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Feb. 5, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:40:19

Can You Agree To Disagree?

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	For Democrats, stop focusing on scaring people about the scary right-wing candidates and offer them real solutions that you're going to fight for.
	I think that's the only long-lasting winning strategy for Democrats.
	Are they going to do it?
	No, because they're captured by the money.
	October 2021 was the first time I met Anna Kasparian for our debate at the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce.
	the summer.
	is longer than life expectancy in the United States.
	and in this episode, Anna and I are picking up where we left off.
	That is the flagship news show from the Young Turks Network, or TYT, where Anna is the producer and a co-host with Cenk Uygur of a daily evening broadcast on news, politics, and culture.
	The show has over 5 million subscribers and 6 billion views on YouTube and is the longest-running online news show.
	And TYT is arguably the most successful openly left-wing alternative news media company, operating as a hub of progressive anti-establishment programming.
	The Young Turks started as a radio program in 2002.
	It transitioned to YouTube in 2005.
	Anna came on board in 2007, playing an integral role in the network's success.
	Anna and I disagree seriously on a lot of our beliefs and opinions, but both of us enjoy good old-fashioned conversation about ideas with people we actually don't agree with.
	In our episode, we discuss many of those disagreements, but importantly, where we can also find common ground.
	We have some honest back and forth on health care reform, labor unions, manufacturing, the left-wing policies that have been a complete disaster for California, and grading the current Democrat and Republican parties.
	Hey, hey, and welcome.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special.
	I'm really excited to welcome to the program Anna Kasparian.
	Anna, thanks so much for stopping by.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thank you for having me.
	So first of all, we have to take on the elephant in the room.
	You are braving grave danger by coming on a show like this one.
	So what's prompting you to actually join me on the show?
	Because it is hard to get people who disagree on shows like this one, for sure.
	Well, I think that it's important to talk to people you disagree with, debate and hash out some of the ideas that we have and the differences we have.
	I'm not afraid of my political views.
	I'm not afraid to admit when maybe I got something wrong in the past and maybe I've evolved on my political views.
	It's just really, really important in a functioning democracy to have Americans see one another as fellow Americans as opposed to An identity that needs to be super combative with a different identity.
	And I think that's what we've kind of turned into.
	You and I clearly have a lot of disagreements on policy, disagreements on culture, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're an awful person.
	It doesn't mean that I should be afraid of you.
	If anything, I should prove that I genuinely believe my political views by engaging in these debates.
	If I can defend what I believe, With actual facts, statistics, empirical evidence.
	Well, that only proves that there's good reason to believe in the policies that I'm promoting.
	And it's easy to be in an echo chamber where everyone already agrees with you, but you're not really being challenged.
	So I like to be challenged.
	I like to put my political ideas to the test.
	And I think this is a good opportunity to do it.
	Yeah, this is one of the things that I really like about you as a person.
	We actually got to know each other when we did a debate about a year ago, I think, over in Pennsylvania, and we were talking in the green room beforehand, and we got along as human beings.
	And one of the things that's nice about conversations like this is, again, what you say, I think, is super important, which is that the social fabric of the country is going to be built on the idea that people can have conversations like this, and yet it's considered so unusual and so crazy.
	Have you gotten any blowback for being willing to do conversations like this one?
	I have.
	I will say, you know, it is a small portion of a very loud group of self-identified leftists on Twitter, for instance.
	They'll get very upset.
	They'll accuse me of platforming you even though, I don't know if they notice, you've got a bit of a platform on your own.
	I don't need to help you in building a platform or platforming you.
	I think that There's this very real fear that in engaging in these conversations, you are legitimizing the other side.
	And my point is, as long as the other side's coming at me with good faith arguments, they genuinely believe what they're saying, having these debates is important in actually deciphering What you as the viewer believe, right?
	Because if you're only listening to one side, if you're listening to leftist media, liberal media, and you don't get the other side at all, your policy ideas are never going to be challenged.
	You're not going to hear the other side.
	And I think it's led to this culture right now where Americans overwhelmingly seem to have difficulty with nuance.
	Right?
	Everything needs to be black and white.
	And honestly, political issues are usually a lot more complex, a lot more nuanced, and nothing in life is black and white.
	And that's what makes them interesting in the first place.
	Right.
	If it was all that black and white, it would be that easy.
	You wouldn't have to listen to shows like yours or shows like mine, and you wouldn't have to, I've always encouraged people to listen to shows that are on the other side of the aisle, because otherwise, they don't know what I'm saying that's fact and what I'm saying that's opinion.
	And so I think it's really important for people to hear conversations between people who really, really disagree.
	You used a phrase there that I think is really important, good faith.
	And this is one that I've had to kind of think through myself because obviously there are conversations that are not worth having.
	You'll have people online who will say, you should go talk to this person.
	You know this person happens to be, you know, like dregs of the earth.
	And then you say, well, I don't really wish to talk to.
	And they say, well, you say you're willing to talk to pretty much anybody.
	So how do you draw that line?
	How do you draw the line between somebody who is worth talking to, somebody who's acting in good faith and somebody who's not really acting in good faith?
	Well, I think the interaction that you and I had both before and during that debate was really important to me in that it gave me a better idea and sense of who you are.
	You know, one of the issues I've had in recent years is the characterizing or the caricatures that are drawn of the other side.
	And I think the left does it, the right does it.
	So just kind of like lumping you in with, let's say, Tucker Carlson, lumping you in with, I don't know, someone else that I certainly don't think is coming at These debates from a good faith perspective.
	They're looking for clicks.
	They're looking to build their public persona.
	There's a lot of that going on.
	You're a pretty respectful person when we're engaging in these debates.
	I don't really see you trying to draw caricatures of me as we're in the middle of these conversations.
	So to me, that's important.
	You can just tell.
	There's like toxicity, and then there are people that you disagree with politically, but you can actually have a respectful conversation with them.
	And because I had that experience with you, I was comfortable, again, having this experience today in hashing out our differences.
	But also talking about where there might be some similarities, where we want the country to go.
	Because this country's always had a variety of political ideas, political differences.
	But there was a time in America where people could engage in these debates, engage in these conversations and leave feeling that mutual respect for one another.
	Seeing each other as fellow Americans, as opposed to my enemy, the other side.
	We need to crush them.
	We need to do this.
	I want to move away from that.
	And honestly, during the coronavirus pandemic, I've opened my mind up to some programming that I otherwise wouldn't have listened to.
	So, for instance, there's this show called The John and Ken Show.
	It airs in LA, but I think it's actually syndicated all over the country.
	And I like listening to it because there are a lot of perspectives in that show that I disagree with, but there have been moments where One of the hosts will say something that, in the short term, I might be offended by or angry about or whatever, but I have to do my due diligence.
	So I'll investigate it a little bit and think to myself, oh, well, actually, he had a point there.
	So I think the necessity for nuclear energy is a good example of that.
	Once I realized right now the technology for renewables isn't quite where we need it to be, where we can just give up fossil fuels and be okay, well, a good clean energy solution to kind of close that gap, at least for now, would be nuclear.
	And you say that, and a lot of people on the left have a negative reaction to it, but I think it's partly because they're not typically exposed to other perspectives.
	Everyone's kind of in their own ideological bubble.
	It's a huge problem, in my opinion, and that's why I want to have conversations like this one.
	And that's a great example.
	So I've always used nuclear energy as actually the litmus test on people who take climate change seriously.
	There are people on both sides who don't, right?
	There are people on the right who will say that it doesn't exist, that there has been no global warming over the course of the last 100 years, or who say that there is no anthropogenic global warming, it's entirely the fault of the sun.
	And my perspective has always been, I don't have the expertise to challenge the IPCC when they suggest that there will be a certain amount of climate change.
	They're sort of outlying more extreme predictions are the ones that have sort of the least predictability and they admit that.
	And so the question becomes, what do we do in order to prevent as much of this as possible, while still maintaining a lifestyle that Westerners are used to and that we should aspire to for the rest of the world?
	And nuclear energy has always been a great way of doing that.
	And so that perspective has tended to draw fire from both sides.
	You have people who'll say, well, why are you even acknowledging that this sort of thing is that you sound like Greta Thunberg?
	And then you'll have people on the left saying, well, he doesn't even believe in global warming because he is advocating for nuclear energy.
	That sort of failure of nuance, I think, has really deleterious effects because it prevents us from accomplishing solutions that, if you and I can agree on a thing, it's a pretty good notion that that's a fairly common sensical thing because we disagree on so many things.
	If we can agree on something like nuclear energy, then really there's not that much to argue about.
	And, I mean, nuclear energy does not emit the type of climate, you know, emissions, climate-causing emissions that other fossil fuel, like, you know, oil, natural gas, that definitely does have an impact.
	It contributes to the climate emergency.
	So anyone who is against nuclear energy, I think there are some points that are legitimate.
	So, for instance, people are concerned about another Chernobyl.
	I totally understand that.
	But the technology has improved since then.
	better safeguards.
	My run by the communist Russians.
	Yes.
	Yeah. So so but look, these are conversations that should be had and we should be fearless in having these conversations.
	I feel confident in my beliefs and my values.
	But I also really want to get into basically a culture that leaves ego aside and helps people feel comfortable acknowledging when hey, maybe I didn't get something right.
	Because there are certainly areas where, turns out, I didn't get something right.
	You know, I used to be 100% against nuclear.
	I thought nuclear would be super dangerous.
	You know, I totally bought into like the Chernobyl You know, but once you start reading into it a little more, once you actually start thinking for yourself independently, independent of some ideological model that you're supposed to fit into perfectly, it really does open your horizons and it allows for you to learn.
	And that's what I want to do.
	I want to learn and I want to make sure that the information I'm getting to my audience is well thought out and accurate.
	So I think what's really interesting about that is that it seems like there are two values that you're centering in on, and they're working in tandem, which are really good.
	One is that you're actually pursuing things that you think are true.
	You're trying to get to the truth, which means listening to other perspectives, just from a sort of classically liberal position.
	And then on the other hand, you're also suggesting that this builds social fabric.
	And so the point that I've made is that the future of the country, in terms of sort of a national polity, because what we're seeing right now is a giant sort, right?
	We're seeing people like me move to Florida, away from California.
	You're still in California, we'll talk about that in a second.
	You're seeing people in New York get more New York, and people in California get more California, and Florida get more Florida.
	It's getting redder.
	And so the social fabric at the national level seems to be fraying a lot.
	And so one of the things that I've said is that the future of the country is going to rely on people who disagree with me but agree that we should be having the conversation, not siding with people who they may agree with in terms of the political end goal, but foreclose the conversation.
	Because that way, the social fabric frays.
	You get to where you want to go, maybe, but you lose half the country in the process.
	That's, I mean, you might lose half the country in the short term, right?
	But I think media is incredibly powerful.
