Solutions From The Multiverse
Hosts Adam Braus (@ajbraus) and Scot Maupin (@scotmaupin) meet up each week where Adam brings a new idea to help the world and Scot picks and prods at it with jokes and questions. The result is an informative and entertaining podcast that always gets you thinking.
Solutions From The Multiverse
Solving the National Debt: Raise Taxes on the Wealthy | SFM E98
Ever wondered how something as simple as a gradient puzzle could transform your day? Find out in this episode as we celebrate the zen-like qualities of gradient puzzles and their unique ability to relax and center your mind. Then, join us as we toast an extraordinary academic milestone: our guest's insightful paper on compassionate principalism in bioethics has been accepted by a prestigious journal. Discover how integrating compassion into healthcare could revolutionize the way we treat pain and suffering, offering a more holistic approach to medical ethics.
Ever thought printing more money could solve national debt? Think again. We break down why this common misconception is flawed and explore the real driving forces behind national debt—policies that have favored the wealthy since the 1980s. This discussion not only debunks the household debt analogy but also highlights the societal and geopolitical consequences of national borrowing. Learn why the issue isn’t just about government overspending, but rather how wealth disparity and tax policies have shaped our current financial landscape.
Why has national debt become a tool for enriching the wealthy rather than addressing public needs? We take a deep dive into the historical tax rates and the growing influence of money in politics, revealing how these factors contribute to political gridlock. With insights into potential solutions like ranked choice voting and reflections on the pandemic response, we offer a comprehensive look at how to tackle these entrenched issues. Plus, hear our critical review of Noah Fisher's "Economics 102" podcast for more perspectives on economic stability. Join us for a thought-provoking journey through the complexities of national debt, enriched by our guest's expert insights and timely reflections on upcoming 4th of July celebrations.
Help these new solutions spread by ...
- Subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts
- Leaving a 5-star review
- Sharing your favorite solution with your friends and network (this makes a BIG difference)
Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.
Email: solutionsfromthemultiverse@gmail.com
Adam: @ajbraus - braus@hey.com
Scot: @scotmaupin
adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)
Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.
I am excited about some recent purchases. Tell me this is a thing I can talk about, because I I guess I think this is normal, but other people find it weird. But I told you a little bit about it. I like puzzles and I only do one kind of puzzle. I do gradient puzzles now. So it's just one big field of color shifting slightly or shifting to another color. So, like I've, I've done a few, but so you've?
Speaker 2:you've limited yourself to just gradient puzzles.
Speaker 1:Well, those are the ones I like, yes.
Speaker 2:Those are the only ones.
Speaker 1:I've done for a while, but like that's, this is what I've got coming up. I have this blue one that I'm showing you. It's got blue to blue, it's a square. And then this other one that I just got today I was very excited about is pink to yellow.
Speaker 2:I don't know why yellow yeah, that's all it is.
Speaker 1:It's just colors. I mean, it's as basic as it sounds that wild but it is like a meditation, just sitting there and taking the pieces and you're yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2:In some ways it's sort of easy right, because you just have to look for the next puzzle piece in the direction of the gradient.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everything is only going to fit one spot on the map.
Speaker 1:Right, right is only going to fit one spot on the map, right, right. So in some ways it's about sorting through and just discerning what the most yellow or the most pink is and like trying to figure it out. But it, yeah, it's. It's also. It just distills it down to shape and color. That's really just the essence of it, and you're not worried about like I gotta put this face together or I'm trying to put this car together. Right, it's just color and shape. But it's just relaxing. It's very nice to do while you're listening to something or watching something. It's fun. I say this because I know your partner is also a puzzle person, so I recommend to her sometime to try out one of these, cause they are enjoyable. Surprisingly. I don't think I would have known that before I tried one, but I was looking for hard puzzles and I stumbled into this gradient puzzle thing and I was like, oh, that's surprisingly relaxing and meditative.
Speaker 2:That's wild.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really wild. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, that's really wild. Well, I have not been doing very many puzzles recently, or painting, which to me, painting is just like puzzle. A painting is basically a big puzzle, okay, you have to kind of like put the right colors where they belong, except for you make every piece by hand. That's sort of what a painting is right. So I haven't been doing very many paintings, I don't know. I think I'm more interested in my um, my phd, writing stuff that kind of takes all my creative energies. Which big news got one of my, my first paper accepted, sweet.
Speaker 1:Very nice.
