Uber-Manliness

So this was sparked by an article BBC had it, but there's a bunch of different, um, uh, bunch of different articles around this. Uh, we're gonna be talking about Father Moses McPherson, whose congregation has tripled in size in the last I. 18 months. He lives in Georgetown, Texas, just a little bit north of Austin, Texas, the city where Marco and I met also. Uh, it's funny, I was thinking, I didn't even tell you this.

Marco uh, Gordon Ramsey did like a kitchen nightmares episode in Georgetown, Texas. And this is like a, I don't know, spiritual life nightmares is what this guy does. I don't know. He like goes into your house and yells at you and tells you what to do Anyway. Uh, so he, uh, this guy Father Moses, he was a Protestant who worked as a roofer, but now he's a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia or RO car. I dunno if they call it that, but that's what their acronym is.

Acronym is here. Um, and I mean the, the BBC article has just, whoever wrote this article must have had a ton of fun because it leads off with a quote. A lot of people ask me, father Moses, how can I increase my manliness to absurd levels? End quote. Um, and he has a whole YouTube video as championing a form of veal unapologetic masculinity, uh, with which. Sort of confusingly Marco includes skinny jeans, crossing your legs, using an iron, shaping your eyebrows, and, and eating soup.

These are all things that are too feminine. Yeah. Yeah. These are like, you know. Yes. Yeah. So he, he's saying that these things are too, uh, too feminine. Uh, he's gotten 75 new followers, uh, which doesn't seem like a lot in 18 months, but whatever. Like, that's more than zero followers. He, I wonder if he has a podcast, he, he can claim that he, uh, tripled it in size anyway. Um, it also, it literally seems like a plot. I don't know if you've seen the righteous gemstones on HBO.

It's like a, like I'm watching it with my wife right now, which is about these like us mega, it's like, it's about a us mega church and John Goodman is the pastor and he's got all these silly children. One of the kids, like the youngest one of the kids, seems like a closeted gay guy.

And he's, he's assembled this like army of muscular men and he's like teaching them how to like, uh, be with Christ, but also like, like literally they're training to carry the cross through the Judean desert itself. And like they have to eat nice and like lift a bunch of weights and things like that. And I turned to my wife and I was like, 'cause she grew up in the, in the Baptist world. And I was like, is this real? Like, do people do this? And she was like, nah, nah, this is a joke.

But it's not a joke. 'cause here's Father Moses saying we have to increase our levels of manliness. Um, you know, Skyward. So I'll let you cook from there, Marco. 'cause we are gonna make this serious in a second.

First of all, I am Orthodox and I can tell Why didn't

But, uh, so first of all, for those of you who don't know, um, Christianity has many different denominations. The two main ones before Martin Luther came along and like protested the two, um, were Catholic and Orthodox, uh, roughly split along the borders effectively of the Byzantine Empire. Uh, and the difference between the two, and this is important 'cause a lot of people don't understand it. Uh, whenever I say I'm Orthodox, they're like, oh, you're Russian Orthodox.

It's like, no, no, that's not how it works. Um, in the eastern part of Europe, uh, most countries basically have their own, uh, orthodox religion. So think of it the way that Anglicans, for example, exist. Um, you know, it, it's much more associated with the state itself, the nation state. And so you have Armenian Orthodox, you have Bulgarian Orthodox, you have Russian Orthodox, uh, do not have, of course Ukrainian Orthodox, which was controversial, um, Serbian Orthodox, uh, and so on and so on.

Greek Orthodox, of course, also very important. You have several other denominations and they're all, um, essentially equal. Although the Archbishop of Constantinople is still like Titularly. Uh, above all of them, you know, uh, but, but not really. They're, they're pretty much all equal. So each one of these groups has its own pope.

Uh, anyways, this particular offshoot in the US that's gaining a lot of, uh, uh, followers is the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia. So the diocese, I guess, would what be, what we would call it, is it's an offshoot of the Russian, uh, church. It's not the American Orthodox Church, which I actually also believe exists. Um, anyways, long story short, um, because, uh, Russia's so manly, you know, um, there is, I guess, appeal, um, for people to join this Russian Orthodox Church.

And I thought that was really interesting because later embedded in this article, um, is basically this interesting link. Um, to a web, to a website run by the, I think, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where you can go and get a visa. You can get a visa for, um, join, uh, for basically residency in Russia. Uh, that's a path to permanent residency for like-minded individuals from countries. And they list the countries and the countries are effectively all from, um, from the west.

Um, it's not like any Russia adjacent countries. Um, it's just targeted towards the west to attract immigrants, like wine minded, conservative, you know, people who believed in manliness. Is, I guess, not eating soup and not wearing skinny jeans, obviously, even though one would argue perhaps that you have to be, you have to achieve giga levels of manliness to pull off skinny jeans in 2025. That's, you know, some would say that, some would say that's how you achieve giga, levels of manliness.

But yeah, so like the Russian foreign ministry has this website, um, and this visa program that allows you to join, uh, basically Russia and get, uh, residency. And it was in this article, I guess because, uh, you know, it's, it's this whole wave that's now, uh, started, uh, it's on YouTube. It's a guess in the Russian Orthodox, uh, offshoot of Russia standing as a bulwark for Western, uh, traditional values. Um. I don't know what to say about that. It seems weird.

The first is like the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in general, um, is actually extremely geopolitical and it's, it's really relevant to, to Vladimir Putin and all the things that he's done. And Vladimir Putin, you can kind of tell is obsessed with this idea of manliness too. Not just conservativeness, but manliness. Like always needing to be out with his shirt off, riding the horses, like jumping in the cold water.

Like he's always had to project this image of being super manly and super strong all the time. Um. And I think part of it is that for most of the 20th century, the Russian Orthodox Church was on the outs with the Russian government. The Russian Orthodox Church had really deep ties with the Czars, and it was sort of the Czars and the Russian Orthodox Church, like, I don't know, like governed as a little bit too strong, but they worked hand in hand to maintain Russia.

Uh, but the communist wanted nothing to do with religion. Uh, I'll, I'll, I'll take a, a Lenin quote here outta my bag that he wrote in 1905. Quote. Religion is a kind of spiritual gin in which the slaves of capital drown their human shape and their claims to any decent human life. End quote. Probably Lenin would be eating soup and, uh, in, in skinny jeans in Moscow right now as he's, as he's blogging that.

And the Russian Orthodox Church sort of has to go underground and Putin turns that around when he takes power and when he's trying to sort of rebuild a sense of Russian nationalism. He really does inject the Russian Orthodox Church, um, with a lot more importance and gives them free reign. And sort of the same way he gave ProGo free reign with the, um, with the mercenaries.

He gave the Russian Orthodox Church free reign to go about and spread, uh, as you sort of say Russia's values throughout the Orthodox world. And apparently he's trying to spread it throughout. Of the United States too.

