Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews 6/29/21 – Stupidity Reigns

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

 Every week we seem to get more and more Dumbass-Heavy, and tonight’s no different, as we discuss Toyota’s folly, Trump’s rally, Arizona’s recount, the saddest party in gun-nut history, and more. Luckily we will be pulled from the Dummy Depths by a conversation with guest Nick Hanauer about wealth inequality and wage suppression. Join us. Support the show

Hey, everybody, welcome back and happy skews day to you. Today is June 29th, 2021. I'm Trey Crowder and that's Mark AGO. What's up, Mark? What's up, Trey? Have you been on a plane yet since the COVID's winded down or whatever? I've taken one flight, but it was months ago and it was kind of cool because it was a ghost town. Nobody was on it.

I had a row all to myself, you know, so I didn't. minded. I imagine that's ending, though. Yeah, airports are busy again, and the airlines so I flew a couple times in the past month and my flights went pretty fine, except they got moved around a couple

hours one way, but my mom's flight to come out to LA a couple weeks ago, got moved a whole fucking day, right? It got moved up like 12 hours from mid-Friday morning to mid-thursday evening. And apparently that shit's happening a lot and people are furious. Like airlines are grounding flights

and they're blaming it on us. Apparently, so what they did is they took the bailout money and pocketed it and fulfilled the letter of the law by, because the deal was you keep your employees employed and you get this bailout money, right? But they fired all their contractors. They just only kept their salary employees. Now they don't have enough contractors. And apparently you have to have a bunch of security clearances to work at the airport. Who knew? So they can't get people hired fast enough.

And apparently, we just have to. deep shit because yeah well i'm not going to lie to you mark you have alarmed me very much with this because i'm not surprised by that but that is upsetting because i was already going to take this opportunity to tell everyone that i'm going back on the road finally doing live comedy shows with uh senior georgia correspondent cori ryan forster and our buddy drew morgan on the well-red comedy tour you go to well-red that's well r ed well-red comedy dot com and check out our our upcoming dates get your tickets we sure would love to see you but now i'm terrified because if i get a flight that's delayed by an entire day that's a real problem so i'm

going to have to be flying in the whole days early and stuff so you know i'm looking forward to that now thank you mark but sincerely thank you that's good to know yeah it's also that sucks yeah it's like how uh how like NBA teams have to leave immediately after game and fly the next town to be in a whole day early in case there any travel problems uh you've got to do that you get leave town a day early i guess what you gotta do okay well we'll see how it goes come see me out there i hope yeah hope to see you all there all right so with us is always producer matt doing his thing this is weekly skews tonight is the night we learn to stop worrying and embrace the dumbassery that's right every week it seems like we spend more and more time on the daily dumbass segment

here at the skews such as the world we live in and so tonight we're just embracing it we've got some top shelf lunacy for you we got everything from demonic pedophiles to to 9-11 aliens and so much more. We also will discuss Toyota's big political gaffe, and then at the midway point, we'll be rescued from the depths of dumbassery by our guest this evening, Seattle Capitalist and Income Inequality Activist.

Yeah, you heard that right. Nick Hanauer, who will join us for a conversation on wage suppression and the reality of the Uber wealthy in this country, and we're very much looking forward to it. Hope you are as well. All that and more on tonight's skews. But we will begin with our first Daily Dumbass. Matt, graphic, please.

Tonight's primary D.D., publisher Simon and Schuster, for rejecting arguably the greatest title in the history of literature. If you don't know what I'm talking about, former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton put out a tell-all memoir entitled, The Room Where It Happened. But it turns out that was not Bolton. preferred title for his book. No, Bolton wanted to call his memoir, quote,

and I shit you not, a hard pounding. And Mark, it's apparently a Duke of Wellington quote that anyone could immediately recognize. And Mark, for some reason, the people at Simon and Schuster, blanched at that suggestion. Do you think they made a mistake? How do you feel about that? Well, I think it was a mistake because that was actually Bolton's third.

choices. First two were digging down the Middle East and South America's hottest and wettest CIA coups. No, he apparently got mad at them. Like when they rejected the title of hard pounding, Bolton got mad and said

that their heads were in the gutter. That no one would view it that way because it was a Duke of Wellington quote, which I believe I saw it earlier, I don't have in front of me right now, but apparently the full Duke of Wellington quote was something like it's a hard pounding gents we'll see in the end who pounds the hardest it's like how much how like we're kind of like up your ass i believe neocon

you have to be like well obviously when most people hear a hard pound me of think of the duke of wellington it's like Jesus crazy now i've said it before on the show but like Donald Trump obviously i'm not a fan but one of the one of the funniest things ever saw him do was when this book first came out, he went on this tirade on Twitter that seemed to be out of nowhere if you didn't know that the book was coming out about John Bolton and it was just so

that a sitting president was like I'm paraphrasing but he was like of all the dumb ass pieces of shit I ever encountered working in the White House. The dumbest, shittiest, quietest, looseriest

one had to be John Bolton. He just went on a like midnight 15 tweet tirade about how much John Bolton fucking sucks and, uh, you know, I enjoyed it. Yeah, I mean, I detect no lies, man. The dude, when he's right, he's right, you know. Yeah. I was still amazed that he wasn't able to like trick Trump into a big war or two. That's like, uh, that's one in Trump's call him.

Yeah, I know, I agree with you. Everybody, I was worried that, uh, literally the whole world was going to, explode once he got you know the codes and everything and so far that didn't happen so yeah at least there's that but speaking of donald j trump he is our first honorable mention for daily dumbass because he left the pedophile tunnels under the white house that's an odd choice you'd think he'd want to close those up being the cracking and all or however all that shit works but no he just left them there what am i talking about well we'll let uh fellow tennesseean and uh long time nemesis of mine. That's not true. But he's just been around as long as I've been around.

