H.M.A.D.C. Yesterday's Price is Not Today's Price

looking at me too. I got a hybrid, but still because uh yo, I think sometimes we're yelling at the wrong people over this day. So today I want to get into some economic stuff. I want to talk about inflation. I want to talk about interest rates. Uh actually who and what is responsible for this uh outlandish gas prices. Because there's a lot of like, there's a lot of hot takes that are very lukewarm. There's a lot of just ice cold takes where it's like you don't know

what you're talking about. There are a lot of funny takes where it's like, oh, my girl wanted me to take it to like a really expensive place and then he put it on a blindfold and then they get out at the gas station and it's like, look, I'm taking you somewhere expensive. Yeah, but I think we don't

have a complete understanding of really how these prices are set. Like, I don't know what in us thinks that you know, you you're yelling at the president, like the president can I mean, everybody's like the president American president don't controls everybody's price, the price all over the dog all world. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Ken. You got a song on the two Pemple Butterfly record called how Much a Dollar Cost? And he's basically talking about like

a dollar cost the price of your soul. That's kind of the idea of the song. But I want to talk to y'all like, literally, how much do a dollar cost? We're gonna talk to a bunch of economics in this one. Now check this out. Uh. When I was getting my teaching credential for California to be able to teach high school in social sciences, the third part of the credentialing program to teach at the high school level was an

economics test, and his thing. I felt that about three times and it's not because I think I've said this before plenty of times. Not because I didn't know what I was talking about. I didn't know how to talk about what I was talking about. Does that make sense?

I didn't understand these terms they was using it. For some reason, my eyes would glaze over when food start talking about inflation and and and and you know it, stagflation and elasticity and you know what I'm saying, like reading these charts, and like I would just I would glaze over because I was like, dog, I just don't get it. So I'm gonna teach you the way that I taught myself. If you want to understand economics, we're just gonna think of it as two things. The ice

cream truck or baseball cards. Now, y'all know, dollars are made, they made up. They are worth whatever we say they worth. It's no magic to it, ain't no formula. They're worth whatever we say they're worth. How much the dollar cost is how much it costs to print it, and what it can get for you. And if there's more of them, they're worth less. That's your baseball card, that's your comic, But your Pokemon car you call whatever you want. If it's too many of them, then they're not rare and

they're not worth that much. The ones that are worth a lot are the ones you can't get your hands on. That's why they cost a lot. So if there's not a lot in circulation, that that means it's worth a lot. If it's too much in circulation, that me ain't worth nothing. That's why the FEDS be trying to regulate how many dollars are in circulation. Now. Inflation work like this. Your mamma give you twenty dollars for the allowance, right, you're lucky.

My mama mayn't give me no twenty dollars for no allowance. But you go to the ice cream truck and you say, I got five dollars. What can five dollars get me? Well, what if tomorrow what five dollars can get you is half of what it could get you today, And it's not just the one candy you like, it's just everything on the truck costs more. That means that dollar can't get you what it you to be able to get you.

That's called inflation. The question is why are you just gonna wake up in the morning and charge more that I I mean, does it cost you more? A lot of times it's that. Sometimes it's not that. Sometimes it's because we know you'll buy it at whatever price we tell you. And we're gonna get to the answers of all that ultimately trying to understand what's happening with these gas prices everybody talking about. But we got the latest thing that it's just like the stuff just don't sit in a vacuum.

Like you gotta understand how all this stuff work and who actually responsible. You could blame the president, but like I mean, he only got a sprinkle sprinkles of blood on his hand. You know what I'm saying any president. It ain't never been one president's fault. But again I'm getting ahead of myself, but let's get back to this up. It's comparison with with with your mama and the ice cream truck. You know. So if you go back to your mama and you're like, yow dollars ain't cutting it.

I'm not being able to like cover what I used to be able to cover tw dollars, your mama is like, you better make that work. See, look, I come from the generation you better make that work. Generation. Your mama, send you to the stove with some money, and you're like, mine, it ain't enough to get what I need and get what you're asking for. She like, you better make it

enough and bring me back my change. Listen, your mama, get listen if you're lucky enough to get some to get an allowance, and she like, look, you gotta make that work. And you like, my lunch costs more than this now, like the snacks caused the bus, it costs more than this. She like, you better make it work. That's living wages. That's why we always mad about minimum wage and cost the living. It's like, yo, you're not paying me more even though it costs more to be here.