	And look, I think it's also important to differentiate between what you and I are doing and what I see happening on other, let's say, right-wing shows, right?
	I see a lot of right-wing hosts bring on individuals who purport to be on the left And then all they do is come on the show and trash the left while simultaneously agree with whatever the right-wing host is saying, right?
	It's a form of propaganda that I think is persuading some amount of leftists to immediately panic if they see someone on the left go on a right-wing show.
	So I'm sure that they'll see this conversation, they'll automatically assume, oh, Anna's just there to Welcome to the Republican Party.
	Right, to reinforce what Ben is saying.
	But you and I have serious differences.
	We've debated economic issues.
	Everyone can go back and watch that debate that we had at the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce.
	But at the same time, I think there is a difference between the endlessly, I don't want to say sometimes violent, yes.
	Like, we just need to bring the temperature down for a second and acknowledge that the majority of the country isn't on the extreme right or the extreme left.
	The conversation is dominated on social media, especially by the extreme right and the extreme left.
	We need to bring the temperature down and actually represent what the majority of Americans are concerned about.
	Majority of Americans want the same thing.
	They want healthy, happy families.
	They want financial stability.
	How do we get there?
	And we're never going to answer that question if all we do is pretend like the extreme ends of the spectrum are representative of this country and that we should all hate each other and be super divided.
	So in a second, I want to talk to you about the incentive structure for avoiding exactly kind of the thing that we're doing right now.
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	So let's talk about the incentive structures in not having conversations like this.
	One of the things that I'm seeing, it's what we would call in the industry, nut picking.
	You try to find people on the other side who say the wildest possible things, or you take them out of context so they sound like they're saying the wildest possible things, and then you critique that in order to drive up ire.
	And I think all of us do this.
	I mean, we're all in the media, which means you very often are playing a 20, 30 second clip of somebody.
	It's not a long form conversation like this one because they're just different formats and we all get this.
	I think the audience also needs to understand that's a thing that happens.
	What's more dangerous is when that, I think, carries over into the political sphere.
	Where you have people in each political party who are now attempting to draw and actually incentivize the other party to get more extreme.
	The idea being, what if we make the other party so extreme that they are unpalatable to the majority of the American people, they elect us, we win, we get to do what we want.
	Now that in the short term actually may get them some wins, right?
	I think this is one of the things that happened in the 2022 election, particularly in the Senate.
	You saw some Democrats who were actually supporting the most kind of out-of-the-box, crazy Republican candidates, like Don Balduck in New Hampshire in the primaries, in order to elevate him, thinking, okay, well, that means he's going to lose, which is exactly what happened.
	It's actually quite a smart strategy in the short term, but what it also ends up doing is it ends up fringing out the moderates, meaning, like, everybody who is not on the fringe is now not represented in the election.
	And what you've ended up doing is incentivizing the kind of most angry part of one party, and in your own party, making them the most angry that they could possibly be about the other party, as opposed to, what if we all just sort of pick our best candidates and then let them go at it in the ring?
	I mean, I wish that that was the actual method and strategy, but you would actually have to have a campaign strategy that offers the voters something to vote on instead of something to vote against.
	And I think that this has actually been an incredibly dangerous strategy for the Democratic Party.
	They might feel super confident that their candidates can beat someone who's on the extreme right, but there have been instances where that wasn't the case.
	I mean, certainly in 2016, the Democratic National Committee was really propping up Donald Trump under the assumption that there's no way Hillary Clinton would lose to Donald Trump.
	Well, here we are.
	I mean, Donald Trump won, clearly.
	So there's that part of it.
	I also think when you consider the campaign donations that ordinary people give to the Democratic Party, they were not under the assumption that their hard-earned money was going to go toward far-right candidates in order to, you know, give these Democratic candidates a leg up in their mind.
	I mean, again, it's very, very risky to do that.
	I don't think it's a smart strategy at all.
	For the Democrats, even in the short term, again, it's risky, okay?
	Sometimes they get it wrong.
	And if you don't give people something to vote for, meaning if you don't have policy proposals, actual solutions that are appealing to voters, are they going to show up just to vote against the person you've been fear-mongering about?
	I don't think it's smart at all.
	Aside from that, I think what you're saying is also correct in that The conversation increasingly becomes dominated by lunatics, and I don't think that's representative of most Americans.
	And there's also this problem of lumping in everyone together in like this neat little box of ideology, right?
	I think in the minds of a lot of people on the left, you are the exact same person as Tucker Carlson, right?
	And I think you're different.
	I think you're different from Matt Walsh.
	I think you're different from Candace Owens.
	You guys are all on the same network.
	I commend you for having differences of opinion on the same network, and I'm sure it can be uncomfortable at times, but there are nuances and differences, and I think it's important for people to be cognizant of that, because I don't want to be lumped in with someone on the far left, right?
	Significantly different opinions from them on certain matters.
	And I think it's important to know what those differences are and not let, again, the extreme ends of the spectrum represent the entire country.
	So, you know, one of the things that you mentioned there is the idea that you have to run on something, not run against something.
	And obviously negative campaigning is the most effective form of campaigning, despite all of the happy talk about how When you campaign for things, people rally behind you.
	People who are policy wonks tend to do very poorly in elections.
	People who are attack dogs tend to do very well in elections because that lizard part of our brain that senses threat is really activated by a perception of threat on the other side.
	Well, actually, can I interrupt you on that?
	Sure.
	Because I agree and disagree.
	So let's go back to 2016.
	Because with 2016 several years away, we can now really analyze it for what it was.
	Donald Trump's campaigning certainly had a significant negative component to it.
	Negative campaigning was part of what he did.
	But he also offered Or at least paid lip service to something that Americans were concerned about, which was bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States, really taking care of workers in our country, maybe reconsidering some of the foreign aid that the federal government shells out.
	That appealed to his base, so much so that even today, they're so loyal to him, regardless of what he does.
	So he actually did give people something to vote for, whereas all we got from the Democratic Party during that election was, ooh, Donald Trump's dangerous.
	Isn't he so dangerous?
	Oh my God, don't vote for him, because if you do, you'd be racist, this, that.
	It was just nonstop scolding.
	If that is what your strategy is, I don't think that it's a winning strategy, sometimes in the short term, but certainly not in the long term.
	So that does raise the question as to what you think the Democratic Party should run on.
	So the Democratic Party has radically shifted its appeal over the course of the last 15 to 20 years.
	If you go back to 2004, it was John Edwards running on sort of the Two Americas platform, which sounds a lot like sort of the language that Bernie Sanders uses when he talks about the United States, right?
	A lot of what he talks about is this sort of class divisions in the United States.
	It's very much focused on economic redistributionism, focusing on the blue-collar worker.
	This is obviously the audience that he's attempting to drive out to the polls.
	Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, if you look at it demographically, seems to have become The party largely of upscale white liberals who went to college and low-income minorities.
	And that's a very fragile coalition because the truth is that I'm not sure that those people have tons and tons in common.
	White upscale liberals tend to be very concerned with questions of equity far more than people who are actually low-income minorities by polling data.
	The sort of woke concerns that everybody on the right likes to pick on, that is white, upper-crust liberals who are pushing that.
	It's not minorities who are pushing that sort of stuff.
	I remember having this conversation with Van Jones and he was totally agreeing with me.
	He's like, what are all these white, upper-crust liberals doing talking about this sort of stuff?
	They should be talking about sort of the bread and butter issues.
	And so you have the white, upper-crust liberals pushing that plus a solid dose of kind of very social leftist policy ranging from Abortion, to transgenderism, to same-sex marriage, and those sorts of policies.
	Policies that are not the chief concern of low-income minorities.
	And it seems like the way that they're getting low-income minorities to sort of resonate to the message is with the threat assessment of the Republican Party.
	The Republican Party's racist, they don't like you, they hate you, Donald Trump's evil, and all the rest of that.
	It seems like they dodged the bullet in 2022, but that's a very fragile coalition.
	Well, I see this as a problem, honestly, on both sides, campaigning on both sides.
	I think that increasingly you have both parties completely captured by campaign donations from wealthy donors, corporate donations.
	I think that's been a problem.
	That has led to pro-corporate policy by both Democrats and, I mean, Republicans have always been in that camp.
	But now Democrats have been so captured with that money.
	And then the other thing is, Ben, it's a huge problem that we have members of Congress invested in individual stocks That they are legislating about, or legislating on.
	Because, first of all, there's an insider trading issue there, number one, conflict of interest.
	And also, they're going to want their stock portfolios to perform well.
	So are they going to pass the right legislation to protect the consumer, to protect the worker, to protect the average American, when they are literally invested in ensuring that those companies do real well, because they profit off of that as well.
	So that is a huge problem.
	And so what you have now Is both sides, in my opinion, campaigning on a bunch of BS, okay?
	Not actually focusing on what would improve this country for Americans, what would improve this country for the voters.
	It's just non-stop distractions.
	I mean, look, this is what we're seeing right now with the investigations in the House, right?
	The first thing Republicans said was, We're gonna do investigations of the Hunter Biden, we're gonna investigate this.
	Fine, do the investigations.
	I don't really care, right?
	I'm not some loyalist to the Bidens at all, by any means.
	The culture war stuff, the investigations, it's really important for Americans to understand, none of this stuff, at the end of the day, is going to improve your life.
	Okay?
	So, all the distractions, we need to be privy to the fact that they're distractions, and we need to get back to actually hashing out what policies need to pass in order to make sure that Americans are thriving.
	So this does raise the question for me of localism versus sort of national policy.
	So when you point out, for example, that both parties are subject to regulatory capture or that they're subject to their own stock portfolio, some people would say, OK, elect better people.
	If we just elect people of this party, it'll fix it.
	If we elect this guy, he's going to fix it.
	And then there's the sort of Thomas Sowell position, which is it's not a problem of people, it's a problem of incentive structures.
	Yes, yes.
	The central structures in Congress are just broken.
	Yep.
	And when you have this number of people, 435 people in Congress, who are controlling this amount of money and this amount of regulatory power, that will corrupt, right?
	I mean, you put that much power at the hands of a very small cadre of people, whether you're talking about in the executive branch, in the regulatory state, whether you're talking about people in the legislative branch, it's innately going to tempt them to, in reality, enrich themselves and self-serve and self-heal.
	I mean, this is something that the founders actually were very much focused on, which was the idea that the federal government was going to have very little power.
	And so this does raise the question of how much power you think the federal government ought to have, because if we're talking about kind of the solutions that get implemented, I'm a big fan of the idea that California ought to be California and Florida ought to be Florida, and basically that may be the only way that California and Florida can share a nation, is if they are allowed to do what they want in their own particular purviews.
	But we, because of nationalized social media, and because of the amount of power that's in the federal government, we focus in on the federal government.
	That means that we care deeply about what happens on the federal level every single day.
