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Show right, job good, thank you, Oh man, we got thank you, Oh god, We've got a great job boy tonight. I'm very excited, as you can see, I am. I am fully healed or re see. This is what caused all the commotion. They glued it back together.
Where is it? They gluted back together?
But that's all. That's it. That's what nearly brought.
An old man down, A tiny puncture wound that all the blood in my body went.
Let's go, we got to help a show to night.
My guess sociologists and author Matthew Desmond's gonna be going.
I love him, They love him fresh off his upset win as Best Supporting Actor, and the crowd goes well.
But first, if I can just pick up something from the last time that I was out here, I'd made a bit of a critique of Elon Muskin and the Doge program. Let me, let me reset the scene. I am not allowed to have big boy mugs anymore. There was there was an actual meeting of the safety Department of Paramount and Viacom. That was like, no most ceramics for mister Stewart, so they wanted to babyproof.
So this is anyway. We had some critiques about Douge.
After the show, Governor Musk tweeted or ext I guess that he would like to come on here and talk to me as long as the show airs unedited.
So I thought about it, and after a.
Prayer full week with my family, well.
A family family hall pass situation.
You don't want to know, I mean, you don't want to know, and quite frankly, I don't want to know. But after thinking about his offer, I thought, you know, hey, that's actually how the in studio interviews normally air.
Is unedited. So sure.
We'd be delighted.
As a matter of fact, let me sweeten or on Sweeten the pod. The interview can be fifteen minutes, it could be an hour, it could.
Be two hours whatever. I'll be honest, I don't think this network.
Makes any other programming, so we do whatever we want.
As long as we wrap.
Before the new season of South Park, which comes out like May or June of twenty twenty six.
So I am game.
I think it'll be a very interesting conversation. But then I checked X again and I saw another tweet from Elon because you can't not And he then said, after saying I'd like to come on, John Stewart cannot be trusted and that I am a propagandist and you give
me too little credit, and that I am not bipartisan. Again, the guy who custom made his own dark Maga hat that he wears to opine in the Oval office with the president who he spent two hundred and seventy million dollars to elect, thinks I'm just two partisan.
I'm really not sure what.
He thinks by partisan means, but it's generally not I support Donald Trump and also German in these AfD party that's not by partisan, that's just the same shit. So I guess what I would say is this, Look, Elon, I do have some criticisms about DOSE. I support in general the idea of efficiency and delivering better services to the American public in cheaper and more efficient ways. And if you want to come on and talk about it
on the show, great. If you don't want to, sure, but can we just drop the pretense that you won't do it because I don't measure up to the standards of neutral discourse that you demand and display at all times, because quite frankly.
You know it, I know it bullshit. So let's get to the big story.
Americans are still trying to process the global realignment that has occurred following the disastrous Oval Office meeting between the President JD. Vance and Vladimir Zelensky. They say, are we still America? They say, oh, side a way on, they say, it's complicated. The best way that I can explain what happened and show Americans how to process this new reality was with another shocking turn of events from this weekend.
On Saturday Night, at the Elimination Chamber, the WWE shock the world is John Cena turn heeled, joined the rocks and attacked Cody Rhodes.
Now, if that does not immediately explain to you our current geopolitical climate, you must have grown out of watching wrestling through the normal course of aging. I, on the other hand, understand this in my booze.
This explains it, folks.
All of your shock, all of your disappointment, all of your anger, it's in there.
It's in the square circle you see Saturday night. Oh, we're doing this.
Saturday night, Johncina, the good guy of professional wrestling, mister hustle, the champ, the man who stood for everything, truth, justice, the guy who literally holds the record for the most Make a Wish Foundation meetings of all time. People would get cancer just to meet John Cina. Last weekend, Sina flipped the script and went from being a face a good guy, to a heel a bad guy. Now, if you don't follow professional wrestling, and I'm guessing if you watch this show, you do, God.
From all right, but let me continue to bore you with this metaphor.
So here's what happened.
The current WWE champion is won Cody Rhoads.
Seven people say around.