That's how that work. Your mom out here talking to you like like she think you just out here bawling out. You know what I'm saying. You're going to the lunch You're going to the lunch line. You're buying all kind of treats, all the snacks, all the cookies, and on Tuesday you out of money. You're like, no, I'm trying to tell you the stuff costs more. I don't know what happened, It just costs more. So your allowance is your living wages, and the cost of living is how

much lunch costs and the bus and everything. You got people out here saying, well, you know, if you guys weren't just buying so much avocado toast, you could probably make It's like, nah, fam, you really think it's that simple. You really think it's that simple. No, it's it's minimum or or average wages for a job versus the cost of living is called inflation. The dollar don't get me you. Now, one would say, well, you know, I mean everything costs more,

but people are making more. You know, if it's like, well gas was in the seventies, but you also made enough to do that. Now that that would mean that the cost of living and wages were growing at the same rate. They just not. So that dollar can't get you what it used to be able to get you. It's not so much that like things just cost more. It's the dollar doesn't get you what it used to get you. That's inflation. Now, we got these p is on the board, and at the end, I'm gonna give

you some actual numbers and percentages. So now that you get the metaphor, let me cut it clean for you. Is definition. So what is inflation. I'm quoting from the State Policy Network dot org. It's a just some information stuff. I mean, this stuff is easily googleble, but like sometimes the terms don't even help you. So, like I said, I failed economics. I knew all these terms, but I ain't really get it. So here we go. Inflation is an economic term to describe the situation where the prices

rise in the economy. It means goods and services are becoming more expensive and your monthly paycheck won't buy as much as it previously did for in other words, when everything gets more expensive. Now as the question for why, I mean this is why an economist is an actual job, because it's complicated and everybody don't agree as to why this happened. But for the sake of our discussion, I'm

gonna try to make it as rudimentary as possible. And again, you know, it's probably economists that listen to this that are gonna be like, now, prop it ain't that simple. Or now I don't agree with this, dude, because I think I may have said this before and was really made clear when my wife got her PhD that even knowledge has to be agreed on. She had a saying in her pH d program that was like he or

she who has funding is right. So if you could get your research funded and it make it into the books, then you write, he who got funding is right. So many people may disagree on this, but there's this o g economists. His name was Milton Friedman, and again everybody don't like him. I ain't gonna hold you here. Ronald Reagan market thatcher type dude. You know what I'm saying. So he'd be pretty conservative. So consider that as I'm saying what I'm saying. But he's one way to do it.

And his argument is saying, it's pretty simple. It's inflation happens because the money supplied rows more rapidly than the goods and services produced. Because remember, we make money like physically literally it's made. We're not on a gold standard no more. They they pieces of They're cotton, pictures of

dead men, that's what they are. He says, Inflation itself is a monetary phenomenon because if there's a finite amount of stuff, that's why a lot of people get excited about crypto because it's like there's only so many and you could predict that because there's only so many in circulation. You can't just like pump money into the system, because

it's got to be a thing. When we was on a gold standard, a dollar meant this many ounces of gold, and there was only so many ounces of gold, so you could predict what was going on in the world and how much there was and how much it was gonna be worth, because there was only so much to go around, right, That was the idea. But if if it's just what we agree on, then as he says, it's always in everywhere a result of too much money for a more rapid increase in the quantity of money

than an output. Moreover, in the modern era, the important next step is to recognize that today government's control the quantity of money, so that as a result, inflation in the United States is made in Washington and nowhere else. So he arguing inflation is a self inflicted wound. It's the government just you keep printing money, so you need

to stay out of the market. Now you get into people talking about like free market economies, you know what I'm saying, or kanzie in or whatever, like these other theories that we ain't got time to get into. But what he's saying is like inflation happens when you just printing money all willy nilly and we ain't got the

product to push it, like you creating this problem. I used to wonder about, like national debt, when you're just like, yeah, this is we're four trillion dollars in debt, and it's like that's not a real number, Like you're never gonna pay that back. There's there isn't four trillion dollars. There don't, there isn't. But then I used to think, okay, well, just well, if I don't mean nothing, just print a bill that says four trillion and then give it to him.