	If you went back 200 years, No one cared who the president was because the president didn't have that much power.
	So what do you think of the idea of sort of delegating power back down to the states instead of centralizing back up into a central government that does have the capacity to be used by both sides for corrupt purposes, for example?
	It depends.
	I mean, I think that, you know, it's funny because I've always been super focused on national politics, but over the last several years, I've been a lot more I'm honestly fascinated with what's happening in California, I think, for obvious reasons.
	Local politics is fascinating to me.
	And in terms of what impacts my day-to-day life, I've realized that these local decisions have more of an impact than what's happening on a federal level.
	There's a lot of gridlock and a lot of nonsense happening on a federal level, so I think that's part of the reason why it's not coming down to impact our lives on a daily basis.
	I think the federal government should be tasked with important regulations to protect the consumer, because greed is a thing, okay?
	The fiduciary responsibility to shareholders is real, and so how do you balance that with the need to protect workers and consumers?
	I think you need a federal government and a regulatory body to focus on that.
	When it comes to Civil rights, you need that protection on a federal level.
	You can't just leave it to the states.
	You know, you don't want one state to say, nah, we're not into interracial marriage, we're going to ban that.
	Or we don't want to, you know, have equal rights based on, or equal rights for everyone, some races we like more than others.
	You know, you need a federal government to protect civil rights.
	But I do agree with you that Americans have not been paying enough attention to what's happening on a local level.
	There are certain things that can be dealt on a local level that doesn't need to be the responsibility of the federal government.
	And to be quite honest with you, with all the dysfunction and gridlock with the federal government, I think more and more people are relying on a local level.
	To get policy passed that they desperately need.
	So in a second, I want to talk to you about local politics versus national, because I think that the national politics does lead to extraordinary polarization, whereas, as we'll talk about in a moment, when it comes to local politics, everyone gets a lot more moderate when they're talking about their own particular community.
	That's very true.
	First, the debt ceiling is now above $31.4 trillion.
	Inflation is still well above 7%.
	People are getting fired at major companies all across America.
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	Okay, so let's talk about the local level.
	So, you know, we're talking about the sort of conflict at the federal level, and federal politics tends to bring out, I think, the worst in people, mainly because it feels like, okay, for me, I'm a Floridian now, which I'm very happy about.
	People from New York keep trying to tell me what to do.
	Why can't they leave me alone, leave my children alone, leave my life alone?
	Leave me alone.
	If you leave me alone in my community with people who I have chosen to live with, which means that we are going to have much more commonality of interest, We're going to come to a policy that works much better for me and my family than people who live a thousand miles away and who don't know me, don't know my family, and don't care about me.
	And I think that, you know, that return to localism may be the only way forward for the country.
	I want to talk to you about what's happening in L.A.
	So, obviously, I grew up in L.A.
	I spent my entire life in L.A.
	until two years ago when I picked up my entire family and moved over here.
	Now my parents live here, my in-laws live here, two of my sisters live here.
	There's been a mad rush to Florida.
	Particularly by people who are sort of of the red state mentality, but I don't think it's purely about, like, I needed to be in a conservative area.
	Again, I lived my entire life only in blue areas, whether it was Los Angeles or Cambridge, Massachusetts when I was in law school.
	And so the thing that drove me out of California is I think one of the things that you've been picking up on and getting a lot of flack from your own side for picking up on, and that is that L.A.
	has just become a trash heap.
	I mean, it's just been governed awfully.
	Forget about who's governing it.
	The policies that have been used to govern it are just terrible.
	You have an increase in crime.
	Homelessness has taken over the streets.
	When I was living there, I've pretty famously talked about this, and it was the kind of place where I had a very nice house in a pretty decent neighborhood, and we had a gate in the front.
	And we would open the gate, and there would be a homeless person face down in the gutter, Edgar Allen Poe style.
	Or there would be a guy outside the house shooting heroin into his foot.
	And I've got like a five-year-old.
	And this sort of stuff has become incredibly common in L.A.
	You noticed it, and you've been getting all sorts of flack for it.
	Right, because when there are problems in society, we need solutions.
	And you can't find solutions unless you acknowledge what the problem is and then properly diagnose it.
	So my biggest issue right now, at least with the way the left has handled the discussion on homelessness in places like Los Angeles, is there's this Housing-first mentality where, oh, everything would be fine as long as we put everyone in housing.
	And by the way, let me just note, housing is an important component to this.
	There is a housing crisis.
	There's a lack of inventory.
	I think we all know that.
	We do need to build more housing.
	But at the same time, treating the homeless population as if it's a monolith has been a complete failure.
	There is a huge mental health crisis happening in this country.
	So people with severe mental health issues are just left to die on the streets.
	And in some cases, you know, because they are experiencing an episode, they could carry out some sort of act of violence and assault someone.
	And it's just, it's a dangerous situation for everyone, okay?
	The people who are just trying to go about their day, and the person who is left on the streets battling with this untreated mental health issue.
	There are people who are obviously struggling with drug addiction, and you look at the number of overdose deaths, and it has skyrocketed.
	The approach that we have implemented is clearly not working.
	More people are dying.
	And I get so much flack for saying this.
	I want an actual solution.
	It is insanely cruel to watch people die on our streets and then give yourself a pat on the back because you think you did something compassionate.
	That is not compassionate.
	You know, there's this insanity right now where, let's say we're talking about the same person struggling with a severe mental health issue.
	They're living on the streets.
	Asking them if they are willing to take the housing that's offered to them.
	Someone who has a severe mental health issue, I know the left would argue, if they engaged in some sort of sexual act with someone, the person who engaged in that act with that person, with the mental health issue, took advantage.
	Because that person with a severe mental health issue does not have the ability to consent.
	But somehow we're just going to take their word at face value when it comes to housing.
	No, we need to get that person help.
	They need help.
	And I don't care how vicious people think I am for saying that.
	It's just common sense.
	It really is.
	And denying that the problem exists is the other part of this, right?
	Denying that there was Definitely an increase in crime in big cities drives me crazy.
	I was assaulted in my own neighborhood.
	I shared the story I was shocked at the kind of reaction I got from people who I typically agree with politically You know what took my dog out for a walk Two guys who were clearly on something they appeared to be homeless Were walking by me or behind me as I was bending over to pick up my dog's mess One of the guys grabbed me by the hips and started thrusting at me with an erection.
	And I know that I wasn't raped, I get it.
	But at the same time- That's not the standard.
	Something like that for a woman who does not have the ability to defend herself in that moment.
	I had no weapon, no nothing.
	I have to think about that at least twice a day when I take my dog out for a walk.
	It is traumatizing.
	Yes, I've gone to therapy about it, I'm working through it.
	That's not your personal problem.
	That's because you were assaulted, yes.
	What's making it worse, though, is that I'm the bad guy for sharing this story and saying, hey, we can't just let this kind of stuff happen.
	We need to find real solutions for it.
	It's utter insanity to me that that has become a matter of public controversy.
	And this is why I say that when people in their communities see the problem, there should be broad scale agreement.
	But you do have a cadre of people who live in a lot of these cities, and I will say in blue cities particularly with crime, who I mean, where you live, I know that area well.
	It's where I lived most of my life.
	It's a fine area, but it's not up in the hills, right?
	I mean, it's not up in Malibu.
	And it's not at Barbara Streisand's estate, where she's got armed guards outside.
	And so those people who are really spending a lot of money and making policy and deciding on no cash bail and all the rest of this kind of stuff, it's an aspect of freedom.
	We have to have the ACLU sue to make sure that the police are not allowed to remove people's stuff from the street because it's an aspect of freedom to be sleeping on the street.
	The fact that those people are so disconnected from the concerns of everyday life that it becomes a sin for you to mention the consequences of their policy is so dangerous because how else are you going to adjudicate whether the policy is good or bad if you can't talk about the consequences of the policy?
	Well, let me give you another example.
	This happened recently and I was really happy to see it because it's important for these groups to speak out about what they're experiencing in California.
	So members of the NAACP in the Bay Area, and we're talking about the NAACP, they're starting to speak out because they don't feel safe.
	They don't want their children to walk past, you know, people smoking meth, injecting whatever, taking fentanyl and all that.
	They want the city to be a lot more proactive in doing something about this because they feel that the communities that are overwhelmingly impacted by this happen to be poor minority communities.
	And that is true.
	So you can't, on one hand, pretend like you care about these communities, you care about equity, you care about all of this, when the policies that you are promoting and advocating for are making it incredibly difficult for their children to grow up in safe neighborhoods, clean neighborhoods.
	I mean, we're spending, in California, billions of dollars every year on making the problems worse.
	Our schools need more funding?
	I mean, it is insane.
	What we're seeing right now is insane.
	I don't care if anyone gets mad at me for saying these things.
	If you're not living it, if you're not experiencing it, if you're not seeing it, and if you've chosen to ignore members of the NAACP on this issue, then maybe you need to, you know, re-evaluate what your values are.
	And one of the things that's happened also with regard to the crime issue in Los Angeles, which again was a significant moving factor in my family leaving the state, was the attempt by politicians and the media to pretend away the problem.
	I know.
	It really is a serious issue.
	There have been reports, I mean Los Angeles Times reported on this, about the police actively downgrading the level of crimes when they report them.
	So what used to be a felony is now considered a misdemeanor.
	What's considered a misdemeanor is no longer considered a crime.
	This will blow your mind.
	In California, domestic violence, for instance, is not considered a felony.
	And I'm talking about domestic violence, including strangulation, is not considered a felony right now.
	Child trafficking in California, believe it or not, has been downgraded to a misdemeanor.
	How does that make any sense?
	And so, a lot of the voters, I think, had the best of intentions.
	I was one of those voters, where I voted for propositions in California that I felt were needed to essentially reform our criminal justice system, because mass incarceration is a problem.
	You know, there are all sorts of issues in our criminal justice system that need reform, but at the same time, I had no idea that when it came to, let's say, cashless bail or things like that, they were going to downgrade certain felonies to misdemeanors.
	I had no idea, right?
	So when that's part of the equation, I think it's important for voters to be fully informed on that so they're not surprised later.
	You get what I'm saying?
	For sure.
	Violent crime is violent crime.
	Do you think people are going to wake up to this?
	And if so, how does that incentive structure work?
	So, California is essentially a one-party state.
	Los Angeles is essentially a one-party city.
	Even if you're a Republican like Rick Caruso, you have to run like a Democrat in order to even get a share of the vote.
	So, what are the alternatives in cities like this?
	So, I mean, you're obviously someone who disagrees with A lot of your party on some of these issues, or at least the more radical wing of your party on some of these issues.
	I've always considered myself a conservative, not a Republican.
	So there are situations where I've said I'm not voting for this candidate because this person does not meet with sort of my minimum standards for who should hold office or this person is somebody who I did vote for but now I'm unhappy with them.