I, I don't think it's gonna do that much in the United States. Um, but you know, like, uh, there was some Pew data that showed that, uh, you know, Orthodox Christians in the United States are 64% male, which is up from 46% in 2007. So, so something is happening like men are flocking, uh, to this Orthodox church in some meaningful way. And I guess. I guess he's articulating something.

I find the description of his, of Father Moses and this particularly masculine orthodoxy that he's describing, pretty boring. He is like saying you can either, you can serve God by being a nun or a monk or by getting married. Uh, he says you should not use any birth control. Masturbation is pathetic and unmanly. Uh, he doesn't want his services to feel like a Taylor Swift concert. Okay. Um, he says The look at the language of worship music, it's all emotion. That's not men. Okay. Bullshit.

Uh, but fine. Like, it's just, it's just like very sort of normal, retrograde, patriarchal, conservative, like fluff. But I guess that's what people want. I don't know.

There's a great book by Richard Reeves called Of Boys and Men, which I would encourage ev everyone to read. And in fact, effectively it argues that, um, it know one of the problems is that, um. Just genetically speaking and biologically speaking, women and girls develop faster than men mentally. Um, and so what happens in competition in education is that quite often girls are going to outperform boys.

Now, in the past, the way that we, uh, didn't allow this to happen is we, what's the word, discriminated against women. That's right. That was their solution for thousands of years of human history. We basically just discriminated women.

Um, but because we don't actually do that anymore, or not to like the extent it happened in the past, what's showing up in test scores, in educational results, in job opportunities, especially in a heavy service oriented economy, is the fact that, you know, girls Rule as the first chapter of the book is titled. Now, Richard Reeves is not some right wing ideologue. Um, he's actually, um, I think, uh, what is he exactly? Um, I don't think he's just an author.

Uh oh, no, he is, um, he is a social scientist, senior fellow at the Brooking I institution, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. Um, which I have to say sounds weird. Uh, has a PhD, I think in, um, oh, a geography. Uh, interesting, interesting path to write about this. But, you know, he's not, uh, I mean, you know, he works for the Brookings Institution, like he's, he's not some weird YouTube show or a podcaster, if you will.

Um, and so his book is not some sort of call to go back in time. He's just trying to fix this, uh, this issue that's coming up. And then nobody is very comfortable talking about, you're not comfortable talking about it, because if you talk about. Boys and men falling behind, you're somehow anti-feminist. You know, and I think one of the most interesting thing that Reeves argues is that that's not the case at all.

You can be a feminist and you can also just identify ways in which men and boys in today's modern society are starting to fall behind.

But why do I bring this book up? I bring this book up, first of all, because it's an interesting one, and I like reading different perspectives.

But diff the other issue is that, um, Reeves is right, and that's why there's such appeal to new forms of achieving uber manliness, you know, in a world where boys fall behind the school, uh, and then end up, you know, um, you know, facing law schools and medical schools where a vast majority are not women, uh, who graduate from those programs, which is fine. Like that's all good and, and fine. But like the point is there is. There is something missing.

And I think it's being filled increasingly by ideologies and new religious cults or new religions, uh, and new appeals to how to become a man, you know, new, new sort of, uh, ways. And I think it's an interesting point that I don't think we've all accepted as the source of the new ideological tensions in the world. I think that's something that like, is not being discussed enough.

In other words, we're in a post-industrial society, this appeal of bringing back manufacturing to the us there's part of it that makes sense from a national security perspective. You should be able to build cars if you one day have to build tanks. Okay. Steel, aluminum, I get it. Yeah. Steel aluminum are really important in a war. So there are ways to justify, you know, tariffs through national security. But when you start asking for bicycles and like, you know.

I don't know, like toaster ovens to be built in America. You have to step back and be like, okay, well what is this about? And then you realize, well, it's about the fact that, you know, for a lot of men who are not very well educated and can't really do service jobs, um, what is there to do? So I do think that this, this issue, this socio, you know, biological issue that we have in our society of men and boys falling behind in 2025 is not just a silly sort of a meme.

It's also underpinning a lot of the, uh, policies that are being shaped by right of center. Um. Parties across the world.

Uh, there's a couple different ones. Number one is just like the sort of with the, with the, with the end of the Cold War and the victory of capitalism. Like we can go back to, to Lenin and the gin of the masses and just say like, yeah, like all of this, like Godlessness and just consumer culture and bye byebye, and do whatever you want. Like there is like a moral center that seems to have gone away. And if you look at decades of declining religious rates. Um, like that's in there.

It could also be driven by the internet. Like people are not hanging out in person anymore. They're hanging out and playing video games. They're, they're not, uh, when George Kennon was writing in the 1950s about how much better the United States is in the Soviet Union, one of his key indicators was Americans hang out with each other. They go to bowling leagues.

They have like natural affiliations and institutions where they do stuff together and they're not worried about the KGB taking and, you know, arresting them and putting them in the gulag. They just want to go bowl and like do whatever they wanna do. Like that has really gone away, uh, manufacturing and agriculture, like two of the manliest jobs out there.

Even if you are making bikes like steel and aluminum, really manly, being in the field doing stuff like really manly doing stuff with elec, uh, electrician work like. Yeah. You know, all that, all those jobs have gone away and they've been considered bad and they've sort of been considered low end. And as to your point, the manufacturing jobs are not even really there anymore. I wonder if the university has something to do with this.

Um, and you can see, I think with the way that MAGA is cool with the, the Trump administration literally shooting the United States in its own foot, like I really do think 10 years from now, when we talk about the long-term impact of the Trump administration, the attack on US universities that is happening right now is gonna be the. Biggest thing that negatively impacts the US going forward.

But you can feel in how the MAGA movement treats, um, the academy, that they think there is something wimpy, whether it's critical race theory or, you know, all these other things. Like there's something there. And I would tie that to the issue of manliness with, you know, it used to be, um, that only the, not the best and the brightest that the upper crust of society went to university. Like university was finishing school for the men of the aristocracy or for the upper classes.

Like people like Franklin Delano Roosevelt went to university because it was sort of, oh, you were on the short list of somebody that could run the country. I think for better mostly, but for better and for worse, like the university has been democratized. Not only can anybody go to university, everybody should go to university.

And we'll tip the scale so that no matter where you are, how intelligent you are, everybody deserves the same chance to go to university and get a liberal arts degree, even though that's not necessarily what you need. So I think that's in there. And then feminism is in there too. And women saw women wanted to have money of their own. They wanted to have careers of their own.

Uh, I always crib from um, Christopher Hitchens who said, if you want the, the most surefire way to cure poverty in the world, empower women, give them access, like, and give them power of their, their own biological clock.

Every single society that has done that, um, has enriched itself massively, uh, going forward, which actually cuts against this idea that Russia shared values, the woman has to go back into the house and breed while the men do manly things and, and build things and stuff like that. There's an interesting juxtaposition there too. And then, I know I'm rambling, but the last thing is just, it's also not just the, like the Russians and the shared values.