Speaker 2:Congratulations by a pretty major journal, actually Not a top, top, top tier journal, but second tier. So you think it's not Harvard, but it's, like you know, University of Pennsylvania or something. Like it's still up there, very cool. So yeah, it was actually pretty amazing, my kind of advisor guy. You could discern his amazement when I told him. I think he was like, wow, I did not expect it to go through.
Speaker 1:So do we get to know what the topic of the paper is, or is that later you know?
Speaker 2:we were talking about it last episode or two episodes ago. Oh, the new shirts with no armpits. Okay, that's what the whole thing you're gonna.
Speaker 1:You're doing a phd on armpit. You're like okay, so I have sweaty armpits. Go with don't where. Where's everyone going? Why are they? What?
Speaker 2:my ted talk of sweaty armpits can you get a phd in fashion? I guess art phd in art fashion maybe, maybe that's what I'm getting, so I should be able to get it. You're getting a PhD in fashion. Well, because of the armpits, that's one of my part of my. The key thing, no, it's the misery stuff. It's the misery, you know if you want Misericordianism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, misericordianism, if you want to like. We talked about an ethic that doesn't require God and is based on evolution and neurobiology. That's kind of what we talked about before. This paper was not about that part of it. This paper was about applying it to bioethics. So like basically saying that, yeah, basically there's a theory of bioethics that's very popular called principalism, and I sort of offered like that there are problems with principalism and that we could solve some of those problems if we adopted compassion as part of the principalism.
Speaker 2:And if you add compassion to principalism, you create what I call compassionate principalism and then you can still do principalism the same way as they do it every day, but you add this compassion piece to try to minimize suffering and it solves a bunch of the problems with traditional principalism and they seem to really like that. Take that sort of compassionate principalism. Take it should make it so that health care is delivered with more justice and with more respect to people's pain and suffering. Both sound like good things. Yeah, so a reduction of pain and suffering Both sound like good things. Yeah, so a reduction of pain and suffering is a good idea.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, so that was a big celebration for today and sure, on this podcast I talked about the idea of minimizing suffering as an ethical principle a couple times, and so I'll just. Some people are getting interested in it who are not just wackos like me.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's good, but hey we're going, but today we're, we're, we're coming up on the 4th of july here it is true, in a couple days from when we drop this, it'll be the 4th of july. Do you have?
Speaker 2:any big plans for the 4th fireworks?
Speaker 1:nothing, yet we're pre-recording barbecue I don't even plan much more than a week out. But no, I no. I'm sure I'll have hot dogs. I'm sure I'll have a hot dog. Any excuse to have a hot dog.
Speaker 2:All right, don't choke. A really good hot dog man goes a long way. Like you've ever had whole foods like their beef hot dogs from whole foods they're amazing.
Speaker 1:I have not I mean, I recommend everyone loves the. Uh the raymond costco hot dog is the classic. Oh, the costco hot I dog.
Speaker 2:I thought you were going to say everyone loves Raymond.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know, raymond, but I was going to say, oh, everyone loves Ray. Wait, raymond, the show.
Speaker 2:Wait, are we doing a mandala effect? Was it always everyone?
Speaker 1:loves Ray. Is it called? Everyone Loves Raymond. That's not the name of the show, was it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1:I've seen zero episodes was it?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think so. I've seen zero episodes, yeah raymond.
Speaker 1:Everyone loves raymond, okay, all right, whatever mine, maybe in your mandala. Oh, it's ray romano. Yeah, but no one ever called him raymond romano. That's maybe where I'm getting that's true everyone does love raymond romano call me, raymond.
Speaker 2:So today in in uh, you know, thinking about the fourth of july I, I put together a nationalistic solution. Oh cool, this is never going to go wrong. No, it's going to be great. So, this is a solution to the national debt. Okay, do we have one of those the national debt. I thought we were all square. What no have?
Speaker 1:we had one like is it just recent or have we had it for a while?
Speaker 2:We've had it for a goodly amount of time.
Speaker 1:It's like is it just recent or have we had it for a while? We've had it for a goodly amount of time. It's only 34 trillion dollars.
Speaker 2:Oh, I thought it was going to be something I should worry about. Only 34 trill, that's not a big deal. I just googled the national debt. It says 34 trillion. Is it really that much? Yeah, 34.6 trillion the total amount of outstanding a total amount of outstanding borrowing by the us federal government, accumulated over the nation's history.
Speaker 1:I love that you just threw a 0.6 on there and that 0.6 represents $600 billion. You're like yeah, 30, no 0.6. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's just a little bit more. Wait, no, wait, it's a lot more.