	So how malleable are you with, for example, how you vote in a local election or even a national election?
	Well, I mean, I don't know if malleable is the right word.
	I was very unhappy with local elections in 2022.
	Didn't feel like there were really a lot of good options, so that was depressing.
	And you're right in that California has become so blue that, like, Any idea that challenges what the, you know, Democratic Party believes there is immediately disregarded.
	And I think that that's a shame because even if I disagree with that point of view, I think it's important to have the debate, right?
	So I actually really enjoyed watching Karen Bass debate Caruso, Rick Caruso.
	I thought that it actually forced her to acknowledge some of the weaknesses in her policy proposals and her ideas, and I don't know.
	I mean, I'm seeing her make some moves that I like, so hopefully she continues in that direction and she improves L.A.
	I'll wait and see what happens before I really give my full judgment on that.
	But I think the most important thing to do is for media figures to start having their viewers feel comfortable.
	Having conversations with people they disagree with, really, because they're not getting the full perspective.
	If they're relying on left media, they're getting one perspective, and they're not hearing from the other side at all.
	And when they do hear from the other side, they're hearing from the extremes, saying insane, lunatic stuff, and they think that that's representative of everyone on the right.
	And I don't think that's necessarily true.
	We'll get to more on that in just one second.
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	So, let's go back to national politics for a second, since we've done our bit on local politics, because we mostly cover national politics.
	So, you know, when you look at the current state of the parties, it looks like the Democrats are in a state of strength, obviously.
	The Republican Party has been in a significant state of disarray for quite a while.
	It's funny you say that.
	I was about to say, I think that that's actually masking a lot of divisions underneath the surface of the Democratic Party.
	I think the Democratic Party has sort of an eggshell skull.
	I think right now, because the Republican Party decided to raid the local homeless shelter for their candidates, the Democrats have been shielded from the consequences of their own bad issue choice and some fairly bad candidates of their own, ranging from people who literally had strokes in the middle of the campaign to a president who does not seem capable of carrying out his office.
	I'm going to ask you to diagnose the Republican Party in a second, and which direction you think that Republican Party is going to go, and then we can get into where we really disagree, because we've been doing too much agreeing so far.
	But if you're diagnosing the Democratic Party, what's the direction you think the Democratic Party needs to move, and can Joe Biden be the guy who leads them there, or who else is there?
	Because that seems like kind of a thin bench.
	Well, Ben, I think we're going to start disagreeing right away, because I think the only winning direction for the Democratic Party is in the direction of FDR.
	And that's the reason why, in the beginning of Biden's term, his team tried to paint him as, like, the new FDR.
	But, I mean, he couldn't be further from the truth, I gotta be honest, right?
	The good provisions within Build Back Better died.
	He didn't even fight for them.
	I don't even think he actually wanted those provisions to pass.
	I think it was all for show.
	Look, the most important thing, in my opinion, is to take care of Americans, make sure they're thriving, protect workers, protect consumers.
	That is my focus.
	I think people want to live in safe communities, clean communities.
	I don't think it makes you some crazy, rabid right-winger to want that.
	I think everyone wants that, and they need to be honest about it, right?
	For Democrats, stop focusing on scaring people about the scary right-wing candidates and offer them real solutions that you're going to fight for.
	I think that's the only long-lasting winning strategy for Democrats.
	Are they going to do it?
	No, because they're captured by the money.
	There's too many.
	And you're right, what you said earlier about Incentives and disincentives.
	That's the whole game, Ben.
	Okay?
	Trying to decipher whether a politician is a good guy or a bad guy is nonsense.
	Are the incentives there to ensure that this elected official is actually going to be honest and work on behalf of his or her constituents?
	That's the real question.
	And right now, I think all the incentives are in the wrong place.
	So what's the number one policy you'd like to see the Democratic Party pursue?
	You're a legislator now.
	You've been elected president.
	What's your first initiative as president of the United States?
	I mean, you couldn't do this unilaterally, but I think one of the main policies that would improve a lot of these other issues that we're talking about is healthcare.
	Single-payer healthcare.
	Or at least, in the very least, in the short term, just reform healthcare to a point where everyone has the coverage they need to get the care they need.
	So the untreated mental illnesses that we're seeing on our streets right now, that is a byproduct of a broken healthcare system.
	I want to fix that.
	That would be, again, the number one thing I would focus on if I had the power to really make that change.
	So, I mean, obviously I think that we all see the problems with the healthcare system.
	It's sort of a weird Frankensteinian monster, this sort of private-public monster in which virtually all medical care in the United States is publicly subsidized at some level by Medicare and Medicaid, by hospital reimbursements that are involved with local and state regulation.
	The levels of regulatory thickets and the amount of administration, the administrative cost for healthcare in the United States is extreme.
	It's extraordinary.
	And I think that the big problem with healthcare is that everyone, it's such a thicket now, that no matter which side you come at it from, you are going to get wrecked for even poking a stick into it.
	The minute you poke a stick at it, ooze comes out.
	Because if you come at it from my side of the aisle, which is it needs more privatization, we should get rid of the I mean, if I were coming at this tabula rasa, you get rid of the connection between your employment and your healthcare.
	It's absurd.
	Why is your employer paying for your healthcare in the first place, right?
	You should— Well, how would people— So, look, I agree with you on that.
	I think a single-payer system would do away with the need for employers to provide coverage for their employees.
	I actually hate the system where, if you're working at a place that you might despise and you want to move on, Or maybe you want to start your own business, right?
	You're less willing to do it if your healthcare is reliant on you staying at the company you hate so much.
	Right.
	I think it's actually stifled a lot of economic growth.
	I think there would be a lot more small businesses, successful small businesses, if people had that freedom to just walk away knowing that they wouldn't lose their health coverage as a result.
	You get what I'm saying?
	First of all, I totally agree with you.
	I think that's why I would prefer to go back to individual and community-based insurance.
	This is why the lack of social fabric really is a problem because in my vision of a perfect healthcare world, essentially because you know your neighbors and you know your community, you don't want your neighbors to die.
	Your community helps subsidize your healthcare.
	But I have very serious doubts about the national community subsidizing healthcare at a large scale, because I don't know that person in New York.
	I don't know what their habits are.
	I don't know what incentives they have to engage in the healthcare structure.
	And you do see a wide variety of sort of models that have been used, right?
	Singapore is a much more privatized healthcare system than, for example, Great Britain.
	So there are a bunch of different ways to sort of slice this particular issue.
	Yeah.
	You know what's interesting?
	Because we hear a lot of I mean, I feel like the right wing in America puts words in the mouths of Canadians and people living in Great Britain when it comes to their health insurance policy and their nationalized health care.
	But you talk to them, and they seem to love it.
	So I'll give you an example.
	So when Boris Johnson was running again for prime minister, what was really interesting is how he kept emphasizing the need to bolster Oh, it's a third rail there.
	You can't touch it.
	But it's a third rail because of how much the people living there love their healthcare system.
	And so there's freedom that comes along with that.
	You know, when you consider the fact that our life expectancy in the United States is comparable to that of Cuba's, There's something broken in our system.
	Well, I mean, so first of all, I mean, whenever we get into these sorts of discussions, you have to start looking at apples to apples comparisons in terms of the demographics of the United States, our age, the ethnic composition of the United States, because different ethnicities actually have different health problems disproportionately.
	You have to look at the poverty rate in different areas.
	Obviously, the life expectancy in Vermont is significantly higher than the life expectancy in, say, Alabama.
	And so that is a wide gap that is not really attributable Necessarily healthcare quality because again the same national system applies to both Vermont and Alabama So you have to yeah, the United States is also a country of 340 million people Cuba's a country of significantly fewer people, right?
	I mean all of these this is why I sort of object to any attempt to use Norwegian models and apply them to a significantly more diverse Heterogeneous and large country.
	Well, okay.
	So so let me let me get into that because If you look at what's work because Cuba, I mean obviously incredibly poor country Especially with embargoes and all of that Donald Trump declared it a state sponsor of terror, which led to other countries feeling very uncomfortable doing any business with Cuba.
	So its healthcare system is severely under-resourced.
	But what they've done correctly is they've focused most of their energy on preventative care, because preventative care is less costly than just allowing people to get super sick.
	At that point, you know, whatever illness they have is a lot more costly to deal with.
	So they're like, all right, we don't have the resources, we just got to make sure we Well, I mean, first we should tell people to stop eating so much.
	care. That's worked out really well for them, whereas in the United States, people aren't getting the preventative care they need to prevent severe illnesses because it's so costly, right? So we need to do something.
	Well, I mean, first we should tell people to stop eating so much. I mean, the United States is an extraordinarily fat country. I mean, just by the stats, we're a very fat I mean, you compare us to Cuba, you compare us to anywhere in Scandinavia.
	This is a country that has, I mean, this is why during COVID, people would say 40% of the population has pre-existing health problems.
	And meanwhile, Sweden's like, let her rip, man, we're all in great shape.
	But it's, you know, so again, comparing apples to oranges is a very difficult thing.
	When it comes to the NHS or Canada, the only pushback that I'd give there is that you'd be hard-pressed to find a government-provided universal system of any sort that is widely disparaged by the people who benefit from it.
	Meaning that if you have no available alternative, people who are on food stamps like the food stamp system, people who are on welfare like the welfare system, people who get student loans like the student loan system, people who get government-subsidized mortgages like the government-subsidized mortgage system.
	Once you make people dependent, which is why in the United States, as I say, anytime you poke the status quo from either side, you get penalized, right?
	People will say, I hate my healthcare, and then the minute somebody tries to screw with their healthcare, they're like, God, we gotta go after them.
	I mean, I think Medicare is a good example of that.
	So is Social Security.
	It is.
	They're both gonna be insolvent, but that's...
	I don't think that's necessarily true.
	We'll have to raise taxes pretty dramatically.
	Yeah.
	Or lower benefits, or lower the retirement age.
	I mean, yeah.
	Which is really what we should do, by the way.
	I think the—you're going to hate me for saying this, but I think the cap on Social Security taxes should be lifted entirely.
	Oh, no, I'm not—by the way, that is at least an ideologically consistent position.
	Yeah.
	Meaning that if you are going to say that we need to maintain Social Security as it currently stands, as a defined outcome plan as opposed to a defined contributions plan, then of course you're going to have to raise taxes.
	I mean, like, I'll say that, you know, I have more—it is a more honest argument to say that we want Scandinavian-style welfare systems, so we need Scandinavian-style taxes, than the lie that is currently being pursued by both sides, I will say, that we have to spend exorbitant amounts of money and never pay for it under any circumstances, and then just basically bet that the bill will never come due.
	Right.
	So, if you say raise Social Security taxes, I'm like, okay, fine, that's an argument we can make, right?
	Because what I object to is, you'll say raise Social Security taxes to pay for Social Security, And I'll say, I don't want that to happen.