But that's not it. Just the whole thing collapses if you do that, because again, if you can just write it on a piece of paper, then it's not worth nothing. So depending on who you ask, what's the role of the government. The role of government is to either a make sure that this delicate balance of quantity, services and dollars stay even or their job is shut their mouths, stay out of it, make sure nobody break no laws.

If there's too much. Again, like I said earlier, if there's too much in circulation, then that means it don't mean nothing. If there's not enough in circulation, then everybody can get to it. So you have to keep this like this balance. You follow me. Now, when you hear things about inflation and how you control that inflation, then you hear stuff about interest rates. You ever heard somebody top about interest rates on the news? Interest rates are low,

So you know you're better go buy a house. You know what I'm saying. You know what the interest is? I mean, I don't know if you know interest is, but basically it's this, I'm gonna charge you to borrow money from me. Let's go back to the ice cream truck. You go out there to the ice cream truck, you and your homies out there. You got your little five dollars, and the ice cream dude say, yo, uh, this is gonna cost you ten dollars. So you look to your brother,

your sister. You be like, yo, let me let me get five bucks. And it was like, okay, I'll give you five dollars, but it's gonna cost you two dollars. What does that mean? That means you need to pay me two dollars for letting you borrow my five dollars. So I want my five dollars back plus two dollars, That, my friend, is interest. The two dollars on top of that is interest. So rather than just saying a flat number,

what you have is percentages or rates. However much you borrowed, I want you to pay me back what you borrowed, plus a percentage of that. So if I brought up a hundred dollars at two interests, then what do I owe you two of a hundred two dollars? That's nothing. Two percent interests, that's great. What about five percent interests? Borrow hundred dollars, I owe you five dollars on top of the hundred after I pay you back. Okay, that's cool. That's five dollars. That's a hundred. So I owe you

a hundred and five. No, well you told me a hundred and five if you paid me the whole hundred dollars. But y'all on payment plans now they tell you it's cool, yo, low interest rate. You just you know, you paid you know, monthly bills. Just break it down, pay what you can, and you keep and you keep it pushing. But every year you don't pay the principal off, that's called compound interests. Principal meeting the whole hundred dollars. I get to attack

another percentage on what you originally borrowed. Now what you got left, what you originally borrowed. You mess around paying twenty dollars a month, and at the end of five months you still owe fifty dollars and you're like, wait, whoa wait, I just how do I still have that? Well, it was compound interest. You know what I'm saying. You ain't. You ain't you ain't paid off in time. So I get to charge another year of interest rates on top of what you already paid, because I'm charging you for

the whole amount, not what you got left. Y'all, y'all, y'all following me? How how this is what we talk crippling debt. It's because you never you can never, You're never gonna pay it back because you're paying more than if you borrowed. So at the end of this, I mean, if the numbers pay back, you didn't paid back five dollars a hundred dollars. Now, of course I'm pulling these numbers like, this is a horrible deal. If you were

in it, you know what I'm saying. But that's this is this is an overview like I said, it's economists that are gonna be like prop you don't know what the hell you talking about. This is while we say, hey, listen, don't be paying the minimums because the credit card or debt or will be like, look, hey just pay me. Just just just just put something on it. You got five on it, just put a little bit on it. It's cool. Well, they're charging your interests every time, you

know what I'm saying. That's why it's so good about getting out of debt, because you're gonna be in debt forever. Look, let me give you a hood scenario. Sometimes this happens with just like cloud, like you turned the wround corner, somebody be like, hey, hey, who know blood who you know over here? And you're like, oh manna I oh I know, uh I know a little tiny baby doo. Look like that's the homie calling right now. Then you call baby do look and do look yeah like now