Cody Roads is the people's champ unquestioned bravery. He stands in for Zelenski in this metaphor. A couple of weeks ago, the rock now evil owner of the WWE putin in our story, made Cody Rhoads an offer.
The one thing that I want more than anything in this world.
Is that I want your soul.
He wants Zolenski.
But sir, but sir, I am smaller and weaker than you. It will take incredible bravery for me to protect my soul and the soul of my people. But luckily I am not protecting my soul alone, for I have the support of the Great Johnsena. So Cody Rhodes Zelenski told Vladimir Putin Rock no soul for you, mother, and that's when they met in the Oval office. America went to
hugs Zolensky. But when America looked up, somehow Putin had given John c to the International time for its time, and rather than repudiate Putin, America smelled.
What the rock was cooking and threw that boards.
Tea days America delivered the nutshot They're not shot to the hopes and dreams of Ukrainians everywhere. And then, for no reason, America jumped on to Lensky and started punching in the face as many times as he got.
To simplistic.
This is it, am I being too simplic, assigning to the delicate art of real politique, a scripted outcome.
Perhaps a judge for yourself.
Putting broken twenty five times his own signatship twenty five times he broken seys fire.
Nor you're in no position to dictate what we're gonna feel.
You're not in a good position.
You don't have the cards right now, seeing you're gambling with World War three. You're gambling with World War three.
Have you said thank you once the fire meetings we gave you through this stupid president, three hundred and fifty billion dollars.
You either gonna make a deal or we're out.
This is gonna be great television. I will say that.
It sure wasn't.
But isn't that what you want from the high stakes diplomacy and real life urgency.
That ending war demands. And you know, even reporters got some nutshots in why.
Don't you wear a suit?
Oh shit, no you did. Let's do that doesn't oh.
Z, let's get you're so poor and war torn, you're down to one Brooks brother.
Oh shit, you've you've so war.
Torn, you've given up the meaningless protocols of business attire. If you think I'm pushing this metaphor, look at the stunned faces in the crowd at WWE when John Cena turned heel. I now present you the equally stunned faces of those watching this Oval office pay per view.
Scott, I've never seen anything like that.
You've never seen anything like that. Wow, just wow, that was something, Caitlin, I want to start with. Look at her face. I mean Christian, you broke Christiana and plo.
The woman wanders unprotected through Taliban control Afghanistan.
Doesn't give ten minutes of Trump diplomacy.
She's like, is anyone else?
Dizzy?
My A one c is plenty Now.
Of course, there is one big difference between the WWE and the world of politics. In the WWE, they seem very clear on who the good guys and who the bad guys are. Nobody walked out of the match pretending that the guy who got nutshotted was the bad guy. There was this attitude of ungratefulness, seeing his smirk, seeing him roll his eyes, seeing him refer to JD Vance the Vice president as JD.
He shows up in his equinox chic outfit to the dog on.
President Zelenski was also antagonistic and frankly, he was rude, so impertinent, so disrespectful, tone.
Deaf, going in and fighting back, getting sassy with the president.
And then he was sassy.
He was sassy.
He was a real scallywag.
You know what I would say if I was there in the Oval office with him, might say, you better watch your tone, mister, I think it was Churchill who, during World War Two was roundly criticized for being a bit lippy. Excuse me, mister, will decide where you're going to fight them, whether it's on the beaches or not, or with him.
Poor guys z Olenski, his nation was invaded.
He's against all odds, health off of much bigger army for three years, and we're like, would kill you to smile, a little more dressed, a little nice to your beautiful country. Nobody would know show off what you guys. You know what I'm talking about. Maybe some of those rare medals have been hearing.
Some about it.
But of course, if you criticize Trump's very.
Clear hostility to Zelenski and very clear appreciation of Putin as being suspicious or a repudiation of American values as they've been outlined since World War Two, Trump's people quickly set up straw men north of Richmond.
If there are no negotiations, what is the alternative another four years of war.
We're not saying there should be no negotiations. We're just surprised at the side you seem to be negotiating for. President Trump recognizes the urgent need to end this war after three long, bloody years.