Like this has been an obsession of Elon Musk's and sort of the rights for some time in the United States. Like I can go back to three, four years ago where Musk is talking about population collapse due to low birth rates being a much bigger risk to civilization than things like global warming or things like geopolitics.

And you've got like this coterie of your Joe Rogans and your Dave Portnoy and your Chris Williamsons, all of whose podcasts I would happily appear on so that I could connect with the misguided male youth. But they're all out there, like in this very, muscular is the wrong word. It's like a very simplistic, like a very sort of empty bro culture that a lot of people listen to because they relate to it 'cause they feel like it's a quote unquote safe space. So I don't know.

I'm trying, I'm like throwing things out at the wall trying to figure out what the why is and we probably won't be able to do it.

And so it refuses to discuss it, and then it's just remains in the right wing domain where it leads to a Nazi fascist state. So what do I mean, what do I mean by this?

Um, like climate change I think is a very similar topic where, um, climate change obviously is clearly happening. But is it going to cook us by next Tuesday? Are we all gonna die by next Tuesday? Eh, I'm not sure that that's the case. And no, driving a Tesla doesn't make you better human being. It actually makes you stupider if you are driving a Tesla in part of the country where electricity is not derived from alternatives.

So you're just a moron who's driving a piece of technology with 200 kilograms of metals that somebody had to dug out, dig out of the ground, take to China, refine it and send it to you. So that's a good example to me of, of an issue. Similarly with this, and what I find, uh, fascinating with Richard Reese's book, which I've read by the way I just checked up. He worked for Nick Clegg. I mean, you know, like he was the leader of the liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom, deputy Prime Minister.

I mean like mm-hmm. He is not a right wing lunatic. So for all of you who have not heard of this book of Boys and Men, no, it's not some right wing appeal to like subjugate women, but what he does is he presents data and says, Hey look, boys are falling behind in education. There's nothing like wrong with that. Like, you know, they just develop a little bit later than women, but we send them to school at the same time.

And they compete for entry exams at universities, very competitive at 18, and they are not yet ready to compete with 51% of the humans who are developed earlier than them. So then they fall behind and then we, they fall through the cracks, and then they're left to be caught by the YouTubers and podcaster that you were mentioning, and apparently the Russian Orthodox Church of America, which offers them a path to Uber, levels of manliness.

But what I find interesting, and where I wanna point a finger to is to the left, is to the liberals, because they're the ones that are unwilling to even debate this issue. In many ways. And I actually, the way I found out about Reeves is I watched him on, on a couple of, like comedy talk shows where he was basically being made fun of by the interviewer. Like mm-hmm. All really, like, men are falling behind. And he's like, no, no, I'm actually serious about this.

You know, like, here's this book, you know, and they're like, ha ha, ha, uh, and he's like, no, but seriously, we need to talk about this. And if we don't talk about it, then the men who fall through the cracks or the boys are going to find ways to be, to fulfill themselves, to be manly on YouTube. And I think this is, this is something where Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are kind of right.

You know, it's, it's this, it's, it's, it's this, um, failure to debate, failure to recognize something is a problem that then leads to people reaching for the Russian Orthodox Church as a solution. To their problems. And it's, it's, it's the unwillingness often of, um, the establishment writ large to debate the issues similarly with climate change, mitigation of climate change.

You know, like, um, as somebody who lives in Los Angeles, who's, uh, who's, uh, basically, you know, a place where I live almost burned down. Uh, I can tell you that I don't want the mayor of my city going to cop. Mm-hmm. Like she needs to stay in this town and make sure that there's mitigation to climate change. 'cause it's happening. You know, like state officials like Governor of California should not be going to an international conference in climate change. Sorry, bro. Sorry.

You know, come on. My podcast, come at me. We'll talk about it. But Governor Newsom should stay here and mitigate for what's gonna happen. Sitting there and pretending it's not happening, you know, and that we can still mitigate it through EVs in like Bulgaria is nonsense.

You need to make sure that there's enough water in like fire hydrants for example, so that mitigation occurs again, a very similar problem that we have in our society where there's an issue and it just doesn't get handled because the waste to handle it actually undermines the bigger, bigger story. Um, so this is one of those things and I find it, you know, fascinating that we've basically gotten to a point.

You know, some young man, um, has no recourse to anything else other than to listen to Joe Rogan bench press and join the Russian Orthodox Church.

Did you see that Bernie Sanders went on Andrew Schultz's podcast, um, a couple weeks ago and was getting major flack on the left for going on there because like people accused him of being a racist and things like that? I would, I would encourage people to go watch the episode itself. It got over a million views. Um, but he did, I mean, he did what Bernie always does, which is Bernie. This is the thing I like about Bernie.

Even if I disagree with 60% of what comes out of his mouth, he's always the same. He's always authentic. Like he's telling you exactly what he thinks and he basically is like, don't get me on this hole. I'm a racist thing. I think that this is a class issue and I think poor people have been taken for a ride in this country, and I think we need to deal with inequality in all these different ways. Don't distract me with all this bullshit.

I was marching in the sixties and seventies, like, I'm not, I'm not that guy. I hate that I'm being pigeonholed like that. But to your point, like Bernie was like kept on the outside, uh, in that. And that 2016 election was sort of thrown into the populous bag, pushed to the side, pushed as, as this person who wasn't relevant. When there is, there is a voice on the left that is willing to sort of confront it.

And there it's, it's less about, um, or, or the thing that he's really focusing on there is the establishment. And, and this is where the, the sort of Trump thing breaks down because it's, you know, Trump promised to drain the swamp and to get rid of the establishment, to challenge conventional views. And o okay.

Like, with you, with you, with you, except like the level of like, of like propping up the establishment and the grift that we're seeing out of this White House is just like absolutely shocking. And that doesn't seem to matter to people. But, uh, last point, just, um, you know, it was shocking at the time that Kamala Harris wouldn't go on Joe Rogan's podcast like she had Trump on and like, she, well, no, correct me then. 'cause she didn't, my understanding was that she didn't wanna go on,

Um, on his, you know, this is how he does it and, you know, she has to do what he wants, but they refuse to accept those conditions. And then Trump was like,

And I, I don't want this to be a Joe Rogan love session, but I will say like, I listen to him every once in a while, honestly, when I have trouble falling asleep gets me right to sleep. Um, but, um, I think. I think he does a really good job of opening space for interesting conversation. He's not afraid of looking like an idiot and asking stupid questions sometimes to smart people, sometimes to people I regard as absolutely batshit insane. But like, he opens up a space for conversation.

And I think there is like a real desire for like, oh, like you could say whatever you want. Like you'll, you'll, like, it doesn't matter how dumb the view is, like you can learn or that's a gateway drug into actually learning something rather than being taken by Father Moses to stop jacking off. And, uh, no, that's,

And effectively, like, it's a hilarious interview because this guy who worked for Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democratic Party of the United Kingdom, probably the most socially liberal party in the United Kingdom, um, wrote a book that says that boys have fallen behind and Desi lytic can't stop by making fun of him. You know, it's like, this is ridiculous, right? Like, but men are toxic. Um, and he has a real problem with the, the term toxic masculinity, you know?

