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Aug. 31, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
30:22
Episode 201 Scott Adams: Healthcare Costs, Weed, Criticizing the Press, More
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Oh, what a good day it is.
It's always a good day, but today, a little better than usual.
Today is a very special coffee with Scott Adams.
Special because the content will be so, so good.
And better than that, more than content, we will also be sharing the simultaneous sip.
Oh yeah, it makes your coffee 75% better.
Science has proven.
And now, if you will, raise your mug, your vessel, your glass, your container with your favorite beverage, coffee preferred.
Oh, that's good.
Now, we have a theme song for Coffee with Scott Adams.
You already know how that goes.
Sing it with me, everybody.
All right, that's enough of that.
But what we also need, I think, is a dance.
A dance to get us going.
I know Ellen on The Ellen Show likes to dance with her audience, but I thought...
Well, you know, I like to do some of that, too.
So I was looking around for what would be a good dance for this audience, and I thought, oh, I saw one on a clip.
And it's actually Prime Minister Theresa May, and she's visiting an African country.
And she's doing a dance I think I'd like to do for you as well.
I hope you can see it.
Do it with me, everybody.
Thank you.
All right.
I thought that was pretty good.
Now, you're probably thinking to yourself that I'm going to make fun of Theresa May for her dancing skills.
Yes.
But you'd be wrong.
I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons that Theresa May is Prime Minister and you're not is that she can do that.
And by that, I don't mean dance poorly.
Anybody can dance poorly.
But what she can do is she can stand in front of the world and do something that she's not good at.
Think about the power of that.
Now, I'm sure people gave her some hard times about it, but I'm not going to.
I give her an A-plus for having one of the most essential qualities of success, which she demonstrated right there, which is a complete lack of embarrassment.
Now, that doesn't mean that in her private life or in her private moments she doesn't feel embarrassment, but it's pretty obvious that she's worked through it.
It's not stopping her.
It's not slowing her down.
So she might feel embarrassed or awkward at times like everybody else in the world, but it's not stopping her.
So, I'm going to give Theresa May an A+ for having an essential leadership skill, which is the ability to just put yourself out there, the ability to take a chance.
All right.
So, now I did not pull out my mic, but I've got two microphones here for another reason.
Let's talk about a couple other things.
I was curious about healthcare.
And you may have seen a thought experiment that I put on Twitter.
I did a Twitter poll in which I asked the following question.
Now of course this question is not a realistic question.
It's a thought experiment to get a little deeper understanding of what people feel about health care.
And I asked this. I said if the government of the United States It is plugged in.
My mic is plugged in.
I'm not going to answer any more questions about sound, okay?
Seriously? If you ask about the sound again, I'm going to stop the broadcast.
All right. So I asked this question.
If the government of the United States could pay only $5 Per year, total.
Not per person, not per day, but just five dollars.
Actual just five dollars per year and give health care to everybody.
Excellent, high quality health care.
And let's say the cost would never go up and there would be no problems.
How many people would be okay with that?
Or would they say, no, that's socialism?
And Surprisingly, a huge number of people said that they would not allow people in their country to have health care if it personally cost them one millionth of a penny because they don't agree with socialism.
Yeah, I do have a light behind me.
me let me fix that so amazingly people are so committed to their anti-socialist philosophy that even in a thought experiment in which I said you seriously wouldn't pay personally one millionth of a penny or one millionth of a dollar if
whatever it comes out to, to provide universal healthcare that's excellent and there's no problems at all, except for that cost of a millionth of a dollar.
And a lot of people said, no, no, it's a hard line.
No socialism. So, what I was trying to get at is, you remember the old joke?
I'm just going to start blocking all the people who say the microphone's not working.
I was getting at the joke that You remember, I think it was P.T. Barnum talking to...
No, it wasn't P.T. Barnum.
It was somebody talking to Mae West and said this old joke, which is, Hey, would you sleep with me for a million dollars?
And she was reportedly said, just in the joke form, she said, huh, a million dollars.
Well, gosh, maybe I would.
And then he says, would you sleep with me for $20?
And then she says, what kind of woman do you think I am?
And then he says, we've already established what kind of woman you are.
Now we're just talking price.
So what I was wondering is if there's a similar thing going on with socialism and health care.
Is it really the socialism we care about or is it the cost?
