Episode 1570 Scott Adams: Let's Talk About the Build Back Better Plan Because You Are Being Bamboozled
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Content:
Supply chain issue solved by financial incentive
Was Bernie right all along?
Build Back Better bill contains what?
Single parent family support
65% tax rate, time to retire?
California tax rate vs. benefits
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Well, welcome to the best thing that ever happened to you in your entire life.
Possibly the best thing that ever happened to anybody in the history of the universe since the Big Bang.
We don't know about before the Big Bang.
I have some speculation.
My speculation is that this is the best time, even including before the Big Bang.
And time didn't even exist then.
So that's how good it is.
What? YouTube video is bad?
Huh. Audio is crappy.
There's gotta be reason for that.
Watch this.
Boom! Fixed.
This is why I have a checklist.
Right? It's better now, right?
Yeah. That's why I have a checklist.
And on my checklist is to check my other microphones to make sure that they're not doing this.
Literally, it was on my microphone.
And by the way, Paul, your logo just saved me, so that actually is really good.
On the Locals platform, there's somebody who...
Paul Collider who posts a meme to tell me if my audio is good every time.
It's actually really useful. So, was there something we're supposed to do now?
I believe there is, yeah.
To take it up to another level.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
And it's going to happen now.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a gel, a systeina, a canteen, a jug, a glass, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now.
For the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
Accept your taxes, apparently.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
Go. Mmm.
Good. Good, good, good.
Well, China continues to be awful, and now they're doing these hostage videos with their Chinese tennis star.
Peng Shui, I think.
So as you know, there was a Chinese tennis star who spoke out against the government, specifically one member of the government who raped her, allegedly.
And then she got disappeared.
But now she's been seen on an official Chinese video.
So we know she's alive, but I don't think she'll be talking to us on her own.
I don't think. So, will it work?
Will China make us forget that they are the rapist regime?
The Xitu regime?
I think they will, actually.
To me, it looks like this will totally work.
China will just treat it like it didn't happen.
They'll make her disappear.
The athletes will complain about it for a month or two.
And then we'll just go on like it never happened, because it sort of doesn't feel like your problem, right?
Now, part of the story that I didn't know until recently is that the tennis star who claimed to have been raped by a high-ranking Chinese official had been in a long-term relationship with this guy.
Did you know that? So she was raped by an ex-boyfriend.
That doesn't make it less rape, of course.
That's not the point. But I feel like that's a piece of context that I missed in the story.
Again, rape is rape, but I feel like that somehow changes it a little bit because it tells you how they got in the same place anyway.
So I saw a meme yesterday that told me it's probably true, I don't know, but it's fun even if it's not true.
That Kyle Rittenhouse and Greta Thunberg have exactly the same birthday, January 3, 2003.
And I tweeted very briefly a witticism about that.
But I tweeted it only long enough to do a screen grab of my own tweet before deleting it so I could post it on the locals' platform where I won't get cancelled.
Because I knew I would get cancelled, or at least I'd get a bad blowback.
I probably wouldn't get cancelled.
But I didn't want the blowback on Twitter because it was definitely a case of a joke that was too soon.
Too soon. But the locals' people can handle it, and I think you can handle it here today, so I'll tell you what it was.
And by the way, after I deleted it, Twitter user Ian Miles Chiang was fast enough to grab it, I guess.
In the 15 seconds it was live.
And he asked if he could retweet it, and I said yes.
So you'll see my tweet under his name on Twitter, just because he was braver than I was.
I should probably tell you what the tweet is instead of talking about it all the time.
I think this first part was like people telling you about their dream last night, and you're like, don't tell me about a dream, just get on with it.
All right, here's the joke.
When I saw the meme that said Kyle Rittenhouse and Greta Thunberg, We're born on the same day.
I said, it's a ridiculous comparison.
Greta only talks about reducing the carbon footprint, whereas Kyle actually did it.
So, that's why I deleted it from Twitter.
Too soon. Too soon.
What about that supply chain problem?
Do you remember the biggest problem in the country?
Was that the ports were all stopped up and Everything was going to come to a halt and the economy was going to grind too close.
What happened to all that?
It just disappeared, right?
It's just not in the news anymore.
Now, I still feel it, like when I go to the store, it's very clear that there's some items missing.
But so far...
I've pretty much been able to work around it or, you know, find an alternative item for a while.
I can't buy the shampoo I use, for example.
That hasn't existed for months.
But, you know, there are other shampoos, so it's not the biggest problem in the world.
But apparently, here's what happened.
A big improvement was made when they started fining companies for leaving their empties, the empty containers.