Pastor Greg Locke explained that and so many other things in a brief 90 seconds. He brings the hate right here. Matt, play the clip. I don't know why pastors don't talk about this stuff. Well, I do. They don't want to seem crazy. I'm already crazy. people like do you really think it's that much of an epidemic do you honestly believe how am i going to get some more crazy do you honestly believe pastor lot that the military uncovered tunnels beneath the capital building and beneath the white house and in the five-fingered lakes do you really believe that they found kids

yeah both live ones and dead ones and if you disagree with that and if you try to discount that and if you try to cover that and if you try to keep that on the deal, you're just as complicit as Hunter Biden and the best of them bunch

of crack smoking perverts. Oh, man. I mean, dude, bringing it. Great energy. Great stage presence, you know. He's killing it. Yeah, it's killing it.

Dude, they love it. I get for it to be like, I don't know if he believes what he's saying, but like, like are the people who think that's true that there are a bunch of dead kids under the capital and under the White House and all they're doing is posting on Facebook about it right it's that's the most insane thing to me is like I don't know I don't know what I'd do if it was true and I believed it but it seems kind of futile to this be like as the worst thing in the world happening guess I got to go to work and then Facebook you know I don't know yeah that is weird now that you mentioned it because like Louis C.K had that bit about like people bombing of abortion clinics and stuff. He's like, look, they believe that babies are being murdered. I don't. I don't agree with that. But if you believe babies are being murdered, you're going to do some pretty wild shit. And that's sort of where we're at right now. Although, I mean,

I guess, you know, the wild shit they did was storming the Capitol building or whatever. But now that that's already happened, you know, what are they doing now, Mark? What's next? Ah, shit. You go to church and call yourself crazy about it. I don't know. I'd say that, like, I personally, I wish I had his charisma. You know, where we could be be if I had his charisma tree. Yeah, man. Absolutely. Well, there's like, you know, there's a long history of comedians sort of drawing from the stage presence and the methods of preachers, you know, St. McKinnison and also Chris Rock.

And a lot of comics, there's like a lot of overlap between like how you go about it, you know. And like we were saying, this dude for what he's doing, murdering, murdering. They love it. He's up there bringing the noise. Yeah, but obviously full bull. lunatic who's been at this for a while now and shows no signs of stopping. See, where I'm from, my preacher nemesis was Jerry Falwell and then Jerry Falwell Jr. But I'm glad to know you have your own televangelist nemesis.

Well, so what happened was Mark, and I've told the story a million times, but that liberal redneck video I did about the transgender bathroom laws in North Carolina, the first one that went crazy viral or whatever, the direct inspiration. for that was I saw this very Greg Locke type of pastor in the state of North Carolina who posted a rant online standing in the woods by his truck about the evils of transgender people in the bathrooms and our baby girls and all this type of stuff but like not a dick joking sight wasn't even trying to be funny just purifier and brimstone and it had like 15 million views and that literally was the moment that I was like oh there's maybe something here you know

Like, if I make fun of this dude, then maybe there's something to that. So, like, I have always thanked that guy and also his lord for, you know, getting me to this point. Like, it's his fault and or the Lord's fault. But right after that Greg Locke, who's the Tennessee guy, he was in on the transgender thing too all at the same time. So I was shitting on him at the time and yada, yada, or whatever. But it was actually this other dude who started it all. But, yeah, Greg Locke's been on the radar for a while. did ever tell you about the time jerry fowler jr called me a liar

no but what he did do you all right so so when jr jr jr jr jr got let go from his job a little bit a couple weeks ago and it was like oh they're letting go get is an alcohol problem like who knew he had a drinking problem uh i did because one time i posted a story about uh jerry junior like about how everybody hates the fall wells or a lot of people ate fall wells run south virginia because they do stuff like they kept hooters out of lynchburg and they uh remember the c17 movie where elizabeth banks was a stripper do you don't talk about about it. I can't think of the name of it right now. But anyway, that movie came out, and if you want to see it,

you'd drive a little bit of Richmond to see it because I kept that out of Lynchburg. And he's responded to me, called me a liar. And he responded at like 1 a.m. East Coast time where he was named searching himself on Twitter. I was like, yeah, I was like, that dude doesn't drink a problem. That was like 2015. Yeah. No, it's good, you know, good to have enemies like that, in my opinion.

So next up on our list, talking about dumbasses, there was a Trump rally this weekend in Ohio. and he invoked the name of one of Ohio's greatest heroes. Who exactly? Well, it's kind of hard to say based on how he framed it. Matt, if you'll play this clip, pretty funny. And that sent a brave young man from Ohio to a plant. Think of it.

You know who the man I'm talking about is? Who am I talking about? Do you know who it is? The stars and stripes on the face of the moon. who the man is, right? You know? Huh? You know?

To a plant. Yeah. A brave young man from Ohio to a plant. The funniest, like, longest running joke about the fact that Ohio has more astronauts than anyone else is that, like, that's how desperate people are to get as far away from Ohio as possible is that they all go to the fucking moon because nowhere is far enough away. Hey, I love Ohio. I'm just repeating what I've heard. But yes. Yeah.

That's obviously a joke someone from Michigan came out with, so I dig it. For sure. Matt was from Ohio, and he says, I just moved to Seattle. So, yeah, there you go. I don't like, I don't have any problem with it. But I do want to say, like, I'm trying to guess what happened there. I'm guessing his teleprompter says something about another planet, and he misread it. Which he still isn't.