you're cool. Yeah that do cool? You oh do Look for a long time. You'll never be able to pay that back. If you like, hey, uh yo, man, you know, whenever you need a favor, I got you. And he's like, yo, can you get me into I'm a rapper, so it's like, Yo, can you get me into this concert? Oh? Yeah, I got you. We even that you're gonna call next week. Hey can you get me into this? I'm like nigked, Like okay, he's gonna call you again, Like, hey, homie,

can you get me into this? You're gonna owe that nigga for the rest of your life, so be careful borrowing you. His name ain't So what's the solution. Don't spend money you ain't got right, I can't spend money I don't have. That's how you stay out of debt. But like, we know, not that simple, so what so yeah, the what a dollar can get me raises over time, so okay, make more money, right, it doesn't it? I

mean it seems that simple. Well, let me introduce you to the CPI Inflation Calculator c p I. What that means is consumer price index, And what we're saying is like the stuff that you just normally need, the like the unavoidable stuff. You gotta buy food, gotta buy eggs, you ain't gotta go to like you know what I'm saying. You gotta Postmates, your you know your your it's the cart your stuff, but you still got I mean, of course you're gonna there's an up charge for that, but

that's a luxury. You ain't gotta do that, you know what I'm saying. It was a luxury for some people. You gotta, you gotta pay your light bill, you gotta pay electric bill, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta pay your gas bill. You got you know, you gotta pay rent. And you also gotta put gas in your car, which is where this whole discussion is gonna end debt. Right. Uh So, consumer price index, right, that's what that is?

What does the normal consumer pay for normal things? And a way to kind of understand this if you look at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, here's some data tools. It's it's it's actually it's pretty crazy to like look at over time how inflation has changed us. So I punched in twenty dollars in March of can buy you the same thing as forty dollars and seventy three cents could get you in this month. You're following me, what twenty dollars could get you? Then forty dollars could get

you out? So it's doubled, right, which would be fine if wage prices also doubled since then, then it would just be a wash. At has has wages risen? Well let's well how much have wages? So here's the way to get your brain around it. Think of it as like rent versus income, meaning average income versus average rent. What percentage of your income goes to rent? Will help you understand a way of saying like cost of living.

So if the price of stuff is going up at the same rate as wages are as what I'm making, then this is a dumb discussion to have. But did it grow out the same rate? So the ratio is rent to income? Right, So here's some numbers. So if we say somebody makes dollar per week or like a forty nine thousand two annual salary like before taxes, that's the medium wage among like full time workers nationwide. Okay, this is this is uh average renter pace of their

income are rent. Among female wage earners, the average rent is thirty point five of the individual rencome. Because again, wealth gaps, I'm telling you, man, this stuff show up everywhere. Right. In two thousand twelve, it was twenty two eight five percent was the average rent and the percentage ravage rent as percentage of their house of their income. That's a twenty four point five increase in the rate of rent to income in eight years, an annual growth of So

there's a lot of numbers. I'm gonna make it easier for you in a second. So the value of the average wage increased at the rate of three point four four percent. So let me say it as clear as possible. Do all the math you want to do it, but you know math is weird. I get it. Listen, rent prices increased twelve point five percent faster than wages. So rents going up higher than your wages. That's how inflation works. So if you to go again, rent inflation, wage inflation,

how much can your dollar give you? Right? So in two thousand seven, rent was going up, uh four point six percent, and then wage was going up four point five pc. In two thousand and eight, rent was going up three point six percent while wage was going up two percent. In two thousand nine, follow me, rent was going up two point eight percent. You know a wage was going up, it wasn't it was going down. Getive

one point five one are our wages went down? What happened to two thousand nine housing crash recession, like the rent going up while we make it less. It ain't no avocado toast. What happened in rent went up three wage two point eight. So what I'm saying is the rent going up faster than our wages. You talk about we spending money on avocado. Know what we're saying is the dollar ain't worth the same. It costs more to live. I guess you could go back to school and get

a get a better job. Okay, cool, Well, then yeah, borrow another eighty thousand dollars that you'll pay for the rest of your life. Anyway, I'm not here to complain. I'm just trying to help you understand how this works. Now, let me get back to like how inflation and stuff like kind of kind of does things. So if you lower the interest rates, then what that means is people gonna spend more money on houses. But that mean we've gonna buy up all the houses. It ain't gonna be

enough of them, which means that raises the price. Does that make sense? So the cost of houses are gonna change, and then they're gonna say many people buying up these houses even we were to raise these interest rates, right, because not the money. So they're trying to keep the money balanced. Air quotes in in in in the system to make sure that the dollar keep meaning something. What does this have to do with why Californians are paying six dollars for gas? You heard me, six dollars for gas.