Speaker 2:So the GDP of the United States is $25.4 trillion.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we just have to do two years of spending, of saving, and then we're good. Yeah, does nobody buy anything for two years? So so the important thing when you're thinking about the national debt, I mean big numbers sound big but there's like inflation and da da, da, da da, and so what you have to do is actually compare to to percentage of GDP. That's the most accurate way to think about the amount of debt are we in Like, are we in too much debt or too little? There's no way to say just from the number. The better way to look at it is like you do it as a percentage of GDP. So if you look at the chart of percentage of GDP, you can see it looks like a big bow, like a big bow shape, and at the very top on the left side, in the past was 1946.
Speaker 2:We had just fought World War II and we had taken out national debt to be about a hundred percent of GDP. So we had about a hundred percent of GDP debt size right after World War II. We had just fought for four years and defeated the Nazis. Okay, then it drops way down and by 1975, it's like 30% of GDP.
Speaker 2:And then it crawls back up from the 80s all the way up. It kind of goes like this in humps All the way up to 2020, it's above 100% gdp. So now it's it. Now it's at 120 percent of gdp. Okay, so we? So it's as if we just fought world war ii, but we didn't fight world war ii. We just are living our lives like normal people, okay. So, solution to this debt. I can provide a solution, okay. Okay, we just have to print more money. I understand how this works. That would work actually.
Speaker 1:We make dollar bills. What do we print up? 33 trillion of them. And then just pass it on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But hand them over to the bank and say we are square now, Right.
Speaker 2:That's right, and not just to the bank, but to all the people who, who own, who own of course, yeah, these are no dollars that's right, so there's.
Speaker 2:There's what I think the key thing.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of different ways that people talk about to, to, to, to fix the national debt.
Speaker 2:Right, there's, but I think the key thing that we have to do is we have to think about the national debt in a different way than people generally do. So I think people generally think about the national debt as if, well, the government's been spending too much and then therefore borrowing, borrowing, needing to borrow more than it, more than it should, right, right, that's kind of how people talk about it. Wow, we're spending too much money and so we're borrowing, we're living beyond our means and therefore we'll, we're destined to live beneath our means. That's kind of like ron paul's thing that he says sure, I love ron paul, but you know that. But I don't actually agree with this. But this is sort of the common way of thinking about it, and the reason why we think of it this way is because we think of the government like a household, like if you or I just were like racking up more on our credit card than we could make in a year, that would be bad.
Speaker 1:Eventually it would catch up to us right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it would be really bad, but the government's not a household for a number of reasons, and so those kind of intuitive ways of thinking about it are not correct. I still think it's a bad thing that the national debt is this high, but it's bad for a different reason than people think it's not bad because, you know, someday the government's going to have to pay its credit card bill, the way that you and I would eventually have to pay our credit card bills. That's not why it's bad. It's bad for other reasons.
Speaker 2:And that has to do with what it causes in terms of societal problems and also geopolitical problems. That's really kind of the bad things about it, but it's not analogous to a household, exactly, um. So let me put it this way, though the key thing we have to understand is the only reason we have a national debt is because national debt is just a way to for the rich to avoid paying taxes that's all it is.
Speaker 2:That's all it is for me why yeah, so when we fought World War II, we actually needed to fight World War II and so we needed to print a bunch of bonds, a bunch of debt, and sell them to the American people. And the American people bought them because they wanted to fight the war and so that debt was actually to to the american people and then, over the you know, 1946 down to the 75, there were high taxes that paid back that debt to the american people. Okay, what you see in 1980, like early 1980s, is you start to see the, the lowering of taxes, and especially the lowering of taxes on the wealthy, and the exact proportion to the lowering of taxes on the wealthy and the exact proportion to the lowering of taxes on the wealthy right is the national debt. That's what it is. So you have to think of it this way you and I, normal people, you and me, working people who are listening to this, who just work we pay taxes, right, sure, and then do you ever get that money like back?
Speaker 2:No, it just goes to the government. You might get services and you know the benefit of the government, but you don't get any money back, right, right, okay, if you're very wealthy, you just buy bonds. That's essentially taxes that now you get paid back with interest from the government, taxes that now you get paid back with interest from the government.
Speaker 1:Okay, wouldn't you like to be paid back your taxes with interest? Well, don't? I have the option to buy bonds too, but in addition of paying, taxes.