Um, and he makes a really good point, which is that we have basically decided that this is a ridiculous conversation. Anyone who has a conversation about boys falling behind is clearly a right wing lunatic, and therefore we're gonna just let them join the Russian Orthodox Church of America and you know, God, and then, and then learn how to. Become men from, from much, much worse options. And that's, I think that's where the establishment really is.

Deaf and, you know, um, how to raise boys, how to, how to integrate men into society when you know the easy jobs are gone. That's a really important issue and shouldn't be left to YouTubers and podcasters and, you know, various like Reddit threads to solve

They want to go to electrician school or trade school or whatever else, and just make a hundred grand or 150 grand, be an electrician and they're totally happy with that. Or be a stone mason or something like that.

Uh, I mean, you, you get a chance, but, uh, if you're not good enough, um, quite a, quite a lot of people end up going to a two year program. I don't wanna call it a trade school. It's not necessarily a trade school. It can be a two year program for hospitality. It can be, uh, you know, a two year program for like a, like an accelerated business degree. The point is there is other alternatives other than the university.

Um, but, but you know, what's, what's interesting to me about all this is that, um, it, it requires I think, acceptance of some of the problems. For example, with climate change, it is very expensive to transition to an electronic vehicle, electric vehicle, you know, so we need to take that into account. Putting taxes and gasoline, uh, may make sense if you are in the city. Fine. Like totally got it.

You may not need to go to target with your car, like take public transportation, but if you live in a rural part of the United States of America, um, you know, you may believe in climate change, you may wanna mitigate it, but you don't have public transportation systems. So that's not the best way to mitigate this issue. For example, all I'm saying about this is that I do think there's callousness. That's what I would say. I think the left. Mm-hmm.

And the liberal mainstream has been callous when it comes to these issues, dismisses them as nonsensical and doesn't wanna discuss them. And I think this 15 minute interview between Richard Reeves and Desi Lytic is like a perfect example of that callousness. Now, God bless her, she's a comic. It's not her job to interview the man properly. Um, but I thought that that was, that was a very, very good, uh, way to kind of think about this.

And that's why this BBC article, you know, comics, uh, attention. That's why we spend 35 minutes. Basically talking about it because, um, BBC, I mean, on one hand, really good job on shining a light in this issue. On the other hand, they are making fun of it themselves. They're saying like, look at these idiots in central Texas, you know, finding appeal in Russian orthodoxy. Like, how, how stupid is that?

But what they're not really, uh, examining, and it's not their job, they're just journalists, but what they're not examining is why, why do mm-hmm. You know, young men starting families find a need to, you know, like appeal to some sort of a higher power in order to feel, uh, comfortable with who they are.

And that's, and that's I think, a deeper social issue that's maybe at the crux of almost all of our increasing, you know, increasing levels of, of toxic ways to achieve Uber manliness, which includes, uh, toxic forms of nationalism, jingoism. You know, trade tensions, a lot of this stuff at its root cause may be a biological reality. We have finally broken down discrimination against women, and that's awesome. Yeah. And not all of it, again, it's not perfect, but we've broken down a lot of it.

But that has created this interesting consequence, which is that men and women don't develop at the same pace. And so by the time they're 18 years old, men should be behind, given the biological realities of the two of them. And I think that's fascinating. And Dan might be, and, and it really, yeah, sorry. Uh, permanent gendering almost of politics, you know, which is, uh, which, which is not a good thing. That is not, you know, politics should not be gendered.

So that's what you're, you're getting if you get the Russian value piece.

And first of all, that's ridiculous because when we do return manufacturing to America, you are not gonna be in that factory unless it's to oil the automated robots, you know? So like you will still not have a good job. Whoever you are out there, but I'm pretty sure you're not listening to Jacob Shapiro and Marco Bob. Um,

Like if you're listening to this and being like, uh, Marco and Jacob retired, they're, they're searching for something to talk about. No, no, no, no. This is like actually the top of the fold. Like in, like, not just in the Joe Rogan universe, in the Fox news universe, in the mainstream like right wing

You know, like, and so like, so, okay, so five years from now, when we look at the numbers and we see like there was a little bit of a hiccup in manufacturing jobs, the point is the policy appeals to this, like bringing testosterone back to America and then, you know, the liberal left and establishment will say, well, this is stupid. There won't be any jobs in America because Mark was right. It's automation.

But we still haven't solved the fact that a bunch of dudes find this appealing and they find it appealing because of the kind of things that Richard Reeves talks in his book, not some right wing, lunatic, centrist, liberal, Democrat from the United Kingdom with a PhD in geography. You know what I mean? Like this guy is. Just presenting facts.

Yeah. Um, and we don't want to talk about those facts because it somehow makes you less of a feminist or less pro women to point out that boys are falling behind in education. And this, I can't stand this, I can't stand this as an analyst 'cause this is what I do for a living. I'm just an analyst. I analyze problems and I hate it when certain problems are colored by politics and you're not allowed to even bring those problems up.

Um, because it makes you somehow, you know, not member of the establishment, which I obviously couldn't care less. 'cause my clients pay me a lot of money to not be part of the establishment. And

Okay,

Okay. And then, then he gets into the other stuff.

I think, I think, I think, you know, there's something mentally wrong with him. And she went to me and she's like, no, he's just a boy. And your first child was a girl and so you're anchoring to her development. And I was like. Oh, okay. So not wrong. Like I've lived the experience, but I've also lived and before, uh, sorry to No, no, you're good. Interject with my personal story to yours.

Um, this is very personal to me because I have witnessed in the educational system across both Quebec and California, subtle ways in which young boys are being discriminated sometimes, sometimes for just being like, you know, neurotic little, you know, shitheads. They're just being, you know, like in, in the case of my son as, as an example, I mean, I was in a meeting in his kindergarten, you know, the poor kids didn't speak any French.

And the kindergarten teacher, the principal and my wife kind of ganged up on him and, uh, in, in ways that were like projecting societal problems on like, the principal literally uttered the words. Does he have problem respecting women? Now, this is a five-year-old boy. You know, and everybody in the room. Every woman in the room was like, kind of nodding knowingly. And I was like, no, he's a 6-year-old. He's 5-year-old. Shithead. He has trouble respecting anybody, you know?

Um, but anyways, that's, that's, that's, I think, uh, anyone who's actually raised kids in today's world, I think can, can relate to some of these issues. And, uh. And it's, you know, that's why it's a very interesting topic for me.

I have sung the Rah Madoff Vespers and I can hit the low be flat. Father Moses, I bet you can't do that with all of your aversion towards soup and all of your nonsense. Anyway, Cornell University Glee Club was an all male group when I was there. And, um, it was honestly where I learned not to be a shithead. I was exposed to like all sorts of.