	That's a good debate.
	What I object to is if I'll say, listen, in order for Social Security to maintain, you're going to have to go to austerity measures.
	You're going to have to cut the age of retirement because people are living longer.
	You're going to have to lower, you're going to have to raise taxes.
	And the person on the other side will say, none of that's true.
	No, one of those things has to be true.
	But yeah, but see, that's what I'm talking about.
	Just going back to our conversation earlier, Determining the difference between a good-faith or bad-faith individual and whether or not you debate with that individual, this is exactly a perfect example.
	You're being honest, and you're at least acknowledging, you know, the flaws from the bad-faith people, the inconsistencies from bad faith.
	Like, why even engage in a debate with someone who's inconsistent, isn't honest about what they really want?
	So I just wanted to, like, go back to that conversation, because it's a perfect example of what I mean.
	And I think this also ties back into, you know, again, that localism conversation that we were having before.
	Yeah.
	We'll get into that in just one second.
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	One of the things that I've said many times when it comes to economics is that I'm a communist in my own house, and I'm a high-level capitalist when it comes to the greater areas of elevation.
	So the further you get out from my local community, the more capitalistic and free-market oriented I am.
	In my house, I have a joint bank account with my wife.
	My wife earns significantly less money than I do.
	It does not matter.
	It is both of our money, which is what we tell our kids.
	It's not daddy earning the money.
	It's our family earning the money, and our family is communist because we're a family.
	But I'm not going to be a communist with some rando over in North Dakota.
	That's not my job.
	I don't know that person.
	I love my family more than I love that person.
	And anybody who tells you they don't love their family more than they love Rando is lying to you.
	It's just not true.
	And so what that means is that social solidarity has to be the predicate for any policy.
	And ironically, what's been happening is that as social solidarity breaks down, people want more control at the top level of government to try to create an ersatz social solidarity.
	And that's not going to happen.
	It's going to make the problem significantly worse.
	So if you argued to me in my local religious community, right, my local synagogue where I'm Orthodox, which means that in my community, there are 300 families in our synagogue.
	We all know each other.
	We go over to each other's houses.
	We babysit each other's kids.
	If you said to us, we are going to have a synagogue-subsidized national healthcare single-payer program, I'd be like, okay, that's worth arguing about.
	I'm definitely willing to have that conversation.
	I know all you people.
	I trust you people.
	I trust you're not going to be a free rider on the system and take advantage of the system because I know you, and there are social penalties for you not doing it.
	If you refuse to engage in the duties of the community, then we cannot have you over for lunch.
	We cannot have you at the synagogue.
	There are certain penalties that attach, but you can do that at a small level.
	As you abstract up the chain, it becomes more and more difficult.
	And one of the things I see, and this happens pretty frequently on both sides of the aisle, is an attempt to take your top-level solution and cram it all the way down in a universalistic fashion.
	So people will take sort of a democratic socialism that might apply in your local community, and they'll say, okay, well I want to apply that at the national level.
	But that's not, you can't do that.
	Or you'll say, libertarians will do the same thing.
	You know, I'm a libertarian, I think there should be no internal penalties for any individual decision that you want to make.
	That's not going to work in your family, and it's not going to work in your local community.
	In other words, the levels of control that you exercise ought to change based on the level of abstraction that we're talking about.
	I think that part of the problem is we don't see each other as fellow Americans at all, and we're so divided that, you know, I think you make a valid point in, you know, at least some portion of the country wanting to reject some of these national policies or national programs.
	They don't see someone living in... Here, you know what?
	I'll put it in the context of the left, and honestly, what my own biases were, and what I used to see the middle of America as, and how I've kind of grown away from that.
	This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but I'm obsessed with that show Yellowstone, specifically because it kind of destroyed my preconceived notions about a huge part of this country, right?
	So, the show, I think, It does a good job in tearing down stereotypes about people in Wyoming, definitely, but ranchers, conservatives, all of that.
	You watch that show and you start remembering, oh wait, they're Americans.
	They're like us.
	They have maybe a different lifestyle, but at the end of the day, they want the exact same things.
	I think what's important is to like, again, bring the temperature down for a second and give Americans accurate information about what the policies would really do And then allow them to vote on that on their own, right?
	Instead of trying to sway them in one direction or another.
	Americans know that health care is broken in this country.
	I think that, you know, there's a lot of on both sides, certainly.
	I mean, corporate Democrats and corporate media like MSNBC, they hate Medicare for All.
	I mean, they've been tearing it down from the beginning.
	Same with CNN.
	The question that we heard over and over again when Bernie Sanders was running and promoting Medicare for All was, how are you going to pay for it?
	How are you going to pay for it?
	How are you going to pay for it?
	Okay, great.
	They don't ask the same question when it comes to shelling out tens of billions of dollars for a war effort in Ukraine.
	Like, there is no debate about it.
	Now, look, I happen to think it's important to help Ukraine defend itself.
	Because we made security commitments after Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons.
	We were part of those negotiations.
	I think it's important to keep our promises.
	But with that said, it is interesting how the corporate media puts its thumb on the scale.
	They pretend like, oh my God, this is the most costly thing in the world.
	How are we going to pay for it?
	But when it comes to other issues, like issues that would enrich defense contractors, there is no conversation about how we're going to pay for it.
	That's a problem.
	I mean, I totally agree that we should always have the conversation about how we're going to pay for it.
	And I also agree that what is happening in Ukraine, it may be an unpopular position on some parts of the right, but I've been an advocate of funding Ukraine.
	It seems like the single best defense investment that the United States has made in the recent past.
	For a relatively cheap cost, we've absolutely crippled the Russian military, which is something I think is probably a good thing, globally speaking.
	With that said, there obviously is a difference in scale between the amount of money that we're spending in Ukraine and the amount of money that we'd spend to do Medicare for all.
	Right.
	And there are obviously significant drawbacks to Medicare.
	I mean, if you look at the NHS, for example, there's a recent article in the New York Times talking about the delays in, for example, ambulances, people waiting 12, 24 hours, literally on a field, not being able to get what they need.
	Because once you make systems national, you're going to have to, in some way, ration the resources.
	And then the question becomes, what are the resources?
	Either you have to increase the resources that you're utilizing, which means increasing taxes or increasing regulations, or you have to regulate the amount of care that people can receive.
	On the other end, my personal experience with sort of a Medicare-for-all system is, in Israel, their emergency care is very good, and if you have cancer, you are in serious trouble.
	Interesting.
	And this happens to be what the statistics kind of bear out.
	The United States has the highest five-year survival rate for things like breast cancer.
	If you have a serious disease, people are coming to the United States for surgery, for treatment.
	If you have a broken arm, you're probably better off in a nationalized healthcare system because it's a fairly simple thing to solve and it's not going to cost you, quote-unquote, anything except indirectly.
	But I think it's really important to differentiate the quality of care that is available in the United States, which I agree with you is fantastic, if you can afford it.
	And when it comes to your life, or when it comes to a family member's life, let's say you don't have the money up front to pay for the procedures or the treatment that you need, right?
	People are willing to go into debt, because at the end of the day, it's about your life.
	And I am tired of seeing elderly individuals, retired individuals in this country lose everything, go bankrupt because of how broken our healthcare system is.
	It needs to be fixed.
	So on one hand, I agree with you.
	The quality of care is certainly here.
	It's where people come to to get the treatment they need.
	But in a lot of cases, Americans go bankrupt for this.
	I'll give you an example.
	My mom was diagnosed with, she'll be okay with me sharing this because I've talked about it on the show before, she was diagnosed with blood cancer last year.
	I'm sorry to hear that.
	Yeah, and it was really difficult because her bone marrow stopped Producing hemoglobin, and we didn't know what was wrong with her before she got diagnosed.
	She was just very, very weak.
	She had no color at all.
	It was terrifying.
	She had to keep going in to get blood transfusions.
	Finally, they diagnosed her and they said, look, the good news is there is a medication.
	You can be on this medication for the rest of your life.
	It's a chemotherapy medication.
	It's called Revlimid.
	But it's monopolized.
	And even though Revlimid was discovered decades ago, in I think the 1950s if I'm not mistaken, the way patent law works with pharmaceutical drugs, I mean, they found loopholes and they were able to extend the patent, extend it, so there's only one option.
	And even with insurance, I mean, my mom's older, you know, she's covered and everything, even with insurance, it's $2,500 out of pocket.
	And, you know, I'll do anything to keep my mom alive, you know, we'll contribute to it.
	Luckily, you know, they found a solution.
	She's doing great.
	But if you don't have the privileges that my family has, if you don't have family members who are making enough money to contribute to help pay for that medication, you are screwed.
	You're either going to go bankrupt or you're just going to decide I'm not going to get the medication and I'm just going to end my life that way.
	And I don't want Americans suffering from that.
	So we need to find a better solution.
	And so far, from what I've noticed in different models in other countries, that single-payer solution seems to be the best option.
	Right, so I would obviously argue that you have to take into account a few different things in a situation like that.
	One is the cost of development of drugs.
	Virtually all medical patents happen in the United States, specifically because it is a free market system.
	We fund the research and development, though.
	Well, I mean, we do, but it's not even close to what the actual medical companies spend on research and development.
	What the federal government spends on R&D for medical product is so much lower than what Pfizer spends on R&D.
	And it takes forever for, I mean, the vast majority of these things are washouts.
	Hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent on drugs.
	By pharmaceutical companies?
	By pharmaceutical companies that don't go to phase three.
	I mean, they certainly provide quite a bit to their shareholders.
	Well, I mean, it depends on which ones.
	You're looking at the ones that actually succeed.
	I mean, for every pharmaceutical company that succeeds and actually becomes a thing, there are a dozen that fail.
	I mean, this is just the way that biopharmaceuticals work.
	I was talking with my friend Vivek Ramaswamy, who founded Roivent Sciences, and this is literally how he used to invest.
	The idea was that you invest in a bevy of drugs, like a basket.
	And the vast majority of them will die before phase three and a few of them will be successful.
	How do you make up all the money to pay for all the ones that fail in order to pay for the one that succeeds?
	So how do you continue to incentivize?
	So I think the questions that we ask are the same questions.
	The solutions are different.
	So how do we continue to incentivize the creation of drugs that can help your mom?
	Two, how do we help your mom pay for the drugs once she gets sick without destroying the incentive?
	Three, how do we actually incentivize doctors to care for your mom with, say, Medicare reimbursement rates that aren't significantly lower than what they can get cash out of pocket, which very often you're seeing doctors in specialized fields just stop taking Medicare entirely because they're operating now Across the table.
	They'll just say, we'll take cash only.
	This happens in the surgical profession a lot, a lot.
	Right.
	And so there are, I think, systems that are in between what we have and single payer health care that have been significantly more efficient in this respect.
	Switzerland is one of them.