So they put a substantial enough fine on it that people figured out how to solve it.
So apparently it wasn't that there were no solutions.
It's that there were no solutions that were economically favorable.
So as soon as they put a fine on companies for leaving their empties clogging up stuff, they figured out how to get rid of them.
So apparently they knew how to get rid of the empties.
They just didn't have a financial incentive to do it.
Yeah, I know. Shampoo is weird, isn't it?
There's a long story to that that you don't need to hear.
But it's a medicated shampoo, blah, blah, blah.
It's more than you used to know.
So, yes. And I use this shampoo on other parts of my body, such as under my arms.
Weird, huh? Here's a little aside for you.
I had a horrible rash...
Under both of my arms that lasted, I don't know, five or ten years, I think.
So every day, like, I'd be, like, itchy and scratching under my arms, and it was just some kind of permanent rash.
I didn't know what the hell it was.
And one day I went to my doctor at Kaiser.
He said, well, use that medicated shampoo you use in your head.
Just use it under your arms.
And I said, what? They said, yeah, just use the shampoo you use in your head, under your arms, and That'll go away.
And I said, are you telling me that a rash that I've had for 10 years is going to go away if I rub some shampoo under my arms?
My doctor says, yeah.
And I went home and rubbed some shampoo under my arms, and a problem I'd had for 10 years went away and stayed away.
That's all it was. Just some kind of, I don't know, skin issue.
So, as I was saying, the supply chain problem just went away.
Now, I would like to add this to my list of what I call the Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters.
But this one was sort of an edge case, wasn't it?
Because the port problem kind of snuck up on us, so it actually kind of happened fast.
But even though the initial shock of it happened fast, it looked like we'd have enough time to sort of, you know, waltz our way around the The solutions.
So I don't think it was just the one fine that made the difference, although maybe that was a big part of it.
But my guess is that everybody working at the port just found a way to do things 10% better.
Don't you think? Just sort of everybody figured out, all right, if I work an extra hour, if I put this where I wouldn't usually put it, you know, that sort of thing.
And problems like this, if you can reduce them by...
I hear it's reduced by a third now.
The problem has been reduced by a third, and I think it's still moving in the right direction.
But that's usually enough to get something completely solved, if you can get a third of it out of the way.
You're usually on your way.
So, this is really an edge case, because we didn't have much time to solve it, and nobody knew what the solution would be exactly, right?
Everybody had ideas, but it wasn't obvious.
But we had, I guess, a few months, and that was enough.
Look at the pandemic and Operation Warp Speed.
Apparently, I think I have to modify the Adams Law of slow-moving disasters.
In the 70s, if you had a disaster, you needed maybe, I don't know, 10 years to To, you know, change your economy or, you know, find new ways to frack or whatever to solve a problem, to take care of the ozone,
etc. So I think we've gone from a world in which you need 10 years of notice to solve a problem that everybody sees coming to a point where if you look at the year 2000 bug that got solved in about six months, maybe a year, I'll say a year, and that was a problem that we didn't think was even solvable.
The final year got solved.
So we may have reached a point where the economy and communications and everything are so fast that the Adam's Law of slow-moving disasters could be compressed from, well, if you have 10 years to solve a problem, you'll probably do it, to, well, if you've got a solid year to solve a problem, you'll probably do it.
And we may have gone all the way to, well, if you've got a good month to solve a problem, and it's a world problem, the world's really good at solving problems, it turns out.
If you have the access to all the resources and knowledge of the world on your problem, maybe a month is enough.
So I guess I modified the Adam's Law of slow-moving disasters to say that The amount of time you need to solve a disaster is compressing over time.
Logically, it would.
It makes sense, right? All right.
We can't not mention the tragedy in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Somebody drove a Ford Escape into a crowd of people who were celebrating and Killed some and injured a bunch, and it was just horrible.
So I don't want to dwell on horrible stories, but I will say that I'm waiting for it to turn into a white supremacist story.
Now, we think the driver was probably not white, based on early reporting, but that's too early to know for sure.
Well, I would just like to add this note from the simulation.
Of all the vehicles in the world, That somebody could be driving to allegedly get away from some other crime.
So the thinking is it wasn't a terrorist act, it was somebody trying to escape another situation and went through the crowd to do it.
The name of the vehicle is a Ford Escape.
Really? It had to be an escape.
I think the simulation just made that happen.
But as also Paul Collider mentioned in a tweet, the worst part of this story is that Ford Escape, the Ford Escape was created by a white CEO and was transported across state lines in the cover of night before any of this happened.
So I think that's got to be part of the story, as Paul mentions.
Here's a question for you.