Yeah. So, anyway, then he also forgot the name Neil Armstrong or couldn't read his teleprompter. Yeah, someone please tell me. It turns into a pop. about guy that went to a plant or whatever they're saying somebody to Chernobyl or does he mean like a like a famous tree climber what's he mean a plan have you noticed that people even they're sitting behind him they always put the most lowest of potter sportive behind even people they were sort of trickle out and leave you're seeing footage from there like a bunch he spoke for like 90 minutes a bunch

people left like 30 minutes in the people just like filtering out like it was like you went to like a jimmy buffett concert and you already played cheeseburger so you're just like start bailing right yeah it's just totally wild he's like he's like He's lost it. He's lost it. He's going to have the magic anymore. I don't know. They're still pretty fired up as our next entry will prove our next Honorable Mitchie for Daily Dumbass. Anybody who's upset at the fact that boys will be boys, okay? That's what happened on January 6th. If you don't believe me, hear it from this attendee of Trump's aforementioned rally in Ohio this weekend on this interview with CNN. Do you think your guys who went inside shouldn't have gone inside or what?

Yeah, I don't think anybody should have went inside, but, you know, when you're worked up in that moment and, you know, the adrenaline's pumping, I mean, it just, just happens. Are you worried that we could see more violence? Yeah. I honestly believe it's coming. So, I don't know if you noticed, Ray, but so that clip, that guy was basically confessing to be in there on January 6th and to be in the three percenters, even though he denies going in the building. but the song playing in the background during the whole interview is my own worst enemy by lit which i just the more the more this shit goes on and the more we cover it the more it's like in my head i'm like i don't know maybe i should believe in some type of god or this is a simulation or something it's

just like there's so many things that are too perfect about that like it's always the most on the nose shit the details of this because like you said you got a strain to hear it but it's in the background is the song my own worst enemy by lit playing while this guy explains the rationale for them rushing the Capitol and how it really wasn't that big of a deal. It's unreal.

Why the Power Pop Punk band from 2004? Why? Is it 98? When was it? I don't know. But it's like why, like, how is that the demo for a bunch of boomers? Well, dude, they, I mean, like, it gets so much more egregious than that.

There was that famous viral clip of those people at a Trump rally or wherever that was. Or maybe it was on January 6th, those people rocking out to killing in the name of by rage against the machine. Like, they just, they have no self-awareness where that's concerned at all. That was in Philadelphia, uh, uh, uh, right during their one of the, during the, during the election count, but they're trying to stop the vote. But the, uh, stop the steal or whatever. Um, but yeah, the woman was draped in a blue

louds matter flag singing about those are workforces, the same with burn crosses. It's like, you know, what you're talking about. It's so weird how they can, like, clearly they know the lyrics because they can parrot them, but somehow don't in any way interpret them. Because, like, lyrics like that, some of those who work forces are the same who burn crosses. I don't know how you misinterpret that and turn it into a Blue Lives Matter anthem. Like, if you told me, it's like, oh, they just like the sound of the song because it's hard and get you fucking fired up or whatever. that's one thing.

But if they illustrate that they do know what the lyrics are, how the hell do you explain that level of cognitive dissonance? Mental gymnastics. I think the lyrics they like from that song is, fuck you. I won't do what you tell me, which is their whole ethos, but not like the song is like workers telling it the bosses

and poor people telling it the cops. To mega people, they're like yelling at like prescription bottles and like the weather report. And like, I don't know. wearing shoes and stores and shit. It's like, Jesus Christ, that's what they think freedom is. I've also seen these people who obviously follow Tom Morello, the guitarist on Twitter, whatever.

He's a super liberal always has been. Obviously. And he'll like tweet something and people being his replies be like, hey, you know what? Why don't you just stick to playing the guitar? You know, the sort of like the shut up and dribble type of thing, which is so funny when it's Tom Marello. Because it's like, hey, you know, why don't you just go back to raging against the machine, okay? Like, keep your politics out of it, and you just stick to raging against the machine. That's what we would prefer.

Yeah. These people. I do want to step in for Tom here. I think he'd be offended. You called him a liberal. I think he'd say he's a socialist or a hardcore leftist. But, yeah. I'm sorry, Tom.

Yeah. Oh, all right. Next up on the Daily Dumbass rundown. 90s comics who failed to realize that women not. only be shopping, they also be driving. That's right. Women be driving. And so because of that, infrastructure is really a woman's problem. This is all coming from Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who said, well, pretty much what I just told you, he said, that roads and bridges are a woman's problem, because oftentimes it is the woman, aside from commuting to work, they don't do that,

clearly. Aside from the whole work thing, it's the woman who's out driving around, taking children to schools, doing the shopping, more time she spends on that road, the less time she spends doing things of higher value. The subtext of this was fantastic because, like, there was a meet the press, and Chuck Todd was asking him, like, how do you, how are you going to explain your bipartisan vote for the infrastructure ability or to the hardcore partisans, right, who think you shouldn't make any deal with Biden? And he was basically trying to reframe the infrastructure bill as pro-family values saying like if you if you make better roads for the broads they'll be home to cook you dinner yeah they won't be stuck out

at the stores spending all your money shopping all the goddamn day they'll be able to make it home and make you a casserole and prepare your supplier and make your Manhattan and give it to you as you walk in the door and rub your feet and all that good stuff if they didn't have spend so much time out on these goddamn sorry ass roads. This is one of those things where it's like, dude, we need better roads. You know what I mean? Like spending money on infrastructure, I'm all

for it. And it's just the way they compass. So it's like, you know, the end's justifying the means or whatever. Like if he's going to vote for infrastructure bills, fucking that's great. But it's just hilarious the road they take to get to a, you know, common sense landing point.

It is like you can't just do good public policy. It also has to be filtered through the Bible. You can't. Like, we just had a bridge collapse. a bridge collapsed a couple days ago last week and hurt a few people. Thank God when it was hurt, like their real bad building collapse in Florida. But like the, so you can't just be like, it's bad to get crushed by bridges. It's got to be like, if your wife gets crushed by a bridge, she won't be to birth you any more offspring like God wants.