Speaker 2:Oh, I see, but the wealthy have been saying for since the 80s, since when we started to have a bad national debt, the wealthy have been saying lower taxes on us and then they've been buying the bonds, which means they've essentially said, instead of taking our money and not giving us anything in return, take our money but give us it in return with interest. So that's all the national debt is. The national debt is just the, the taxes that we should have been charging rich people since the 80s yeah, that's all it is.
Speaker 1:That's all it is, it's not. It's not like stuff we borrowed from other countries or we sell it to chinese people.
Speaker 2:We, you know, with the chinese government, we sell it around, we, we sell it all around. But but if we, if we tax the wealthy, we wouldn't have any, we wouldn't need any of it. I got no complaints.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like a lot of the wealthy we wouldn't need any of it. I got no complaints. Yeah, I feel like a lot of the wealthy don't pay, like we were talking about the flat percentage or not a flat tax, but like where? The like, if you have more money, you pay more. And that sliding percentage, oh, when we were talking about workday fines, yeah, and I was like so you could do workday tax and you're like, well, they already pay that, but I, but I think they get out of paying their taxes a lot, and this is what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:Like this, the wealthy the. The idea is, if you have like smart money people, they can get you to pay virtually nothing in actual taxes. When it comes down to it, when you should be contributing under FDR's America, you would be contributing a lot more and then we would just have a lot more money as a group. But then people are like it's fine that the government doesn't have more money because they would do bad things with it, which might be true, but they can do nothing without any money. So it's right.
Speaker 2:So, just like you said, is exactly what's been proven recently, which is that the you know we think we have a progressive taxation system. Everyone says, well, there's progressive taxes. If I make more money, then some of that money goes into a higher tax bracket. I pay higher taxes on it, and the presumption for normal people like you and me is that that's just like kind of a smooth sort of stepwise ladder all the way up to the absolute most wealthy people.
Speaker 2:Sure right, yeah, that it's some sort of yeah, but the reality is that tops out at the highest wage earners, like $300,000, $400,000 a year wage earners and then after that there's a completely different tax structure where, in effect, people wealthier than that, like wealthier than the wealthiest doctors and lawyers and business, you know, executives, people wealthier than that pay actually now less percentage of their of their income than normal people like you and me, working stiffs. You know, and this has been shown, uh, in multiple places, it's been reported on, not just by some sort of you know, oh, I don't know, you know, think tank or something. This has been reported by the new york times, pro publica, brookings institute center for american progress. Sure, it's been reported everywhere that this is the case. I think even the White House released a report that showed this. I mean, this is like this goes all the way back, all the way, you know, everywhere.
Speaker 2:So this is an accepted fact is that the wealthy essentially don't pay a progressive taxation anymore in the United States. Only if it tops out at the people who pay the most taxes. A percentage of their income is probably like wealthy doctors, because they're making very large incomes and then those large incomes pay of, you know, the highest tax bracket and the income tax. But if soon, as soon as those those, as soon as you switch over from having a high wage, to say, owning a lot of stock and real estate, then you can start to dodge a lot of taxes, and if you then get really, really wealthy, you can start to do all kinds of weird stuff like the carried tax interest rate, or you can ship all your corporate profits abroad to tax havens, or you can you can do all this kind of wacky dacky stuff to avoid paying taxes, and for every.
Speaker 2:So, when we think about the national debt, the focus is always on entitlements, which the Republicans call entitlements, but then the rest of us just call, you know, essential services that people need. That's always the focus reduced spending. But the reality is all of this just comes from not taxing the wealthy their fair share. That's what all of this comes from. That's the whole national debt. So the solution of the national debt is to stop tax cheats. That's it stop tax cheats and close tax loopholes and raise taxes on the wealthy.
Speaker 1:Okay this is the solution.
Speaker 2:There's no need to reduce any kind of spend. I mean we could be more efficient spending, you know but? But you know, but we don't actually have to. We just raise taxes. The wealthy are wealthier than they've ever been. They're paying taxes at a lower rate than they've ever paid, and there's no reason not to just reverse that.
Speaker 1:So is that a matter of getting Congress to do something? Is that starting the House of Representatives?
Speaker 2:Like that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1:But it feels like all that gets stalled out because of the wealth of the people involved in making those decisions. So how do we get around that?
Speaker 2:Well, the Congress people don't really care about wealth. They don't have that much money.
Speaker 1:Well, why haven't, why haven't we passed this in the last 40 years?
Speaker 2:Well, because the wealthy people buy off the Congress people.
