Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 248: RICO The Rotary

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

We discuss the RICO charges against Young Thug and YSL, and then get into a discussion about how America got to have so many millionaires Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Oh, man. The camera does add 10 pounds, doesn't it? Yo, yo. What's up, Aaron? Shit. Is it both of y'all? Y'all got it? Y'all got it?

Well, I mean, I guess you guys would just zoom me from that location, so it makes sense. You know, we thought that two people in one room would create a sexual energy that was so powerful. Yeah, yeah. That it could not be overcome. Undeniable. Yeah, undeniable. Hell yeah. People would know.

Like, did you listen to that latest Trailblazers episode? The sexual, I mean, it was fine. The takes were okay, but the sexual energy was awful. It was palpable. It was palpable. It was palpable. I don't say that usually about a podcast, but. It was first off everything. We're just talking.

Did you ever watch The Wire? Nah, man. I've been meaning to watch. What's The Wire? And what's the other one that people. What's the other one? Oz. I've been meaning to watch those two, man. what's the other one that people uh what's the other the other one oz i've been meaning to watch those two man yeah six feet under six feet under i actually did watch the first episode that i liked it that's pretty cool but now i haven't seen the wire why well i

was like i was like i was thinking the other day like the reason it doesn't hold up so i don't think it holds up i don't really enjoy it up, I don't think it holds up. I don't really enjoy it. The reason I don't think it holds up is because 90% of the show is them creaming their pants over surveillance technology. And when that's the whole show and technology ages,

it becomes dated so rapidly like the whole show is just kind of nolan boy like it was kind of that and then after season three the reason i tapped out was it's not the only reason i tapped out part of the reason is what you're saying because by the time i came back around and watched it uh it just felt a little dated in some ways not that it wasn't entertaining if you entertaining in a lot of ways, and it's all merits. Of course, Michael K. Williams is brilliant and so forth. But when I tapped out, it was like,

I think it was maybe season four when they started doing that weird Verizon product placement. Yeah, you know what I mean? I was like, this is beneath prestige TV. You know what I'm saying? I don't tune in to hour-long dramas to get like product placed you know what i mean and advertised to subliminally what do you mean like you would see like like it would be like a seed where let's say it takes

place in somebody's like apartment or some shit like that you know yeah and they got like i mean i don't know what verizon kind of place but what they got a phone I mean, I don't know what Verizon kind of placement. They got a phone with the Verizon inscription on the back of it. All the logos. Yeah, all the logos. And then they had like the- Ten minutes of dialogue is just them talking about payment plans. That's what I was thinking. Well, actually, have you considered that?

Yeah, I'm on the family plan. Verizon's the only way to fly. I liked it up until the Verizon product placement. I just couldn't get on board with it at that point. That might be the only time you'll hear that take. A person judged a whole five-season program only on the fact that they slid into product placement. I feel like it's kind of a tell.

It's kind of like an unintentional tell about how you could tell that police and the feds after 9-11 were so just like hor like geeked up they were fucking so amped up for the like not only the changes in technology but the fact that like all the laws essentially just let them do whatever the fuck they wanted to do and and so that like all the laws essentially just let them do whatever the fuck they wanted to do and and so that's why the show sucks because they like got really excited about that fact and that became the show and like communication has changed since so much since then that watching it now is it's it's just funny to watch them just i don't know just be

amazed by text messaging and being able to, you know, surveil a community or neighborhood 24 hours a day. I know exactly what you mean. Two things. You just reminded me of one thing. One, I read today that the self-driving cars, they're equipped with cameras, right? Because this is how the technology works, right? So they avoid accidents and collisions with other objects and shit. the technology works right so they avoid accidents and collisions with other objects and shit and apparently that video footage is saved and stored and cops have access to it and have already

used like from whatever i guess like test drives from self-driving cars or i guess tesla's because technically like that that technology is like actually still like it's active currently in some teslas that kind of half-ass works what um barely works but yeah man so the cops have access to that footage you know and they've used it already as evidence in cases yeah that you know it is funny it's like we're sold kind of a bill of goods on this idea that like technology and everything like we can't we can't adopt Terrence's vision of Luddism because we have to keep moving society forward and all this stuff. But really and truly, all that means

is just advances in surveillance technology from social media to self-driving cars, all this stuff. All it means is we're even further surveilled than we already are. Every aspect. And it's harder to pull out of it. Yes.

But we weren't sold that at first. than we already are. Exactly. Every aspect. And it's harder to pull out of it. Yes. You know? But we weren't sold that at first. Like, you know, the future looked like this liberating thing where we're just gonna have all these cool gadgets and everybody just, you know, Oh, hell yeah. Lives and let lives, but it's actually the opposite. We mentioned this, we didn't dig into it though.

We mentioned it, I think, at last week's show. Did you see the story where the cdc tracked millions of phones to see if americans followed covid lockdown orders and like this was funded by i guess the company that they contracted out to do this was like a tail backed company of course always but wait how do you serve how do you surveil whether i mean i guess you use like their gps like you know location, location tracking to find out if they left home or not. Yeah, let me read this. The CDC bought access to location data harvested from tens of millions of phones in the U.S. to perform analysis of compliance with curfews, track patterns of people visiting K-12 schools, and specifically monitor the effectiveness of policy in the Navajo Nation.

The documents also show that although the CDC used COVID-19 as a reason to buy access to the data more quickly and intended to use it for more general CDC purposes. So they weren't just doing this for just COVID shit. God damn, Sid.

Safegraph is the company It's a The company the CDC paid $420,000 for access to one year of data Includes Peter Till And the former head of Saudi intelligence Among its investors Watch them turn that shit into some

Citizen return to your home Well that was the thing We were in the early pandemic everybody was talking About like how authoritarian It was in china that robots would go out there and like take your temperature and yeah like that's probably not okay but we weren't we were doing the same thing we just weren't being open and and blatant about it we were doing it and also it was toward the aim of like controlling the virus our aim has nothing to do with saving lives our aim had was making a donald trump and anthony fauci both look good man two of the most despicable characters in this whole entire thing

it's so true is we had more people die than any other country and it was the least surprising thing in the world and it wasn't even like that data was used to stop the spread or if that was the case then maybe you could like warrant some trade-offs you know like hard times demand desperate measure measures do you have to trade whatever in liberty and get whatever you know the quote i'm talking about we don't let terrorists do quotes or idioms on the show here that's why positive negative liberties whatever blah blah yeah i know what you're talking about but even we didn't get anything out of the deal they just tracked every bit you know every little bit of our data even more to sell off to someone else

didn't they just say that like last week that like we just passed a million cases but i'm pretty fucking sure that like we've been past a million cases but of course like yeah a million deaths a million deaths sorry sorry sorry deaths my state georgia we don't even collect the data anymore yeah that's why Right. The funny thing about this is literally the moment they stopped caring about any of this was Ukraine. Like, that is the moment. You didn't hear about COVID after Ukraine. Right, right. That was it.

That was the ending. Historians will have to account for the fact that COVID ended the ended the date february 22nd the day russian that's what it'll say in the textbooks it'll say that in the textbook yeah yeah it was amazing russia went in and kovat went out uh well their trade-offs you know why can't isn't it weird that americans cannot well i'm not talking about the left or, you know, even more politically engaged people, but just like your average person in this country cannot keep their eye on just one big issue. Like they keep their eye on one big issue at a time. That's why this is so effective.

