio,

or whether it's Netflix and Warner Brothers and Netflix, in, you know, using, given their past history, influencing the theatrical windows, you're going to see, yeah, potentially the death of, of movie theaters in the United States. And then you go to be clear, it is, you know,

because this was predicted, the death of movie theaters were predicted when, VHS tapes came out. And it's not because we're talking about an introduction of a new technology. We're talking about an inability to actually get movies to fill those theaters. Fewer movies, right? So if Netflix and Warner Brothers, if Netflix and Warner Brothers are the same company, it is highly unlikely that the same amount of movies will be made out of Netflix and Warner

Brothers. It just is. and the same thing goes for if Netflix and Warner Brothers and Paramount are the same company. It's just very unlikely that you would see the same amount of output. And if there's a limit to the number of films, particularly a number of films that people are going to want to see, which is already a problem in the U.S., then, you know, that's going to have a material impact on theater owners. That's why theater owners have opposed this deal. The other people that have posed this deal are everyone who works in Hollywood,

the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild, the Screen Actors Guild. And that's because if you're taking, you have a project, whether it's a film or television series, and you have a number of bidders for that project. If there are fewer bidders, if Netflix and Warner Brothers were two of the bidders, and now they're one, you're not going to get as much money for that product. And there's just not going to be as much production, period, because why would one entity make as much product as exactly? Right.

Well, it's all just, I wanted to ask just really quickly, though. I mean, first of all, Netflix, I think they do seven-day theatrical releases in terms of like the awards consideration. And that I would imagine they're going to lobby to basically have that be nothing. So that they're promising that they would be the same theatrical windows at Warner Brothers that they are currently. But I don't know why we should believe that. Why would we believe them? I mean, and, and, and, so that's going to really harm movie theaters. But even like, when we back up to just how this even got going,

you have the Ellison Nepo Baby that, that is in charge of Skydance and was across this merger with CBS, who just was like bloviating and just was like, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to acquire, I'm going to acquire Warner Brothers. That got Netflix into the bidding war. And they were like, hey, we have a better offer. and now they're coming back, Skydance Paramount, with another offer with Jared Kushner in tow. Right.

He's helping finance it. To be clear, the Paramount tender offer they've made for this hostile bid is the same offer that they made at the end of the process that Warner Brothers board rejected. They're basically saying, okay, the board rejected it. We'll take it to the shareholders and we'll let the shareholders decide. And it isn't only Jared Kushner's involvement here, but Paramount a couple months ago hired Megan Delrahim, who is the, in the first Trump term,

was the head of their antitrust division of the Justice Department. So there were a number of sort of MAGA world figures that were involved with Paramount. And Paramount's entire strategy has been, we're the ones that can get Trump to sign off on this, and nobody else can. And so that was sort of their, their ACTA. in the hole. The problem with that, and the problem with this whole binary that gets set up, like, oh, I'm relieved that Netflix is going to buy Warner Brothers and not, you know, I'm relieved that this one illegal merger and not this other illegal merger is that state attorneys general

have the authority to use the Clayton Act, use the Sherman Act, to challenge mergers. And it's, it's very clear to me that they will in this case, no matter who tries to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. Um, uh, Rob Bonte is the, the attorney general of California. He has been talking about maybe running for governor of California. His, uh, an entire ecosystem in Hollywood is against this deal. Why would he not? And he, they'd be against the paramount deal as well, because it's the same dynamics, why would he not challenge this merger in court, especially when there are ample precedents? I mean, this looks a lot like the merger that was proposed between Simon and Schuster and Random House Penguin a few years ago during the Biden administration. And

Biden administration challenged that, saying that authors would get smaller advances if there are fewer bidders in the marketplace, the exact same dynamic as Hollywood. talent, getting fewer bidders in the marketplace and getting lower amounts for their productions. And they won that case pretty resoundingly in court. And that precedent can be used by any attorney general where Netflix and HBO Max is played. So any attorney general in the United States can use that precedent and say, this is the same kind of thing. It's going to create a monopoly or towards a monopoly in streaming or in studio production, and we're going to challenge it.