Let's get into it, y'all. Remember in the Dark Night when Heath Ledger was joker, and he said when he met with all the goons, hey, if you're good at something, never do it for free. He's setting up a principal here him being good at something is for the sake of our times. Is a commodity, And I'm not gonna just give you this commodity because I'm the only one you could get it from. So I get to set the price, havey have? I want to set it because

you need it. And if I could control how many of it and how much of it is on the streets, then then then I could charge whatever. I won't enter the idea of the oil industry, the energy industry. Why are these dudes all clicked up together if they all trying to sell the same product. It's exactly what I'm telling you, because we get to tell you what the hell, we're gonna you're gonna pay us for it because you can't get it nowhere else. Why do they have a

vested interest? And make sure you're not buying wind because wind is free. You say you got to build the infrastructure for it, of course, but the wind is free. I can set these prices because it's simple law of supply and demand. If you could control, just like the dollar, the amount, just like your Pokemon card, if I can control the amount of them that are in the streets, then I could control how much you're gonna pay for It.

Would make sense for everybody that owns any of this energy to make sure we all on the same page, because if you start charging less, you mess up it for everybody. We're gonna have to make sure we got some folks on the inside that is making the laws to make sure that this money trained working. I got enough money to make sure you lawmakers ain't gonna mess up my bag. But like I said, with the Pokemon card,

that can only go so far. There's a term called elasticity, which means at some point you're gonna hit a place where this is so high that we're not gonna We're not gonna buy this no more, or we're gonna figure out other ways to do it. Now we're getting into the culture war debate about like, well, you know, we got oil in America. It's sitting right up under right up under the Alaskan ice. It's sitting right up right

off our coasts, it's right off the golf coats. But the problem is to get to that you kind of gotta kill earth to get it. And we're like, yo, is that juice worth the squeeze? Is it really worth the squeeze to just like destroy the ground at the ground we all live on to get some stuff that we actually need. Well, the question is how much a dollar cost? And then the next question is is that gonna make it any cheaper? Is it? If these people

are already know we're willing to pay this much. I mean, if you just come down one dollar, then it's gonna seem cheaper. May I mean you you trust in them to be some economic purists. I don't. I don't think it's gonna change the price very much because they're just gonna tap a all American you know, stick on it. Just it's oil. Listen, it's oil. Riggs and long Beach it's oil riggs and in Texas and Yo, here's an

interesting thing. Why I hear recently a lot of Latinos are actually switching to these Republicans because look at a lot of migrant Latinos. They work in the oil field, they work out here, and we're the ones and we do you know, Democrats talking all this like clean energy stuff, so we canna lose their job. They canna lose their jobs, and they like, listen, everybody racist. That that's they stay that. Look, look, both of y'all races democratic and neither one of y'all

like y'all just the Demo has just talk nicer. And when you talk about us, all you talk about is immigration. I'm like that's like issue number five, you know what I'm saying. So like, look they look low, kid, you know they kind of did they them the Latinos is like the Republicans just gaining some Latino some Latino ground, because it's like, can you talking y'all already know y'all racist, both of y'all races. You'll be saying the quiet thing

out loud. So what you got for me? Well, we got these jobs, like yeah, said, let's go comp pop how much is it worth? It? Can gas be eight dollars? Which which with where where's your price? Y'all just saw our president get on the stage and he say, hey, listen, listen, effective immediately, we're gonna ban Russian oil import because we have war with Russian. Now, let me ask you this, how smart is it to buy something that you need