Like nobody sits down and says, man, that Roe shit was wild. And then like Ukraine, Russia, like, like you know like taking it in totality it's like they only have like the attention span and sort of um capacity to care about one hot button topic at a time absolutely and then it seems like that's when it seems like not even on some conspiracy theory shit but when biden did like the land lease whatever bill or whatever for ukraine and that goes through within a day of like the roe v wade stuff and it's just like it's all this stuff happening like this next big event happening and then other like horrible shit gets slid underneath you know so sometimes i gotta like stroke my chin and i'm like man are these motherfuckers like inca hoops like twiddling

their fingers what was the land lease deal i mean it was the what was it 40 billion dollars i sit here and just start people can't think about it and i'm like oh wait it was i missed that what was that yeah what was it somebody didn't create i guess i don't know oh okay okay yeah i think they signed another i don't know i just saw on the front page of the new york times joe biden signing something and it was like 400 billion dollars to ukraine or something it was like 400 billion they're considering it i think they're considering that two or 300 billion thing but then they just also did the thing you're referring to i don't know god but there was um there was a quote going around last week and i meant to

get to it and i i didn't i can't remember it was maybe like an undersecretary of defense or something like that who basically just literally said like we're fighting a war with russia through our proxy ukraine did you see that you just said the quiet part loud yeah he just like said those like like as a leftist like a leftist tweet like your hammered signal account tweet like you just like the official lectern of the white house and he goes full stop and then people are just like look at each other he goes no this is not a drill. We are literally fighting a proxy war against the Russians. It was Representative Seth Moulton, he's a Democrat from Massachusetts,

said, we're not just at war to support the Ukrainians, we're fundamentally at war, although somewhat through a proxy with Russia, and it's important that we win. Fundamentally is like politicians speak for quite literally. But fundamentally leaves a little bit of room for interpretation. That's why they use that. Yeah, they do like it.

I use fundamentally a lot too because of the room for interpretation. A little vagary gets you off the hook a little bit for a bad take. I use fundamentally a lot too because of the room for interpretation. That little vagary gets you off the hook a little bit for a bad take. That's called gaslight language, Tom. That's why I like it so much. I'm constantly just gaslighting everybody. Every person I come to,

even in the store at Walmart, I gaslight them. They're like, sir, can I help you? And I'm like, can you help me? I don't know. can you? Can you help me? I don't know. Can you? But the funny thing, what he's not telling you is it never works, and he just gets cuffed and stuff for sexual harassment.

No, I wasn't being provocative. I was gaslighting. My rap sheet is 46 counts of gaslighting. God damn. Yeah, I was looking it up. That Seth Moulton guy, I knew he sounded familiar. He ran for president in 2020. Or he was seen as a potential candidate. He didn't run.

Oh, he did announce his candidacy. Then he pulled out like three months later.h malton did oh yeah i don't i knew the name sounded familiar i was like how do i know that name there was him and who was like the former soldier that was running as like the maverick republican evan mcmullin i know you're talking about yeah he was a libertarian he ran as a libertarian, I think, in 2016. Do you remember like Obama era 2008 when it's like, oh, what does the future look like? Who are going to be the standard bearers of these parties?

And that was about the last time you could be like a virtual nobody and run for president. Now you have to have serious clout and be like a celebrity of some sort. It is crazy to think about. Obama achieved the dream when it comes to politics. He didn't even have to serve a full term in the Senate. He just immediately got to skill

Clinton to some degree. I guess he was a governor. He was a draft pick. You're right. He was. The deep state drafted him. They probably literally did. He was. You know what I'm saying? Coming out fresh out of college. Yeah. The deep state drafted him. They probably literally did. He probably. Isn't his mom kind of like.

Didn't she have involvement in like a sort of satanic cult? Wait. Satanic cult. What? Yeah. I think his mom was involved in the same like cult that Sufjan Stevens' parents were involved in. Oh, okay. I can't remember the name of it.

Maybe the Process Church or something? I don't even fucking know. I pulled that out of my ass. That sounds right. I was about to say, it's like all of these presidents, man, it doesn't matter who they are. There's some a couple generations back, like connection to some CIA shit,

some FBI shit, or some pseudo-secret society. That would be an interesting thing to tease out i'm sure like people have probably i think matt chrisman did this a little bit when he did the hall of president or hell of presidents thing uh but it would be funny to kind of tease out just see like okay what occult and or deep state ties do all these sort of twisted bastards have, you know? Yeah. It wasn't a satanic cult. It was, it's called Sabud. It's a international interfaith spiritual movement

that began in Indonesia in the 1920s. I don't know, it's... I don't understand why they didn't seize on that. Just say that he was part of something called Sabud and like, I don't know why they didn't seize on that. Just say that he was part of something called SABUD, then I don't know why. Right, why'd they seize on the thing about him being from Kenya? Or Sunni Muslim.

Yeah, right, it's too obscure. Yeah, you'd have to Google it. Right, they'd be like, SABUD? Not worth my time Googling that. Let's just do Muslim, most people are afraid of that now. Most people will be like, bad. It's post 9-11. That'll play.

Just blatantly shows how much they literally did just look at him and say, Muslim. Muslim? Yeah, Muslim. It sucked so bad that he sucked so bad yeah he could have been awesome he really could have he would have just yeah he just yeah well you know especially as the first black president i mean i don't know what i didn't really expect any different you know what i mean because there's always like a deep i think all black people kind of knew like deep down you're like yo this country is like unforgivable like irredeememable. There's no way they're going to put a brother at the head.

He's not going to be the black face of the white empire. Like no fucking way. But it was like especially disappointing because now it's like, I mean, I don't know. It's not like people are going to be like, well, we're never going to have a black guy's president again. No, but it's just like, damn, dude, the first one out of the gate, it had to be Obama, man. They're in Hyde Park, man. My ass was bawling tears i said it's finally come hope and change

it's finally here guys it's like when you found out that like the like the dc sniper was a black guy and he's like god damn bro come on man that's uh that's not a crime you expect from a black guy i'm gonna be honest he was a jamaican guy too actually which is even worse for me that's a that's a wide-ass crime they did a lot to lee boyd malva yeah he's in the prison right over here he used to listen to our radio show. Wait, are you serious? Yeah, serious. I mean, I say that like he was an avid listener, but he actually just listened to it by force

because they used to pump it through the speakers. We have one degree of separation from. Lee Boyd Malvo has heard mine and Terrence's voice, I will say that. That's probably the fair way to put that. It's the closest we've ever come to history, to actually entering the stream of history. We count several luminaries among our listeners.

Nick Offerman, Sturgill Simpson, and the DC sniper, Leboid Malva. Six degrees of mass shooting. See? That is true. There's probably no other left podcasters that you could draw a straight line between mass shooter to like us probably not listening to choppo that's the tagline man six degrees of mass shootings very proud to have the only black mass shooter amongst our listeners

jamaican no less god damn uh we'll have to ride him and be like man we got we got another jamaican guy on the show now it's extra yeah you know here's the thing i was just thinking about this them collecting all that data the cdc like monitoring your movements and stuff i wonder if so they said they were planning to use it for all kinds of reasons not just covid i wonder if part of the thing there is that they look at the overall pattern of your behavior during those first 12 months of the pandemic like how much you left your house how much you went to the store how much you went to the beach or whatever because remember early in those early days that was the thing people were

like they're literally at the beach and it was like june 2020, yeah. I wonder if by taking that data and, like I said, the patterns of your behaviors and what you were doing, if they were then able to discern how good and virtuous of a person you were. You know what I'm saying? Like if you were more on the left and it was revealed in the fact that you never left your house or if you were more on the right and you were constantly leaving your house or whatever. And if they then sold that data to various advertising, you know, Twitter advertising firms or Instagram advertising and stuff like that, so that they could then know what products to present to you. Does that make sense?