And it doesn't matter what the Trump administration does. This is at the state level. It doesn't matter that the Trump administration may put its thumb on the scale. We don't have to accept the best that the Trump administration will give us in this case. And I think that's a very important mindset to get out of, Because I'm seeing a lot of commentary of people like, well, we can't let it go to the Ellisons because that'll be Maga, Inc. That is this binary that gets set up that we have to choose the lesser of two evils is untrue. Warner Brothers is a very successful business.

It is the number one box office winner this year. If you saw the Golden Globe nominations yesterday, the two big films in that were sinners and one battle after another. both from Warner Brothers. There is no reason why this business can't be managed successfully by independently and any attempt by another company that's a competitor to merge with it is presumptively illegal. I understand that, right? And I'm hopeful that what you're saying wins the day in court. But is there something to what we're seeing right now, this overall dynamic where it seems like under Biden,

And of course, we've talked at length about greedflation and these companies getting away with taking home these record returns with higher prices. And then you add Lena Khan and more aggressive actual antitrust enforcement. There was major pushback against her. Then we have Trump. And it feels like all of these companies are racing, understanding the illegality of their actions to get this in right now in case of in 2028, a Democrat coming in and tripling down on this strategy. and I don't really see many reasons for them to be dissuaded because the administration is on board. They 100% are, and that's why we have to be loud about this. I mean, I haven't seen a lot of California elected officials outside of Rokana talk about why this Netflix merger is bad and it's an illegal merger.

And that is a form of cowardice. Democrats who are in control of attorney generals offices all over the country have. And theoretically, we could have a suit where there's 15 attorney generals joining into this suit. And, you know, there is definitely a merger rush happening right now. Wall Street is very happy with how they can basically engage in pay-to-play corruption and get whatever they want out of this administration. And in a lot of the smaller cases, they probably will be able to do that. I mean, state attorneys general are constrained to a certain degree by the bandwidth that they

have. They aren't the U.S. Justice Department. They can't challenge every case. But this one is very high profile, and it affects hundreds of millions of people in the United States who are subscribers to HBO Max or subscribers to Netflix. And some of these, you're not going to get past the goalie. and if if state attorneys generals think they can you know sort of keep their powder dry and hope for the best from the Trump administration on this they are sadly sadly mistaken and they need to get involved in the game here that would be impressive if someone was that completely oblivious as to what's going on all right last question on this

What Netflix is talking about is buying the largely like the the non-cable side, I guess. Right. Yes. Yeah, they won. Streaming services. Warner Brothers Studios, HBO and HBO Max. And then the cable companies would be separated off, much like what Comcast did with MSNBC and all those. cable companies.

So they theoretically be their own entity. That would be spun off into a separate. entity. Yeah, whatever it's called, you know, like, whatever, the choice. What is it, versent on your former employer at MSNBC? Yeah, who knows? But the, but would that be subject to a potential hostile bidder? That's a spinoff. So, I mean, you know, they could, they could kind of do whatever they want with it. But this is actually a larger question here, which is Why are we, why would we be at all confident that a company made up of cable networks would survive in 2025? Well, whatever versant is, I don't think so.

I mean, I can tell you that. Like, if I know better on the discovery global network side, which is, I believe, what it would be called. Our partner, our Calci partner has on the big board, it'll be schooling along here. you can bet on how long MS now is going to be around. There's a reason why they call it now and not tomorrow. If you watch cable in 2025, you won't know what year it is. There's like there's nothing on there that's current. It's just a wasteland of reruns.

And cable television is likely to go away. Built up in all of this is this real disruption in how we consume broadcasted information and entertainment. We are moving inexorably to streaming. The question is who's going to dominate that space? Netflix is making their play. One of the things about this is that Netflix wins, even if this gets mired and caught up in legal challenges, because for the next year and a half, there is going to be this question as to whether or not Netflix is going to be able to purchase Warner Brothers, HBO Max, its main competitor, or one of its main competitors are not. And so if you're a producer and you have two bids for your television show, and one is Netflix

and the other is HBO Max, which one are you going to go to Netflix? Of course. So the larger problem here, and I know you've thought about this a lot, because it came up way back in the day when Al Franken was challenged. Well, this is what I was going to say. This is the other thing is like, is this Bill Clinton's fault for the Telecommunications Act of 96? Well, it's the fault of a couple things. It's it's the fault of the end of the Paramount Decrees, which was actually during Trump's first term.