from somebody that show enemy. Does that sounds smart to you? Well, we've been doing it four decades because we've been using Middle Eastern oil and and there's there's there's some weird kind of things going on here. This stuff is complicated, and when you get into the geopolitics of it, because it's like why I'm ba buy oil from Afghanistan if I'm at war with Afghanistan? That don't make no sense to me, right, But it's because, well, y'all can destroy

y'all land, I'm not gonna destroy mine. You know what I'm saying, Like I'm not if you don't clean your kitchen, you understand what I'm saying. You don't already clean your kitchen. Are you gonna cook for dinner? You're gonna buy something because I'm not trying to wash all these dishes again. Right, So you're like, don't destroy your land. You feel me, We'll just buy it from you. But on people on the right, it's like that don't make no damn sense.

We got it over here. We could get some of that good some of that good money, you know what I'm saying. So they're looking at everybody going Okay, how much is it worth? How much is it worth it? How? How? How? What's the price? What's your breaking point? How much the oil prices gotta be before you stop worrying about sequoia trees and breathable air and nashvial parks and an entire globe that's like livable. What's like? What's what's the price?

How high this gas gotta get before you stop realizing that, Look, we're just gonna have to pay it. So does the president control the prices? Who know? The industry control the prices? The question is what does he control? But only specifically for America. So if the president say, hey, listen, we're not using that oil, we're shutting off this pipeline, we're doing this, then the industry gets to go, okay, cool, So you you're cutting off your other sources, all right, Dope,

this will we charge it. Oh look, now get hell of murky because listen, you put a sanction on Russian oil. Let's just say you make this like an international NATO sanction on Russian oil. Somebody gonna make some money because you don't cut them off. So now look at look at peepe this, peepe this. We make money off this war because you still gotta buy oil. And if you're telling me you're not gonna buy oh man, now look, somebody fnna get bread off this war and get it.

Get crazy, don't it. You're a You're in a horrible situation. You want to keep the prices down, Go ahead and buy from Russia. You're buying from Russia. You're supporting their war. I mean, it's crazy, ain't it. You need to tell me you ain't never had to play nice, to play the long game. Somebody you know, crazy, But like I don't know what to say, like I need them? Yeah? Like or or do you need them? What's the price? And it's not like the president buying that oil, your

gas station buying that oil. You feel me and he's like, look, that's just how much it costs. You went to the ice cream truck and your drum stick that was a dollar yesterday. If the ice cream industry, truck truck industry was like, hey, we're not buying from anybody from Colorado, then the rest of the state's go, oh word, okay, well we get to raise our price though, because you actually need these drumsticks and you're gonna sell them, Like what what what y'all gonna do? And now you like

got dog man? Okay, so now the ice cream two dollars. So you're like hey mom, and mom like, I ain't paying you. Listen, you got this. How much your money is. You gotta make your work, so do you? So I guess you gotta make sacrifices. You gotta do other things.

You gotta get you a scooter. I don't know, you're gonna start mowing the lawn and make some extra money and wash some cars or you could do with Some other people have argued to continue this metaphor switch the frozen yogurt, Well what if we don't use oil into electric cars, into clean energy, And to this, we're like, well, yo, well if we just stopped doing that, then well, now you messed up another part of economy because there's millions

and millions of people that got jobs. So now you're gonna put all these people out of business, which is also gonna mess up inflation because now there's more people in the job marketing. If there's more peop, if there's more people that need jobs than there are jobs that exist, then guess what our unemployment race rise. It's it's a

crazy balance, right come. There's a lot of different Like it's super cool now like back, which is way better than when I was trying to learn all this stuff, where there's just like dope websites that can like give you pretty simple breakdowns of a lot of these things. That makes it a lot more easier than the way I went through learning all this stuff. So here we go.