Is inflation going to crush us, or is economics a bullshit?
Because I feel like only one of those two things can be true.
If we do not get crushed by debt and by inflation, then nothing we know about economics is right.
Am I wrong? Now, by the way, if there's anybody new to my live streams...
In addition to my cartooning career, I do have a degree in economics, and I've got an MBA from a top business school, Berkeley.
So I kind of know my way around economics, at least as a citizen level, you know.
And I don't understand how something could be so obviously bad, meaning gigantic trillion-dollar increases in debt, And everything that that will do for inflation with pumping money into the system.
Everything I know about economics says it will destroy the country.
But it looks like it probably won't.
What does that say about economics?
Now, actually...
All right, okay, we've got a little fight going on over on locals in the comments.
I'll let you work that out.
Work that out on your own.
But a serious question.
Have we not been relying on economists to give us a heads-up on whether something's going to be bad for us or good for us?
And have we not put the economists now to the ultimate test?
We've done something that I think every economist would say should crush the country.
That amount of debt and that amount of money pumped into it.
But it seems like most of the economists are saying, ah, well, yeah, we've got some inflation problems, but we'll get over it.
Now, what if they're right?
What if they're right?
What if we can get over it?
And we'll have some inflation, obviously.
Nobody's saying we won't have inflation, by the way.
Everybody, the people who are talking about it seem to be saying, well, yeah, there'll be inflation, but it'll work its way out.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Five years ago, if you talked to every economist and you said, can we add $5 trillion of debt and we'll be fine?
Who would have agreed with that besides Bernie Sanders?
Was Bernie Sanders right all along?
We might find out he was.
I mean, he probably would have spent $10 trillion.
But, you know, the reason I've always, you know, rejected the super-socialist ideas, you know, a little bit of socialism is fine, because pretty much every country has that.
But the reason I've resisted the, you know, full socialism is not just because it takes away incentives and it's a system that doesn't work, is that I didn't think we could afford it.
It didn't seem possible.
But what if it is?
All right, let's go through this Build Back Better thing, and I'll try to do this in a non-boring way if it's possible.
Number one, in the comments, how many of you feel you have a good grasp on what the Build Back Better bill has in it?
Now, we're not talking about the infrastructure part, because that already got passed.
But what does the Build Back Better have in it?
Most citizens don't know, right?
Because it's a long laundry list of things, and each of them would be its own entire conversation.
And you don't really have much transparency.
But I looked over it today, and here's the first thing...
Yeah, it's a confusopoly, you're right, Cassandra.
I was going to talk about that.
So you've got the government who puts on its website, here's what our plan is.
And I went to the website to read it today.
In the government's own words.
So I read what the government said about it, and then I asked people on Twitter, what do you not like about it?
Tell me the bad things in it.
The things that people said they didn't like, I couldn't find in the plan.
Now, I think the problem is, not that they're not in the plan, but that the government's website that describes the plan is a summary.
I don't think I found it there.
So do this.
Go to Google and just Google something like Build Back Better and see if you can find a list that very clearly tells you all the things, but importantly, includes the things that people are talking about that they don't like, such as a cap on the SALT. Now SALT is the state and local taxes deduction.
Now, I've read different accounts about what that is or how big it is or whether it exists and whether it'll be in the final one.
So you got your original plan, which they took the real infrastructure out of and passed.
So the original plan, and then we got the modified plan that went through the house.
So if you're Googling, it's hard to know if you got the first plan or the modified plan.
And if you look at Wikipedia, you're not sure if they updated it for the new stuff.
And then you realize that there's a reconciliation process, which I don't fully understand, but my understanding is that the Senate can basically change the plan fairly substantially and then just give it back to the House and say, do you still like it?
And if they still like it, something happens and then it can pass.
But we don't even know what that plan looks like.
Because I can't easily Google to find out what it is, and I certainly don't know what it's going to turn into.
Because the Senate will fuss with it.
So how can I be in favor of it or against it?
So, yes, it's a confusopoly.
So between the government and the press, there does seem to be some...
I'm not going to say it's coordinated, but there's nobody who's working against it.
So it's coordinated by default that nobody wants to tell you the details.
Or to give you, let's say, a debate on each of the items.
Here's the plus, here's the minus of this item.
This one will be cash positive, this one will be cash negative, but we like it for social reasons.
Put them all together and they cancel out or they don't, whichever it is.
So we're about to spend, probably, trillions of dollars that the public is completely shut out of the decision.
Now, I don't know if that's a bad idea, by the way.
Do you think you could really add to this?
Let me ask you this.
I'll give you a fact, and then I'll ask your opinion.