President Zelensky has different aims in mind.
Yeah, bullshit. I'm pretty sure everybody wants. Everybody wants to end. Hitler wanted to end the war, just not the way it ended.
You're pretending that we have.
No other options.
Our hearts all break for the suffering and loss and death. But you know what would be even worse, World War three.
Yes, I'm sure your heart in quotation marks is breaking, But in your little zero sum formulation you are correct. Total capitulation by Ukraine, loss of all their mineral wealth and no security guarantees is still better than World War three for now. But you know everything sounds better if the only other option you're presenting us is world War three. You can listen to the Amelia Perez composer freestyle another verse at.
The Oscar or World War threat.
Eventually you will.
Agree to hear another verse by Ham.
These guys are so up Trump's ass they can't even admit that this meeting was Russia's wet dream.
The world is now watching how Trump behaves and acts when he's pressed.
I thought he stood up for America, that we're a good people.
We want to.
Help you, but we're going to be respected.
So I think Moscow is probably more afraid of Trump than ever.
Yes, people get terribly afraid when someone viciously takes their side. They must be quaking in there. What are Russians wearing their feet? I don't is it shoes inside other shoes? And then they get very small until the last shoe that you take off as a tiny shoe and you you're really, you're positive, this has got to be the last shoe.
And then but no, little baby, no.
You don't.
You know what Putin must be quaking.
Let's get the This is the actual Russian state television view on Russia's fearfulness.
The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations from Union. This largely coincides with our vision.
America said, do whatever you want. It has nothing to do with us.
It's such a pleasure to watch.
Yeah, basically he is taking our bread and butter.
We wanted to sell the Western world into pieces, but he decided to saw through it himself.
Not only are the Russians not fearful, they'reing delighted.
Do you know how hard it is to delight a Russian? There's only two ways.
To do it, break up the Western democratic order or bear on roller states it's the only two ways, or social media dash cam death. Three things really look None of this is to say Zelenski handled this meeting well. Everyone knows by now. Trump's love language is subservience. If he calls your wife ugly, you praise him. If he calls you widow, you run his state department. And if you're a foreign leader who wants to be on good terms of America, you got a butter Trump up Lakei's Texas toast.
British PM Kritarmer knows how it's done.
It is my pleasure to bring from His Majesty the King a letter he sends his best wishes. It's an invitation for a second state visits.
This is real special.
This has never happened before. This is unprecedented, and I think that just symbolizes the strength of the relationship between us. So this is a very special letter.
That's how you do it. To Lensky, a letter from the year. It's going to work. Seal on it. It was brought you by Harry Potter's owl. What a delight the King is throwing you a ball.
You'll be the belle of the ball, and then I'll sweep your chimney.
Zelenski shouldn't have gone in there with Russia hasn't abided by any ceasefire agreements, so we can't trust him. Should have gone in there with a dessert cart and a Kiev hotel opportunity. So this meeting has deeply wounded America's alliance with Ukraine as well as the rest of Europe and the pun detocracy. It's having a hard time figuring out the strategy.
I worry that the President is actually not interested in a deal about Ukraine, and but I don't understand it.
The question now, Jim, is what happens in Europe? How does this make America great again?
It just does not make any sense, you.
Poor dumb bastards.
It makes perfect sense if only you watched professional wrestling.
Do you get it? It was heill turn. I'll explain it again.
It was a designed to create the alliance Trump always wanted in the first place. What's to understand Trump and the Republicans like putin better just.
Listen to putin.
The radical neoliberalism, destroying traditional values, the obsessive emphasis on race, modern cancel culture. It turns into reverse discrimination, of reverse racism. But they invented five or six genders, transformers trans you see, I do not even understand what it is share toilets for boys and girls.
Cats, maddying dogs, will and grace removed. It sounds like Putin is primary and Marjorie Taylor Green from the right, a woman who, by the way, gives up the whole point of this realignment.
The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians.
Russia is not doing that.
They're not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it by bombing other Christians.