Because you might act differently if it's a philosophical hard line versus you think, well, it's not the socialism that's the problem.
It's the problem that it doesn't work or that the government never does anything right.
Or that the price will go up or that we don't trust it or whatever.
So I was trying to drill down to find out.
W.C. Fields was the one in that joke.
You were correct. Not P.T. Barnum.
We were trying to figure out I was trying to figure out, is it the fear of the government ruining everything?
Is it that you don't like the idea of any of your money going to help somebody else?
Just where is the dividing line?
And it was interesting. So a number of people said, anything the government does is going to be bad news.
But the government does lots of stuff for us, like collective defense, and it builds roads for all of us, etc.
So sometimes you just have to get the government involved.
And then I said to myself, What would it really cost?
We're hearing a lot of folks who are being labeled as democratic socialists, Bernie Sanders being the primary person there, talking about universal healthcare or so-called single payer, the single payer being the government in this hypothetical.
And they're saying, well, if other countries can work it out, why can't we work it out?
Which is actually a pretty good argument.
It's a pretty persuasive argument to say, look, these other countries have figured it out.
Why can't we figure it out?
Now, of course, there's a lot more to know in this conversation than just those things.
But I started asking a few questions to myself.
And the first question was, what would it care?
Okay, I'm blocking all the people who are saying my mic doesn't work.
I said, what would it cost for universal health care?
And what's our total, how big a percentage is that compared to our total, you know, intake of...
All right, blocking all the people who say the mic doesn't work.
What would it cost?
And what is our total intake for taxes?
So I'm trying to get an idea. What is it as a percentage of the total tax?
And here are the numbers I came up with from PolitiFact.
Now PolitiFact looked into it and on the high end, and I think you have to assume it would be on the high end, it would cost $2.5 trillion per year for healthcare.
And I think I got that right.
But our total tax intake every year is like $3.3 trillion.
So how much would everyone's federal taxes have to go up in order to absorb the extra $2.5 trillion if we only bring in $3.3 trillion in the first place?
And I think it's something like 75%.
Now, I probably have my numbers wrong and somebody will embarrassingly correct me.
But remember, I've got the Theresa May thing working for me.
I don't get that embarrassed just because I'm doing math wrong in public.
But the general idea here is, why don't we know how much everybody's taxes would go up, just in a sort of a thought experiment way, if you were to just raise everyone's taxes by the same percentage, whether it's everybody's up by 10% or everybody's up by 50%, what is that number that would get you to universal healthcare?
The number I came up with is 75% tax increase.
Now, I might have that wrong, but if it's somewhere in that 50% to 75% range, it seems like that's the number that the Republicans or the people who are not in favor of this should be focusing on.
Instead of saying they want universal health care, why don't they say they'd like to raise your taxes 75%?
To give you universal health care.
And then you've got both the costs and the benefits.
People can decide.
If people want their taxes to go up 75%, maybe they like that.
Now, here's the problem.
I don't see any mathematical way or any practical or economic way that any of this is possible.
Or even close.
Not even close.
So, Under those conditions, what do you do?
So it seems to me that we're being lied to.
I mean, we, all of us.
Doesn't it feel like we're being lied to on this topic of healthcare?
Because I don't understand how other countries could be doing this.
But the only way we could do it is by raising our taxes by 75% across the board.
Now, of course, since you wouldn't raise taxes on the middle class by 75%, wouldn't you kind of have to raise taxes on the rich by 90%?
I mean, roughly speaking, just sort of in terms of very general terms, it would be impractical to raise taxes on the middle class by 75%.
It would be a waste of time to raise taxes on the lower class by 75% because they don't have any money.
They're not paying any federal taxes in the first place.
So all you have left is the rich.
And unless I've done my math wrong, something like a 90% tax increase?
Which would, by anybody's calculation, destroy the fabric of society because rich people would just leave.
Or they'd find some way to pay no taxes at all.
I mean, I would.
Let me say this as clearly as possible.
If the U.S. tax code raised my taxes by 75%, I would leave the country in a heartbeat.
Wouldn't you? Is there anybody here who wouldn't leave the country if their personal taxes went up 75%?
So that's that.
So there's something about this health care topic that we're being lied to about because the numbers don't make sense.
So somebody needs to explain to me the numbers before I even think I'm in a conversation.
All right, next topic.