Male diversity and like it was okay to not only was it okay to feel things, you had to feel things in order to sing well and to be a good musician and like unpacking all of the baggage of you're not supposed to be feeling, you're supposed to be masculine, you're not like, like the Glee Club was like where most of that stuff got rehabilitated for me and I learned that you could be emotional and masculine at the same time anyway. Like, not to make this like a, a therapy session.

The reason I'm bringing it up. It's because in the last couple of years, the Cornell University Glee Club, it's not all male, and they've stripped all references to things like brotherhood and fraternity and things like that because they wanted to make it more inclusive and they wanted anybody who was the right voice part be able to join the Cornell University Glee Club, even though there was also, there's an all female group too, the Cornell versus cor, the Cornell University

Chorus and other like, you know, um, um, other choirs that you can join if you want boys and girls or male and female voice parts and things like that. And I'm just saying like, um, like, like maybe it's the biological thing, maybe it's consumerism, maybe it's the loss of manufacturing jobs, all these other things. I just like the fact that in my own lifetime I saw the institution that like helped me work all the shit out.

Really no longer exists because it's not politically correct to have hey, just dudes here, like just dudes figuring out how to be dudes and like in a really productive, like really open like way, but like that's not okay. Yeah. Everything.

Yeah. I'm.

But, um, let's go to the Visa for a second. So, basically there's a clear problem in, in the West that you and I have identified. Richard Reeves talks about it too. Uh, we all understand it, what to do with men and Russia goes like, he, we've got a solution. Come to Russia, you know, and you could be a man. Um, and that got me thinking, first of all, God bless Russia. All is fair in love and war. I have no problem with the Visa program. God bless you. Yes, yes. Do it. In fact.

You know, if you don't feel comfortable being a man in America, go ahead, pack your bags, go to Russia. I have no problem. It's a, it's a free world baby. And if Vladimir is, is welcoming you to Russia and you wanna take him up, I have absolutely no problem with this. I would not impede, I would not punish, I would not, I would not do anything to people who wanna do this. But

I think this is brilliant and I don't understand why the west doesn't do the same. You see, I think it's high time that, um, we separate immigration into buckets. You know, you can have immigration plan to bring labor into the country. Fine. Like, makes sense. But why not have offensive immigration policy? Like if you have a certain level of education and you are from a country that's an adversary, we want to like a vampire. Suck your educated, smart people out of the country.

And so, you know, I've jokingly proposed this in the past, like when Russia invade Ukraine, I would've just said, I would've opened all the consulates, all the embassies in Russia and said, Hey man, if you have a master's degree and above like free green cards to America now, of course there's like, no, there's gonna be a ton of spies that come, like, come across the pond, obviously, obviously. But eh, so what, you know, what does the FBI do anyways? Like, there you go. Jobs program.

Go, go make sure these people are not spies. The point is, I think that, um, when you, when you think about the West versus Russia or versus China or versus any other adversary, I think it's a fair point to say that the quality of life is much better in the West. I mean, anyone who doesn't say that is like. Clearly lost their marbles. And the point is, yeah, I mean, I think that what Russia is doing is a great example of offensive immigration policy.

And um, God bless them, they're allowed to do that. It is, like I said, all fair, all is fair in love and war. I think the US should be adopting the same policy, but here we see the ideological uniformity of the right wing. We, we spent the first 45 minutes effectively criticizing the ideological rigidity and uniformity of the left. The problem with the right is that it's has its own ideological, sacred cause.

And one of them is immigrants are bad and immigration itself is some sort of a tool, uh, with which the left is trying to like, um, reduce the white population of America. But there is, there are, there are ways in which immigration has in the past been used, um, quite offensively. And I think that this would be one of the ways to do that. So I actually, um. I support the Russian, uh, what is it? Value visa. I think it's a great idea. It's

I think if the reverse happened and if the West started appealing to really smart, educated Russians, I think that you would see, um, a huge exodus. Huge. And in fact, most of the Russians who are educated, who are just trying to work and raise families, they actually moved to places like Tbilisi in Georgia. They moved to Belgrade in Serbia. And, uh, it's, it's shocking that the West is effectively treating all Russians the same. I mean, that's on some level. Like ethicist, it's racist.

Similarly, with all Chinese treating everyone the same, if these are your adversaries, if these are your geopolitical rivals, then absolutely it makes sense to drain them of their human capital and their talent by making an appeal to them, making it easier for them to come as international students and as professionals.

But they've halted student visa interviews for the entire world trying to get to US universities as they're like trying to get, you know, trying to get funding sources away from the universities. And you're taking away that sweet, sweet international student like tuition. Like it's just gonna, like irrevocably change the face of US science and it's gonna open up. They're not gonna go for the Russian values visa, but Japan is trying to attract more skilled labor.

Japan, like, like they're trying to attract immigrants. Like that's how, like long in the tooth the situation is. If China started doing this, like I think it would be really difficult for people not to think about being at the cutting edge there. Europe is the odds on favorite, or to your point, Canada, like an odds on favorite to like really profit from this, but like, no, listen, it's not what US is doing. Listen,

But there's ways to eliminate that vacuous, non-productive source and pool of international students and direct them towards the more productive. And Canada's done that. So Canada is actually cutting international student applications, uh, 10% this year. Uh, but the effort is to keep the university applications relatively stable, uh, and eliminate those, you know, semi fraudulent language programs. Um, I think the US uh, I think maybe we've overreacted.

I. To this, maybe they are just like introducing social media vetting. I don't think it's sustainable to not attract international students. Uh, I think we need to separate what's happening to Harvard from the State Department issue. And again, we'll, we'll see in 12 months. Jacob, who's right, who's wrong? You know, like, so I'm open, I'm open to being obviously wrong in this being like terrible. Um, but I'm, I'm going even beyond that.

You know, what I'm saying is that our entire immigration system can be changed and not just of the United States of America, but also of Europe and also of, uh, Canada. And what I mean is that it can start to aggressively recruit educated and well-trained professionals, you know, and, and not, and I think the, it, it starts with a very simple point. You cannot treat anyone, everyone who's Russian, as if they themselves approved and authorized and planned the invasion of Ukraine.

And effectively that's what we're doing. And it's benefiting countries like Georgia and Serbia. You know, whereas it could be benefiting countries like Germany, which do need IT professionals desperately. Um, and it's just a silly fact that this is, this is one of those things where geopolitics has not been able to break through, uh, very parochial domestic politics.

Yeah, I mean, the EU actually a couple weeks ago, like launched a new initiative to try and attract scientists and researchers. To the block and I feel, I can't find it off the tip of, I'll have to see if I'm just imagining it, but I believe, I thought it was Germany or some European country was like basically offering Russian, like academics, like access to the country if they needed it, like after the fact. There you go. But I can't, I can't find it. Um, exactly.