Yeah. Oh, man. I don't know. There's something else. All right. Next up, we got an update on that crazy-ass Arizona recount. that we talked about a couple times here on the show. Mark, QAnon, that's the subject at hand.

So why don't you take us through some of this? It is hilarious. All right. So the guy we talked about before, the guy from Cyber Ninja Security, who's running the, he has no, he has, he's basically does computer software security,

and he's not very good at it. He doesn't run a studio company that's never done anything before. But he got hired to run the Arizona recount, and there's nothing about elections. And so he's been presenting himself as this is a non-partisan effort to uncover whether there was any vote fraud to restore

faith in the election process, right? That's his pitch for it. But he also, it turns out, he's the star of this documentary that just came out called The Deep Rig, where he, his face is blurred out through the whole thing, but his voice was not disguised. So everyone who saw the trailer automatically knew it was him, even though they make a big point in the documentary. And at the end, the big climax the movie is they unpixelate his face and show you that he's the guy who actually knows about all the fraud. He's a source for all this. But the documentary also called, him in Anon, which of course is Qaeda lingo for one of the people who

deciphers few posts. But even the better part about this is the guy that directed this documentary. His name is Roger R. Richards, so let's call him Triple R. He's directed, he's had another documentary he made three years ago.

And let's just start by showing you the trailer for it because it is something else. Our difference is worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? The Germans had a settlement on the moon, they had a settlement on Mars, and they were doing this as early as 1939.

Between the age of 16 and 17 years old, I was transported to the moon, and after 20 years, I was age regressed, back in time, and then returned to civilian life. Exeterrestrial spacecraft have appeared over nuclear missile installations and have completely powered them down. All right. You know, you get it. 9-11 aliens. In the trailer, it also says that the Nazis had a moon-based anti-colonial Mars in 1939. And the best, well, that's probably the best for it, but the thing that's even,

even crazier probably, but it's not even, let's say it's crazier, who cares? It's not in the trailers. Apparently the documentary argues that aliens were behind 9-11, right? What the government is hiding from us is we were at a hot shooting war with aliens, and we are apparently holding our own, so that's pretty cool. Yeah, now, Mark, you know, listen, you know me, I'm into the alien stuff. I think they're, I think they're here.

But come on, the idea that they were behind 9-11, abject lunacy, anyone could tell. but now that this is from like this new documentary starring the man who's in charge of the Arizona recount that it was brought to you by the man who made the Alien 9-11 documentary again it's like I was saying earlier every single thing related to these people that comes out like every little detail is just more absurdly ludicrous than the than the one before it it's wild can I ask you like when you're triaging your priorities in life, all right? You're a person who believes, again, that we are facing imminent alien invasion and you're worried about boat machines in an Arizona suburb. Right. What, why are you wasting your time on that? Man, you need to be fucking building the laser gun or some shit.

I don't know. Wow. That is a very good point. All right. So, listen, before we get Nick out here in a few minutes, Mark, let's talk a little bit about tax stuff, rich people stuff. the latest pro-publica tax expose, Mark, which said what? So, yeah, so we've talked a little bit about, since the theme tonight is class war a little bit.

There was a pro-Publica, we talked a couple weeks ago, but they were expose of, like, breaking down some tax filings they got a hold of from America's ultra-wealthy. And the latest one is about how Peter Thiel, who was on the board of Facebook and founded the surveillance company, Palletor, well, I can't think of the name of it right now. But he took a $2,000 Roth IRA, which he shouldn't have been eligible for, but he rigged his finances to look like a middle class person. And he turned that $2,000 Roth IRA into $5 billion in untaxable investment income. And it's perfectly legal. What he did is perfectly fine.

It goes against the spirit of the law. And he may be engaged in a little light fraud to what he did was PayPal, which company he founded, went public. he had an analyst price PayPal shares at 0.001 cents of shares so he could buy that many shares with $2,000, which is how he turned it in the $5 billion. But yeah, I don't know what to say about this stuff anymore. It's fucking nuts.

And if you don't know anything about Thiel, he's quite an interesting character. He's a libertarian who thinks women shouldn't be allowed to vote. And he also finances a bunch of lunatic right wing. He's also bankrolling J.D. Vance's Senate campaign. So that's a little bit of a conversation. connection to our world. Yeah, no, the, it seems like they, I don't know, they both play by different rules than

the rest of us, but also that's not enough. They exploit the rules that do apply to everyone else. Do you know what I mean? And so, with that said, let's bring our guest out here. Our guest this evening is Seattle-based capitalist and activist who in 2015 founded Civic Ventures and Civic Action, a group of political troublemakers devoted to ideas, policies and actions that catalyze significant social change by thinking, writing, and acting outside the realm of conventional political discourse, civic ventures, drives the economic

conversation and fundamentally alters the status quo in Seattle, Washington State, and the U.S. at large. He's also my good buddy from way back. That's right. It's Mr. Nick Hanauer. Nick. Are you there? There he is. I think I'm here. Hey, you're here. Good to see you, man. Good to see you. It's been a while. I'm doing good. That's, uh, that's Mark Aegee there, my, uh, venerable co-host. And we're thrilled to have you with us. Good. To see you. So, Nick, uh, the first thing I ever found out about you. So people don't know what the hell I'm talking about. You and I have done some things in the past, made some videos together, things like that. And, uh, but the first thing I ever found out about you was this, um, this article you wrote in 2014. It was that the pitchforks are coming,