	Singapore is another one of them.
	My argument isn't with restructuring the system.
	It's how we restructure the system.
	And the simplicity of the NHS comes with significant downstream effect.
	Right.
	The one other thing I'll say is, okay, so just quickly on the pharmaceutical drugs.
	I mean, you will admit though, right, that when you look at the amount of money Americans are charged for pharmaceutical drugs relative to any other country, we're being price gouged.
	We are subsidizing the rest of the world in their price gouging is how I put it.
	The reason I say that is because we are paying free market prices and they are paying cartelizes.
	They've cartelized their pricing structure.
	And so we could, theoretically, Bargain negotiate with it with drug companies, and then all the patents will get filed elsewhere That's why I mean that is the other downside in the very in the very least I mean one of the proposed policy solutions in build back better that was nixed was Allowing for Medicare to negotiate drug prices on behalf of Medicare recipients right that was squashed.
	I mean not entirely I think there's like a handful of drugs.
	It's for it.
	It's for the Right.
	It's because the great fear in terms of the incentive structure was, if you allow Medicare, which supports a huge percentage of people who are taking these drugs, to negotiate the price, what you're going to do is remove essentially the R&D budgets of a lot of these companies.
	I'm not buying that at all.
	The truth is the profit margins in these companies, I mean, take for example, Moderna.
	Moderna had to sink tens of billions of dollars into the development of RNA vaccines, and it was a complete failure until COVID.
	I mean, like that was, Moderna was essentially bankrupt before COVID happened.
	And this is, unfortunately, the way that science very often works, that it fails and fails and fails and fails until it succeeds, and it costs and costs and costs until it succeeds.
	And this is, I think, a general point about business that people should understand as a person who is a business person who runs a successful business.
	For every business that gets founded and succeeds, and people see the really rich person at the very top, they miss the five businesses that they started before that failed.
	And literally, for me and my business partner, it was several businesses that we had started before that did not succeed until we hit the one that actually worked.
	And they don't see the other businesses that started and failed.
	Most industries are more like the restaurant business than they are like any other.
	Well, I mean, look, you're going to start a business, and you take a risk.
	And if you succeed, you succeed.
	If you fail, you fail.
	But at the end of the day, when we're talking about Americans Funding research and development for these pharmaceutical drugs.
	I don't think it makes sense for us to then be price gouged By these companies which look I mean, I don't have the numbers in front of me I wish I did but you look at the profits from these Pharmaceutical companies the amount of money they make profit alone every year year after year the amount of money they pay their executives year after year I don't think you can make the case that the amount that they charge Americans for these drugs makes much sense.
	I I mean, obviously we'll have to disagree on that one.
	It's fun, but we're getting to disagree on that one.
	So let's talk about some of the other issues.
	I've had you diagnose the Democratic Party.
	So now diagnose the Republican Party.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Where are the issues that, obviously, on economics, you have some significant disagreements in terms of you want more government control and regulation of industry generally, you're a big fan of labor unions, obviously you and I have a wide-scale disagreement on that, I think that they radically raise costs, which is why you've seen so much business move out of the country, and also why you've seen fewer and fewer members of the private sector joining unions.
	Public sector unions are very powerful and robust.
	In the United States, private sector unions are increasingly not.
	But what are sort of the big issues?
	You look at the Republican Party and you say, these guys are just, they're out to launch.
	Well, okay, just putting policy aside for a second, it's more about what I'm noticing in terms of, I don't know if fracturing's the right word, but, The Republican Party is in a little bit of a pickle, right?
	Because when it comes to — and tell me if I'm right about this — when you look at Republican voters, it appears that they're certainly attracted to the MAGA-type candidates.
	So they'll do really well in primaries.
	But then once you get to a general election, and the battle is really about those independent voters, Those candidates really do struggle, and I think that's what really transpired in the 2022 midterm elections, right?
	These Trump-endorsed candidates who are further to the right, in my opinion, Like, they'll do really well, but then all of a sudden they kind of try to tone down their rhetoric to appeal to either moderate Republicans or independent voters in the general election, and it's not really working out for them.
	So I'm curious what your thoughts are on that, because I think you, just based on what I know about you, based on the conversations we've had, you're more of the You're just a traditional conservative, in my mind, really, right?
	And so—and I remember you having some analysis post-midterm elections that was—you hit the mark on the head, like, or the nail on the head.
	It was correct in that we need to stop promoting these, like, far-right figures who aren't appealing to a broader electorate.
	What do you think the solution is going to be?
	Because I think your analysis is correct on that.
	So I mean, I think that so much of this is attitudinal, meaning candidacies very largely in the primaries have become not about being far right politically.
	I mean, as you say, I'm a traditional conservative, which means it's hard to outflank me on the right.
	But when it comes to sort of the attitude that's taken by candidates, that's what's attractive.
	And that's driven largely by the polarization.
	I think that inside the Republican Party, there's been a move, which is sort of understandable based on how assaulted people feel by the media in particular, that the more people attack a particular person on the right, More people on the right rush to that person's defense and say, this person is just the best thing since sliced bread.
	And that is—I think people see that as beginning with Trump, and it really didn't.
	I mean, I've been here the whole time, and I think that for a lot of Republicans, that really started mainly with McCain, the sort of move from I can't believe these people like John McCain is about as moderate a member of the Republican Party as it's possible to find.
	And yet suddenly he runs for president.
	He's the worst person in the entire world.
	He's garbage.
	He's terrible.
	What's going on?
	And then the Republican Party responds by nominating the most milquetoast human being on planet Earth in 2012, Mitt Romney, who is as inoffensive as dishwater.
	I mean, he's just He is just white bread.
	He is white bread with margarine.
	And everybody on the left immediately went to, he's the most scary person.
	He's forcibly cutting the hair of gay kids in the 50s.
	And he's the person who straps a dog to the top of his car.
	And Joe Biden out there saying he's going to put y'all back in chains.
	Mitt Romney's going to put y'all back in chains?
	And so Republicans responded to that, many conservatives did, by like, why aren't we fighting this?
	Whoever is willing to punch somebody in the face is the person we're going to support.
	And so that's how you get Trump.
	And then Trump wins.
	And so because Trump wins, there's this sort of halo effect that has now accrued to people who are quote unquote punchers.
	Now I do think that the solution to that for the Republican Party is to find people who are smarter punchers.
	I like the punching.
	I think the punching very often is necessary.
	That's why I like Governor DeSantis in Florida.
	I think he's intelligent about how he throws punches.
	I mean like him or hate him, the guy's much more strategic than Donald Trump.
	He also didn't take any of Trump's bait.
	Right.
	He's a very strategic thinker.
	He's somebody who really tries to pick his fights.
	If somebody tries to pick a fight with him, he's not always going to pick up the glove and just slap back.
	Trump's big thing was, you can't hit me without getting hit on any score ever.
	And that's not DeSantis.
	So I think that the idea that the Republican Party is not going to be combative in the future is wrong.
	And it's okay to be combative, but you have to pick the right targets.
	By the way, the same thing is true on the left.
	I mean, I think that when you see Democratic candidates, very often there's an attraction to sort of the most wild-eyed, because it's like, wow, the right really hates this person.
	They must be really, really fantastic.
	I think you see some of this from the squad.
	But there are definitely counterpunchers in the Democratic Party who know how to punch and are much more strategic in how they go about that.
	That is, I think, the future of the Republican Party.
	That's at least the hope of the Republican Party.
	If not, what you're going to get is whoever says the wildest thing and draws the most fire is by necessity... What I've said to Republicans is you're essentially letting the left pick your candidates.
	You're letting the left target the person and then hit them.
	And the more they hit them, the more you're like, that guy's great.
	Love that guy.
	Well, maybe they're hitting him.
	Yeah, because he's on the right.
	Maybe they're hitting him also because he's a bad candidate and because some of the stuff he's saying is crazy.
	Yeah, I mean...
	Herschel Walker was not— He's a bad candidate.
	He was a terrible candidate.
	I'm sorry, he's a bad candidate.
	Absolutely terrible.
	I mean, same with Oz, right?
	I mean, and that's the other thing.
	I feel like the quality of candidates has really gone down, and it's really—that has accelerated post-Trump, and it's like, I guess anyone can run for Senate now?
	Like, what's going on?
	I mean, that is a serious job.
	We've got a hundred senators.
	It's an important job.
	You've got to be... Look, I'm not like some elitist that thinks, like, oh, you have to have this decorated record and, you know, you've done this and you've done... I like ordinary people representing Americans, but smart people who have actually thought through the policies they're promoting.
	I feel like you're right.
	There's a lot of rhetoric going on.
	I see a lot of that on both sides.
	A lot of negative campaigning, where everything is about attacking the other side.
	Ooh, the other side is so scary.
	So you have to vote for us, because if you don't, the other side's going to win, and your life is going to be miserable.
	I don't really notice much of a difference if it's a Democratic administration or a Republican administration, because at the end of the day, there's a lot of talk.
	I feel like there's a lot of show going on.
	But when policies need to be passed, and I think this is partly due to how our institutions are set up as well, nothing really gets done.
	Well, so I think the purpose is that nothing should get done.
	But I think that the problem is that actually, in spite of that, things continue to grow.
	So I think we have an increasingly incompetent yet intrusive government.
	And so that's a bad combo.
	If you're going to have a government that is very intrusive, it better be damn good at what it does.
	And it seems like precisely the opposite.
	All of our institutions are failing to actually perform on the promises that they are promising.
	And then they promise in response more promises.
	And then people are like, well, that guy is promising a lot, so probably he'll do the job.
	It's like, well, maybe no one can do this job.
	Which, again, I keep coming back to the localism point, but I really think that it's easier to get things done on a local level than it is on a federal.
	And it was designed that way, and I'm not sure that that's a bad design.
	I think we have outsized expectations of what the federal government can do.
	And what that means is that whoever promises the most and talks the biggest is the person who's likely to do well in national politics.
	Yuval Levin has made the point, the sort of center-right philosopher at AEI, he made the point that when it comes to Congress, when it comes to the Senate, it used to be that Congress and the Senate, these were institutions that shaped the people who went into them, right?
	That you became a Congress person, that meant you learned the rules, you learned the ins and the outs.
	You figured out exactly how policy got made, how the stock exchange, you cut the deals.
	You did the stuff in the back room, but then you campaigned on it, right?
	It was an actual thing that shaped who you were, and now, instead of it being institutions shaping the person, the person uses the institution as a platform.
	The real reason that you go to the Senate is that eventually you can get a show on MSNBC.
	The real reason that you go into Congress is that eventually you can get a contributor slot on Fox News.
	That basically, people like you and me who are in the commentary business, people who used to maybe aspire to go into politics, it's now the opposite.
	People who go into politics aspire to go into the business that we are in, actually.
	That's so true.
	And by the way, I find that so disgusting.