Speaker 1:OK, so that's what I was saying. Yeah, oh, yeah, you go the Congress people don't care.
Speaker 2:Because the Congress people are so wealthy that they are affected by some, but they are now.
Speaker 1:they're paid. Yeah, they're paid to do it. So how do we get around that?
Speaker 2:Well, we've talked about a few things already as solutions here. I don't.
Speaker 1:First, of all, I don't actually think money in politics is as powerful as people think, so you just said that you, just you just gave the example why it is extremely powerful and impossible to fix and the cause.
Speaker 2:It's also every time you turn the entire national debt.
Speaker 1:That's what you just talked about, right, I know, but I think it's actually you're saying you don't think that's money in politics, even though that's exactly what it's causing politics is important, but I think the more important thing is, but I think the more important thing is.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I think the more important thing is ranked choice voting. I think that's the key thing. I think if we had ranked choice voting but why? Not focus on money in politics, because that seems like the more important thing that's directly related, that we just found out was directly related to it.
Speaker 1:Now you're like that's not related. That makes no sense to me.
Speaker 2:I'm being paid off, Scott. No, I'm not saying. I'm saying it makes no sense to me, so I'm trying to make it make sense. I'm making my mortgage payments now because the Heritage Foundation said it needs checks.
Speaker 1:When anyone says I don't think money in politics is a problem, I go cool. No, no, it's, and we just went over this look at this.
Speaker 2:Look at bloomberg's run for president okay he spent a billion dollars which is an insane, a crazy amount of money. Yeah, and he never broke more than, I think, six percent of the vote in the polls. He was a walking kind of amazing yeah, but I mean, but think about it.
Speaker 1:If the premise is, if the premise is money is, you know, totally in charge in politics, then bloomberg should have gotten 20 of the vote well, if the premise is that bloomberg one person only got six percent of the vote, therefore put money in politics across the board is not effective I think that's a flawed premise.
Speaker 2:That's not what I'm saying. I think that's a crazy. I'm just saying.
Speaker 1:I'm saying maybe it's, maybe it's not, maybe it's not a one variable thing on why a person isn't elected president, right but he was a particularly dumb candidate anyway.
Speaker 2:No, no, he's beloved. No, he's beloved, he was generally beloved.
Speaker 1:I mean, he wasn't beloved for burning down a billion dollars trying to run for president Right.
Speaker 2:But I think he was also seen, as you know, late to the game and not you know, people didn't want a billionaire to be president. Well, I don't think that's true, donald.
Speaker 1:Trump won. You're wrong, donald.
Speaker 2:Trump won twice.
Speaker 1:He's good at winning twice, unfortunately, but people didn't want Bloomberg because people didn't want a billionaire to be president.
Speaker 2:But Donald Trump's a billionaire. The people voting for Bloomberg in the primary are not the people voting for the pro-yay for Donald president. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:For Donald Trump. Yeah, I thought you meant To separate the thing, Well you said everyone.
Speaker 2:I thought you meant yeah, okay, donald, yeah, so here's the. So okay, yes, I'm not disagreeing that money is not a problem in politics. I'm just saying it doesn't seem to be the entire problem. Part of the problem is frank choice voting okay and rank choice voting I'm on reason.
Speaker 2:I like that yeah because the reason why that will fix things is because as soon as the politicians are not mud slinging at each other, that will change the like media dynamic. And I think the media dynamic is actually the bigger problem, which is, you know, you go on the news and anytime you want to talk about the national debt, it immediately gets pulled over into questions of spending. And no one even brings up the reality here, which is that the entire national debt, the excess of national debt, is like one-to-one the tax breaks we've given the wealthy people since 1982 or so. So no one ever just points out that actually the whole national debt is just caused by lowering taxes on the wealthy. If we just restored the tax on the wealthy back to 1982 levels, there would the national debt would just creep down back to very, very manageable levels. So what?
Speaker 1:would my life be like? How would my life be different if the national debt was zero Like I'm. I'm going, I'm going around right now. No, it's a real question yeah. And and and I, my life is what you know, like, I go shopping, I go to work, I go to see movies, I, you know like, go to the gym. How is if now, all of a sudden, we fix this and the national debt gets paid down to zero? How, how does, how is it? Where do I see the effects?
Speaker 2:I think the effects for you don't come day to day because government spending really really big, aggressive government spending is usually done in an emergency. So the difference would come in an emergency. So say, we pay down the national debt over the next 10 or 15 years, 20 years, down to, like you know, back to 30%, kind of a more manageable level. And then there's another pandemic, right, and it's like, oh, shoot this.