So everyone's wondering, why isn't Trump aligning himself with the West. In his mind, he is Western civilization, not Europe. To most of us, Russia is not that because we and historically everyone has used the West to mean Western values. Europe represents the expansion of liberties advocated by Great Enlightenment thinkers like Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau.
But to Maga, this is Europe.
It's gay, super gay. When Maga talks about Western civilization, they mean the Knights Templar. Still pretty gay, I gotta say.
But excitingly so. But that's the thing.
It's not democracy versus dictatorship or capitalism versus communism anymore. It's woke versus unwoke, and Russia is not woke. They're very tired, they're commotos. It wasn't decided in a particularly volatile meeting on Friday. You got to give credit where credit is due to MAGA architect Steve Bannon. They've been working on taking out the EU for a while now.
It's a global revolt, it's a zekeeast.
We're on the right side of history and the beating heart of.
The globalist project is in Brussels.
By drive the stake through the vampire, the whole thing will start to dissipate.
We'll call it the movement or the cause or something like that. And that's literally when we take over the EU.
Holy shit, what a concise, centrally planned social engine nearing scheme. But here we are the end result of a scripted arc that culminates in America betraying its old alliance for the lore of a strong man partnership that carves up the world's rich bounties and places classic democratic values behind transactional convenience.
So say it with.
Me, conspiracy theorists by design. It's a new world order. So Europe sadly, if I may, when we come back. Matthew Desmond's here, don't go away?
What about the fail show? My guest tonight.
He's a sociologist at Princeton University and a Pulitzerprise winning author of Evicted. His latest book is called Poverty by America Does Welcome to the program.
Matthew Desmond, sir, thanks for being here.
To be here, let me say this fabulous book, thank you, filled with such interesting research and unusual and I think, really interesting ideas. I mean, does America require poverty to function in the way that we do?
Is it a requirement of our society? Yeah?
No, I don't think so.
No, you know what I mean? That is the system we run.
Do they require in the capitalist system people in poverty to function that maximum profit?
I think a lot of us do benefit from poverty in ways we don't realize.
Right.
We soak the poor the labor market of the healthy market. We continue to have a government that gives the most the families that need the least by subsidizing affluent instead of fighting poverty. We continue to live in segregated lives. A lot of us are connected to that problem, but it also means we're connected to the solution. I don't think we have to live with all this poverty in America.
This system can work.
You say something in the book that blew my mind, which is there's a part in there where you talk about the tax burden, and if we just collected the taxes that were owed, it would account for one point something trillion dollars. And your calculation of how we could end poverty in this country was how much money.
So if you take everyone below the poverty line and lift them above it, that's about one hundred and seventy seven billion dollars a year. And it's a super rough estimate, but it gives us sense what we're talking about when we're talking about ending poverty, because that's so utterly attainable for us. Right that's less than one percent of our GDP.
So I Steady came out to show that if the top one percent of Americans just paid all the taxes they owed, just the ones they owed, just the ones they owed, and not got a tax at a higher rate, just paid what they owed, we would net about one hundred and seventy five billion dollars a year, so we could just about close the poverty gap.
Just with and without levying other taxes, just collecting what we need, right.
I mean, so like so woa bah yeah right.
Yeah, because like when you say that, I just go no, right, that cannot that can't be.
But b right, that's insane.
And it's not the one thing I will say.
It's not like we don't spend money right on alleviating poverty.
We did.
The budget for America was what three point seven trillion ten years ago, now it's like seven trillion. We do spend the money, are we just spending it inefficiently?
So I think we have to recognize that the things that we are doing to fight poverty now really really matter. Medicaid, food stamps, you know, housing assistance. These are life savers, right right, and so these things, these programs are lifting millions of folks above the poverty line every year. We also have to recognize that we have to do more, you know, because the problem is getting a lot worse. So over the last fifty years, we've had wages stagnate
for too many workers, We've had housing costs sore. We now have the lowest wages some of the lowest wages in the industrialized world, in the richest country in the history of the world.
And solebrity levels are higher than almost all other countries in the industrial world.