where you were essentially trying to warn other Uber wealthy Americans. that listen, guys, income inequality is getting worse and worse. And eventually, they might kill us if we don't back off on this. Like, they're going to, there's a, you know, a breaking point to all of this. And we probably should be more worried about it. Well, Nick, that's seven years ago now. And I'm just wondering where you're at on all that at this point in time. What kind of progress you've made or how you feel about that whole dynamic in 2021.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I feel largely vindicated. You know, I believe the words we used in that piece were a police state or an uprising or both. And I don't think that there's a better way to think about the Trump years other than as effectively a populist uprising. and certainly that 40 years represented, you know, the shit show that, you know, represents that kind of anger, right? You know, I mean, the only thing that recommended Donald Trump to his minions was the fact that he was angry and wanted to burn everything down, and so did they, and that's what elected him. And, you know, I think that the, you know, what he did and the continuing assault on the democracy is all the evidence that you need that most people or are huge, not most people, but certainly a huge proportion of Americans feel like the country doesn't, doesn't, you know, doesn't represent their interests, isn't worth saving. and um or certainly the institutions aren't worth saving and um are you know effectively are ready to burn the whole thing down and and and and um you know for sure if he had been reelected or if he

had been able to claim re-election uh you know like i think things would have gotten really hairy yeah terrible and so um you know i think that we're still on the bleeding edge of that kind of civil breakdown and you know i think it's if you're not worried you're not paying attention yeah it's sort of like one thing the interesting me about that that the sort of ideas is like um when the people have assert assumptions about how america works right it's democracy and it's free and american dream is like right there for me to have and when the when it doesn't work that way people start assuming that there must be some unseen force screwing them right instead of the scene forces.

So it feels like to me conspiracy theories and disinformation or like what's filling that space and that's sort of like bigger picture

what's happening right now that like our institutions are being torn apart because they're not functioning the way they're supposed to

people assume they must be in control under the control of some like unseen force like a pedophile cabal or what have you. Okay but to be fair those institutions

for the last 45 years have been controlled by an unseen force which was the neoliberal economic world order. And, you know, I think that, which is basically a set of ideas and policies embraced by both Republicans and Democrats that enriched the few and savaged the many. And, you know, I think for the purposes of this conversation, I think it's really important to root it in just some numbers and facts. So the median full-time

worker in America today earns about $50,000 a year, if they had been held harmless by the last 45 years of neoliberal economic policy, instead of earning $50,000 a year, they'd earn between $90,000 and $100,000 a year. And that gap between $50 and $100 really explains a huge proportion of the social maladies that we face today. So you just have to think about what the country would be like if the typical person made 100 and not 50, you know, among other things, there would be no government debt because everybody would have paid a lot more taxes. But certainly the kind of pain and anger and difficulty that most citizens face today would be much less. And so, you know, that and that objective reality, right, just the facts of the matter are that for most people, they saw their

lives get shittier and harder, while a few of us, you know, lived beyond the dreams of avarice, right? And, oh, shit, sorry. You good. That's my alarm to make sure that I don't miss. Anyway, and that dis, that, that, you know, that gap, it has effectively shrugly. It has effectively shredded the reciprocity norms that make social cohesion and democracy possible. And so the only, you know, a lot of people, a lot of my colleagues think that you can fix this with politics, like better political leaders and better narratives and stuff like that. And I just don't agree. I think that the only thing that fixes this is economics is actually materially changing the lives of the majority of citizens. Because if people feel like they're getting a fair

shake, if they feel like their kids have a chance, if they feel like they can retire in security and dignity, well, then the institutions are worth saving. But if they're not, right? You can understand logic. For sure. Well, there's like, so recently there's been this whole narrative about people aren't coming back to work at fast food restaurants and things like that. And, of course, like conservatives have had this narrative of, well, they've gotten, why would they? They're getting this unemployment, they're getting these like COVID benefits and it's made them lazy and people don't want to work anymore, right? And they call it a labor shortage. But economically speaking, a genuine labor shortage is addressed by raising wages, right? Because that's how that works.

Exactly. Yeah. But they won't, they won't do that and still continue to push this false narrative. And it seems pretty simple, but they're just, that's how stuck in their ways they are, when it comes to not paying people anymore, right? That's right. You have to remember, I mean, all of this is bullshit. So first, first, if you examine the rate at which folks are able to hire people in the state where they've cut off these UI benefits versus the states that still have them, you will find that the rates at which people can hire people are the same, right? Which leads you to believe that whether people are getting U.I. and it doesn't seem to have any effect on businesses' capacity to hire.

It just, look, it turns out that it is, it takes a long, anybody who's ever hired a bunch of people knows that it takes months and months to sort through candidates to find folks to hire. And, you know, that downturn scared the crap out of most business people and most people constrict, you know, like radically shrank their operations. And now they have to gear up and it's hard and it takes time. time. That being said, I do think that the pandemic forced a lot of people to reexamine their lives and ask a bunch of, I think, important, smart questions about what they want to do with

the rest of them. And it may be very true that a lot of people who had really terrible, shitty jobs before may be pursuing other paths. But, you know, the Republican answer that the way to manage a society is with fear and, you know, sort of privation, that if we just make people poor enough, they'll do whatever we want. Because if they don't come to work for us, they'll starve to death. Like, I don't think that's a great way to govern. Right. Well, it's also this idea of like, you know, they, like, if you work hard, you will succeed in this country. And it's like these people are working their asses off. Right. And can't pay their rent and don't have health insurance and all that. And so they reached the

conclusion of, well, fuck all that. You know, like what is the point of doing that? if that isn't how it actually works. That's right. And so you had a recent article in The Hill talking about wage suppression, keeping the wages down. You've been advocating for a higher minimum wage for years now. Do you think that this whole recent dynamic with people having trouble hiring and this whole conversation surrounding it will make any kind of difference in that regard? Where do you think we're going in terms of wage suppression and the minimum wage general?