17 Nobel-winning economists signed on to say that the Build Back Better thing is a good idea for the country, that economically speaking, it's positive.
Are you convinced? 17...
Nobel economists say this is a good deal.
Are you convinced?
Well, how many of the 17 studied it?
What do you think? How many of the 17, say, did an economic model of each of the items and then summed it up?
The answer is zero.
I'm pretty sure.
Because there's nothing even to study.
Even if you wanted to study it, you wouldn't know exactly what it is.
Because you don't know what it was, what it is, what it's going to turn into.
How could an economist possibly say it's good or bad?
It's ridiculous. So when you see 17 economists sign on, this is exactly like the...
How many intel agencies said the Steele dossier was correct?
Was it the same number?
Like 17 or something?
Was that also 17?
Or am I misremembering that because I'm conflating it with this?
It's the same number, right?
17. Because when you hear 17, you say to yourself, well, even if 12 of them are fake, you've got five left, right?
Doesn't your brain do that?
If you hear 17 experts or 17 intel agencies agreed, your brain says, well, even if most of them are full of shit, that still leaves a lot of them So this is sort of that laundry list persuasion.
I'll bet of the 17 economists, none of them really looked into it much.
What do you think? I think there were just Democrats who said, well, I'm a Democrat.
It's a Democrat bill.
It looks good for the public. Looks good for bad people.
I'm all in. I don't think anything beyond that happened.
But... Now, as I said, I have a background in economics, so I looked at just the government summary, which leaves out all the stuff like...
I mean, I didn't even see anything about amnesty in there, or parole, they're calling it, or whatever that is.
So we don't know what's going to happen with amnesty, parole, who knows.
So it's all just this big mess of crap that I can't discern.
But let me give you my...
Semi-uninformed opinion based on my background in economics of whether this looks like a good deal overall.
And the answer is, it might be.
Certainly, anything this big is going to be 20% absolute horrible bullshit.
Can we agree on that?
Can we agree that No matter how good or bad it is, that there's sort of, let's say, a floor or a ceiling to how good it could be, because it's a big government thing, right?
So let me concede that there's no way it's 100% good.
Everybody on board? I think we would all agree that nobody thinks it's 100% good.
So we would only be talking about, you know, on average, is it more good than bad?
Now, at least 20% of it is absolute crap that needs to be fixed by the Republicans if they can.
And maybe it will be. Maybe the worst parts will get adjusted.
But there's something very big about this that you're going to hate.
And when I say you, I mean those of you who are pro-family, which is, I imagine, most of you.
Here's the uncomfortable truth.
Sometimes you have to deal with reality instead of what you want reality to be.
Will you agree with me so far?
Sometimes you just can't make reality what you want.
Sometimes you just have to deal with the one you have.
So withdrawing from Afghanistan, for example.
There was no good way to do that.
We probably did it the worst possible way.
But it was going to get messy.
There's some things that are just, you know, just bad, naturally.
All right. But here's what I think this Build Back Better thing does.
I think it removes the family structure from being the essential system in the United States.
I would say that outside of the government itself, the most basic system, if I will, that held the country together...
was the family unit.
Now, wouldn't you love, you conservatives who are watching, and other people too, wouldn't you love for the government to help families?
Right? And that would encourage more families to form and stay together.
It's a pretty good unit.
I believe that this budget is separating family From, let's say, a required institution to an optional one.
That's evolving.
I think the country is trying to evolve into a world in which you don't need two parents.
Or any, maybe.
But I think the biggest part of this is moving to a support structure that is especially good for single parents.
Now, If you create an incentive structure that makes it easy to be a single parent, what's going to happen?
You'll get more of them, right?
If it becomes easy to be a single parent, and right now it's super hard, you'll get more of them.
Now, some of you would say, oh, my God, that's the end of the country, because then people won't form families, even if they, you know, maybe they would have otherwise.
But now it's just so easy to be single, you might as well get that divorce.
Here's the tough part.
I don't think a family works for everybody.
I think a family unit is the best possible solution for a lot of people.
A lot, a lot of people.
Tens of millions of people. It's absolutely the best thing.
And people who have done it would tell you the same thing.
But there has to be a solid 40% of the public that will never thrive in a family situation.
In other words, they just can't be married.
There are a lot of people who probably could be an okay parent but never could be an okay spouse.
Am I right? The world is full of all kinds of different people.
Some people would be great spouses and terrible parents.
Some people would be the opposite.
So if what this bill does is make it possible for people to thrive outside of the family unit, you're going to get more unfamilied But it might be economically positive.
That's my take.