They're not just higher, like our child poverty rate is double what it is in Canada, Germany, South Korea. You go to Europe, Europeans have this phrase like American style deprivation.
So it's I don't even want to know what the German word for that is, but ensure it's very long and sounds like someone has bronchitis. Right, But it's this is the part that shocking. We've done things. I'm going to go back to the pandemic that there was the era, you know, the rent assistance program and the child tax credits. Poverty dropped in the pandemic when people were really suffering by what percent.
So the Third Rescue Plan, the Third Rescue Bill under Biden signed it in March, right, we dropped child poverty by forty four in six months because of that intervention.
So we naturally at that point had to end it very quickly.
That program, right, well, a lot of that because we were quiet.
We were quiet, you know, we dropped the victions the lowest they've been ever on record. We did the most for poor kids we've done since the War on Poverty and the Great Society, and there was not a lot of us saying this is the new America that we want. We weren't writing our congress person, we were talking to our neighbor about it. We were quiet, and in our silence, like five million more kids got tossed into poverty the next year.
And so I think that this is it a question of when we think about we always think like, well, for people below the poverty line, there's a ton of programs for them. But I'm a little bit above it, and my parents are getting older, and my kids are going to school, and I'm going to tight squeeze, and quite frankly, I don't want any resources that I might have to paint. Are there too many people even above poverty who are struggling but feel like I'm not getting
any value on my return for tax dollars? Isn't there a little resource guarding? And by the way, not without cause.
Yeah, there's something to there. But one thing that blew me. I think the thing that blew me away writing this book is that if you look at everything the government does for us, all those poverty programs to float of the poorest families, like food stamps, social insurance like Social Security, but also tax breaks. And you got to count tax breaks, you know, the cost the government money and they put
money in my pocket. If you add all that up, you learn that the average family the bottom twenty percent of the income distribution, so are poorest families, they were seeing about twenty six thousand dollars a year from the government. Okay, so the average family in the top twenty percent are richest families. They're receiving about thirty five thousand dollars a year from the government.
There say that again, so.
This is the true nature of our welfare state. They're getting about forty percent more than the poorest families. And then we have like the audacity, the shamelessness to look at a program that would like reduce child poverty or make sure all of us had access to a dentist and be like, gosh, how can we afford it?
Right? You know, here's where they go with that.
And this is the thing that I would like you to talk about, which is what they would say is, oh, yeah, but the top ten percent, twenty percent they pay all the taxes. I don't think people understand what a regressive tax system we really have for people, not just at poverty, but working class middle class that comes from sales taxes and everything. People pay much more percentage of their income at the lower levels, even though it's not federally taxed.
Right.
So you know a lot of folks just look at that income tax and they'll say the poorer aren't paying taxes. But that's like counting calories only by a county what you have for breakfast, right.
You know.
And so if you're looking at the whole tax structure, you see, you know, a lot of the poor, working class, middle class folks are paying the same tax levey as rich folks. The folks that have the lowest tax burden in the country, of course, are richest families. Makes no sense.
But we're not bad people, no, So what is going wrong is that if you were Doge, if you were there to say, how could we do this more efficiently to get people that are struggling to alleviate that because in many other countries they do do that, what would you say?
So I think we got to do three things. We got to deepen our investments in fighting poverty. We got to get back to those big, bold programs that we had in the Great Society. We saw what we could do in COVID.
What were some of those programs that you would.
So we expanded social security, We created Medicaid and Medicare, We expanded educational opportunities. These are deep investments in the poorest families in the country. So we need to get back to that. We can fund that by fair tax implementation. So the Highers Chair a few years ago told Congress that we lose a trillion dollars a year, a trillion on tax cheating and invasion, A trillion a trillion.
Yeah, those poor people are getting away with a ton, right, a trillion a year, and alleviating poverty would be two hundred billion a year.
What right?
What is there something in the system of federalism that means those dollars to the like if Walmart has a five billion or ten billion dollar profit and yet still a lot of their workers are on public assistance or struggle who might not be below poverty line, but just above it, how are we not penalizing them?
