True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 88: COVID Cliff
Aired: 2020-08-01
Duration: 01:14:28


=== Welcome to Serial (07:43) ===

[00:00:00]  Welcome to Serial.
[00:00:07]  Welcome to- Oh, I was expecting you to keep going.
[00:00:11]  Cereal.
[00:00:14]  welcome to cereal welcome to cereal welcome to cereal oh my god stop it I can't.
[00:00:26]  I'm in a loop.
[00:00:28]  So.
[00:00:29]  We have decided to sort of like revamp where we're going with this podcast.
[00:00:35]  For a lot of this podcast history, we've been focusing on putting a certain, you know, people or persons in prison.
[00:00:44]  But we sort of like with all the stuff that's been going on lately, it has made us sort of reconsider that and think kind of holistically about what our project is.
[00:00:54]  And now we've changed focus.
[00:00:56]  And I would like to announce our new project, which is to free Anand Saeed from prison.
[00:01:04]  I thought you were going to say Free Mumia.
[00:01:07]  Well, no, I am actually really extremely pro-free Mumia.
[00:01:13]  But that Mumia has already got a lot of advocates.
[00:01:18]  He did a split with Os Rotten, which I had when I was 13.
[00:01:23]  Very good split.
[00:01:25]  But Anon, I feel like once Serial...
[00:01:29]  I think it's Adnan.
[00:01:30]  Adnon.
[00:01:31]  Well, before we complete this pivot, we should probably learn his name.
[00:01:36]  Well, names are subjective.
[00:01:39]  You can just say anything.
[00:01:41]  You said that before.
[00:01:42]  You said that before.
[00:01:44]  Someone once told me that on Goff Street.
[00:01:47]  Like, someone I know once told me that when I was like 19, and it was the most confusing thing anyone said to me.
[00:01:52]  And it's never, for those who aren't familiar with this thing, someone told me once that you can just pronounce names any way you want.
[00:01:59]  It doesn't matter how they're spelled.
[00:02:00]  Like, if that's your name, you can pronounce it that way.
[00:02:03]  Which is one of the most mystifying statements anyone's ever said to me.
[00:02:06]  But now I just take it as fact.
[00:02:09]  My friend was on a road trip once, and a waitress at a diner she was at came up and had a name tag that said chamomile and she introduced herself as Shamila.
[00:02:26]  Whoa.
[00:02:27]  That's pretty good.
[00:02:28]  Perhaps your friend was right.
[00:02:31]  Well, I am Brace Beldang.
[00:02:33]  That's what I'm going for now.
[00:02:35]  And now you're host here of Cereal.
[00:02:40]  Free Adnan.
[00:02:42]  Free Adnon.
[00:02:43]  I actually have no clue about that whole thing.
[00:02:46]  Oh, well, it's like, you know, like...
[00:02:47]  Is he guilty or innocent?
[00:02:49]  Did we ever decide?
[00:02:50]  Well, you know how like sometimes someone you're dating really makes you mad and you're like, I wish I could kill them.
[00:02:57]  Yeah.
[00:02:58]  He did.
[00:02:59]  Oh.
[00:02:59]  Do that, but then the lady got did she didn't she get like tons of awards and and money for like basically like falling in love with him and then making a podcast about it, yeah, but like in fairness, you did say Ghelane had a hot voice, you know what?
[00:03:15]  I don't take that back.
[00:03:16]  I stand by my assessment.
[00:03:18]  Sorry to the haters for thinking that I've crossed too many lines, I'm too far gone, but it was you know as shocking to me as you must feel shocked for me saying it.
[00:03:31]  But that's you know, this is the kind of truth that we're committed to here on serial.
[00:03:40]  Well, unfortunately, I do not think Ghelene is going to make it much longer, Liz.
[00:03:44]  Really?
[00:03:45]  Yeah, she has a new cellmate.
[00:03:47]  Who?
[00:03:48]  Anand Saeed, The one and only podcast That.
[00:04:21]  is No, that's that should be the new claim.
[00:04:23]  It's just the only podcast.
[00:04:25]  Uh-huh.
[00:04:26]  The only podcast still putting them out.
[00:04:28]  Every other podcast.
[00:04:29]  We make our own truth.