I'm hearing some pushback from the press, mostly, saying that it's dangerous for the president to criticize the press because his criticisms of the press as being, quote, are causing some risk of physical danger to the press.
A risk that some nut is going to say, enemy of the people, I'd better go take a weapon and do something about this.
We hope nothing like that happens.
And so the president is being criticized for creating a situation where it would be dangerous to be the press.
To which I say, well, let's look at the full picture.
He's not doing that just for fun.
He's doing it because the press has characterized Trump supporters as literal racists and Nazis.
Literal racists and Nazis.
In other words, people who are worthy of being punched by Antifa or anybody else.
Now that's a very dangerous situation and we've seen plenty of reports of Trump supporters being harassed and physically accosted.
So, in such a world, is it dangerous for the president to put pressure on the media who are creating this unsafe situation with, you know, 30% of the country?
Or does it make it less dangerous because it's a needed pushback in terms of freedom of speech?
In other words, is the president's freedom of speech, which does create some danger for the press?
It does. I'm not going to deny it.
It does create real physical danger for the press.
But it is a pushback for the press creating real physical danger for people like me.
Now, does CNN make me less safe?
Yes. CNN's coverage, the way it does it, makes me personally, because I talk about the president a lot in positive ways, it makes me 30% less wealthy because there's a lot of pushback.
And I am in physical danger to the point where I don't do public events anymore.
Because I wouldn't consider it safe to go in public.
Why is that?
It's not because the public came up with these opinions on their own.
The public gets their opinion from the fake news.
They get their opinions from the press.
Now, I know some of you might be thinking, hey, it's not just one side that has the fake news.
What about Fox News?
They've got some fake press too.
Well, yes, all sides are guilty of some spin, some bias, some fake news now and then.
But I don't see the Fox News version making it dangerous for anybody.
I don't see Fox News calling people snowflakes, putting them in physical danger.
But I do see CNN and MSNBC and New York Times, Washington Post, calling a third of the country actual white supremacists and racists.
That very much puts them in physical danger.
So, if the president's calling these groups the enemies of the people creates some physical risk, I don't want anybody to get hurt.
But it is a reasonable response to having his supporters put in physical risk by fake news.
Now I'm not talking about real news.
I'm talking about the fake news specifically.
And there's so much of it that it does put Trump supporters in physical risk.
So if the president pushes back and pushes some risk back in that way, I'd say that's probably a healthy situation.
What would be less healthy Then letting the press create a dangerous situation for a third of the country where it would be just okay to attack them.
And everybody would say, well, you know, sure it's illegal, but we're okay with it because they're Nazis anyway.
What would be more dangerous than that?
You need a little pushback from that.
And so the press is taking a little bit of risk on their own and should.
I think it's appropriate that the risk is part of the pushback.
But I don't want anybody to get hurt, and I want to say as clearly as possible, don't do anything physical or even intimidating about the press.
That would not be a good situation.
Alright, let's talk about my favorite topic.
I heard a report yesterday.
I'm waiting for some confirmations.
I think I might not have the whole story yet.
But I was hearing that there are 14 organizations within the administration, the Trump administration, that are organizing to put out a negative message about weed, about marijuana.
And apparently the thinking is that there are too many positive things out there about marijuana and they need to balance it with some negative things.
To which I say to myself, what?
What? Now here's what I think happened.
Now this is just speculation.
But I'm trying to imagine how the conversation went.
Because I'm hearing some pundits say they think that Jeff Sessions is behind this, not President Trump.
Now imagine that.
Now that sounds maybe like it's right because Sessions doesn't like weed.
The president reportedly doesn't have a strong anti-weed opinion.
So maybe it is Jeff Sessions who's organizing against weed.
But I'm trying to imagine how that conversation went because you imagine that Somebody went to the President, maybe it wasn't Sessions himself, and said to the President, some version of this, Mr.
President, We're thinking, Jeff Sessions has asked us to, if this happened, this is just speculating, Jeff Sessions asked us to pull together as much information as we can on the negative effects of weed as part of our push to make it continue to be illegal.
What do you think about that?
Do we have your blessing?
And I can imagine President Trump hearing that and saying some version of Sure.
Why don't you go ahead and do that?
Fine. Have you connected the dots yet?
Here's the scenario that's starting to come together.
I see the ha-has.