Right?
I think we need to move back to that question, which I think is this like second piece of the puzzle. We need to have new ways of empowering the poor. We need to find a way to build worker power, to expand housing choice, to finally take on all the ways they're getting financially soaked by banks and pay day lenders in the country. And so this is a way.
Is that? So is it that poor people need better lobbyists? Is that what this is? Like? How does this get done?
They need better choice, so they're not accepting the best, bad option all the time. So if you think of like, how were we going to build worker power in this economy? So now you've got to go to one Amazon warehouse or one Starbucks location at a time. Right, remember when we were losing our minds because one Amazon warehouse the Staten Island maybe organized a few summers ago, and they're like,
oh my gosh. You know, but we have no chance of organizing all our warehouse workers or barisas like this. So we have to have different approaches. So the new labor movement is saying, let's organize entire sectors. Let's get everyone in food to hospitality. Let's say if they take a boat, then that could trigger process with the Secretary of Labors, Like, all right, let's bring worker representatives, corporate representatives. Let's have something out that covers every single work there
in that sector. So this is what policy wants call sectoral bargaining, and it's a way to organize all those kind of warehouse workers, all those barisism and go.
Is there something too to getting the government to value labor again in the way that they value capital? Right, capital being taxed that you know, gains that are much lower. There's a lot of rules that ease capital, stock buybacks, your only you know, have to answer to shareholders. Is there a way to get workers in on that, because that seems like where the acume elation of wealth seems
the greatest. How do we plug labor into that stream without necessarily killing the stream, but letting it really getting them into the flow of it.
Yeah, why don't we put workers on corporate boards for example?
You know, easy?
Easy?
Why do they fight that?
And would sectoral bargaining get that done?
It could move us closer to something more like a capitalism. We deserve a capitalism that serves the people, not the other way around. And a lot of the times I think the ideas we have about growth are just wrong. You know, if you rewind the clock in nineteen sixties, we had a higher a corporate tax rate about fifty percent, About one and three of us were belonging to a union.
And we are much more productive as an economy than we are now, and we're kind of fed this like lie that like we got to slash these unions, We got to slash this corporate tax break, and we're going to get the economic growth and we we win in that bargain, and we got the inequality that we didn't get the growth.
But don't you think the financialization of our economy change that calculus. You know, we used to think about IBM, the blue chip companies. You would invest in them and they would have steady growth, and they would give you dividends and you would work for them for forty years.
You know, I was saying, You know, if.
You were to reasonably watch the news networks, the little bug in the corner is the stock market.
Right. If you go to a hospital, they plug you into a machine. It gives you your pulse, your blood pressure.
You know all that, you would be well within your rights to think that is the measure of my health. I'm looking at that, when you watch that, you would think, oh, that must be the measure of.
Our economy's health.
Is there a way to educate the public that that's not actually our economy. That's just a tiny fraction that goes mostly to I don't know, the top ten percent on fifty percent of the wealth in the stock market. What other measures would give people a better sense of how we're failing?
Could we have a ticker that's about, you know, the number of families went to a food pantry this month to eat right, A ticker that's like the number of families have lost our like a ticker about the number of kids that can't afford a winter coat this winter, you know, yeah, and kind of tracking that it's like real the people.
How many people have parents that need elder care, but it's squeezing them because their kids are going to cut?
Like give a sense of that. By the way, I reopened that cut just by hitting like that, just by doing that.
I can't even do this anymore? Are these critique it now from the left a little bit?
Are there things that.
The left advocates for or does that makes this realignment harder?
I just don't think the left has fully committed to poverty abolitionism. You know, you know, we know where our local organic cucumber came from. You know, but we don't.
Wait we do we do wait?
Is it written on there to hold it under a blue light?
How do we do it?
Redo?
All right?
Reto you? We don't know how much the farmhand got paid picking it. You know, if you go to London, you go to the independent stores, they have a sticker on the door and they say this store pays a living wage. Now, our stores, we've got a lot of stickers, but we often don't have that one, you know. And so I think that more of us have to just commit.