Well, I think, you know, the article that I co-authored was with the main author, a guy named Larry Michelle, is one of the country's leading labor economists who did an analysis of why wages didn't keep up. And the conventional view, like the story that most Americans have been told and that they bought over the last 30, 40 years is it's these inexorable, you know, unchangeable forces in economics like automation and globalization and stuff like that that kept people's wages down. And this turns out to be a complete lie that basically people's wages stopped growing because of a set of very deliberate things, a bunch of very powerful people did in the service theoretically of growth to actually suppress wages. So if the minimum wage had tracked productivity gains. Today, it'd be about $22 an hour. And obviously, a bunch of people

worked super hard to make sure that did not happen, right? Let me remind you that if you work in it, if you, if you're a tip worker, the national minimum wage is $2.13 cents plus tips, which is suspiciously close to slavery. I mean, at what point, 213 is almost zero, right? Like, It's kind of crazy. And, you know, that piece of work was important because it showed people that this didn't happen to us. We did it to ourselves effectively. And that's bad news.

The good news, of course, is you can undo it. You can enact a new set of policies that can substantially increase wages for folks. And we should. And the gap between what folks. folks in the bottom 90s are making and what they should make is about two and a half trillion dollars per year, which is the amount of money you could transfer before you felt like you had gone too far. And the $15 minimum wage, just for argument's sake, is in the range of about $450 billion, if you implemented it nationally, of that $2.5 trillion. So even if you did that,

you've only taken a teeny bite out of the real problem. I was going to say, like, In your Hill article, you point out that there's a 43% gap between productivity and median compensation, right? And you also started pushing for a $15 minimum wage, I think, in 2013, which, of course, inflation would make that $17, $18, $19 by that or whatever. So, like, that's all that, even that fight for $15 is like a good example of the productivity gap because it's already old, right? No, that's right.

Yeah, we started, the first time we talked about a $15 minimum wage was in the fall of 2012. Wow. And, you know, and we're nowhere near implementing that nationally, obviously, although we've made a huge amount of progress and probably moved to $150, $200 billion a year in the states where we have enacted it. But there is so far to go to get the typical working person whole again. And, you know, that's, again, that's the bad news. The good news is that, you know, these are not revolutionary steps. this is the frustrating part is like we could very easily fix most of these problems and would rich people like me make a little bit less yeah we'd make a little bit less but we don't have to

tear the whole country down to get everything back on track if rich people paid a little bit more in tax and big corporations were required to pay people enough to get by without food stamps and we did three or four other things you know you could you get to a trillion a half to two trillion dollars pretty, pretty quickly. We do have to unscrew our health care system, which is basically the world's largest price fixing scheme. And that will take a lot of work because there's a lot of embedded interest in keeping things just the same. But I do think that, you know, if we grind away, and certainly, I mean, I will tell you, nobody has been more surprised than me about how damn good the Biden administration has been thus far.

Joe and his team have really done an outstanding job of driving the right narrative and being bold and aggressive. And so I do think that there's some hope here. Well, what about you said? You know, rich people like me, you said. And again, that article we were talking about it, like, listen, the pitchforks are going to come for us. Like, has there been any shift in attitude at all in either direction amongst that cohort, amongst your peers, you know, where all this is concerned?

Yeah, I mean, for sure, for sure. I mean, you know, like, when I started talking about inequality in 2008, 9, 10, people, like, in my peer group, people got defensive and angry. Like, if you even brought it up, people would, first of all, nobody would even agree that there was inequality. and if there was, it's not my fault, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And today, you really have to scrape the bottom of the conservative barrel to get people to be just like, no, it's not a problem. Fuck the poor, right? Like, you know, like my wife and I are members of a very hoity-to-toity group called The Giving Pledge, which is this group of gillianaires who pledged. who pledged to give away at least half their wealth during their time.

And it includes, I don't know, like some double-digit percentage of the richest people in the world was founded by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and so on and so forth. And, you know, in the years that we have been part of that, I have watched a transition from people being like, what, inequality to like people really like talking about it a lot and feeling like we have to do stuff about it. Now, of course, the devil's in the details. I mean, and in the law, it's not in the details. It's in the laws, right?

You have to pass laws. Nothing will change because rich people feel bad, right? That is not good enough. The world does not operate on the kindness of strangers. Yeah, it's that whole like big government thing, you know, that they argue against, but you have to, you know, like the EPA where the environment is concerned. Like, they're not going to do that stuff themselves. They're just not like, you have to force them to do it. You have to regulate these people.

You have to force them to pay it. And that kind of opens up the question of these, you know, loopholes. We were talking about earlier, you know, that pro-Publica article about Peter Thiel and the Roth IRA. Saw that. Yeah. So like. What a douchebag. Right.

So absolutely. On like what do people, regular people, like Mark and I know listeners and most of us, like not truly. grasp about the reality of the over wealthy in this country where all that is concerned, you know, how all that really works. And you wonder why people are pissed off. Right. It's like, you know, I can't pay my rent. And this guy is doing a Roth IRA or a salt away, whatever it is, $5 billion.

Yeah. What a, what a douche. You know, here's the thing is that it, it's just a truism of human behavior. that, you know, given any system, there will be people who try to game it. Right. Right. And the reason that standards are so important is that if you don't hold folks to a high standard, the terrible people, like Peter Thiel, drag down everybody else, right?

Like, there honestly are lots of people who run big companies who would love to pay people 15 or 20 bucks an hour, but if they're direct competitors are only paying them seven bucks, you know you you're you're existentially threatened if you do the right thing um and um that's why it's not really fair to look at a big company and say well how come you don't pay 20 bucks an hour you should do it it's the right thing you know like you know people who run companies do have a responsibility to you know like make sure that they continue to be able to operate and that's why standards you know both on wages and all these other things are so damn important so that effectively protects the good people doing the right thing from the bad people doing the wrong thing.