No, that makes sense. You know why, too? to present to you does that make sense no that makes sense you know why too because like you got me thinking what if too like because i know already they can monitor how much time you spend on an ad like when you're scrolling or some shit like that you know so using that in conjunction what you're saying to push like the you know what i'm saying the most appropriate ad to to you as an individual you know depending on like morality or sense of politics or whatever i think the the next the first person who truly is able to usher this country into because obviously like if we're going one-to-one with rome we're in the rome republic era but we need to be like an empire era you know

what i mean like augustus uh Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, the dude who cried while Rome burned, or played his fiddle while Rome burned. Yeah, the guy, he castrated boys against their will so they could sing pretty. He had little boys balls. That would be a crazy fate to have in the Middle Ages. People told us that that was still a thing.

When I remember being in choir in eighth grade, people told us about that was still a thing like when i remember being choir in eighth grade people told us about that and i was like do they still do that i'm getting out of this class wait it makes your voice higher right like you're like it like you don't you don't go through i guess like the the hormonal changes like to is that that does? Yeah. I guess it gives you easier access to a falsetto. God damn. Your voice doesn't change. We used to have easier access to a falsetto, syphilis. These are the things we've lost.

Things. Now we have no access to a falsetto, no jobs, no cash. No jobs. The people already in power have syphilis. Right, yeah. I'm like... So the thing that would actually get us into the empire phase of this thing that we've,

this thing of us as America, would be the first presidential administration that figures out that the way to wield power in this country truly is to just embrace what the CDCs did just vacuum up everybody's data and like how they operate in real life and navigate the world and what media they consume. And then the government is able to craft your own sort of proprietary experience through the, you know, cyberspace. You know what I'm saying? So, like, you never have to, like, if you support Trump

or you support the right wing, the right wing's in power and they're doing the things you like. If you support the left wing, the left wing's in power and they're doing the things you like if you support the left wing the left wing's in power and they're doing what you like but you know what i mean but at no point even if your life personally sucks ass and you're bleeding to death and you know you're just getting worse and worse you will think that things are getting better because the media you consume tells you to do so so it's not even like you're saying like it's not even because right now you kind of have to seek that out right like if you want to like be embedded in your sub community like you got to seek it out whatever channels you watch whatever media you consume yes but this is like this is like a subscription

service or streaming service for your you're not not streaming service but it's like delivered straight to you you don't even have to seek it out anymore uh exactly you just chill at home and your little like dystopian pod and shit and you get all the media and all the reality that you want crafted for you perfectly without even having to leave your house or interact with anybody else right because if the president can't do anything anyways like just fucking make it a proprietary entertainment experience the whole shebang you know what i mean according to your taste according to your taste and the first person that's able to do that they will be the octavian uh caesar augustus of our times you know what i'm saying but that's yeah right for like a thousand years they'll reign for a thousand years yeah

yeah that's right god damn man fuck yo um what else what is what's going on what What's going on What else is going on Boys What else is going on Well we were going to talk about the YSL indictment I read an article about it Just to kind of Educate myself

I knew it was not you guys I sat my ass down and educated myself I took several i took several seats and i knew it wasn't your job to educate me it's not not aaron's job to educate us i'm not about music about atlanta about atlanta yo to be honest with you tom you you i didn't even hear about it when it happened i thought i thought i saw people posting about it but it wasn't until you brought it up and uh what is it now you got a young thug got arrested in atlanta uh by a fulton county yeah on monday yeah so yeah it's like what an 80 something count indictment handed

down from i think county yeah and uh implicates a young thug, most notably Gunna, and several associates of the record label who were trying to recode, saying that YSL, which stands for Young Stoner Life, which doesn't really sound, sounds about like the most innocuous criminal syndicate. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Just on the face of it, it's a little, you know, silly,

but basically they were saying that, well, the big thing that was coming across the TL was that some people inside were saying that Young Thug ordered a hit on YFN Lucci. He's an Atlanta rapper. And then I guess they were saying, bring him back up, bring him back up old shit from 2015 when allegedly Birdman Young Thug had Lil Wayne's tour bus shot up. Uh-huh. So they're saying that YSL actually stands for Young Slime Life. That they are in fact in the-

Yeah, it does stand for Young Slime. Young Stoner Life is the record. Well, there's- Yeah. I think that they, yeah. Like, I think Young Thug's lawyer said that there is no Young Slime Life. But the DA is basically saying, like, no, there's Young Slime Life. There's Young Stoner Life in the sheets, but Young Slime Life literally in the streets.

But that's the thing so like young slime live to the extent that even if it was a gang they're not like a quote-unquote street gang but but it's isn't this whole thing getting like sort of like wrapped up in the new i think is it the attorney is it the d.a. the full uh the full in d.a. um yeah she uh yeah she i'm pulling up now fanny willis uh apparently she's like a little over a year into her term and i mean like i think i was telling y'all in the group chat like i didn't know that like gang like gang shit like the rhetoric used down here was such a big thing so you know whenever a mayor comes in or like this da fulton county like her whole thing is like this anti-gang crusade that she's doing so one of the things that's like super fucked up

one of my mutuals on twitter has uh had a post about how they're including uh the definition of a gang to include up to three people right right so these are some yeah so like we can be recode technically if we like if okay so here's the thing about it. This is crazy because they tried to pass a similar law in Kentucky. I don't know if you remember this, about maybe three or four years ago. Is this one of those ALEC things where... I guarantee it. Like some tough on...

Yeah, anti-crime, tough on crime right-wing group basically got all these legislatures. Police association or some shit. Yeah, to adopt this law where if you had three people in your group, that was a street gang. I would bet dollars to fucking donuts that if you had an honest accounting of crime in Atlanta, it's probably like most other places,

it's probably as low as it's ever been, and yet the rhetoric is it's dangerous and it's and not just atlanta but every place yeah yeah absolutely and i mean she said i mean just like this like article i checked out she's like she can't when somebody asked her i'm trying to see somebody asked her like what how much of the crime in atlanta can you contribute to like um to gang violence and she said some shit like like she didn't give an exact number but she was like oh um it's so much that we're not even sure and apparently people's like estimates are like 70 to 90 which sounds just fucking insane to me you know like personally just 70 to 90 of the crime in atlanta 90 of every

crime in a fucking i would be surprised if it was nine percent exactly swear to god like yes yes and and i mean like also they're also using is the one thing that just like blew my fucking mind they're using young thugs lyrics and i think gun is two lyrics as evidence Right, which to his credit like Jay-z and like a couple other rappers and like trying to push against that in New York They were they were trying to say like it was there another case that was brought up of another rapper whose there was reuse I can't there was I can't remember. I can't remember who it was. I can't remember who was to was it Was it 21 Savage now no i wasn't 21 savage i i just might 21 savage might have had with his like deportation case they might have brought up something yeah i can't remember the details of it though according to this new york times article it's happened

a few times in fact and that this is also so the fresh crackdowns on rappers and their music have taken different forms in different cities. In New York this year, Mayor Eric Adams suggested that social media companies should ban some music videos by artists in the graphic drill rap genre. I forgot about that. After two aspiring rappers were killed in Brooklyn. I mean, we pulled Trump off Twitter because of what he was spewing,

yet we are allowing music, displaying of guns, violence. We're allowing it to stay on these sites. Is this fucking 1993? Like when they steamrolled the fucking doggy style cds seriously that is an interesting thing because here let me say this everybody forgets this that snoop dog had you know he's america's uncle today but in the early 90s, he was public enemy number one. This is true. You know what I mean? And now he's like, he hawks Corona and everything else.