[00:04:31]  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:04:32]  We, we, we, who's that, Carl Rove that said that?
[00:04:36]  Yeah.
[00:04:37]  We have, we are the first Rovian podcast.
[00:04:41]  The first Rovian podcast on the left.
[00:04:44]  We forge our own reality.
[00:04:45]  Well, technically, Carl Rove was a Trotskyist, but yes, point taken.
[00:04:50]  Um, my name is, I'll be, I'll be straight with you, guys.
[00:04:55]  My name is Bryce Belden.
[00:04:57]  Oh, that's nice.
[00:04:58]  I'm Liz.
[00:04:59]  We are joined by our completely new producer, Young Chotsky.
[00:05:03]  And this is Truanon.
[00:05:05]  Yes, welcome.
[00:05:06]  Hello.
[00:05:07]  I am, I'm, I'm really, I gotta tell you, a little sick of this coronavirus business.
[00:05:15]  Yeah.
[00:05:16]  Uh, I basically, I've gone through a couple waves of dealing with corona.
[00:05:23]  I think everyone has now.
[00:05:24]  And I'm at the point where I'm back to being scared of getting it again.
[00:05:28]  Really?
[00:05:28]  Yeah.
[00:05:29]  What kicked that off?
[00:05:32]  Um, some people dying, and uh, that'll do it.
[00:05:37]  Yeah, just stuff feeling a little too close to home.
[00:05:40]  I don't know.
[00:05:42]  This shit is still going on, believe it or not, people.
[00:05:45]  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I, I've gone through several of my own personal phases, not to be uh mixed up with the societal phases that we've also faced.
[00:05:56]  At first, I was having a really good time.
[00:06:01]  Next, I was having a slightly less good time.
[00:06:05]  Following that, the dissent continued.
[00:06:09]  And now I'm somewhere at a subterranean plateau where I'm deeply paranoid, nihilistic, and extremely mentally ill.
[00:06:19]  So, this is more of like an L-shaped recovery that you're going through.
[00:06:22]  Yes, yeah, yeah.
[00:06:23]  But somehow, you know what?
[00:06:25]  I'm still rocking.
[00:06:26]  That's the thing.
[00:06:26]  You are.
[00:06:27]  I'm still rocking.
[00:06:30]  I love being in the subcutaneous part of the world, baby.
[00:06:37]  I'm doing good here.
[00:06:39]  I'm nothing if not a human rat.
[00:06:42]  And so.
[00:06:44]  In fact, the rat king, many have said.
[00:06:46]  Exactly.
[00:06:47]  Yeah.
[00:06:47]  And so the more garbage and bullshit that I'm around, sort of the more I thrive.
[00:06:54]  Not mentally, spiritually, or physically, but, well, no, spiritually, yes.
[00:07:02]  But the other things not doing so great.
[00:07:05]  So we should say that it is, we are recording this July 29th.
[00:07:11]  2020.
[00:07:12]  Oh, shit.
[00:07:13]  Yes.
[00:07:14]  In case people were confused.
[00:07:16]  Not 2021.
[00:07:20]  And as of now, there is no deal in Congress to extend the CARES Act and the provisions under the CARES Act.
[00:07:30]  They are still debating out what the hell is going to happen.
[00:07:34]  It's the Republicans have offered what they're calling the Heels Act, which I don't, I don't even want to even look up what that stands for.
[00:07:43]  Don't care.

=== Yelp's Closure Crisis (15:21) ===

[00:07:44]  But real sick of all these little names.
[00:07:45]  They got to come up with some better names.
[00:07:48]  Yeah, they should just call it the money bill.
[00:07:50]  Yeah.
[00:07:51]  Well, they would, except they're not actually offering very much money, which we can kind of get into.
[00:07:57]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:58]  Well, I think we'll get into that in a second.
[00:08:00]  But UI officially, I know there was something where like it officially expired, I believe last Friday or last Saturday, I think.
[00:08:08]  I don't know exactly when, but it's done now.
[00:08:11]  Yeah, that's done.
[00:08:13]  And the eviction moratorium is about to end, the federal one.
[00:08:16]  Now, states have their own and some municipalities have their own, but the federal one has been key in staving off what looks to be a large portion of American people who can't pay their rent right now.
[00:08:30]  Yeah, a ton of them.