Speaker 2:We need to like respond to this pandemic very strongly and protect people who are sick and who are vulnerable, and we need to keep the economy from crashing and burning. We need to keep people employed and we need to spend, like you know, $10 trillion to do that. Well, if the national debt is only 30% of GDP, then the government could be like, yeah, let's spend $30 trillion, like you know today, like let's do it because because they can simply do that and I mean there might be inflationary effects to that, but they can do it and not blow the lid on people being freaked out like that. The American government has a weaker sort of credit score, you know, yeah, and that's good, because if the American government keeps a strong, kind of strong credit score, then we can sell our debt for a lot Triple A bonds that we can keep getting strong debt and that government, the government, can use that money.
Speaker 1:But if we don't have any debt, like what do we like? How's that?
Speaker 2:It just, it just loosens up the, the government's ability to spend. Okay, right, so if the government says, hey, you know, actually an asteroid is coming towards earth and in five years it's going to hit earth, we need to spend like 10, you know, infinite I mean as much money as we possibly can to avoid disaster hitting earth. That well then, at that point actually, you probably.
Speaker 1:Just, you're talking about like a three-body problem, that's what you're. Yeah, if there's supposing, what if there were some?
Speaker 2:yeah, we have an economic, some kind of economic crisis. Like what if, tomorrow, you know, a super ai emerged and the super ai like just trashed like all of our systems and we were like really in trouble. You know we had to like rebuild the economy from scratch, where 40, you know 70% of people had no jobs and you know it'd be nice to be like, well, the government can help support some kind of transition for the next five or 10 years, because we actually have a lot of room in the national debt, you know we still have.
Speaker 1:That sounds like our government. That totally sounds like something our government would jump to do. Certainly wasn't like pulling teeth to get them to give anybody any money during COVID for years. That wasn't hard.
Speaker 2:Well, it might have been hard, but it was probably hard because our GDP was it was our national debt was already up more than 100%.
Speaker 1:GDP. Yeah, if we gave them lots of money they would definitely be way more generous. Or maybe there's some other problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like so basically the national debt jumped 20, 20 trillion dollars during covid, so it jumped from. It jumped from all right above 100 to 126 percent and then it's come down a little bit under biden biden's kind of you know, paid things off a little bit, um, back down to 20 but 120. But you, but you know, so they did During Trump, during COVID the government spent $20 trillion to, like, protect the American people from COVID. I mean, it wasn't nothing you know Sure yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, but that it was harder. It might have been able to be 30 or 40 trillion if we had only been at, you know, more like a 30 or 40% of GDP. So I think that's the reason why you want the low GDP or the low national debt is so you can afford crises better. The other reason is, I think again that we haven't spent the national debt on something worthwhile. It's just been a giant tax break to the wealthy. That's all it's been. It's just been a direct wealth transfer from the public funds to the private funds of the wealthy. So you know.
Speaker 2:So when we talk about this, you know, I think that's the key thing we have to keep in mind is that it's been a theft of the treasury. That's how we should think about the national debt. It's just a. It's just a theft. The wealthy people have thieved the public funds. You know like it's like if the sultan has, you know, the has taxed people, and then those taxes are sitting in like the gold vault of the sultan, and then the like grand vizier, who's friends with all the merchants is just like, oh, sultan, we're just gonna like start giving out this gold to the merchants and then the merchants just took all the gold from the sultan. Now all the people's money is gone, because that would have been spent on, you know, building roads.
Speaker 1:Are you describing the Sultan as-?
Speaker 2:This is Aladdin. This is an Aladdin analogy.
Speaker 1:Is his name? Bernie Madoff? Is that the Sultan you're talking about? That's the merchant. That's the merchant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or you know Jeff Bezos or anyone, it doesn't matter. They're all know that. They all know that they're against the workers and the regular people. The workers and regular people don't often realize that we are all one class and we are actually against the wealthy. But the wealthy know that. The wealthy 100% all day long, know we're the wealthy, they're the poor, the working class. We try to take as much money as we can from them and prevent them from taking money from us. But we don't. But a lot of people who are working class don't do that. They sit around and think, oh, jeff Bezos likes me, you know he does this for my good or something. Um, I shouldn't pick on Jeff Bezos. He's not the worst of the billionaires. The worst billionaires are people who you know destroy the planet, create ox, you know, destroy, destroy. You know various systems in the society. Yeah, and you know polluters and people just inherit their money and then they're billionaires. Nepo, baby, these are obviously the most.