Um, okay, we did an hour on the Art of Manliness. That's great. Dealer's choice. Marco, do you wanna talk about Bitcoin and crypto or do you wanna talk about the big beautiful Bill first?

And it's insane, uh, not because having an 8% deficit is a bad thing. Um, but because there are moments when you need to expand your deficits to offset the loss of private sector, um, you know, economic activity such as in a recession. So when a recession happens, you should be in a deficit. There's nothing bad with that. You have to go into deficits to offset and get the economy back on track. And when you are at 8% deficit with no recession, that's a really bad place to be.

It means that you don't have any room to stimulate if a recession happens. And I wanna spend a little bit of time, um. Here. A a lot of, a lot of my clients, very sophisticated investors, but also just like regular people, you know, or twitterati if you will. Uh, a lot of people expect there to be some sort of a calamity. You know, there's gonna be a giant bond market riot because the deficits are large. Um, America is basically gonna default. Uh, it doesn't have to actually happen.

It can just be a slow burn. You know, you don't have to have a heart attack. You can just basically slowly die over a period of 10 years. Why? Because interest rates are going to remain very elevated for the private sector, which includes both corporates. It also means you trying to buy a home with a mortgage, you're gonna have to lock in at a much higher rate.

And the reason for this is very simple, when the government has a lot of debt and it has to constantly refinance that debt in the markets. Imagine it's like a government having a credit card. Um, and that credit card is constantly carrying like a $50,000, you know, bill over and over every month. The interest rate on that is going to be, uh, very high, and there's not gonna be a lot of demand in the economy for non-government debt.

So whenever interest rate is applied to government debt, the private sector always has to pay a higher interest rate. And the difference between the government and the private sector is the government can print money and can raise taxes whenever it wants. Like the government can get revenue whenever it wants by just taxing you more. So it will always have a lower rate of interest. It will always cost it less than just private individuals.

And because of this, the government will get refinanced at 4.5% on its 10 year debt. But that means that your 30 year mortgage is gonna have to be six or 7%. It's not gonna come down. I think that this is something that will over the next 12 months become the political issue in the United States of America. People will begin to associate, it, will start to understand the math because enough people, especially millennials who are not pretty old, like, you know, I'm a millennial. I'm 43 years old.

Millennials are going to start being like, wait a minute. Why don't I own a home at 45, 43, 40, 39? The interest rates are too high, but I saved all this money and all this crypto, you know, I made all this money with Bitcoin, like I can afford a down payment, but I just don't wanna lock myself in with a, uh, interest rate of 7%. And it's that connection between the rate of interest, the cost of financing, and the government debt.

So cost of financing for individuals and corporates and government debt. I think that connection is going to be, start being made. Um mm-hmm. And I think that. What I would say my hot stake here is that yes, this big beautiful bill does add to the budget deficit. Although if you actually take tariff revenues, assuming that the 10% tariff remains, it's actually pretty flat to be honest.

So if any, you know, if I hear a bunch of liberals coming out, like, you know, a couple of months from now seeing that President Trump's big, beautiful bill added to the deficit, you know what, like, do some math. Look at what Joe Biden did. Look at what Trump and Nancy Pelosi did together as a, as a, as a loving couple running the country in 2020.

Like this is not this, this bill is the least profligate bill of anything that was passed by the United States of America over the last like seven years. So like, relax. So, no, this is not the issue. The issue is this. I'm fine

Uh, and actually the politics already pivoted in January, which is why this bill is adding $2 trillion to the deficit and perhaps not even if we

So this bill is either flat and doesn't add to the deficit, or it adds 1 trillion over 10 years, which is a joke given the current size or the deficit. The point, the, the whole point of this, the whole point is that that's the peak and I think that politics is going to start moving the other direction. Uh, again, it already did. I think that this bill was supposed to be five to 7 trillion, but they actually found cuts. I. To add to it, which was not something that was, uh, expected in 2024.

Uh, in 2024. One of the reasons that the dollar rallied, and one of the reasons that, you know, everybody thought that Trump would bring growth was that he would simply repeat what he did in 2017, but the macro conditions are not there for that. And so the bond market rioted in November and December of last year and forced the House of Representatives to basically add cuts to this bill. And by the way, just to, yeah, there's,

I mean, there's some hot button stuff in here, like the changes to Medicaid are gonna theoretically save $625 billion, but are estimated to push almost 8 million Americans off of healthcare coverage. Um, and if you start messing with people's healthcare, I feel like the politics is gonna change around that. There's also, like, I had never, maybe I'm just a, a new bio with this. I had never heard of salt taxes.

And now the idea that there's like this huge increased cap on state and local, local tax deductions, like funny there and all, all the green energy stuff. I mean, I don't know that, that again seems just like shooting ourselves in the foot. Also, glad I went ahead and put solar on my house last year rather than waiting, uh, until this year. Um, but I don't know.

I mean, if I was gonna take the opposite side, um, well, I, I guess I can't take the opposite side because you're saying that you think this is gonna get passed and that just makes the problem worse. You just don't think that there's gonna be any more gravy after this one. That this is the last one. Is that the right characterization of what you're saying?

So you're not gonna have a heart attack, but you're extremely unfit and can't climb stairs.

And this is, by the way, this is something we all learned at 19 years old, crowded into an amphitheater at a university when we took macroeconomics 1 0 1. This is that crowding out effect. This is why you cannot grow the economy with deficits. And so the irony, Jacob, is that fiscal conservatism will be stimulative. This is where the fiscal conservatives and the right wing policies and economics are correct.

When your deficits are persistently high, reducing them does actually lead to more growth and even more equitable growth. Like access, you know, access to credit is very important if you're poor. Mm-hmm. You know, uh, you're not using credit to buy jet skis and boats, although, you know, obviously some people are. But, um, access to credit is how you get a truck so you can get, have a job. So you can be a plumber, uh, or access to credit is how you get a home in a nice neighborhood.

Or it's how you send your kids to college. So access to credit is very important. It's not pernicious, it's not bad. But when the government has basically taken all the supply of, you know, bond buying, that there is, there is no more supply for the private sector. And so that's where cutting the deficit will become stimulative. Uh, and I think that over the next, um, you know, this, this bill basically was al already surprised. It, already surprised how conservative it was.

And again, I know the mainstream media is not labeling it as such because liberal media wants to paint, paint Trump as being profligate and irresponsible. And I mean, on some level he is. But I don't think that the media is properly telling investors, and also just regular listeners, how much lower this deficit is. Like how much less of a deficit this bill is bringing to the table than it could have. If you actually listened to Trump's um, election platform, it was 10 to $15 trillion.

Extending the 2017 tax cuts alone. Jacob is 5 trillion. Just that alone is 5 trillion. Just keeping our taxes the same. You and I since we're US citizens and we live in America just keeping our taxes the same cost 5 trillion. And yet this bill is somehow between two to 3 trillion additive to the deficit only. So I think that the zeitgeist has already changed. I mean, clearly it has. Uh, in 2017 the tax cuts were unfunded. Now they're partially funded.