And, you know, like, I don't know, but I don't think very many of my friends are salting away billions in Roth IRAs. My financial advisors have never come to me with that scheme. You know, like, you've got to, you know, you got to muck around with the worst of the worst to end up there. You got to really, really want it. Yeah, there are always people like that. that, right? Like, there will never not be people like that, and you just have to stay after them and, um, and, and, you know, or ideally put them in jail. The, uh, one interesting thing to be about your, about your various projects, uh, from the, uh, TED talks to the pitchfork op-ed.

It's like your audience is, uh, felt as other wealthy people, right? Which is like, there's an implicit argument in that, that like, basically saying, you guys, you know, we've captured control these institutions and the government, and we need to, we need to, we need to, you basically a hostage negotiation. Well, please release some of the government so they can govern again and we can get things back on track. Is it a fair description? Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, so the, yes and no. So, so what, it's, I think it's really important to underscore for folks how deeply these terrible economic ideas got into the heads of even good people and you know like if you know Shakespeare said first kill all the lawyers and he was right about everything except

the lawyers it was the economy right yeah yeah because look when I started on this path even left-wing Democratic senators believed, like absolutely believed, like in gravity, that if you raise wages, it killed jobs because the economy was, they learned in college that the economy was this parato optimal equilibrium system where if one thing went up, another thing went down. And so good people on our side enacted policies that harmed most people and made a few people rich all the while absolutely believing that it was good for everybody. And that set of ideas, we call neoclassical economics, and the weaponized kind of public version of that we call neoliberalism, which includes things like raising wages, skills, jobs, and tax cuts for the rich create growth,

and regulation is bad for productivity and growth, and people are paid what they're worth, and on and on and on. Just a bunch of ideas, which are internally consistent. and supported by traditional economic thinking, but are just not true. And so a lot of this, a lot of what wrong, some of what went wrong was from nefarious, bad people, but some of it was just good people trying to do the right thing and fucking up. And that gives me hope because if you kill neoliberal economic ideas and neoclassical economics, and we are doing a good job of that right now. we have these people on the run and get people to recognize that, you know, raising wages doesn't

kill jobs. In fact, it creates jobs because when workers have more money, they buy more stuff and people hire people, right? If you can begin to crack this open, you create a green field for better policy and you can get a lot of great stuff done. And for every one of me, there's 9,999 of other people, right? Like, we do live in a democracy. And if you can get people to, like, begin to see these facts, whether they are Republican or Democrat, you can begin to drive policy in the right direction. Right. There's, I mean, you know, not all Republicans are brain damaged racists, right? Like, some of them just want to live decent middle class lives and can teach those people that those are lies too. And you can create a super majority of people who

actually prefer economic policies that benefit the middle class. and lead to actual economic growth rather than a few people basically stealing shit like what's going on Wall Street today. So, okay, kind of on that note, first of all, Dick, thank you for joining us. It's been great as I knew it would be. But you kind of touched on there, like this mission you have, right? What do you got going on right now? How can people check it out, support it? What do you want people to know, that type of thing?

You know, just plug what you need to plug, right? I mean, you know, I thought for folks to follow me on Twitter. I'm at, you know, at Nick Hanauer. And, you know, my mission, our mission, and, you know, we collaborate with a bunch of people is to tear down neoliberalism and replace it with a new set of economic ideas. So the next set of economic policymakers and political leaders enact policies that benefit the whole country and normal people rather than just people like me. And, you know, I don't do that because I love to pay more tax or because I'm just such a. you know, moral dude, I, I just want to live in a country where I can drive down the street and not feel like I'm going to get carjacked because people are so poor or pissed off. Yeah.

And, and I think, you know, and, you know, all of our work at Civic Ventures supports that. And, you know, sadly, you know, I don't need anybody's money. I don't know what to say. I groove on the support, but there's not a lot that people can do to help directly. Yeah. Yeah, just follow and care and be down with the calls, you know. Right. But no, Nick, you know, wish we had at least a thousand more like you, brother.

I really appreciate it. Thank you. And more like you, too, Trey. My man. Thanks for joining us. Okay. Let's do it again. I can't wait.

Okay. All right, bud. All right. All right. Nick Hanauer, everybody. Yeah, you know, I like, I appreciate his optimism, you know, towards the end there. Like, we can do this. I hope he's right.

It seems like it's a manageable thing, making people realize that they're being fucked over, whatever side they sit on. So, you know, we will see. All right. So we can get into the questions and comments. We said, let's at least mention Toyota's bullshit. So as y'all are seeing us, the cues and Cs there, Toyota, it was determined, donated more than anyone else to the group of senators, the group of congresspeople who, uh, voted shit what was it

yeah the top to stolen yeah stolen election conspiracy loans in Congress all the people who said the election was stolen it turns out Toyota

was the highest supporter of those people generally by a mile on average $55,000 like across the 30 some odd

Congress people no so 50 times here's the funny thing about this I think it was $55,000 totally donated

oh what really? Yes yes wait hold on This entire number we're talking about is 55. I literally just assumed it was like on, okay. Yeah, so divide 55 by 37 and that's how much Toyota.

Wait a minute. Yeah. Okay, hold on. I'm sorry. I wasn't, I wasn't fixing a boycott Toyota either way, but this. No, no. What is this? What am I missing?