	Right?
	Disgusting both for the media outlets that Instead of hiring trained journalists, people who actually want to do unbiased reporting, instead of hiring them, it's like, let's hire some operative within the Republican Party, someone who's in Biden's administration.
	I don't think that that's the right way to go.
	I think the partisan media is becoming more and more ingrained into today's society, and that's leading to more of the divisions that are not conducive to finding solutions that Americans want.
	But look, to your point about localism and all of that, this is a little bit of an example of what I'm seeing happen on the left that kind of reinforces your point.
	You know, you go to Scandinavian countries and they don't have a federal minimum wage.
	What they have is trade unions who negotiate wages based on their workers.
	Right.
	That's why I want worker power.
	That's why I want workers to be organized.
	I think it's a far better solution to have labor unions engage in those negotiations and those debates with the employers as opposed to sitting around and waiting for this insanely corrupt federal government to keep their promises in raising the minimum wage.
	Minimum wage hasn't been Trade unions also provide the unemployment benefits, by the way, in Scandinavia.
	They do, that's right.
	They essentially do the job of what the federal government tries to do here.
	One of the major components or factors in wages stagnating beginning in the 1970s was the decline of labor union membership.
	So that was the decade when labor unions really started to kind of fall apart to the point where we are today.
	Now, we're starting to see a little more labor militancy.
	Honestly, that's the only thing that's giving me a little bit of optimism and hope for the future, because I've kind of given up on thinking that the federal government is going to solve these issues that workers have been dealing with for decades now.
	But to your point, I do think that there are solutions that are outside of the federal government.
	And it's really about empowering ordinary people, but it's going to take a lot of work.
	It's going to take organizing.
	It's going to take putting your cultural differences aside, because that's an issue that the left has as well, in my opinion, where they want everyone to be pure, everyone to be exactly in line with them ideologically, culturally.
	Americans are not like that, though.
	There's a lot of diversity of thought, diversity of opinion.
	We have different lived experiences, different backgrounds.
	We need to meet people where they are and not assume that someone who might disagree with you on something is automatically a bad person or a rabid right-winger or whatever they want to, you know.
	And by the way, when it comes to private sector unions, I'm actually not fundamentally on principle against private sector unions, as long as there's freedom of negotiation and as long as people aren't getting kneecapped on the side of the road.
	The idea of collective bargaining, that's been part of negotiations since the beginning of time.
	There's nothing wrong with a set of workers saying, we wish to come and negotiate for a higher wage.
	The employer just has to also be able to say no from time to time, otherwise, you know, start your own company.
	Yeah.
	This is why I remember when, last time we talked, we were talking about, you know, the idea of, and Bernie was big on this, the idea of sort of collectivization of ownership of companies.
	And I said, I don't, that's called a stock agreement.
	That's fine.
	I mean, if you and your friends want to put together a company and you own the stock in the company and you decide the wages, that's just called the company.
	Like, that's fine.
	And in fact, very often you have some of the biggest sort of collectively owned organizations.
	I think the biggest one in the world, I believe, is in Spain.
	Yes.
	Magical?
	Yes.
	I think that's right.
	And they actually engage in hardcore capitalistic competition.
	That's right.
	And have had to cram down on their own workers.
	Wage decreases when the market actually undercuts them because ownership is still ownership.
	But those are decisions that are democratically made within the organization.
	Because it's connected to the people who actually have a stake in the organization.
	That's right.
	And if you choose to take the risk, then you also choose to reap the reward.
	Correct, yeah.
	So one of the big problems, obviously, is that when we try to posit sort of labor versus management, what both sides are putting in there, there's an opinion by labor that labor is the sort of labor theory of value.
	Labor is the only thing that's valuable to the organization.
	I don't agree with that.
	But it is a huge, huge revenue.
	I mean, the revenue is created by the workers.
	And I think that that part of the equation is completely left out of the discussion when you're in America.
	Well, again, I mean, I think that that part, part of the revenue is created by the workers.
	Capital risk that was made by the person.
	Sure.
	Some of it's created by the corporate structure.
	And this is why, again, I'm not against collective bargaining in a free market system where you're saying, listen, and we do this on an individual level.
	I think one of the big problems that we've had in terms of collective bargaining is that because it used to be that labor was very striated, it was a lot easier to do collective bargaining because so many jobs now are sort of individualized.
	This isn't to speak to like fast food workers or something.
	But you're talking about, at our company, for example, or your company, for example, you have very specialized jobs, and so the idea that you can collectively bargain for very specialized jobs, very specialized job descriptions, it's actually incredibly hard to do that with any level of actual rationale.
	No, I mostly agree with you on that.
	So, for instance, look, we have a portion of TYT That is unionized.
	I'm not part of that union because of the specialized nature of the work I do.
	Correct, you couldn't unionize.
	Right, these are the graphics artists, the editors, they decided to do it, more power to them, it's worked out, and I'm glad that they did it and they're happy about it, right?
	But when I think about labor unions, I'm mostly thinking about major companies like let's say Amazon.
	Which, you know, you're seeing more and more of these Amazon warehouses either attempt to unionize or in some cases they've been successful in unionizing.
	I think it makes sense in that area, especially when you're talking about a company that's so massive that the workers are just kind of, they become numbers.
	So, again, if people are willing to join a union and then go at the company that way, that's fine.
	My big problem is that I think the National Labor Relations Board is rigged completely on behalf.
	I'm sure you love the NLRB.
	The current NLRB is fantastic.
	The NLRB should be disbanded.
	It's a garbage organization.
	I disagree with you on that wholeheartedly.
	Listen, the Starbucks stores that tried to unionize, and by the way, many of them, hundreds of them have succeeded in their union elections and they have unionized, I mean, the labor crushing Strategies that we've seen from the executives at Starbucks have been pretty disgusting.
	You know, people who have been fired just because they've brought up the topic of organizing the workplace.
	Just all sorts of violations.
	If it weren't for Biden's relatively labor-friendly NLRB, they'd have no protections.
	At all.
	Well, I mean, your protection, theoretically, is in how good a job you do, along with your fellow employees.
	Well, I mean, when it comes— The NLRB, I mean, I have— Listen, the NLRB is the kind of place where I made a joke online at one point that if somebody tried to take editorial control of my show on the basis of unionization, I would fire them.
	And the NLRB— They can't, though.
	I mean, that is a ridiculous thing for anyone to attempt to do.
	Well, of course, the NLRB sent me an emissive, and I had to get a lawyer to explain to them that, number one, it's a joke, and number two— Wait, they actually try to do that?
	Oh, yes.
	This is Ben Dominic over at the Federalist.
	But it's not a free speech issue.
	Yeah, it is.
	It's 100% a free speech issue.
	Number two, editorial control is not implicated by labor contracts.
	Labor contracts are about wages and hours.
	Correct.
	And working conditions.
	It's not you get to unionize at the Daily Wire to decide that you don't like my editorial control.
	I'm the owner of the company.
	That's not how that works.
	Right, right.
	So, I mean, the regulatory overreach there is really bad.
	This is not to deny that there are circumstances.
	You're a coal miner, and all the coal miners in town are being jobbed by the machinery.
	Of course you should unionize, right?
	Norma Rae, okay, fine.
	But the idea that the federal government is supposed to cram down on Amazon, that it has to pay people a certain wage when there are other people who are willing to work for below that wage in the same exact town.
	Like, how is that consensual?
	Consent seems to need to exist on both sides when it comes to labor relations.
	Yeah, look, the NLRB's main role is protecting workers who might deal with their employer raining terror on them if they are organizing the workplace.
	The retaliatory Strategies that we've seen from companies like Starbucks have been pretty gross.
	We need to allow people to have those conversations, to organize their workplace without fear of retaliation from their employer, right?
	So that's the main reason why I think the NLRB is important.
	You know, the anecdote that you shared about, you know, what happened with you and the editorial control, that is insane.
	And look, we—I'm not going to name names, obviously, but we had a similar issue, not with the union, but with employees who didn't like some of the commentary from me or some of the commentary from Cenk.
	That's called Sad Day for You.
	If you can't handle differences of opinion, then this is not the career path you should go in.
	That is free speech.
	And guess what?
	We're also workers.
	I'm a worker.
	I have my rights, too.
	I should be able to speak my mind on the show that I produce and host.
	But, you know, aside from that, I just think that there is There is an imbalance of power right now, and it's because of the fact that labor unions have been dismantled in this country.
	And workers need those collective bargaining rights in order to have a say, not just in what they're getting paid, but also their workplace conditions.
	Democratic-controlled Congress did to the rail workers was pretty gross.
	I don't know what you felt about that, but rail workers deserve to be able to take a day off, or more than just a day off, if they're sick or if they have a family emergency, without being penalized by their employer.
	And the fact that, you know, during these labor negotiations, they couldn't even secure that, and you had the Biden administration literally put its thumb on the—not literally, but put its thumb on the scale to prevent them from striking, I disagree with entirely.
	So, I mean, on principle, I'm not in favor of unions being able to bargain for more than they can get.
	When it comes to the internal turmoil of the Democratic Party having problems with the labor unions that it seeks to appease, I admit that I enjoyed it.
	I mean, but it shows you, but that's the thing, Ben, like it's really important to differentiate between the principled left, right?
	I'm not just saying leftists, the principled left.
	Those who actually want to empower labor, and then the Democrats who pay lip service to labor unions.
	And that is why you are seeing working people start to realign their political ideology, unfortunately in some cases, with the right.
	Because they will hear someone like Trump pay lip service to workers, even though talk is cheap, he didn't actually follow through with a lot of what he said.
	But just acknowledging those issues that workers have been dealing with made Trump super appealing to them.
	So I think in the future, one of the places where there will actually be bipartisan agreement is, I think indirectly, it will have serious effects on labor, but the sort of willingness now to face up to the threat that China represents is going to have some pretty dramatic impact on reshaping supply chains, on reshaping how manufacturing and labor work, particularly in the United States.
	I think a lot of the outsourcing that has gone to China is going to be reshored in fairly short order, given the fact that both parties are now realizing what a threat China represents.
	Well, look, and aside from China being an adversary and all of that, I'm a little uneasy with some of the rhetoric that I'm seeing, and it seems like an area where Democrats and Republicans are united.
	The rhetoric, I don't want it to lead toward an actual, like, war with China, and I feel like Biden has been irresponsible with some of the things he's said.
	Like, oh, you know, if China invades Taiwan, we'll have boots on the ground.
	Don't say stuff like that.
	That's incredibly stupid.
	But in terms of, like, the manufacturing issues, the supply chain issues, I'm very happy to see that politicians are finally waking up to the fact that we need to manufacture things in the United States.
	I mean, this is one of the failures of, you know, Venezuela's policies.
	They stopped manufacturing things, started importing everything, and once oil prices went down—and oil, of course, is like their number one commodity in export—they were screwed, right?