It might be really good economically.
Because here's the argument.
If you have a single parent and they can't afford, let's say, childcare or whatever, you basically take them out of the workforce forever.
You just crush them.
There's nothing they can do. They've got to get on welfare or something.
But if you create a solution where, let's say, you had a kid and the childcare part makes it impossible to work, well, maybe the government solves that for you.
Gives you healthcare and food security, too.
Maybe. So...
So you don't...
I hear all of your objections.
And let me say, if you disagree with big government in general...
I'm with you, you know, in general.
Sometimes you need big government to form a military and stuff like that.
But you can't love everything about this Build Back Better bill.
However, I do think they're taking a clear-eyed view that the world isn't going to be a family unit exclusive world in the way it almost was in, say, the 40s or so.
I think it's a practical...
Look at the fact that we just can't keep families together.
We don't have that kind of world anymore.
And, you know, you could lament that, and you could wish it were otherwise, but I don't think you're going to get 40% of the country ever to be in a family unit.
I just don't think it'll ever happen, with any kind of incentive.
short of jailing them, I guess.
Now, here's some other parts that I love about it.
One of them is food security for kids.
If you remember when I was talking with Hawk Newsome, notably of Black Lives Matter.
Now, he's quite provocative in a number of ways, so I certainly don't agree with his take on everything.
But one of the things that Hawk was promoting was food security, because in the black community especially, it's a big deal.
And I don't think that that gets enough attention, because if you don't eat right, you're not going to learn right.
Are you with me? If you don't eat right, you're not going to learn right.
I think everybody would agree with that, right?
So I think that part, I would say, is economically positive, because you might be turning bad students into good students, and that has a huge economic upside.
So that looks good. So I would say that, and then there's a number of healthcare things.
One of the reasons that I describe myself as left of Bernie, but better at math, meaning that I always thought his programs were impractical, math-wise.
But as a goal, wouldn't you like everybody to have healthcare?
You just don't want to be the one to pay for it, right?
But as a goal, I want everybody to have quality healthcare in this country.
And I don't think we could call ourselves a great country, If not everybody has, you know, good access to healthcare.
I mean, that feels like a minimum to me.
So I like...
I generally like how the Republicans solve problems, you know, build systems that take into account human motivation and such.
But I like the goals on the left.
They just don't know how to get there.
Now, if it turns out that they can get there just by raising taxes on the super rich, and if they can get there without causing an inflation that crushes us, maybe there was a path after all.
Maybe I've been wrong about everything.
I don't know that I'm wrong.
I mean, I still think it's a big risk to put that much debt on the country and throw that much money into it all at once.
But I also don't know if it'll work out.
And I don't think you do either.
So I would say if all you did is read the top-line descriptions from the government of what this Build Back Better thing does, it looks terrific.
Thank you.
But, hold on.
So let me back up and say that again.
If you just read the government's own description of what it's doing, without any knowledge of the details below the top line, if that's all you saw, it actually looks pretty terrific.
And in fact, if that's all it was, I feel like I could almost back it.
But, you know the government and the media are lying to you, don't you?
That we don't know really what's in that shit, do we?
They're selling it as soup, but it might not be soup.
It might be a bowl of piss.
And you can't tell.
Because the government's not being clear.
We don't know how it will be reconciled and tweaked by the end.
And the news is completely worthless in describing this stuff.
And if you said, okay, well, the news is bad, but we'll listen to all the economists, the economists are all just lying fox.
17 Nobel lying fox.
Basically, they didn't look into it.
They liked the social element of it, probably, and said, oh, yeah, it's fine.
We'll just tax rich people more.
Alright. Can you believe that I looked at this plan, and as of today, I can't tell if it will raise or lower my taxes?
Think about that. I looked into it today, and I can't tell if my taxes would go up or down.
I can't tell. That's a pretty basic question, right?
At my income level, does it go up or down?
Now, at one point, there was talk about this SALT deduction, the state and local taxes...
So if your state has high taxes, you can use that to offset your federal taxes.
It never made sense to me that that was the case, by the way.
I don't think there's any justification whatsoever for getting a state deduction, but if I can get one, wouldn't it be terrific?
And one of the plans, and I think the Republicans will probably fight for this, is that you would get back your SALT deduction In California, where I live, if you're under a certain income, which I am.
So I think it was under $10 million of income a year or something.
So I'm under $10 million of income per year, so it looks like my taxes would actually go down.
I mean, if the SALT deduction cap is taken off.
So think about how basic these questions are.
I don't even know if my taxes will go up or down.
I don't even know if these plans would be economically positive or negative.
You don't even know.