So my prediction here is this will not stick and Young Thug will be like America's uncle in like 2046 or something like that. You know, I wonder what kind of effect it's gonna have that if you're pissed off about books okay books is not the best example because people do still use books but if you're pissed off about music like you can't go steamroll some cds anymore you know it's all on the cloud now well there's a snoop dogg had the babes like well i still had to go

buy my cds you had to take a video of you deactivating your Spotify or some shit like that. Yeah. I guess that's the thing. How do you protest symbolically if you can't? You don't have the physical thing there. What? We were talking about this in the chat earlier.

It really does feel like a 90s-ass like Dolores Tucker kind of like moral panic kind of about like rap music. It is. And then the other thing is listen. It's like if you really think rappers are doing 10% of what they rap about. Bro that's

part of the job is fucking lying yo. You don't do any of that shit. Yes. Right. Yes. He's not Al Capone like dude the way they made it sound like they say to sound like young thug is like some fucking kingpin who's like talking about the shit on his instagram and stuff and like he's like putting in calls on like burner phones and like fucking jail and shit like that's like dude like i mean i mean obviously what it is it's fucking racist as shit right i mean i think the DA is black, but that doesn't mean shit, right?

Like, black liberals easily, especially in Atlanta, get swept up into, like, you know, this crime wave and, like, gang violence shit. Has Keisha Lance Bottoms said anything about it? Nah, nah, nah. She's not the mayor, but no, she hasn't. As far as I know, she's probably said... Oh, she's not the mayor anymore? Who's the mayor now? Andre Dickens is, which this motherfucker, man, was...

I'm not even going to go in. It's just like you got these fucking people, like these black liberals, what did Cornel West call them? The black misleadership class, you know, who facilitate shit like this. Because this is not coming from the right. Like, sure, the right statewide does horrible shit, but this is like a black city with, you know what I'm saying, black liberal elites, and this is the kind of shit they're doing, man.

Yeah. 90% of the stories we tell on this show are bullshit. So, you know, how are you going to? We're a bunch of grown men liars ourselves. Yeah. Exactly. It is kind of weird, though, because, I mean, like if you look at the class distinction of this stuff, you know,

I remember reading this profile of Young thug when he was ascending and they were talking about like when he first came out before he would like wear grills or anything like that his teeth were really messed up and he was like really self-conscious about like because he just grew up in this abject poverty and everything and then you know a guy like that they're hanging out to drown this shit because the truth of this is probably this if i had to guess okay young thug is not some head of a criminal syndicate okay he's he is the head of a record label imprint that probably has some hangers-ons and some of his buddies around the way that are still involved in some street shit.

They've probably caught up two or three of those dudes, and they're trying to make the case that they can just run it up the ladder and make an example out of the face guys at this thing. You know what I mean? That is probably the absolute truth of it all. No, that's absolutely what it is, man. They're finding a face for this so that they can sweep under all all of these because i mean like i don't know man atlanta it's like one thing is like if you actually took care of the root causes of gang violence like poverty for example then

you wouldn't have these problems or you wouldn't have these imagined problems because i'm not trying to say that like you know like atlanta can't be rough like there are neighborhoods where it's like yo i don't even want to go down there everywhere of course not everywhere everywhere right but the way you deal with that is not like not by like you know making an example out of this dude who like came from nothing to like make a name for himself man and then sweeping up a bunch of like in a dragnet a bunch of like other brothers on the street like who don't have anything else to fucking do you know it's like when they ride on those ATV bikes or whatever and they're talking about criminalizing it.

It's like, yo, they have, what would you rather them be doing on the street, right? Like selling drugs, gangbanging? You know what I'm saying? If you don't want them to do that, then do like after school programs. Like, I don't know, man. It's just another one of those cases where, you know.

You're going to hear, we're going to be the face of, they're going to try to like pin the Pawpaw mafia on us or something the mason jar mafia get caught up in a reco yeah it's gonna be we're gonna be the face of it i mean it's like that's what it is it's like you had this major push from these retailers associations and right wing politicians about this crime scare over the past 12 months, especially since the pandemic. And I even heard that about Atlanta. People are like, oh, Atlanta's a war zone right now.

And I'm like, okay, there's probably some shit like Chicago's drill scene type shit going on down there. But it's like, to the degree that that affects, and I'm not saying that's good or whatever, but I'm saying to the degree that affects crime overall is like, come on. Bullshit. You know what I mean? I'm just saying that's good or whatever, but I'm saying to the degree that affects crime overall is like, come on. Bullshit.

You know what I mean? I'm just talking about that. It's fucking bullshit. And she is, isn't she a new DA? Yeah, she's a new DA. So,

I mean, it feels very much like she's new to the job, has to pick a publicly identifiable, almost sort of, I wouldn't say Young Thug's a household name, but he's pretty close. I mean, he's a pretty, he's probably one of the five biggest rappers in the world.

Right. I would say at this point. I think that's fair to say. And so it's very much, it's just very obvious that it's meant to attract headlines and to bolster her credibility and record. Yeah, watch her run for mayor and like the fucking run for mayor and

like a fucking of atlanta or full or full you know whatever in fulton city and fulton in a couple years or some shit yeah it really is just the same old story from the fucking 90s it's just yeah it's just ambitious da's going after low-hanging fruit to make headlines and prove their record so that they can become mayor eventually and and get bullied around why would you want that job get bullied by i yeah i'm this ambitious lawyer who's gonna uh you know possibly put my career and reputation at risk prosecuting one of the biggest stars of all times just so i can get in this job where the cops in my city are gonna bully me around daily and call me a punk bitch pull my kids out of school especially because like you're not like you're not like uh it's not

like you're a right winger where you could run like this town like your fiefdom you know what i'm saying like you're not you're not you're not really about it so you're gonna have to like buckle under the weight of like you know like police associations right and like the real estate uh developers and shit like that you know so yeah there's no glory in it but right it's so ridiculous it is so rico is just like it's also just like not that I believe in law enforcement in general but it is lazy like law enforcement anyway

it's just like I'm there's one guy that did some shit but because he belongs to the same you know you were going to

like a guy at the Kiwanis club like gets cuffed and stuff for some for some crime then they just like

take out the Kiwanis in general. It's like, no, you selectively choose how you want to apply it. You know what I mean? It is really lazy shit. It's just so dumb. It's like taking down... I rob a bank out here, and then they come book

you two as accessories, and you didn't even know I was going to do it. You know what I mean? That would be funny, though. Both a funny bit and a funny... if you got elected to da like that's your first priority like we're taking out the kiwanis yeah the lions club the fuck stop bad hombres the lions club i don't know if it's a good example not to make light of it if not y'all can cut it out but it's like it's like you know i don't separate my laundry when i do laundry i know you're supposed to you know what i'm saying you're supposed to separate the whites and the darks man like that's like just throwing all of that shit in and just

trying to get the shit over with as soon as fucking possible man like you're not doing any work you don't effort in it i mean the thing about it is like these police like departments they get so many resources to like do and to be fair like no no they get they get more some some municipalities get way more or way more funded overfunded than they should be others like like they don't get shit right either but either way it's like you know atlanta at least like these motherfuckers get so much money and like they still can't do their fucking job right so it So it's like, what are you paying these people for, man? Ladies and gentlemen, it's a new day in Lexington, Kentucky.

We're going after the Rotary Club. These sons of bitches have gotten by with it for too long. Too long. Too long. Justice may take a while, but it's not blood. They're bringing in all these internationals. It's got to stop. It would be fun to get elected to DA as like a progressive prosecutor. Wasn't that the thing?