Speaker 1:Lex luther yeah, they're the most sort of lex luther amazon is actually not that bad.
Speaker 2:In a way, they're you know, they're relatively environmentally. They have some cool.
Speaker 1:Your hot takes this episode are. Amazon's not that bad and money in politics isn't a big deal.
Speaker 2:Cool, well, yeah, yeah, I think we should temper our our rages a little bit and point them in the right direction, like we should be much more focused on rank choice voting, I think, than necessarily trying to control money in politics. If you had rank choice voting, it would. It would put a huge it would. It would completely it'd be much harder to like influence elections with money if you have ranked choice voting in place so and it's hard to get money out of politics.
Speaker 2:But actually ranked choice voting is pretty straightforward. You just do it. You just do a state-by-state ballot initiative well, but it's hard.
Speaker 1:It's also hard. Any change in the power structure which is needed to be approved by those in power is hard, you know.
Speaker 2:But it doesn't have to be approved by those in power in states that do a ballot initiative, sure, okay. So that's good, yeah, but I guess that's the solution for today. It's just a perspective change. If you change your perspective on the national debt and you don't think of it as the government legitimately spent more than it legitimately took in, you know, then then the national debt seems like, oh, we have this huge problem. But if you realize that it's like, no, the government spent probably less than it legitimately should have, because it took in far less than it legitimately should have, because the to the, the wealthy, just you know, browbeat the legislature to cut down their taxes, yeah then you realize the national debt is just a sign of the theft of the wealth from the public coffers by the wealthy, that's all it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know we didn't fight a war. We didn't. You know we didn't, I mean sure we fought the pandemic in the last just over two years.
Speaker 1:Did we really fight it, though? Is that the right verb?
Speaker 2:two years. Did we really fight it, though? Is that that the right verb? Did we fight the pandemic? Sure, we shut down the whole country for like a year by the country the pandemic is that oh yeah, you were like he didn't fight it too late.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I binge watched the pandemic. Is that maybe I? I, uh I pizza ate the pandemic, I don know. Thought doesn't feel like my. What happened for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been listening to Noah Fisher's podcast which is called Economics 102. And it's interesting to listen to. I think you know he's quite, you know, smart, well-read guy and obviously he has a take on everything, which is cool. And it's fun to hear him kind of go on and on about stuff and some things he knows a lot about. Like he talks about Japan, he knows a lot about that. Other things you can start to feel like the thinness of how much he knows, but he still is like a pining so he gets a little thin but it's still interesting to hear his perspective and you can kind of bake it into yours. So this episode's a little bit of a. I'm sure Nathan Bishop would have a very different idea than I do about this, but maybe not so different. Well, we would see. That'd be cool if he actually responded. I don't think he would though.
Speaker 2:But yeah, he's quite good If anyone wants a good. Like how's the world working? They talk about they call it Econ 102, and they say they're coming at it from their perspective in economics. Yeah, but I feel like they're just coming at it from the perspective of like world systems. Like they're talking about systems in the world. Like well, this is how the eu works, this is how the american government works, this is how, like this market works and that market works with these players in it, like they're much more institutional than it is, like pure sort of classical economical theory or something.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But it's it's a good one to listen to.
Speaker 1:Okay, that sounds good, we'll give it a spin. What's it called again? Economics 102. It's called Econ 102.
Speaker 2:Econ 102. Yeah, it's part of a network of podcasts that are pretty cool. They're kind of very San Francisco either, called Turpentine. They have a whole network of podcasts. I think the. I think that the way Turpentine works is the guy who's at the center of Turpentine. He basically realized that sub, sub, sub, some sub. There were some subs, you know some subs, the newsletters. No, oh, there's this website called some sub or not? Some sub sub. The hell is it called?
Speaker 1:Substack. Yeah, I do know that one. Yeah, yeah, so Substack basically, there was all these people. The real website name yes, I do know that. Yes, the fake one that you had no, I didn't know that one.
Speaker 2:So I think what he realized is that there was all these great substacks and they didn't have podcasts. And he just contacted them and said I will be your co-host and I will just interview you every week and you'll just talk about what you wrote last week on your sub sub, your sub stack, and then I will pay you a fraction of the income circuit from your podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure that's exactly what it is, cause one's like an AI podcast, one's like a econ podcast, one's like a history podcast and they're all from turpentine and they're everyone is a sub stack like a major sub stack guy Interesting turpentine and they're everyone is a sub stack like a major sub stack guy interesting, interesting. Yeah, so I think it's got. Hey, look at that, could be a business model for an entrepreneurial young, it's true.