Why are we even talking about this if that's literally the amount of money we're talking about? Well, the thing that's funny to me is they told you, first of all, Toyota dug in and they put it up statement, which is one of the most tone-duff things I've ever seen. It's like, we don't think it's fair to judge a politician based solely on their vote to not certify the 2020 election, which is like the most important thing they do probably is a continuation of a continuation of that was really funny. But two, the fact they're digging in instead of retracting $55,000 in donations spread out over 37 people is they are pretty confident they have purchased 37 Congress people for about 1,200. bucks each, which is extremely funny to make. You know they're going to have, like, there's going to be a lot of fucking insurrection-y type fucking old boys looking to buy Toyota now, you know what I mean? Which is ironic because for years, at first it was like amongst the more redneckier,

more stereotypically redneckier of our populace. It was like, can't buy those goddamn Japanese cars buy American. And then they were the Prius people. Do you know what I mean? Like Toyota's been persona non grata amongst, that cohort for a long time. So it's funny that now, because of this, which I'm just finding out, is like, based on not really that much money in the grand scheme of things, you're going to have old boys

lining up to buy tundras and shit. Man, what a ridiculous time we live in. Well, I thought it was $55,000 on average per whatever. No. Wow. That's what makes it also so much funnier to me. But like the other end of it, like, first of all, I think, rednecks should have loved Toyota's the whole time because you've seen any pictures

in the Middle East, you know, they're great for mount the gun to bed of. So that's one thing. Yeah, yeah. I had a joking about that forever about fucking the overlap between rednecks and those motherfuckers and fucking ride around shooting guns in the air in the back of a pickup truck. Hits for them. Hell yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah, those are called technicals, by the way. I'm not sure what's the name for it, but a gun mounted in the back of a Toyota is called a technical. But also like the lib flip out of Toyota is really funny because it's like, why did you think Toyota was a good company? because they made Prius. Everybody here drives a Prius. Like, you thought that, like, they weren't a corporation.

But also, like, I guess the logic of Toyota is if there are people who need to buy a Republican congressman, it's a foreign car company known for having a lib demo who makes electric cars. They could be the object of a ton of, like, regulation from, like, nationalist economic people. The other thing is, like, maybe it's just me, but as a liberal, like, it's weird to me that any of us have a standard for corporations. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, my assumption is that they're all fucking nefarious, shady, and, you know, like, they're corporations. Like, I don't like, I don't know.

I'm just not this type of shit that ever comes out. It's like, what do you think Toyota was doing? It's just, it's just weird to me. Corporations don't have morals. And by the way, just look up what Toyota was doing during World War II if you wonder why they were, if they were support right wing political fanatics. anyway uh just yeah i don't know i don't understand why like we got to project like everything's branding now

everything's everything's everything's we all we all think uh our purchasing power is politics and we think it's like that's the way you do things we've got like this corporation's good and that one's bad it's like no you got like nick was talking about like some people are bad gypsy mama i like this good point well ford went and made that made that communist electric f-150 so that's true how the how the tables have turned. You got Ford out here making these commie electric trucks while Toyota's supporting the true patriots.

Who'd have thought? Yeah. What I was saying is like, you can't be like this corporation is good. This one's bad. That's what we have to have rules. Like Nick said, you have to have a rule for people to follow. You've got to enact laws. Otherwise, because it's always a race to the bottom with these motherfuckers. Like, it's like everybody's trying to grab the last dollar they can. Yeah, I would just assume that any

massive corporation on the level of Toyota Donates all kinds of money to all kinds of candidates would have been my before you before I ever heard any anything about this story if you just asked me I would have said. Oh yeah. I'm sure they'd make all kinds of donations across the board to everybody because Why wouldn't they? You know, they're playing the game at that level or whatever. I'm still blown away at the amount of money we're actually talking about. I completely misinterpreted that and yeah. It's very easy to do. Wow. But so like you'd think like it is If companies were forward-thinking at all, Toyota should be pushing, supporting the people who support the Green New Deal because higher fuel standards would sell a bunch of fucking Priuses. But they're living quarterly report to quarterly report. They're just deathly worried about Republicans passing a law that says for certain percentage of vehicles have to be run on gas because they're doing the shit like that at the state level trying to fuck over renewable energy. So it's like, yeah.

Also just the fact that like the thing that's really fucked up is that, you know, like you said earlier, it's like, oh, that. bought all these congressmen for this amount of money and it's like the fact that that can even happen do you know what i mean like that's the that's almost just taking for granted in this conversation you know it's like you donate money you get there you carry their favor and it's like yeah and that's fucked up like that why the hell are we still doing that uh Aaron McCullough friend of the show it says I'll never buy one of those fascist toyotas I'll stick with a true patriot brand like Nissan that's right yes all-American Nissan yeah Yeah, it's all just, I've also seen it point out before that, like, in the world we live in today, like, this consumerist society we're in, it's literally almost impossible to, like, ethically consume anything.

Do you know what I mean at this point, which I believe to be true? And I know that's, like, cynical and defeatist or whatever, but I also think it's just the reality, you know. No, I mean, every piece of clothing I'm wearing, I bet, was made by a child. You know, it's like, like, I don't know. Like, it's like, so you bought a Prius, okay, with a lithium in the battery, it probably came from a mine in Bolivia that was obtained via a coup. I don't know what it's like, I don't know what to say. Or if you're tweeting, condemning Toyota from your iPhone or whatever.

Yeah. The classic example. Like, you know, yeah. Well, you know, hey, there's no hope. Nothing hits. That's our closing. There is hope. There is hope.

I believe so. I believe so. Both for people that can change shit. All right. As a reminder, I'm going on. tour again for the first time and over a year please come see me go to well red comedy com well r e d comedy dot com get your tickets see the dates and uh yeah come see me out there on that old dusty trail i sure would appreciate it i'm trained that's mark thank you all for

joining us we'll see you next week on weekly skews skew