	We experienced how insanely fragile our supply chains are.
	We need to manufacture products and bring jobs back here to the United States.
	I like that we're headed in that direction to some extent.
	The CHIPS Act is a good example of that.
	So we'll see.
	We'll see what happens.
	I think there's certain specified industries, CHIPS are obviously one of them, where they actually implicate national security.
	And so you are going to see some right-left coalitions that are sort of odd when it comes to reshoring that sort of stuff.
	Same with pharmaceutical drugs, by the way.
	That's true.
	Any stuff that has been manufactured in China heretofore and that seriously impacts national security is going to be reshored.
	Much of it's not going to be reshored in the United States, by the way.
	A lot of it's going to end up in Vietnam.
	Some of it's going to end up in Thailand.
	Mexico.
	Yeah, Mexico.
	You're gonna see a lot of this stuff go to other places on the globe and you know the sort of countervailing Point to to the we need to reshore everything is that autarky has essentially been a giant failed economic strategy wherever it's been tried the idea Of all manufacturing happens in our country all products must be produced from within that that that generates economic failure I mean one of the reasons that Venezuela has failed is specifically because it is essentially economically isolated and self isolated I mean they nationalized virtually all of their industry and
	They prevented people from being able to own even within their country. I mean there's foreign direct investment basically dried up There's no money going into Venezuela in the one of the there's half of the story That's been told when it comes to the American economy about stagnating wages The other half that has not been told is that what you get for your wages now is way better than what you got in 1980.
	I mean, that is just a reality.
	You would not wish to live in 1980 as opposed to now.
	You now have a refrigerator, you have a microwave, you have two cars, you have a- Sure, okay, so if you want to talk about the technological advances, sure.
	Well, I mean the stuff that you have for your money, aside from two specifically government subsidized areas, healthcare and education.
	There's a lot of crap.
	Okay, so look, honestly- Would you rather live in 1980?
	Like, that standard of living?
	In terms of the quality of products that Americans could buy, I want to go back to the 1950s.
	Okay?
	I'm literally— He was right there.
	They still driving those cars.
	I stopped.
	I completely stopped buying new clothes.
	Everything I buy now is vintage, made by American garment workers in the 1950s.
	And those garments, by the way, look like they're brand new.
	Brand new.
	Quality.
	Like, what we did— But the percentage of salary that you would have to spend on that is much That's true, that's true.
	So for the worker, you're not shopping vintage shops in the 50s, you're going to H&M.
	So, okay, but understand, so what happened with, especially, this is what happened in the 1970s, we started offshoring jobs and really focused on consumerism, right?
	So wages started to become stagnant.
	But Americans were okay because they can rely on cheap products that are made in other countries through exploited labor, right?
	So we have a bunch of cheap crap we can buy, sure.
	But the quality of the stuff we're buying is not there.
	We have to replace it.
	I mean, look at clothing in particular.
	You buy clothes in America that, by the way, were made in some other country, in some factory or whatever.
	Wash it, falls apart the next day.
	I mean, that's true, but the percentage of your salary every year that you're spending on clothing is way lower than it was in 1980.
	And when you talk about sort of the economic narrative of the 70s, there's a countervailing point of view, which is that heavy unionization, high labor costs in the 50s and 60s, and a time where literally the rest of the world was physically destroyed by World War II gave us a head start, which we then blew over the course of the next two decades to the point by the 1970s, we have a decade of economic stagnation with literally no stock growth from essentially 1963 all the way up till the early to mid 1980s.
	You have 20 years where your stocks don't actually appreciate in any serious way because the economy basically stops dead. We're getting out-competed.
	The American car companies, which are the crown jewel of American industry, are getting out-competed by Toyota and Hyundai.
	And by the 1970s, 1980s, we're importing all of those cars.
	That's not because we offshored to them. It's because we didn't offshored them.
	It's because they were— No, we totally did offshored.
	Maybe not to Asian countries, we offshored a lot.
	I mean, think about the Rust Belt, right?
	And all the manufacturing jobs that went to Mexico.
	The offshoring happened later.
	That offshoring happened in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
	Correct, yeah.
	That was an aspect of attempting to compete with the import of cars from other countries.
	I mean, Toyota becomes a world power in terms of being an actual global corporation because our manufacturing costs in the United States are too high.
	We're living fat and happy off the excesses of the rest of the world being destroyed, essentially.
	And because of that, we could afford to do all this.
	We were the only game in town.
	And then we weren't the only game in town.
	Suddenly, Japan rises from the ashes and is an economic world power and is out-producing us when it comes to cars.
	And so you have two choices at that point.
	Either you go tariff, right?
	You actually start restricting imports and you generate enormous cost for your own citizens Right.
	Or you have to start offshoring and competing and lowering the wages.
	And so that's essentially what happened in the 70s.
	I would go on the tariff route, for sure.
	400%.
	And by the way, so Trump, right?
	I mean, this is sort of that right-left horseshoe that's been happening.
	Obviously, I wouldn't because if you just, again, I will go back to my original point.
	I don't think that you'd be willing to have many takers who would be willing to go back to 1980s level standard of living.
	Yeah.
	From 2022.
	We have a, for as much as we can talk about the excesses of Amazon, we now live in a world in which you can take a device out of your pocket, you can hit a button, and any product on Earth will arrive at your door in two days.
	That's true.
	And look, that's part of consumerism, and it would certainly be a culture shock for Americans to, like, rethink whether or not they need all of this stuff that's made in other countries.
	So that's the honest trade-off.
	Yeah.
	And I appreciate the honest trade-off.
	No, and I am being honest.
	And look, I acknowledge that people might not agree with me.
	Most people might not agree with me.
	But for me, I, in my personal life, have become a lot more happy in rejecting that consumerist mentality.
	When I spend my money, I spend on quality items that are going to last.
	And I just feel better about my purchases knowing that it was made at least at a time when people were unionized, when they were actually making living wages, they were succeeding, they were able to buy homes for themselves and their families.
	I want to go back to that.
	The fact that most Americans now are not able to buy a home in America is insane.
	We need to figure out what it is that's leading to this.
	Well, we know.
	Why we have this inequality, what we can do to lessen that economic inequality, because we want more Americans to actually enjoy that slice of the once-American dream.
	I mean, I think we certainly agree on enjoying the slice of the American dream.
	How we get there is another question.
	And when it comes to housing, I will mention that apartments are way bigger than they were in 1980.
	Houses are way, way bigger than they were.
	In 1980, you know, the real question I think, and this is an open question, I think one that people are going to have to decide, is when it comes to inequality, you can essentially, democratic socialism, which you're an advocate for, redistributes things that are already there.
	Capitalism generates new and better things.
	And so the balance has always been, how much can you continue to generate new and better things when you are redistributing what's already there?
	Well, you're not taking into account the financialization of our economy, right?
	Which is completely disconnected from productivity.
	So what I mean by that is, we're now in this age where companies don't even really need to focus on productivity when they can do things like corporate stock buybacks, By the way, I agree with a lot of that, and one of the things that has generated that is the Fed.
	The Fed is a disaster area.
	Totally agree on that.
	The massive infusion of tremendous amounts of money and easy credit into the system has led to people doing exactly that.
	You are 100% right about that.
	That is true.
	And we're also seeing that happen within the housing market, where you have private equity firms who have taken interest-free money, cheap money, thanks to the Federal Reserve.
	They're just buying up entire neighborhoods of single-family homes that typically would be purchased by actual families.
	Again, agree.
	The Federal Reserve is expending extraordinary resource and their easy money policies over the course of the last few decades have been an absolute disaster for the American economy.
	And quantitative easing, honestly, started under the Obama administration.
	So the fury that middle America feels toward Democrats like Obama, I get it.
	Because after you just got foreclosed on, After all of that heartache that your family experienced in the 2008 economic crash, you see the banks, you see Wall Street, you see the same individuals literally exploit that crisis to become even wealthier.
	Right.
	And here's where I think this has always been sort of the fascinating divide when it came to, for example, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street.
	So, my question always with Occupy Wall Street, which is making some of the same points you're making, is why are you occupying Wall Street?
	Why aren't you occupying K Street?
	Like, you should be in Washington.
	I don't understand why you're going after the people.
	Again, speaking of incentive structures, the people in Wall Street are acting based on an incentive structure.
	That incentive structure is created by the easy money, which is actually being generated by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve.
	One of those things is a thing where you have stock in it.
	It's called your vote.
	And one of those things is a place you do not have stock in it, and that's called Wall Street, unless you actually have stock in the company, in which case you go to the shareholder meeting.
	So it seems to me that the focus should be placed on the origin of the public policy.
	If you and I can agree that the Federal Reserve should stop pumping money into the economy, and this will naturally lower the amount of easy money that is available for all of these places to buy up, all of the single-family homes in Houston, for example.
	Then I think we actually hit agreement.
	I think where we hit the disagreement is where you say, OK, we need to penalize these companies for buying up the single family homes.
	No, I really don't think that that's really the issue.
	Well, no, we need to do away with the ability for them to get that easy money and buy up the single family homes.
	And honestly, one of the biggest issues, I think, part of the reason why, or the main reason why the Obama administration went along with this whole quantitative easing policy is because whether you're talking about Democrats or Republicans, both parties have been captured by those corporate interests, thanks to unlimited campaign donations and to political action committees, thanks to the fact that our politicians can be personally invested in individual stocks.
	We need to reform the system.
	It's not necessarily about punishing Wall Street.
	It's about getting to the root of the problem, which is the corrupt influence that Wall Street has on our politicians, thanks to how the system is set up.
	I don't disagree with any of that, particularly, but I would say that there's one additional element that I actually think looms far larger, and that is the political interest in Washington is always going to be in control, and Keynesian economics suggests that the easiest way to avoid blowback for a stagnating economy is to pump money into it.
	And so if you are in Washington, you're never going to be the president who says, we need to radically increase the interest rates. The interest rates are not meeting with what the actual risk level is in American society. Right now, Biden's taking the heat for it.
	The reality is that the interest, the notion that the Federal Reserve, every president is going to have an interest in pumping money into the system. The more money you pump into the system, the more you inflate the GDP. The more you inflate the GDP, the more people have the impression that things are going splendidly. True.
	The more easy money there is in the system, the more that you do have corporate interests who are backing. All of that's true. But that starts with the amount of control that can be exercised by Washington, which is why, and this is where we'll disagree. I think that Washington should be stripped and castrated and most of its power should be taken away. And then we don't have to worry about any of this. And all the stuff you want to do at the local level, you can do And what I don't want to do at the local level, I can do with my friends.
	Anna, thank you so much for stopping by.
	It's really been a pleasure.
	Thank you.
	I hope we can do it again in the future.
	Thank you.
	I really appreciate it and enjoyed it.
	That was a lot of fun.
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