You're saying we've got to put up poverty has no home heter signs.
I think that.
I think we. I think the left needs to get more serious about economic justice.
And do you think so?
I always worried.
Here's what I always worry about, and I worry about this with climate it always comes down to, for some reason on the left, you people have to be better people, and that'll put pressure on it. I feel like the whole point of joining as a society is that is that a system can alleviate that. Like I just don't know how we get out of it without it coming from legislation, I don't know. I mean when you say, like, we've got to call our congressman, I'm like, I've been
in that situation where you call congressmen. It does diddly pooh, like they're not even answering, and half the time they don't even know the ins and outs of what you're talking about. Like, the country's held together by hundreds and hundreds of legislative aids that are working tireless, isn't there can't we present them? I would love to see you lobby in Washington because I feel like you have interesting ideas that haven't tried. We're not walking down the same
tired path. Is that a possibility or no?
They don't.
Are they open to that of me going to watch?
Yes? But people like you, you know, I have to tie.
Follow you.
Did they at least ask yep?
Yeah?
For real?
Yeah?
Yeah? But I think you know that we definitely need more political movements. We need new legislation, but we also need more skin in the game, I think as a country. So like, let's think about segregation, right, So segregation is upheld by zoning laws, It's upheld by history, but it's also upheld like at soccer games, you know where your buddy turns in and you're like, you know, you saw that building. We're not gonna we're not gonna build that thing. Right, it's upheld a little.
You mean nimbi, Yeah, sort of like we all want it. You can adjustice, yeah for those if.
You wouldn't mind.
But doesn't that speak to that the systems then have to Here's what I would say. We think of poverty as a vice, and we think of entitlements as a moral hazard for vice. Why don't we view it as investment. Why don't we view what a great economic engine for this country to take areas that have suffered entrenched poverty and rejuvenate them.
Yeah, in a different way. There's huge investments. So look at food stamps, right, Yes, a billion dollars dedicated to foodstamps get you one point five billion dollars in our GDP. If you look at what it does for kids, the long term economic and health benefit for kids, it's a huge return on investment. It's about one dollar in foodstams get you sixty two dollars coming back to you in a society. Meanwhile, right when we cut the corporate tax rate,
the benefits that we get are a lot less. We get a lot less that we're promised often when we're doing that. So investing in American people and stabilizing communities that need it the most is the best way for all of us.
I got to tell you that at all. That argument that to me was the most concise.
And powerful because and it's one that I really haven't heard, which is, you don't understand, like we're not just giving people money. We're investing and getting a huge return, and all these corporate subsidies are not.
Getting us a good return.
Exactly.
That's fabulous right there. That is anyone watching this, I really appreciate this book. If you get a chance, it will blurry. It will open your eyes to a system that can often be well meaning but not function in the manner that it purports to be functioning. And it's really a wonderfully accessible journey through that. So I really appreciate the book. Be sure to check out Poverty by America. Matthew Desmond. We're going to take it to a bread Law.
I've got to talk for tonight.
Before we go, we're gonna check in with your host for the rest of the week.
Mister, Michael Coss to Michael Tooker, what do you got for?
Oh? John Rustler with John, that's.
The Trump tariffs are about to kick in, and I'm worried about my wallet's specifically the money in my wall, not my driver's license that's been suspended for years.
But your correct tariffs on Canada and Mexico are set to take effect, I think.
Tonight exactly, and so that's why I'm stocking up. I just bought four thousand pounds of Maryland crab and ten thousand cans of Arizona iced tea, so I'm ready.
Yeah, those are all American products. So shouldn't you have bought like Canadian and Mexican products or.
You know, this might be all that crab and iced tea talking, But I don't think I know how tariffs work.
All right, Michael, cost everybody, It'll all work out here.
It is.
Your moment is that everyone knows the history here, the back and forth. We understand that. We all understand that. But the question now is can we get them to a table to negotiate.
That's our goal.
Don't do anything to disrupt that, and that's what Zelensky did. Unfortunately, is he found every opportunity to try to Ukraine's plain on every issue.
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