Isn't Krasner, isn't he a progressive? Larry Krasner, Chesa Boudin as well in LA, I think. See, if I got elected to that It would be Kind of an experiment really Like we're going after the Freemasons Anyone associated with occult activities Yeah We're going after the odd fellows

They just go down the whole list here The Knights of Columbus Those assholes are getting theirs See how long it would take before I got assassinated Maybe I wouldn't. Maybe they've lost their influence. Maybe. Who knows?

Hold on. You wouldn't get assassinated. I don't think you'd get assassinated. I think they would go along with it. They would go. They need some relevance. You're so powerful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's funny that Young Thug's the target of that. The one guy in rap that like notoriously does the gender bending thing and calls his homeboys his babies and like all that like you know like kind of the you know the playfully um uh i don't want to say homoerotic because i know he's like, like playfully queer. Like he's like, he wore the dress. Like wears the dresses. Yeah, right, right, right.

Yeah, that kind of thing. Go after the Migos, man. They fake as fuck. Not to say there's not any like queer gay gangsters. Definitely, there's a lot of those. But, you know, I'm just saying it's just kind of interesting that like the subject of that

is probably like the least traditionally masculine or whatever. Yeah. Hip hop or whatever. That's the dude you want to go after for a minute. Yo, you know he was supposed to... He was talking to Elon Musk, too, about building a city called Slime City in Atlanta. Oh, no. Really, this is this man's only crime.

Collaborating with Elon Musk. Yeah. really this is this man's only crime collaborating with yeah yeah if there's anything to be brought to account for it's that yeah it's a new day in atlanta we're going after anybody who's ever collaborated with elon musk yeah it's when i was the manager of summit City, I had that, I remember loving that 1017 Thug album. One of the first young thug tapes that came out. And I'd sent an offer to his manager of 2,000 bucks to come play Summit City in Weinsberg. And they had accepted the hold. And he had that song Danny Glover come out like a week later. And he just kind of like really kind of took off from there so needless to say that didn't happen but it it's funny to imagine an alternate universe

where young thug would have been in wattsburg with men terrence like just on a wednesday night at summit city you know yeah yeah playing the mixtape hits for a bunch of coal miners and god damn man in a better world yo maybe he wouldn't be up and caught up in this bullshit. That's the dream of Slime City, ultimately. We're going to bring coal miners to supply the energy for Slime City. Like the city of Metropolis from that movie or some shit like that. That's right. Yeah.

You just go mine coal in like a dress and like a slack chain. Just power the whole city. Yeah, just power the whole city. That'd be so tough. I'm really wondering how the Bitcoin, because that was a big, Bitcoin is crashing this week.

That's what I heard. That's putting it light. But I wonder how the Bitcoin mines around us are faring. Because for five minutes, that was the hottest new thing around. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because it's like everybody was hopped up and thinking that was going to create at least some jobs. And it's like, it's so funny.

It's just like, it was the only thing that we've been yapping about that we were proven right about so quickly yeah i mean like like real quick yeah yeah you know what i think about too i think about all the celebrities that were like hawking that shit you know yeah like it seems like now they're like nowhere to be found like they just like sat down real quiet where's jimmy fallon at all those cats yeah right right yeah i saw that one that one headline going around that was like the the nft once worth 350k just sold for 115 bucks and even that's probably generous it's not even the ounce of weed man god damn yeah yeah right you're promised all gary gary v promised you all this prosperity and you

can't even buy an ounce with that fucking ape money god damn uh i don't know if y'all want to talk about it but i saw it right before uh i got on that uh that joe mansion uh said he's not voting against the woman's reproductive, I forget what the name of the bill is called, but it was supposed to expand Roe v. Wade. He's not voting for it or he's not going to vote against it? He's not going to vote for it. He's not voting in favor for it.

He said that he would be in favor, which is why I don't understand. He said he would be in favor in codification of Roe v. Wade, but he's not in favor of this bill because it's too expansive so i'm like okay but if this bill is like a like a building block to roe being codified which is even bullshit i think they could do it right now if they wanted to then why would you be against it you know what i mean i love how that motherfucker has aphasia all of a sudden when it's like yeah i just think the codification is um you know uh the cats in the cradle and the silverstone so forth. Well, there's a headline in the New York Times I just saw.

Every week I get on this show, and you two are naysayers. You wanna talk about how great everything is, or how bad everything is, and how absolutely shitty, we live in the hellscape. We live in hell. Blah, blah, blah. It's a dystopia, man. Yeah, that's what you two say.

You're always, all the time, being naysayers. What is it called? Balls and Strikes? Yeah, you're always calling... I don't say that, Aaron. We're not naysayers. We just read them as we seize them. Read them as we see them, exactly. Well, how do you read this one?

This is in the New York Times. For tens of millions of Americans, the good times are right now. Who are we to question one's lived experience is the first thing that comes to mind. Who am I to question the New York Times opinion writer? Their houses are piggy banks, their retirement accounts are up, and their bosses are eager to please.

When the boom ends, everything will change. Whose retirement account is up right now? Who the fuck is this person talking about? This is an era of great political division and dramatic cultural upheaval. Much more quietly has been a time of great financial reward for a large number of Americans. For the 158 billion who are employed, prospects haven't been this bright since men landed on the moon. As many as half of those workers have retirement accounts that were fattened by a prolonged bull market in stocks. There are 83 million dollars.

Couldn't that just go away instantly like if there's like a a sudden crash won't those pensions just immediately be fucking sold off or like right i don't understand how that works but also i don't think it's like such a good thing to say like oh people haven't been this prosperous since the last time we put a guy on the moon like fucking 40 years ago or some shit like that you know what i mean like that isn't that doesn't sound too good man what they mean is everybody from a bourgeois petite bourgeois class is having the time of their life right now because you know like poor and working people have just never reached the class strata to even participate in all these markers of prosperity that they're even talking about so it's like

they're kind of their's kind of on the scale when they're saying this a little bit. Yeah, there are 83 million owner-occupied homes in the U.S. At the rate they have been increasing in value, a lot of them are in effect a giant piggy bank that families live inside. This boom does not get celebrated much. It was a slow-build phenomenon in a country

where news is stale within hours. It has happened during a time of fascination with schemes of the truly wealthy, see Elon Musk, and it gets the backdrop of an increased inequality. If you were unable to buy a house because of spiraling prices, the soaring amount of homeowners' equity is not a comfort. The queasy stock market might be signaling that the boom is ending. A slowing economy, renewed inflation, high gas prices, and rising interest rates could all undermine the gains achieved over the years.

But for the moment, this flood of wealth is quietly redefining retirement, helping fuel Silicon Valley, and stoking a boom in leisure and entertainment. I'm not seeing the boom in leisure and entertainment. I mean, the movies suck. The movies are awful. Nobody goes to concerts anymore.

Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Or if they do go to concerts, like, they die and, like, do some Astro Roll type shit. But, like, yo, that's a sacrifice to... Yo, I just wanted to say, I fucking hate articles like this, man, where they're like, okay, I know you read the headline and you're like, bullshit. I know you read the headline and you're like bullshit, but I'm going to show you how all of the things that you, that you are going to acknowledge to refute me, how yes,

they are true. Yes. This is how the economy fucking sucks. But have you considered when they do like the 180? I fucking hate that shit, bro. I know exactly what you're talking about. Cause you,

you, you open an article like this expecting to sink your teeth into some red meat, right? Like you're like, hell yeah. I'm ready to dine out. I have my Lugers and my steak and my fork and my A1 over here. Instead, you get an overdone steak and the waiter's telling you, well, this is what you ordered. At least I called that shit a hockey puck, man. That's what that shit is.