Just bottom line, I'm gonna break these things down for you. Okay, look again, Like we said, gas prices are basically supplying demand, and then gasoline prices cover the cost of like why it says six dollars a pump, what does that cup six dollars a gallon? That's covering firing, the crude oil, refining it, distributing it, right, and additional federal taxes because everybody got get the cut. Usually if it's reasonable as

related to inflation, costs of living wages. Nobody really notices it because it's a necessary evil, like you still gotta get around. It only becomes noticeable when it gets too high. And what's crazy if your oil exactly is don't nobody get mad at you. Everybody get mad at the president. Which is a great set up if if you, if you them right now, let's dive into it. So remember that that gasoline don't come out the earth is gasoline

oil don't come out there. It comes out as crude oil, right, and it's a raw commodity, and getting it out the ground is the biggest percentage of our cost. That's why oil men make so much. Well that and it's freakishly dangerous. So if you look at like according to again I'm quoting,

I'm quoting Investopedia. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the price of crude oil accounting for fifty of the price of gasoline in the decade through on average, But that average conceals wide fluctuations in when crude prices down sharply during COVID, crew just accounted for just fort of gas prices. Because you remember when COVID started, nobody was going nowhere so we wasn't buying it. Now if you

know how again, selling something work. If it's just if it's just sitting in the warehouse, it ain't doing nothing but getting rotted. So you're trying to offer it right there? What's up with these like end of the year sales. You're just trying to off your stuff, so that means you got to lower the price. And if you lowering the price, that means you're not getting a return on

your investment. So you're hoping that you could just off as much as you can with hopes that that muggle rebound a little later and you make your mo money. You feel me. I don't know if you'll remember in the pandemic, there was a moment when crude oil prices the price of a barrel got to negative where it was negative a dollar. You know what I'm saying. I know it's a weird mathematical thing, but that's what I'm

trying to say. The demand was so low, so it just like, dang, we can't even get this stuff away. Don't nobody wanted? Whoa that? Did that mean that? The President went up there and with his harsh negotiation and said, you're gonna give us oil. Now that's not now that our work now crude oil. I'm gonna give you another metaphor in a lot of ways, is like coffee. Now,

I stay with me. Now, why wohen you go to specialty you know snobby tea coffee shop that that coffee cup is six dollars a cup, whereas you could just go to Circle K seven eleven, Piggy, Wiggy you know, wig wams, I don't know, and get you a one dollar cup of coffee. Well, one taste horrible and the other one tastes amazing. If you know what you're tasting. Why, it's because all coffee beans ain't created even the process of getting them to that shelf and created equal. That's

why that hoity toity spot is called specialty coffee. It's the top of the crop that gets to go there that for it to be called specialty. Everybody else that little folders you know what I'm saying That that I mean, I'm I'm throwing shade it folders, you know what I'm saying. But that stuff, why it tastes awful is because it's a lower grade being. And then the process of getting that thing roasted and grinded and stuff like that. Like, yo, it's not it's not as good, but you can still

sell it because plenty of people drink it. Look, this is easy when cocaine and crack cocaine costs more because it's pure. I mean it's easy, right, that little dirt weed that you'd bought from your uncle, Like why it was only two dollars. It's because it's nasty. It's got a reguno in it, you know what I'm saying. But that good, that good good that Kelly Kush is gonna cost you something because it's better, like right, I mean, it's this easy. Crude oil, there's a quality of crude oil.

If you want good crude oil that's good to make gas, you gotta pay for the best stuff. Secondly, refining it, like I said, the process of making crude oil at a high grade into gas, it costs a lot. You gotta pay them people. And then next you gotta do distributing, marketing that once the crude oil is refined in the gasoline, it gotta get shipped in storage tanks and eventually make

it to those gas stations. And then stations require staff making its distribution and marketing and that account for like fourteen percent of the US retail price in gas in the decades average. Right, they gotta make their money too. And then finally the tax man. Here's where it gets gangster. Stay in local taxes account for sixteen percented at retail gas price. Now this is where you can start getting your pitch force together, because I ain't set the price,

but I set the percentage. Now, it's not just the president, their state taxes to everybody gotta make their money. If you can think of it like this, what the president gets to do is figure out which supplier he go on. You. The supplier get to tell you how much this stuff costs. And then after you bought and how and how, that supplier tells you how much each of these things costs. They calculating their cast to get it out of the ground, to process it. And then once we sell you that barrel.