But I would say, if you don't know, if feeding children and giving people good health care and housing and some of the other good things, if you don't know if they're good or bad, should you do them?
Here's your decision-making test.
Let's say you legitimately don't know.
And I feel like that's a fair point of view.
Let's say you legitimately don't know if it's a good idea or a bad idea.
Do you approve it? Do you like it?
It's not as obvious as you think.
Because if you don't know if it's a good or bad idea, your first instinct should be conservative, right?
Well, if you don't know if it's going to work, don't do it.
But that applies to literally everything we do.
There's nothing we do that we know is going to work, right?
We don't know. We just have a good idea it'll work.
And I wonder if maybe we shouldn't take the obvious benefits that come with it since we don't know if it'll work or not.
I mean, the fact that we can even discuss that we could pump 3.5 trillion into the economy and maybe we'll be fine.
It's kind of interesting.
Thank you, Mark. All right.
Now, I pay, as it turns out, the highest tax rate in the country.
I saw something, I don't know if this is true, but it says the combined California tax bill would be 64.7%.
Let me round that off for you.
In California, two-thirds of my income is taxes.
At my income level.
Did you know that?
Am I paying my fair share?
Is there anybody here who thinks that two-thirds of my income...
And keep in mind that I work seven days a week in two completely different jobs.
You know, this plus cartooning.
So I'm an example of exactly what the country wants, right?
People who can work hard in a productive thing that...
People want to purchase, etc., or pay for in some way.
And two-thirds of my income will just go to the government.
Shouldn't I just retire?
Because this is a pretty big incentive to retire.
And I'm at that age where I could if I want.
But the government's basically retiring me.
I'm not going to pay two-thirds of my income.
I mean, 50% is crazy.
And I'm probably at 60%.
I think I'm at around 60%.
I don't think it's 65%.
But if you added the other kinds of taxes, it would be 65%.
But, you know, I feel as though...
I don't know how you calculate what's fair.
Because fair is subjective.
So take me in California.
Granted, I have the highest tax rate in the country in California.
The highest tax rate of all. Is that fair?
Is it fair that every dollar I earn, I pay two-thirds of it?
Whereas the person a block away could pay 10%.
Is it fair that I pay two-thirds of my money?
Well, I think it is.
I'm going to surprise you.
Because in California, we get a lot of benefits that you don't get in other states.
Let me give you one example, and then you can generalize from that.
In California, I can go outside and take a stroll on a sidewalk that is more turd than concrete.
You can't do that.
Try doing that in your state.
In California, I can go take a walk, and when I come back, my house might be full of strangers.
Can you do that?
Now, those strangers might be removing things through the windows, because that's been happening quite a bit in my neighborhood lately.
I don't pay for that. That happens for free.
So I'm meeting nice people.
I'm walking on turd sidewalks.
These are things you don't get.
Now, suppose I was over-hydrated.
Well, I live in a state with severe water restrictions, so that helps me.
Suppose I've been getting outside too much and getting a little bit too much sun, a little bit of sunburn.
In California, for half of the year, We have so many forest fires that it blocks out the sun.
Can you do that in your state?
No. In your state, you have to put on sunscreen and slather it on before you walk outside.
My state, you can't even tell if it's daytime half the time.
So I think that that is worth two-thirds of every dollar I earn to walk on turd sidewalks and have no sun exposure whatsoever and have new friends coming in through my windows on a daily basis.
That's something you can't do.
All right. I feel like I had some other things to talk about, but they weren't terribly important.
Am I missing any topics?
Is there anything else happening today?
I feel as if the news that's not being reported is all the important stuff.
Doesn't that feel like that?
That... We don't understand the Build Back Better thing, but that's like a huge deal.
We don't really know what's happening at the ports with the supply chain, but that's a big deal.
Oh, the Epstein trial.
Has that started? I just saw something trending about that, but we don't know anything about that yet, do we?
Until they start naming names.
How many of you... Oh, the jury selection.
God, I'd love to be in that jury.
Can you volunteer for...
For jury duty in another state?
How much would you love to be on the Ghislaine Maxwell trial?
It's going to last forever, so that part's bad.
But at least it would be interesting.
It would be the most interesting trial you ever had.
Yeah, just think of the per diem.
$15 a day, baby.
What's this? Daryl for federal hate crime?
I don't know what that's about. What am I doing for Thanksgiving?
I actually don't know.
I don't have plans for Thanksgiving.
Strangely enough. So I imagine...
Yeah, I'll probably just order pizza or something.
Scott Stoll Dilber from Mike Judge Office Space Cartoon.