Right. The queasy stock market, yes, signaling the boom, is ending. More than 4.5 million workers voluntarily quit in March, the highest number since the government started keeping the statistic in 2000. A few years ago, the monthly total was between 3 million and 3.5 million. Maybe it's easier to focus on the negative, but a huge number of people,

maybe 40 million households, have been doing pretty well, said an economist. You'd have to go back to the late... Said an economist. That was my editorial. I'm not going to commit to which one, but just know sources say credentials. It was Dean Baker

who's like a left lib. You'd have to go back to the late 1990s to find a similar era. Before that, the 1960s. This widespread wealth throws light on why the number of workers who say they expect to be working past their early 60s has fallen below 50 for the first time it accounts for the abundance of one billion dollar startups known as unicorns more than a thousand now up from about 200 in 2015

i mean uh but doesn't that kind of like hint that maybe some kind of precipitous decline is coming soon i don't know it's also did they said that like people uh more people are saying that they don't expect to work over the age of 60 i don't know i feel like it's either because i mean i don't know when you ask me about my future and what i'm gonna be doing especially at like 60 that's not even a question like i don't know i might be working i might not be working you know what i'm saying like i don't feel, that's not even a question. Like, I don't know. I might be working. I might not be working. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't feel like that's like a fair question.

I might be, I might be, I might be on my way to fall into a vat of boiling oil at Disney world. Okay. Bitch, I might, I might be crushed in a fucking cart return. I don't know.

Bitch, I might be underwater by then. I don't know. Bitch, I might be underwater by then. I don't know. Shit. A lot of variables there. You can never predict the future. There's the other thing. It offers a reason for the rise in interest in unionizing companies from Amazon to Apple

to Starbucks as hourly workers seek to claim their share. And it helps explain why Dwight and Denise Mackinson just returned from a 12-day cruise through Germany. Our net worth has reached the millionaire level due to our investments, which was unfathomable when we were married 40 years ago, said Mr.

Mackinson, 76, who has retired from the Air Force. No, I'm sorry, from the U.S. Forest Service. Big difference in agencies there. The couple who live in Idaho have company. There are 22 million U.S. millionaires, up from fewer than 15 million in 2014.

Wait, wait, wait. How many millionaires are in the U.S.? There are 22 millionaires. 22 million U.S. millionaires, up from 15 million in 2014. Wait, there's 22 of the 300 million people in the United States 22 million are millionaires? Apparently, yeah. Yo, what? Ah, that's ins...

No, that's not right. What? I'm calling absolute fucking horse shit on that. I actually think I believe this. 22... I believe that. They're talking about equity in their homes and everything.

Like, they're... Yeah, I think that this is partially why class politics in this country is so brain-addled. Because we have a massive. We have too many millionaires. We have too many, we have a very solid like upper middle class, you know what I'm saying? That is true because people are living a lot longer

and then people, you got like, you know it used to be the case that you'd be a pensioner and then they'd give you your pension then you'd die like five years after you retired but people live like 20, 30 years after retirement years after exactly now exactly so those people are super wealth exactly yeah yeah that makes okay that makes sense because yeah goddamn i guess it's probably just like the probably disproportionately in like the boomer class i would guess well it's exactly the people that he's like talking about like the people that he's like talking about, like the people that he's like the Air Force guy or whatever.

Yeah, it's people that have skilled jobs. And this also, this is the case. That is insane that about 15% of the country are millionaires. Yeah. I would have guessed less than 1%. No, that's why that the whole 99%, like we are the 99%, like that got infused into a whole generation of activists and made us all think that there really was the super super wealthy and then a vast sea of the super poor well but you're exactly right but there there is a massive like upper middle yes the

buffer class and these are all skilled workers who like built this up through years of retirement and like pension i'm going to reverse course on this i do believe it and i'll tell you the reason i believe it is because there's a there's this is the only country in the world where the motherfucker can make five million dollars a year and they'll swear up and down their middle class all right all right no you're not no the fuck you're not i was in the group text with some friends of mine who were way more successful than i ever dreamt of being and every one of these mothers motherfuckers would be like, oh yeah, I made 2.6, you know, it's just like ghost shit that you wouldn't admit in public,

you know what I mean? I made 2.6 million last year. Yeah, I mean, we're middle class. It's like everybody thinks that they're goddamn middle class, and it's like, no, you're not. Well, I remember this being a kind of thing of debate

during the Bernie years. Like people saying, oh, it should actually be like the 90% versus the 10% or something. I mean, people years, like, people saying, oh, it should actually be, like, the 90% versus the 10% or something. I mean, people would be like, that's ridiculous, blah, blah, blah, like, you're being divisive, you're creating, when in all actuality

it's really more like the 85% and the 10%, and then, like, the 4%, and then the 1%. And then the 1%. Well, like, yo, it's like this, like, it's like these people like this buffer class to kind of keep that like myth of like the american dream alive right because like these are the people that like people will point to and say well you see how this person did it you know i'm

saying they played by the rules and did x y and z and like they're like 22 million out of 300 million that's like i want to know like the the the rate in other countries because i feel like that's unheard of and unique right yeah i would also like to know that there is i don't know if there's another country on planet earth and there's some old ass fucking countries yeah like the uk i don't know if there is another country with 15 to 20 of its population are that wealthy the uk probably got like 22 actual millionaires. That's the real family. The UK has two and a half million millionaires.

That's fucking insane. For a country the size of Alabama? Jesus. It's fucking nuts. I thought it would have had more given they colonized 90% of the world but that's Yeah That tells you how much capitalism

Actually is fucking dog shit because You were a country the size of Alabama That ruled the world for 400 years And you don't even have as many Millionaires as the United States who you birthed Pussy shit I don't know I want to know how many Millionaires are in Russia dates who you birthed. Pussy shit.

I want to know how many millionaires are in Russia. Oh, shit. That's a good question. No, Betty, a better question is how many billionaires did we put there? List of countries by number of million. Okay, there's an actual full Wikipedia page. Okay, United States is at the top with 22 million. China is number two

with 5 million. No one even comes close to with five million no one even comes close to the u.s no one even comes fucking nobody even comes close percentage of of of this is the real interesting statistic though is the percentage of millionaires of the u.s adult of the percentage of uh percentage of millionaires of adult population. So, the United States is 8.8. Australia is 9.4. Switzerland is 4.9 with 1 million millionaires.

But that's, you know what I mean, that's like per capita. You know what I'm saying? Pretty crazy. But United States has the vast majority. United States has a 39% share of global millionaires. No one even comes close. The next is China. Goddamn. And then Japan is number three.

Germany is number four. UK is number five. Yo, this country is, bro, number one. Consider this. Has there ever been a country that's facilitated downward mobility this quickly? Because think about this. A motherfucker working in a factory in 1939 retires a millionaire motherfucker working in a factory in 2021 has to go uh dance for his dinner in front of congress

with an eat the rich jacket on otherwise he's going to retire indigent but if you retired in that sweet spot like there was a window where if you retired in it between like 1985 and 1995 or 2000. Around the time we were being born. Like those were the glory years for your pensions. That's why they have built up this massive block of fucking wealth in the middle of the class structure. I feel like. There's so many things that have become abundantly clear to me just now. there's so many things that become abundantly clear to me just now what you just said that example that's in the span of somebody's fucking lifetime yo

like if you think about like you think about like just like the example of like you know like the soviet union or china and the way that they were able to like industrialize and lift like millions hundreds of millions of people out of poverty right and just the united states alone man coming off of like world war ii right with that boom and within like the span of somebody's lifetime you know what i'm saying you got so much downward mobility that people got a whole like multiple jobs at a level before where your father could have been like a fucking like a milk boy a milkman or some shit you don't say without going to college i'm serious a motherfucker could not even make boats, but just make a part of a boat in a factory somewhere

and retire with like five mils. You know what I mean? Oh, man, that hurts a lot. A motherfucker that just makes rear view mirrors for cars, and he's like, yeah, I retired in 93 worth $7 million. Like two houses. That's the thing about if we actually had like a political entry, if there was actually a political vehicle attached to unionization efforts

and like Amazon and stuff, it's like this sounds like a good bargain, but it's ultimately kind of reactionary, right? Because like if you buy into that, the whole pension scheme and all that, you're preserving the system as it is, right? And you're not changing anything. You're just getting yours and going home, which is understandable.