It's what we're seeing is an end of the separation between production and distribution. Yeah, FinCin and also the Paramount Decrees. So the Paramount Decrees in 1940s said, if you're a theater owner, you can't also be the production company anymore. And that's how it was prior to the Paramount Decrees. And the television equivalent of that is FinCinn, which is, you know, that different production companies have to be involved with different television networks. And we're now moving towards a reality where Netflix owns its productions and therefore can dictate the prices that it pays for those productions. And it also has the distribution output.

And so it can favor its own content. If this merger goes through, you won't see any Warner Brothers pictures on other streaming companies, right? Because they'll all be on Netflix. Or in a theater because that theater is also competing. Like, they're just like, why should we, why should we diminish what we can make on our streaming service? We'll just keep it all for ourselves.

And this is exactly what the Paramount Decree is and these other structures. were set up to stop because it trended towards sort of a monopolization on, in this case, entertainment, but you know, you can also see it related to information. And so, you know, if you're talking about what's the real answer here, it's not just this sort of uneasy status quo. So maybe there's, you know, what if there's another buyer for Warner Brothers and it keeps it independent, we maintain this competition between Warner Brothers and Netflix and Paramount. That's not the full answer here. The full answer is to set up once again a separation, a structural separation between production and distribution in a way that preserves the ability

for frontline talent to recoup the value that they produce. Nobody goes to movies for the executives. Nobody goes to movies to see who produced. Can we also just say that this is about literally a couple of guys. Zazlov is one of them. I've heard he's just a lunatic to work for who have turned their companies into basically a cottage industry in the sense that like our old-timey notion of like a corporation and a company man and I'm doing this for the sake of the company and the future of the company and my workers and blah, these are just guys who perceive these entire operations as a financial instrument in the same way that they would buy a stock and, you know, they don't have any emotional attachment to it.

It's like, you know, it's going to. I'll give you two things on that. David Zasloff stands to get a $500 million payday if the Netflix Warner Brothers merger goes through. So that's number one. What do you think he's rooting for? Number two, Warner Brothers would be an absolutely profitable company, especially if they shed their zombie cable networks and move those off to the side.

But the only reason that it isn't, it has massive debt from all of these other failed mergers that it did. Yes. The merger with Time Warner that then failed, the merger with AT&T that then failed the merger then with discovery that is in a process of failing. And when they spin off these cable companies, they give them the debt. You guys own the liabilities, right? That's what happens. So, yeah, I mean, the only reason that this company is not as viable as it should be with

a lot of success, both at the HBO level and the Warner Brothers level, is this legacy debt from failed mergers. So the answer to that is to do another merger. it's it's it's just madness um David dan always a pleasure folks should head over if they get a if you subscribe to the prospect now

you get access to the archives and so if you haven't seen this affordability even if you don't you get access to the archive I know I'm a bad marketer but here's my point we don't have to make him 500 billion dollars and you're sitting here letting people off the hook for Here's my point. Here's my point. We don't have paywalls. We think information should be free,

and we think that the value that we produce needs to be accessible, and we ask our people who support us to help us keep that free. And so it's more of a fundamental kind of philosophy that we have, that we believe that this information, stories about ideas, policies, power should be available to everybody. And, you know,

if you believe in that, if you think that that's an important value to you, then you can help support us and keep that a reality. So you're a red diaper baby, essentially. Is that what's going on here? I'm one of those,

that's all full-on communism. One of those comments. That's right. That's why we're the, great, a stable organization that we are. There you go. David,

Dan, honestly, how many years has it been since you've been an executive editor? Six and a half. Really? Yeah. Holy cow. It has been amazing what you've done with that magazine.