Dr. Johnson, my private troll, come over here.
Let me tell you a story about Office Space, the Mike Judge cartoon, or movie.
So most of you saw Office Space and probably loved it.
It was a pretty awesome movie for, at least the first part was awesome, then it got boring.
But Dilbert was already a well-known comic at that point, before that movie came out.
Unknown to me that the movie was in production, I was looking for some advice on hiring an art assistant or something.
I forget what it was. And I wanted to ask Mike Judge a professional question.
Just a cartoonist to cartoonist question.
I had never met him, but I thought he might know the answer.
So somehow I got his phone number and called him and left a message.
And he never called back.
Now, How many of you ever leave a message and never get a call back?
Is that common in your world?
To leave a phone message to, let's say, a professional in your field.
Is it common to not get a call back?
Now, it's common for, like, your friends, right, or your spouse or something.
But in the business world, if you're asking a colleague, you know, somebody who's at the same level you are-ish, do you ever just not get a call back?
It's all over the board. I'm seeing lots of...
Anyway, so he never called me back, so I've never spoken to him.
But not long after that, Office Space came out.
Now, when Office Space came out, that cost me probably $20 to $50 million, personally.
Do you know why? Because at the time, it was very obvious that there would be a Dilbert movie.
You know, Dilbert was so popular at the time already.
It was, you know, already being talked about for a movie.
And do you know what happened every time I went into a meeting with anybody in the movie business?
Do you know what they said?
Oh, you mean you're trying to make office space?
And I'd say, well, no, actually, Dilbert came before office space, and it would be its own thing.
And then the movie people said...
So basically Office Space with Dilbert.
And I'd be like, no, it's different.
It'd be my own thing.
And they would look at me and say, but basically Office Space, the movie that's already been done.
That was it. So Dilbert was sort of an obvious thing that would become a movie property, and a lot of studios were interested, etc.
But because Mike Judge front-ran it, It probably cost me 20 to 50 million dollars.
Now, some said that the Dilbert cartoon made office space possible.
What do you think? Because the Dilbert comic was the first time anybody had taken a sort of a realistic office cubicle world and showed that it had commercial potential.
Before Dilbert, nobody believed that an office-y movie Could have market potential.
I proved it did, and Mike Judge absorbed that market potential and made a lot of money.
Now, of course, it's a competitive world, and who knows if he was even aware of Dilbert or it was his own experience.
I have no idea. But I certainly made it possible.
I think I can say that for sure.
I have no... Direct knowledge that he even knew that Dilbert existed at the time.
I assume he did, because everybody did.
So, to Dr.
Johnson, just so you have a correct understanding of what came first.
No, by the time I sent my voicemail, it was already under production.
It had to be. Alright, anything else that I'm missing today?
I don't have to run today.
Not the movie. It came out before the Dilbert comic strip.
There was an office space cartoon that nobody ever heard of.
Well, apparently it was not commercially successful.
Fake news responsible for the truck attack.
Best show ever.
Oh, so a lot of people ask me why I don't move out of California.
And I'll give you the answer to that. - Oh.
I built my home here to be, let's say, crisis-proof.
So, you know, I could survive a whole bunch of natural disasters where I live.
And it would be hard to replicate that.
But also you can't match the weather.
Even if you throw in the smoke and everything else, it's hard to match the weather.
But on top of that, if you have roots here, it's just hard to move.
So it's more about the human part.
If you took away the human part, I'd probably be looking to move.
What is Drew Carey's story?
Oh, that's a good question.
So Drew Carey, some people also saw the similarity between his characters in the Drew Carey show.
I'll give you a little background on that.
So Dilbert came first, before the Drew Carey show.
And a lot of people probably said to him the same thing they said to me.
He's like, hey, you know, Drew Carey looks like Dilbert, and he's in an office, and it's an office company kind of thing.
But the Drew Carey show wasn't really so much about the office.
It was just a setting for human interactions.
It wasn't really about office-y things.
So that was very different.
But one day I was at home and Drew Carey just called me home.
Which is the coolest thing about being semi-famous.
That famous people will call you home.
Like the phone will ring and it'll be just some like world famous person.
So Drew Carey called me home and he was of course aware that people were making comparisons.
Oh, Justin's saying more in the filters?
Well, there's more stuff like that on my micro-lessons within the locals subscription world.
Anyway, so Drew Carey called and he offered me a job writing for his show.
And I said, really?
I've got a job already.
This Dilbert comic thing is working out pretty well, because by then it was already pretty hot.
And he said, well, you know, you wouldn't believe how much writers get paid.
And I said, how much?