I can't really, I can't fault anybody for taking that deal. I mean, I'd probably take that deal. God damn. I mean, let me ask y'all a question. Unless there was a larger culture of political you know communization and other stuff let me ask y'all a question dead ass serious would you trade your years to the day you'd have to be like i just wake up tomorrow and be 68 years

old millionaire uh-huh or would you rather just gut it out as as you are i'd do it i would do it yeah i would do it i would y'all would like wake up turn 68 tomorrow i'm just be a millionaire i just want to be old man i'm so i just like i do it i do it i would do it because i'm trying to hasten i could wake up and be poor poor 68-year-old. I don't care. I just want to take a whole salary. You would die quicker at a poor 68-year-old. One question real quick. The caveat is like, yo, would that mean that any of the ailments that I have right now at 31, at 68. They're intensified and your dick doesn't work without pills.

Fuck, dude. But I'm like a millionaire though. But you never have to worry about anything again financially. Oh, bro. Hell yeah, I would do that shit. I would worry about it. Let me tell you, you motherfuckers do that Faustian shit and drop dead of a heart attack like in a way. Immediately. Wake up at 68, have a heart attack

by lunch. You're rich and then like the news that you're rich and 68 because you were 30, whatever, yesterday. Then you're like, oh, God, it's too much for me to handle. Trip over, like, a house slipper and hit my head and die or some shit. Yeah. I don't understand that, though. Like, their houses are piggy banks. Like, only if they can sell those houses.

Like, you're assuming that, like, there's a market for people to buy these fucking houses. And we saw how that worked in 2008, so, like, what are you talking about? You know what I mean? All my friends that are, like, buying houses and shit right now, I'm just gonna go up to them when they, like, have their house for them,

and I'm gonna say, it's a good-looking piggy bank you got here. How much you got in there? And then I'll take a hammer to it, like, I'm gonna crack the piggy bank, get the piggy bank. Get the money. It's a time of prosperity, a time of abundance,

and yet it doesn't seem that way, said Andy Walden, vice president of enterprise research at Black Knight, which analyzes financial data. That's some sus ass shit. I can't listen to any motherfucker from a plate. What do you call enterprise? Black Knight is what it was called. Fuck no. vice president of enterprise

research get the fuck out of here man oh god man this really has this changed me this discussion i really had no i mean i knew there were like a here's here was my my idea of the the landscape there's this very tiny class of, like, hyper-rich assholes that are just ruining everything. And I know this is going to be like, why do I turn to this guy for analysis? And my question is, yes, why do you? And I answer your question with a question.

But, like, that really explains a lot of things. Like when people say America is a wealthy country, they're not just talking about like our access to creature comforts. They're talking about there's just a lot of fucking rich people here. 22 million to be exact. You know what this was kind of like? Bob, I was going to say, this was kind of like for me, because Tom, I'm also having a revelation. It's like a similar thing is when you learn that like it's

not really just the military recruiting poor people like as much as it is a military class that's become entrenched in this country you know what i'm saying so it's like on the same note it's like yeah these this millionaire class is like entrenched but and i don't want to go on too long about it but i wonder though like that that wealth can't last forever right that wealth is not like entrenched the way it is with like you know i'm saying like industrial type of families this is like wealth that's been built up through like speculative capital it can't last forever can it like these people are going to be like out of a home soon right these are next these are people with somebody named mumsy in their family a lot of times that's true but also not even that it's also more than just like like the preps and stuff like the old money people

it's like we were talking about also people that took advantage of the united states having a like a monopoly on manufacturing post-world war and This is like mids money, though. Like, old money is like the manufacturing. New money, I guess, is like the Elon Musk and shit. This feels like the venture capitalist. This feels like mid money, you know? Yeah. Like, literally, it's mids money.

In a way, it's like, I never thought I'd say this, and I hate Elon Musk, and few people make my blood boil like him, but at least his dad got their fortune from being a criminal. Yeah, from being a virulent, like, racist. Yeah, yeah. I don't condone the racism, but I do condone

fortunes made by crime. I love the way this is framed. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve Chair, recently warned that there were too many employers chasing too few workers, saying the labor market was tight to an unhealthy level. But for workers, it's gratifying to have the upper hand in looking for a new position or career.

I love that. Guys, the labor market, it's tight to an unhealthy level. These workers, they're starting to get some ideas. Oh, my God, dude. It's like the labor movement, in a weird way, the labor movement of that era we're talking about created all this wealth. They did, yeah.

They did. You know what I mean? They did. They became a part of the state apparatus and the status quo. Yeah. And that's, I don't know, that's why it's good that the Amazon Labor Union did, like, the AFL-CIO and everything.

But I hope that they don't get absorbed into that eventually because that's, well, him and Biden punching each other on the arms, that is not a great sign. But, like, you know, I hope that doesn't happen. You know, you can see a situation in which. Well, see, like, what I was thinking about it, too, is, like, I know there were people criticizing him for that. But it's like, and I know I said it all along, but it's kind of like, yo, I would trust, hopefully, that, like, his convictions are, like, he has commitment to his convictions, you know. And two, like, I don't know. It's like, he's already kind of said, like, you know, that this is not about him.

This is about, like, everybody else and da-da-da-da. But I don't know. It seems he does have a healthy skepticism of it. I just know when the Democrats come around doing the buddy-o-buddy Amazon better watch out shit. Am I right, Chris? We're going to get up there and cause some trouble. Biden's tactics remind me of every old bastard around here that's trying to get one over on you. Oh, hell yeah. Oh, hell yeah.

Oh, hell yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, that's not a criticism of Chris Smalls or the Amazon labor union at all. I just know how Biden et al. He's going to start pulling the wool over his eyes. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. The equity available to homeowners reached nearly $10 trillion at the end of 2021,

double what it was at the height of the 2006 bubble. According to Black Knight, for the average American mortgage holder, that amounts to $185,000 before hitting loan-to-value tripwires. The figure is up $48,000 in a year, about what the average American family earns annually. Even very new homeowners feel an economic boost. Oh, hmm. In 2006, homeowners cashed in their equity.

Sometimes they used the money to double down on another house or two. In 2022, there's little sense of excess. One reason is that lenders and the culture in general are no longer so encouraging about that sort of refinancing, but owners are also more cautious. Let's see. Brian Carter, an epidemiologist in Atlanta, said he and his wife had about a quarter million dollars

in equity in their home but didn't plan to draw on it. Those who take a boom for granted often get upstaged by reality. In May 2000, the entrepreneur Kurt Anderson said raising money for a media startup called Inside was as easy as getting laid in 1969. That was a few weeks after the stock market peaked. 17 months and one merger later, Inside shut down.

Mr. Anderson clarified in an email that he did not actually have sex until the 1970s. Damn. All right. Got to hand it to that writer. Pretty good. Anyways, head into that writer. That was pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah, it was pretty good.