Some of you are ahead of me already, right?
The other story in the news is that the president would like to fire Jeff Sessions.
If the president fired Jeff Sessions today, the only story would be, my God, he fired Jeff Sessions because of Mueller.
He must be guilty.
The world is ending.
The government is falling apart.
We've got to impeach this man.
So that's what the story would be if the president got his way today and just fired Jeff Sessions, which he's hinting about.
But suppose Jeff Sessions Took a hard stand against marijuana and wanted to keep it illegal.
Let's say the president said, I don't like that idea.
There's, you know, 10% of the people in prison are there for marijuana stuff.
I don't like what it does to the minority population in this country.
I don't like the expense it causes.
I'm going to fire Jeff Sessions and make sure that weed It does not become a problem.
Now suddenly, he can fire Jeff Sessions.
Who on the left is gonna complain about President Trump favoring that outcome?
All right, so people still asking about the audio.
If you're new, I'm blocking everybody who complains about the audio because it ruins the periscope when everybody's just interrupting me with problems about the audio when I already know that the rest of you can hear because you said it's fine.
So anyway, I think it would be a genius thing.
Here's my bigger point I wanted to make today.
By the way, I'm going to do another Periscope.
In about 45 minutes, I'm going to do a separate Periscope to give you a little update on my startup, WenHub.
Some exciting things happening there.
Don't tell me it's echoey because I'm going to block you because I already know that.
Uh...
Thank you.
So, here's my point.
It seems to me that, for those of you who have read my book, Cat It Failed Almost Everything and Still Wouldn't Make, You probably know my thinking about systems versus goals.
A system is something you're doing every day, something that moves you closer to your outcome.
A goal is just saying, I want X. I want this specific thing.
Does it seem to you that Democrats are goal thinkers and Republicans are systems thinkers?
Does it seem to you that that's the case?
Because let me give you some examples. - Yes.
When Democrats talk about healthcare, they say something like, I want healthcare for everybody.
That's a goal. I would like that too.
Except I don't know any system that would get you there.
So, I'll be talking to Dr.
Shiva next week about some systems that might get us there.
Excuse me. Think about anything else.
Think about the topic I was just talking about, which is the danger to the media of the president criticizing them.
What the left says is, hey, stop putting the press in danger by saying they're the enemy of the people.
That would be a goal. Stop putting them in danger.
That's a goal. A system would be, let's use free speech to balance out any of these problems.
So that's the Republican saying, hey, the president has freedom of speech too.
The press has freedom of speech.
The president has freedom of speech.
If they make it dangerous for Trump supporters, Trump supporters might make it dangerous for them.
Because that's how things balance out.
So that's the system.
If you look at, let's say, gun rights, the left would say, my goal is to have no guns be killing people.
Or some version of that.
No gun deaths.
Well, how do you get there? What's the system that gets you there?
Because the systems we know of wouldn't really work in this country.
The right says, we've got a system, it's called the Constitution.
If everybody just follows it, if everybody gets gun training, if you put a trained, honest gun person in these anti-gun zones, then the second gun gets there faster.
But whether or not you agree with one side or the other, my point here is that one tends to always think about the system.
What's the system?
Is it in the Constitution?
Have we voted on it?
Are we using free speech?
These are all systems. So Republicans are systems thinkers.
Even the economy.
You see the President Lowering taxes to improve the system.
And what do the Democrats say?
Hey, you're giving money to the rich.
That works against our goal of income inequality or Something like that.
So the point is, look for how often you see that Democrats, or just people on the left, don't think in terms of entire systems.
They think in terms of a goal.
And the goal is usually one you don't even disagree with, if you're on the right.
So there's nobody on the right who wants more gun deaths.
There's nobody on the right who doesn't want you to have health care.
There's no one on the right who wants, I don't know, wants children to be separated from their parents at the border.
There's nobody on the right who wants that.
So when the left talks about let's don't do these things or do these things, they're talking about goals, but there are always free-floating ideas that don't have anything to do with...
Alright, so I'm getting more complaints about the sound.
I'm going to get off of this now.
Too many complaints about the sound, but at 8 o'clock I'm going to do a special little periscope, or a little bit after 8 maybe, on my startup, Wenhub, which I think will be amazing.
Some really big announcements.
So it's going to be fun.
I hope you join me for that. That'll be a quick one.
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