And when he told me how much a successful TV writer gets paid, I have to admit I was tempted.
Because I think at the time, it would have been something like $400,000 a year.
If you just forward that, you know, I don't know, 20 years or whatever it's been, it's like $1.2 million a year for a top writer.
And probably, just based on my success with Dilbert, I probably could be a TV writer for a million dollars a year.
I'd hate that job, because I did that job.
I wrote a lot of TV scripts for the Dilbert TV show.
And I don't like that work.
I just didn't like doing it.
Okay.
I was just looking at some comments.
Okay.
Sounds like no family unit thing is another LBG great society thing.
Yeah, kind of. Do you give to charities or what kind?
Let me give you an answer to that that is surprising.
Do you know how a lot of celebrities have a pet charity?
Like Jerry Lewis was the telethons and Various people say, okay, this is my charity and this is my thing.
Do you know why famous people do that?
Do you know why famous people, celebrities usually, do you know why they usually pick a specific charity?
Now, sometimes it's because they have a family member or somebody they're close to, so it's close to them, and that's part of it.
It has nothing to do with taxes.
Now, everybody who thinks that charity...
First of all, there's no such thing as a tax write-off that makes sense.
A lot of people who don't study finance don't know that.
You can never make money by writing things off because you spent more than you wrote off.
So it's either good to spend it or it's not.
But nobody does things because of the taxes.
They're either good or they're not, including taxes.
All right. The liberal blind spot that Scott has.
What liberal blind spot do you think I have?
Please read my mind incorrectly in public here so I can see exactly what you're saying.
Tell me my liberal blind spot.
Go ahead. You've got time.
Yeah, just shut up. Because you know I don't have one.
All right. What was I talking about?
Oh, why do celebrities choose one charity?
Here's the reason. Because if they don't choose one charity, they get pecked to death by other charities, of which there are many.
Here was my day early in the Dilbert world.
Somebody said to me, hey, how would you like to participate to this local charity?
And I'd say, you know, I'm doing well, and I think I should give back.
So I'd say, yes.
All right, yeah, I will do that.
So I'd participate in the local charity.
How do you think that turned out for me?
Did you think that turned out well for me?
What do you think happened when I participated in a local charity?
What do you think? Turns out that people who participate in any kind of a charity, I'm talking about the other people, not me, also have some connection with other charities.
And the next thing, your email and your phone just blow up.
Hey, I got a charity.
I got a charity.
I got a charity. And I was spending maybe 25% of my entire day saying no to charities because there were just too many of them.
So what the celebrities will often do is say, I give all of my attention to my one charity.
It's how they say no.
It's not just about the one charity.
It solves two problems.
One is they probably genuinely care about the charity.
It's often based on a family member or something.
So I do think they care about the charity.
But it solves one of their biggest problems, which is saying no to stuff.
No, I have a charity.
I put all my attention there.
Did you know that? You didn't know that, did you?
So, since I don't have a named charity...
Here's how I answer the question.
Somebody asked if I give to charity.
And the answer is, I don't disclose.
I don't disclose.
Because if I did, other charities would peck me to death.
So when somebody says, and I also give only anonymously.
So when somebody says, can you give to my charity?
I say, nope. Because you would know I did it.
And then it's not anonymous.
So I can say no to anybody.
Because they can't guarantee anonymity.
Nobody can, really. Is there a mutual fund equivalent for charities?
Not that I know of.
Yeah. So, I will tell you that over the course of my successful career, I've given a lot away.
So, you know, you can use your own imagination.
But my goal was always to die broke.
And if I didn't give it away while I was alive, then I kind of suck.
That was my feeling. Sort of not too far from the Bill Gates thing.
If you die with a billion dollars, you did something wrong.
You really did something terribly wrong.
So I would say that by the time I die, I will have personally...
Consumed 10% of my wealth.
And all the rest will have gone somewhere else by then.
Including to heirs, because they spend it too.
But very little of the money that a rich person owns gets spent by the rich person.
How much of Elon Musk's wealth do you think he spends on consumption?
Tiny, tiny, tiny bit.
All the rest is going to end up somewhere else.
Either heirs or donated or starting more businesses or something.
Alright, have I chatted long enough?
And it creates jobs.
That's correct. Aliens are back in the news?
Don't hold your breath.
So I'm predicting no aliens, but I'd love to be wrong about that.
And when I say no aliens, I mean no aliens anywhere.
No aliens on other planets.
No aliens will ever be found in our current simulation, is what I think.
Will Build Back Better help the Dems keep Congress?
I don't think so. Well, help, I guess I should answer more specifically.
It might help, but it's not going to be enough, no.