And very important. And we're going to have a Netflix show, too, on organized money pretty soon, probably next week. So you can check that out as well. And organized money. I thought you were actually. I thought a Netflix show.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to do a show about Netflix. Yeah, imagine after all that, like it's hilarious. After all that. After all that, yeah, we're, Netflix called us. They said, you know, you guys are, you guys are doing some fun stuff. No, we're going to do a show about the Netflix. Well, well, I was very excited to watch you on Netflix.

but maybe another time. Can I still access the peacock archives of you, by the way? Dude, let me tell you something. You couldn't even see the show when we were on Peacock. Like, that was the problem. I tried to explain to them, you're not on the internet. You know, we could talk for about another 20 minutes about how all of these entities spent billions with a B in setting up streaming plays without any clue as to what they

were doing or where they were going to make money from it. And it's why they, they push that writer's strike because they need to get out of deals and they need to backfill all of this debt they had created. We weren't, that's not even the internet. Like, it was just, uh, don't, don't get me started. David Dayne, uh, uh, we'll put a link obviously to, uh, prospect. Dot org. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Uh, we're going to take a quick break and head into the fun half of the program. Wherein we will have fun and

go over more clips of Emma because she's been so insistent. We play like we're going to do the whole hour. We've got to do the whole hour. Let's just take it from the top. We should include the part where I completely forgot Scott Jennings named

and call him Jeff because Jeff Lake was sitting next to me. It was going into break and then I was like for a minute in the break like, what is his name? What is his name? What is his name? And it's Scott Jennings, not Jeff Flick. You know what?

Honestly, that is a power move. To go on television and call somebody by their wrong name. That's what my husband texted me. Accidental power move. Total power move. Total. You just, just call him Bill. Yeah.

It's Kevin over there said and just watch the look on his face. Like, what, Kevin? It's just got hard for him to scowl any harder than he was. already scaling before you've had his name right he could sprain his face he's mugging folks uh remember it's your support that uh keeps this show a keeping on can become a member at join the majority report dot com when you do you only get the free show free of commercials you get access to the fun half and you can i am us yes uh also just coffee dot co-op it's their end of the year's sale 30% off you don't even need to use the coupon code majority uh though it doesn't hurt for you to

it in there because I think they see that in their logs. But just coffee.coop, they got all sorts of coffee. Now is the time for you to check it out, store up. If you've never tried just coffee, now is the time to do it. This is the time of year. You get 30% off. If there's a different flavor you wanted to try, now is the time to do it. You get 30% off.

If you've never had the majority report blend, now is the time to do it. just coffee dot co-op the dot co-op is because it's a co-op um Matt left reckoning after the show today at uh 2.30 Eastern time David Griskema going to be talking about this

Senate primary in Texas where uh Colin Allred drops out and Jasmine Crockett jumps in and Talarico's still there and none have really done a whole lot of substance yet uh and we also talk about this Netflix slash Paramount slash Warner Brothers deal where I suggest that maybe we should go back to copyright terms that allow us to like keep this stuff as assets indefinitely because the whole reason we we've kept expanding this copyright beyond like what it is in the constitution which is like a lot shorter than 75 years plus the age of the author whatever it is now is so like

Mark Twain's family could it have like not be poor right and it wasn't So, like, the Saudis could buy, like, the Maltese falcon. I think all this stuff, it should either be property of, like, the unions and the people who produce it, or it should be public domain. It shouldn't be a play thing for these, you know, psycho billionaires. But check that out after the show today. 100%. Um, PBD and J, Brad Lander to primary Dan Goldman. Yes, we, uh, we headline that.

Yes. Oh, folks, come on. See you on the fun half. Keep up. See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now.

But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for, hold on for a second. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey.

Fun hat. Matt. Who? Fun. What is up, everyone? Fun hat. No, me, Keene. You did it.

Fun pack. Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint. Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.

Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Women is? Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. is coming from dude but dude uh you want to smoke is um seven eight yes yes it is you oliver's me think it is you who is you no sound every single freaking day what's on your mind we can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism i'm gonna go through libertarians they're so

stupid though common sense says of course gobbledygook we fucking nailed him so what's 709 21. Challenge met. I'm positively clovering. I believe 96, I want to say. 857, 210, 35. 301. 501. 1 half. 3-8s. 9-11 for instance. $3,400, $1,500. $6.5,4, $3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making me think less. But let me say this. Poop. You can call it satire. Sam goes to satire. On top of it all, my favorite part about you is just like every day.

All day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we've seen you. It's just the week being weeded out, obviously. Yeah, sundown guns out. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question.

Who cares? Our chat is enabled folks. I love it. I do love that. Got a jump. I got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm losing it, bro.

Two o'clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulaw? Outrage. Like, what is wrong with you? Love you, bye. Love you. Bye-bye.