Anyways, I don't know. Interesting. We just got a lot of rich people in this country. We got a lot of men. A lot of rich people. Damn, dude. 22 million out of 300 million. It is interesting.

That is who the Democrats are obviously going to be gunning for now, right? That's their natural constituency. And it's been that, obviously, for 20, 30 years, even longer than that. But I think it's interesting. Like, one of the things they keep coming back to in this article is, like, no one wants to talk about this. No politicians want to take credit for it or talk about it. It's like, gee, I wonder why. That would give the whole game away, right?

Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, Biden is kind of like i don't know man in little ways they always reveal like who they really are like it's like that self-melting quote from earlier speaking the quiet part out loud like biden talking about like uh oh we're going after inflation or whatever whatever he's trying to pivot to now when like people are like yo there's like covid like there's roe v wade but it's like it's like this this kind of language of class politics that only appeals to people who give a shit about that stuff you know yeah it's like the the various political parties they they can't openly court the 22 millionaire 22 million millionaires

court the 22 millionaires because that would blow up their whole idea that everybody is this virtuous worker. We all know we're temporarily embarrassed millionaires, but that's only through social experience because everyone has a cousin or an aunt that if they aren't millionaires they know someone who is it's like you there's like six earlier we're talking about six degrees of separation six degrees of school shootings there's also like six degrees of

millionaires like you know you know someone who's a millionaire or something you've heard of them so you're like yeah that's the thing for sure right that's the thing that keeps you motivated our age like our conception of millionaire is just somebody that's like cash rich. Right, right, right. Like gauche and like has all these sort of like inconspicuous markers of, you know, wealth and whatever. But it's actually just like people that own houses

and worked during the right period in American history. Right. That are still alive, like you said, Aaron. It's not been that long. It's just like somebody's lifespan. Right. God damn man i don't know dude like i just think about it and i'm like like my mom like you know or older folks people like my mom's age they'll always say like you know uh people my age it's like oh but you guys could have done this x y and z you know and in my mom's case it's even like look at how

drastically different things are now where my parents immigrated here under a reagan administration where reagan a republican gave like these newly arrived immigrants amnesty you know what i'm saying a fat like a pathway to citizenship and that's ronald reagan a fucking republican and then like look at today so it's just like, I don't know, man. It's like, yeah, motherfucker. Of course you were able to like work, work a job, not even have to go to college, work at a factory and buy a home, you know, like the landscape was incredibly different then. Let me read you the last three paragraphs from this article.

This is interesting. The logic households have more cash than debt for the first time in decades, which is theoretically good. But all that money is encouraging spending, which is propelling inflation, which is forcing the Fed to push up interest rates. The result, a recession late next year. Ashley Humphries, 31, feels prepared for most any scenario.

Six years ago, she was a graduate teaching assistant making $12,000 a year. Now she earns a low six figures as a senior product manager for a parking app developer in Atlanta. I've lived out some of my childhood dreams like dyeing my hair vibrant colors and seeing Phantom of the Opera from the front row. She got a dog, put a bit of her income in the stock market, and bought a Tesla. She just left on a Caribbean cruise. Two of them, in fact, one after the other. You know what's so weird?

Is America the only country where people just have to do meaningless things before they die? Yeah. Like have a bucket list? Yeah, it's like, oh, I can't die. I've not read American Pastoral by Philip Roth yet. yeah like have a bucket list where like in other countries the bucket list is like I can't die I've not read American Pastoral by Philip Roth yet

you know what I mean you're right is America the only country with a bucket list like a bucket like yeah but like

it's so fascinating if I just wanted to dye my hair purple and go watch Hamilton it's like Hamilton but if you didn't

get to do those things, would you die without a sense of purpose? I didn't get to see Hamilton from the front row. I didn't get to dye my hair with Kool-Aid like Kurt Cobain. I didn't get to watch all 25 seasons

of Survivors and shit like that. Oh, God. Oh, shit. I never it. Oh, shit. There you go, Terrence. I never got to go to Colonial Williamsburg. That's probably good as noticing it.

That is just kind of telling, though, isn't it? Yeah. We don't consider our life as having had any value for what we've done. Uh-huh. The things you can check off on the list.

Just little random things that you can check off a list is how you measure your years here. Just an empty, vapid society, really, with a lot of millionaires and a fascist movement.

Yeah, I found that. Fascist political movement. Not good. Not even creeping fascist. Not even straight up just here. Yeah, not good. Well, if you want to increase our equity, or whatever the fuck,

so we can retire in 60... If you want to give us some goddamn dignity in our golden years. Goddamn self-respect. Yes, we do have a Patreon. It's at P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com

slash Trailblazer Workers Party. Just give us a little bit of dignity. Give us a little bit. A cup of coffee. Get you an extra episode every week and a kind word said about you. Yeah, that's's right Here at HQ But you know what we should do here

Like you know Remember like at the end of every episode We used to Back in the early days when we were coming up When we were cutting our teeth We've forgotten about those that got us here But like here just a quick Accounting of people that Subscribed this week But here, just a quick accounting of people that subscribed this week.

Let's give you a little shout-out here before we sail off into the sunset. Damn, this could be you next week. Shout-out to Mr. Trent Dunbar, Nicole Barnett, Eve G. Let's see who else. Christopher Rufo. What the fuck? Christopher Rufo. What? Let's see who else Christopher Ruffo What the fuck Christopher Ruffo Let's see

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Shout out to Brad Gosser Brian Quimby Street Fight Radio Brian Quinby, Street Fight Radio Brian Quinby, Street Fight Radio and the three people who spell their name in Cyrillic who said to me actually Tom, Vlad does not translate to Bob

it translates to authority or ruler or conqueror. The funniest thing about that is I had a dream last night that we were vindicated, that someone said that Vladimir actually was Robert. So I'm believing the visions in my mind. I'm believing the dream, yeah. Shout out to Alexander Chaney, also Canadian.

Seems like we're making some inroads up north. Madeline Montag. Oh, yeah. Craig Hoffman. Chris DeBoff. That's a tag. Terry Adams, judge executive of Letcher County. Yeah.

Sam Wright. The whole government of Letcher County, really. So many more that, yeah. Shaheen Barzager. Ethan Fudge. Ethan Fager. Ethan Fudge. Ethan Fudge. Ethan Fudge. Matt Kingberger.

Samuel Ordonez. All good names. All people that I'm sure that I would like if I met them in real life. Hell yeah. Andrew Yanowski. All good names. Anyway, we'll get back to that little tradition. But thank you, each and every one.

And if you didn't want to be doxxed before our audience, just send me a message and say, hey, man, I appreciate the gesture. Send me a message within the next 30 minutes. Take that off there, and I'll call Terrence and be like, man, I didn't mean to fuck up my man's Samuel Ordonez like that. But, no, really, special thanks to all y'all. Sergio Gomez. I didn't mean to fuck up my man's Samuel Ordonez like that. But no, really, special thanks to all y'all. Sergio Gomez.

Isn't that Gunna's name? Sergio Kitchens. No, Sergio Kitchens. Kitchens. Way better than Gunna. Way better stage name, man. Sergio Kitchens. Sergio Kitchens in the kitchen. There's so many things.

Whipping in the kitchen. There's so much you could do with that last name, and he's just abandoned. Who am I? He's doing okay. Right, he's a millionaire. I mean, there is the indictment. He's one of the 22 billion.

Yeah, that is true. All right, thanks for listening this week, everybody. We'll see you next time. Go over to Patreon. Bye-bye.