Uh, going forward, I think this pendulum is gonna swing even further towards fiscal conservatism. And the reason for that is not because government spending is bad. I hate that it's not, government spending is sometimes extremely good, but in this particular case, we're just running such a high deficit that it's basically preventing you. Yes, you listening to this, buying a home with a reasonable mortgage rate, I.

So it, it's hard for, it's hard, and maybe I'm guilty of anchoring to the 10 to 15, uh, trillion or anchoring to the liberal media, but to me it just seems like, um, yet another, I mean, and, and I also, I'm so uncomfortable. I'm like literally squirming in my chair, being in a position to agree with Elon Musk. Uh, but here I am like squirming in my chair, being like, okay. And I felt this way about the first Trump administration too.

Like the one thing I really, really liked from the first Trump administration. Um, platform was infrastructure spending. And I feel like we got everything but the infrastructure spending. And the one thing I actually really liked about the Trump platform was, oh, maybe like a return to some like, notion of fiscal like responsibility. And there's not, there's there, to me, there is no fiscal responsibility here. It's just the gravy train is gonna keep going.

And the idea and like the things were, are gonna have to get really bad for the normal American, um, citizen in order for the government to say, okay, we do have to cut back. And then it's also just, um, it's, it's all of the policies smooshed together.

So if, if you take what you're talking about with the one beautiful bill in a vacuum, like, okay, I can sort of get all the way there, but then you start, you know, remembering that, well, part of what they're accounting for is that tariff revenue is gonna pay for some of this. And I mean, I think the tariff policy is nonsensical and that most of these tariffs won't be here probably in six to 12 months. And if they are, it'll be like negative on the US government.

You, you pair all this stuff with, okay, but you're also like killing the universities. You are making it impossible for international students to come here. Uh, immigration migration is also sort of stalled, so you're not getting that. So maybe we're gonna get labor shortages and higher labor costs and then we're gonna get labor cost inflation. What happens if we actually got. Something that happened in the Middle East or, um, that caused, you know, energy prices to go up.

Or like what if energy prices stay low for so long that American shale producers are out of the game and then you get a sudden spike and what are the inflation numbers gonna look like there? Food prices here, they're not nearly where they were like, you know, three, four years ago, but they're starting to tick up. They're appreciably above where they were last year and like trending in the wrong direction.

So you start like putting all of these things together and then you think about a United States that, to your point, has no fiscal space anymore, has done the max of what it can possibly do. And what did it get with that? It didn't get beautiful infrastructure or manufacturing capacity or innovation. It got nothing out of it. Just like,

Similarly, if I were to tax and import at 50%, you would just not import it. You would just stop consuming or you would buy an American alternative, uh, at which point you would get no revenue from tariffs. And that's why there is this like counterintuitive point. If you wanna raise money from tariffs, you can't manufacture at home. Lemme say that again.

If you want to raise revenue from tariffs, you have to continue to participate in globalization and trade because you're raising revenue from imports. Mm-hmm. And that's why you are right. What's going to stay is probably just that 10% across the board tariff. But the 10% across the board tariff is small enough that it will allow tariff, like tariff revenue to be collected and imports to continue.

The US is not going to shift that manufacturing domestically, but it will also be able to raise about one and a half trillion. Now, some of the estimates are two and a half. I go with the least, um, least optimistic one from the Peterson Institute. I think that's the most appropriate. So one and a half trillion will be raised, and that's what I'm seeing. I think this bill is actually far more conservative than people understand.

It raises deficit by two to 3 trillion, but I'm comfortable assigning one and a half trillion dollars worth of revenues from tariffs because globalization continues. Americans will continue to buy bicycles from China no matter what National Security Hawk psychopaths say. And effectively that 10% will raise one and a half trillion dollars. So that's the first thing I would say. That's where I think that maybe we're. Well, it's funny because Trump himself calls it a big, beautiful bill.

I would say, uh, it is a mod, moderately sized, and yet somehow still functional. Bill, you know, was that a phallic joke perhaps? Um, it's not that big, you know, Donald, it's not that big but me, you know, it works. So that's the first thing I would say. The second thing I would say is that the P research actually has a great poll that looks at the share of respondents who say the deficit reduction should be a top priority of the US government. Mm-hmm.

And that p research poll is fascinating because it actually hits some of the very important macroeconomic moments of US history Exactly. Correctly. For example, after 2008, it goes from 50% of Americans think the deficit reduction is important to 70 by 2012. And that's the birth of the tea party.

The Tea Party was born out of this concern about the deficits, and the Tea Party got a lot of flack for a lot of things they did, but the Tea Party in Barack Obama, both of them together, and I think both of them deserve credit. The conservatives obviously always give it to the Tea Party. The liberals give it to Obama, but both of them sat down and actually reduced the US deficit from 10% to 3%, two and a half, like just under three.

So the US deficit shrunk from 10% in 2000 and uh, 10 to basically, uh, by 2015 it was like, I think under 3%. That's an extraordinary amount of deficit cutting. And it happened democratically through a legislative process. Now it was very painful, and that pain led to voters not caring about deficit reduction. And you can actually see on the chart the share of respondents who say the deficit reduction should be a top priority, declines down to 40% by 2021. We're now in a post pandemic world.

Everybody wants infrastructure just like Jacob does. Everyone's cool with it. And we start spending, and Donald Trump takes advantage of this decline in political support for, for basically prudence. He passes the tax cuts in 2017 without any offsets at all. Just blows the budget deficit for the first time since the sixties in what economists would call a pro-cyclical way. First time since the sixties that America expanded its deficit outside of a recession.

And then of course, during the pandemic. Both President Trump and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, basically start out doing one, one another who's gonna, you know, blow through the deficit more because it's the pandemic. And then Joe Biden famously, when he became the president in early 2021, blows out another 2.1 trillion for no really good reason.

Like that one, I think was the most egregious act of fiscal responsibility that that February, 2021, that early 2021, basically decision to just do some more helicopter drops to the American public, because why not? Even though we had a vaccine on the way we knew it was coming, and it was pretty clear that lockdowns were not gonna last anymore. The point is that this line bottomed in 2022. This support for deficit reduction bottomed at 40%.

Only 40% of Americans thought in 21 that this was important. It's now back up to 60. It's back up to 60 Jacob from 40 to 60% in four years. Why? Because voters are kind of not stupid. And they understand that inflation was one of the consequences of all this fiscal orgy. And the second thing that I think voters understand is this crowding out effect. They're starting to ask questions like, wait, why?

Why is this auto loan, like I was able to afford a car, buy a car and have an interest rate on my auto loan at like 3%? Now it's at like 7%. Why? Why is my mortgage not 2%? Why don't we have 2% mortgages for 30 years? And the answer to all of this is the deficit. And so that's why I'm, I think, uh, first of all, I can empirically prove to you that the directionality of this is moving towards more, uh, fiscal conservatism.