Speaker 2:Podcast producer like yourself, contact really popular people, stackers, and say I'll be your co-host and then they already have a huge. So the problem with podcasts right, is not this podcast, but most podcasts have a problem getting a audience. But if a Substack already has 50,000 subscribers, the Substack can say listen to our podcast Boom, and it creates this flywheel Maybe.
Speaker 2:And then now Turpentine says find our other flywheel. You know there's an ad in every episode for other Turpentine podcasts and so it cross-pollinates this whole Turpentine sort of wheelhouse. So yeah, it's pretty smart, this whole turpentine uh sort of wheelhouse. So yeah, it's pretty smart. Um, and I like the econ 102 on their ai one is pretty cool too. They have one about economic. They have one about financial markets called riff cool, sounds fun, very nice.
Speaker 1:All right, well, new podcast and get rich people to pay their taxes so that we can yeah, national debt debt debt down. Happy, happy independence day. Everybody and you, we can lower spending debt debt down.
Speaker 2:Happy Independence Day everybody and we can lower spending. There are things to lower spending on, like, for example, you know the way, like I've already, I've already proposed we should, we should allow new colleges to start. That would then lower the cost of college tuition, which then would lower the burden on the federal government to lend money to students to go to college. So that would lower, you know. So if we just allowed new colleges to start, just that would tremendously lower the spending on higher education. Healthcare we could do Medicare for all. It would dramatically lower the cost of healthcare for the garbage country.
Speaker 2:You could lower costs of all kinds of things.
Speaker 1:Wait, did I tell you my idea for one big garbage bag?
Speaker 2:Wait, what's that? Well, well, I was gonna just glaze over that. Yeah, no, I noticed. Maybe I just stopped and rewind my g.
Speaker 1:What is, what is? Well, you know how everyone has all these garbage bags, these little garbage bags, and they fill up the landfill.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, we just have one big one, like in the middle of the I love that middle of town and you take your garbage into the one big garbage bag and then you get it lifted up by like helicopter.
Speaker 1:I'd love just one bag.
Speaker 2:I'd love that, but I have a. What about neighborhood bags? What about neighborhood size bags? This is what they have in germany a neighborhood size bag. Yeah, you know how. Right now, every single individual house has like a garbage and recycling right compost, like you're talking about dumpsters, what you do is you just put a dumpster on each block.
Speaker 2:So every two or three blocks there's a dumpster, and then to take your garbage out you have to walk a block and then throw it in that dumpster, and then the truck comes and it just takes the dumpster away. It's pretty good, but what about?
Speaker 1:one big truck instead of lots of little garbage trucks. What about?
Speaker 2:one big garbage truck. Well, you said a helicopter even would be cool.
Speaker 1:We take the helicopter to the one big truck. I like the helicopter idea One big helicopter, one big truck and one big garbage bag. That's my idea. I'm down. It's just one One thing.
Speaker 2:I'm on board. It would be so nice, because then you wouldn't have to have all these little garbage wheelie things everywhere. It would be so much more affordable and fast, and then everyone would get a little walk. Right, everyone gets a little walk to the neighborhood, get a little walk to the smelliest place and you see other neighbors who are also walking and you can all be like, hey, how are you Great community Snoop?
Speaker 1:with each other.
Speaker 2:So it's like a hole. You throw it in the hole and then it's gone.
Speaker 1:You can't get in there and get it out what if I want people to see like my trash, to like show how cool like my? Trash is just full of gold bar wrappers, like from all the gold bars I buy at the store, and so they're gonna have to rich dude as, as you're walking up, you have to trip very theatrically and the trash has to like oh my trash and just go everywhere and you're like oh, my gold bar.
Speaker 2:I just saw this so embarrassing filled all my empty caviar cans. I'm so sorry everybody, that's right I'm so sorry. That was unintentional and everyone will be like tax that man Tax tax, tax, tax, tax tax.
Speaker 1:I couldn't possibly. I'm just needing to buy bonds. I couldn't possibly. Yeah right, All right. Well, thanks for bringing us a fun one. Yeah, man, and thanks for joining us again. No problem, Thanks everybody for coming next time.
Speaker 2:Happy Independence Day. Keep it, climaty, yeah, bye-bye, bye, thank you.