Now the company that bought the barrel, they gotta tell you how much it costs for them to get that Crewe get that gas in a truck to the station in the pumps, and then that company got to pay the state and the federal and they're saying, Okay, you gotta get your cut it cost me this much. I'm a seller at this you want this percentage for gallon of what I sell? So then they say, okay, who

paying for all that? Nigger us? We but this when you say proudly it's the same amount of work to get the oil out of the Why then why is the price changing. It's the same amount of work to get the oil out the thing through the thing. It's like, what's the inflation? Baby? Add it's inflation. Look, I can't control them, you know what I'm saying, how much of dollar? Cause, yeah, it's inflation, baby. And what we say before inflation may

it up? And if inflation shooting up faster than your your rent or your income, oh baby like that, man, that's y'all's problem. We just look, the inflation went up, so now I gotta pay my workers more. That's what y'all said, cost the living, right, Oh baby, you got all these environmental laws, they just cost me more to make sure I'm taking care of earth. That's what y'all said. Maybe you ain't have all those laws, you know what I'm saying, Maybe we could get this gas a little cheaper.

Pimping ain't easy. And then that's where your price come. So you see how crazy that is. They mess around, tell you it's your fault. It's your faults these prices. That is, don't blame us, blame your president, blame your laws. The only problem is this is an international commodity. So it ain't just inflation, it ain't just the president, it ain't just the oil industry. It's cap ullism. It's the whole systems. It's the whole thing. So when you're feeling

the pain at the pump, you gotta understand economy. It's all of it. So what are some of our solutions? Well, like I said, you can go get a better job, or we can start lobbying for higher wages for workers. We can start talking about clean energy not needing these things. We can start talking about these tax rates and try to understand like hey, homey, like why are you charging this much? And then there's us as consumers. You remember

beanie babies, I know, right, because we stopped caring. They used to cost a lot, they used to be collectors on it. Maybe there's a few niche places that you can get them for high prices, but we generally don't care no more. You know, how you make a price go down, stop needing it. What I tell you about, uh, the price of crude oil during COVID season, during them lockdowns, when nobody was driving or they was like, oh man, President Trump got the gas right kesa chump, ain't do nothing.

Nobody was buying it because nobody needed it. They needed to off they wait, that's I mean, it's pretty simple. You go to the ice cream truck, all of a sudden, something go down with them drumsticks. Don't nobody like them, no mo, So you're charging two dollars for them. Drumsticks gonna be dumb because all they're gonna do is sit on the bottom of your freezer because nobody buying them. Guess what I bet you them things go down the fifty cents. You feel me where? Okay? Am I being

a hypocrite? Absolutely? Because guess what, I still got to pick up my child today. I still got to feel my gas tank. I'm just saying, if I'm gonna shake my fist as something, it ain't the damn President. He ain't. But one piece of this. If if anybody I'm gonna be mad at, it's the industry itself. But the industry said something very simple, the same thing the joker said. If you're good at something, don't do it for free. You mad at me, but you're still buying it. You

still swipe your card. Question we gotta ask ourselves is when is it too much? Neighborhood pimps looking at the judge like, yo, you could put me in jail, you could put my house in jail. But I know your face. You bought one of mine yesterday. I'm only in business because you're buying. If you stop buying, I stopped Selling's pimping, pimping up with these electric cars, you know, I said, And y'are acting like airplanes don't run on fuel either.

That's gas too they I mean they're buying gas. We're gonna stop flying as a nation. Look, I don't know it's pimping. I don't I mean, I don't know. I'm just saying, if you're gonna shake your fists, shake your fists at gestures wildly the whole thing, because at the end of the day, this is the price of participation. Come on, player hood politics. M M yeah. This here thing was recorded by me propaganda in East Low Spoil Heights, Los Angeles, California. This mug was mixed, edited, mastered, and

scored by Matt Osowski. I can totally say his name, guys, it was it was just stick. He's won by Matt now again because he got two legal situations with the name Headlights. Y'all know, common used to be called common sense. You know, Tip Ti tips sometimes it happened. Executive produced by the one and only Sophie Lectman for a Cool Zone Media and the theme music by the one and only Gold Tips Gold Tips d J Shawn p So. Y'all just remember listen every time you check in. If

you understand city living, you understand politics. We'll see how next week start to start