But the other one is that historically I think a lot of people are very reticent. You know, there's this very callous and glib view. The democracy always stands towards socialism and towards more spending that voters will never vote to cut themselves. Their entitlement benefits that. Is repeatedly throughout history proven incorrect. Argentina just elected a dude with a chainsaw and he was carrying a chainsaw for a very symbolic reason. IE I'm gonna cut The government people voted for him.

Margaret Cher did not mince words about what she was gonna do. David Cameron in 2010, same thing. Um, and similarly again, Obama and the tea Party got together and actually shrunk the deficit from 10 to 3%. Not because they were doing something voters didn't want. No, no, no. It was the voters that pushed them to that. Uh, and you can measure where voters are on this kind of like, um, you know, profligate versus conservative line through just polling.

And I'm telling you, it's moving in the other direction.

The Cornell University Lee Club cured me of my toxic masculinity, but not of my intellectual elitism. It's all a bunch of idiots. Um,

And that's what I'm telling you. What I'm basically telling you, Jacob, is that we have a slow burn. We have a burden on the economy, which is the high interest rates, and they're not going away. And it's gonna be very difficult to overcome that. Unless the government actually. Releases some of that potential by cutting its own debt burden.

But I, I go back to what I said earlier, which is, I'm with you sort of a ways there, but I think what's different about this time is that the populace have captured in large part the state and populace are not going to cut spending. Populists have to keep on giving the goodies in order to maintain, uh, their political positions.

And Trump, and we talked about Bernie earlier, also a populist, like a lot of these folks that are in the house, these are populists, these are not people that I think are gonna turn their back on on this spending. They couldn't do it even though like they're, you know, you had Doge and these other things. Wandering around trying to do that. And I think the problem is that even with, even like, let's accept the argument, like let's say, okay, it's only 2 trillion, it's, it's not as conservative.

Let's, let's, I don't think we're gonna get a trillion and a half of tariff for revenue, but okay, let's say we get the trillion and a half of tariff for revenue too. Like, okay, it's still like we got nothing for all of this. And we're sitting on a society that is not gonna manufacture things, that is giving up a lead in innovation that is behind on and is going to be further behind on all of these other different things.

And so you're gonna get governments that are gonna look at this equation and be like, well, do I keep giving the goodies or do I make the hard cuts and take people off social security and take people off Medicare and take people off Medicaid and cut us military spending and go after the big ticket budget items in order that things are gonna grow. But like to do that, like you have to rehabilitate the society and rehabilitate the economy. And we're not like, we're not there yet.

Like we're not laying the groundwork for that. So you'll get into this trap where. Like, it's not gonna be like it was in previous iterations because like you would need spending just to get the economy to where it can take advantage of what you're talking about. Does that make sense? Well,

You know, that's, that's another way you can solve this issue. So we keep talking about cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts. Oh, you know, cuts to Medicare, this, that. But let's be very clear, president Trump is getting none of his priorities from the election. Like, you know, taxes and tips are going through a, a couple of other things, but for the most part. You know, he talked about expanding the deficit, 10 to 15 trillion.

Not literally, I mean, he didn't say those words, but when you do the math, you put all of his priorities, he's getting none of those. Jacob, the vast majority of this bill is going, you know what? It's going towards keeping the law the same. And this is what a lot of people don't understand. It costs a lot of money to keep the 2017 tax cuts. Why did they expire? Because they were not funded, as I said earlier.

I. It would be to just let, uh, the tax cuts of 2017 basically sunset and I expected the next president of the United States of America, if it's not a Republican, will effectively take us back to the tax rates, uh, of pre 2017.

But when you look at things like, oh, charging however much money so you can get access or not, not charging money, uh, however much Trump meme coin that you buy, you get personal access to the dinner with President Trump. Uh, you can buy club memberships for the new club that they're setting up in Washington dc I think the starting membership is gonna be $500,000. All the deals that the Trumps are signing, um, in the Emirates and in the Gulf.

And like, I mean, they've, they've made billions of dollars so far on some of these like crypto initiatives. And I think we should save like crypto and Bitcoin, like for a proper conversation down the road. But which is just to say if the re, if the net result of all of this is that the rich get richer and that you literally have, um, like the president of the United States using the office to enrich himself. Like that is eventually gonna give the other side fodder for Yeah, tax the rich.

How did they get that money? Like, we want some of that piece of the pie that needs to come back into the system rather being taken out by these people who are still manufacturing in China or who are, you know, in their ritzy clubs or in their, you know, gold plated toilets and things like that. Like, I think there is a populous move waiting there.

And to your point, if the auto loan rates go up enough and then the mortgage rates go up enough and you can't blame the Biden crime family, or you can't blame the woke people anymore for that because it was the Trump administration that was doing all of it. Like there is sort of a counter o okay, like let's let's take out the Franklin Delano Roosevelt playbook. Let's get taxes up in the 50 to 70% effective range.

Let's do all of this different government spending and hands outs and things like that. Like I do think that's a door, um, that is, that is lurking in the background a door. I think it is. What, what beautiful metaphorical language for me,

And he's been pushed by the combined efforts of the bond market and members of the house to get that down to two to three with sum tariff revenue. And that is actually a shocking rate of change towards a more conservative approach to deficits. Now I think that, I think that over the next five years, that's gonna include some tax increases. Yes. It's not just gonna be finding cuts. You're absolutely right. There's gonna be a little bit more, but right now we can close on this, but.

Right now, the United States of America spends more on financing that deficit than on the US military. So just think, you know, that that's ultimately unsustainable and we'll have to change.

Any parting thoughts on the NBA finals before we get outta here?

It is, it is a great atmosphere. Um, but as long as the Seattle Supersonics don't exist, I'm always going to be a little bit miffed about OKC, having a team.

Um, uh, like Caruso was draped all over him, but every single minute, every single second of that exchange was a foul. And it just came down to whether you're gonna call it or not. And so I don't think that OKC has like a recipe for long-term success because despite the fact that SGA obviously is amazing, I just feel that at some point over the next 12 months, the referees could stop kind of treating them like a novelty. Like, oh my goodness, look at them.

They, they beat the crap out of their opponents. So the perimeter, you know, like the reason that Caruso can guard Yoki is 'cause you're letting him file him. Um, the reason that.is able to shut people down on the perimeter is that quite often he is following the screener. He is, um, you know. What's the backup point guard? Uh, number 22. My brain just stopped.

But, uh, you know, that guy like is a hundred percent using his hands on defense Every ABA play now in the NBA, everyone's just like wrestling. I don't know if you've noticed that. Yeah, that's a lot. Um, and so anyways, um, I'm not sure how sustainable that is in the long term. I think at some point, or, you know, the NBA has these, these waves where they just kinda let something happen 'cause it's novel and they're like, oh wait, that's, that's actually really aggressive defense.

No, we're gonna start calling foul. And then suddenly their defense isn't as good as it was in the past.