[00:08:31]  I mean, it's all for all federally backed mortgages.
[00:08:34]  Yeah.
[00:08:35]  Which is all of these things are going to kind of come crashing down, not necessarily right now, but what you're seeing right now, these topics coming up over and over and over again.
[00:08:49]  Because I'm sure that the Republicans and Democrats will eke out some sort of like filthy, vile deal very shortly, maybe even by the time this podcast is out.
[00:09:01]  But what we're seeing right now is we're kind of naming the rocks that we're watching tumbling down the hill.
[00:09:08]  And they're kind of just kicking the can further in the future.
[00:09:11]  And eventually these programs will run out and there will be no replacement.
[00:09:16]  Yeah, I mean, I think something that we talk about a lot on this podcast where I always bring up are like what we call cascading effects, which is to say that like, you know, one thing happens and there are a string of other effects that follow from that that don't really get touched about.
[00:09:35]  And I think that's what we're kind of talking about on the episode today.
[00:09:37]  We're going to kind of go through some stuff that isn't totally being covered as much as I think it should be.
[00:09:45]  Or a lot of these things are sort of being covered in a discrete way, as if they're problems that aren't all interconnected.
[00:09:52]  But if there's one thing that I believe in is that recessions are intersectional.
[00:09:58]  Yes, yes.
[00:09:59]  And we will be getting into that today.
[00:10:24]  So I think we wanted to start off with reading something from a open letter, which, by the way, to be completely clear and frank with every single one of our listeners, open letters are for pussies and losers.
[00:10:40]  Yes.
[00:10:41]  I have never really read an open letter where I'm like, damn, glad this person wrote that.
[00:10:45]  They always annoy me in some sometimes rather esoteric ways.
[00:10:51]  But this one I thought was, it stayed with me ever since I read it.
[00:10:56]  It was, it's by, you know what?
[00:10:58]  I'm not really even going to try to pronounce his name good.
[00:11:01]  I'm actually going to pronounce it wrong on purpose.
[00:11:03]  Michael Hulabeck.
[00:11:05]  No.
[00:11:06]  Welbeck.
[00:11:07]  Okay.
[00:11:08]  Yes.
[00:11:08]  Okay.
[00:11:08]  Let's just say Welbeck.
[00:11:10]  Michelle Huelbeck, who is a French writer known for his books about sad men who are fed up with everything.
[00:11:22]  Yes.
[00:11:22]  And to be honest, I'm a big fan of a lot of French literature.
[00:11:26]  Not the biggest Welbeck fan because for a variety of reasons.
[00:11:32]  Most of them, it's, you know, come on, I get enough of this in my daily life.
[00:11:36]  I'd rather read, at least Jeanette got some pussy.
[00:11:42]  Well, all right, technically he got.
[00:11:44]  Anyway, so, but he wrote this open letter at the beginning of the pandemic, or I believe in early May.
[00:11:51]  And I revisited it this week, and a lot of it rings even truer now than it did back then.
[00:11:58]  And because whenever I read, I for some reason affect a very high-pitched British accent, I'm going to have Liz read a couple sections of it right here.
[00:12:07]  So we'll link to this piece.
[00:12:11]  But basically, he starts out, a banal virus, really not so different from any flu virus, but with unknown survival conditions, vague symptoms, sometimes benign and sometimes deadly, and not even sexually transmissible.
[00:12:24]  In short, a virus without qualities.
[00:12:27]  And while this epidemic can easily cause several thousand deaths in the world each day, it meanwhile produces the curious impression of being a non-event.
[00:12:36]  Already, I don't believe for even half a second statements like, after this, nothing will ever be the same.
[00:12:42]  On the contrary, everything will remain exactly the same.
[00:12:46]  The unfolding of this epidemic has been remarkably normal even.
[00:12:51]  The West will not be the richest and most developed zone in the world for all eternity.
[00:12:56]  It's not our divine right.
[00:12:58]  Our story has been over for some time now.
[00:13:00]  This isn't exactly a scoop.
[00:13:04]  All these tendencies were already in effect before the coronavirus.
[00:13:09]  They've only become more obvious in this moment.
[00:13:12]  We will not wake up after our confinement ends into a new world.
[00:13:16]  It will be the same, but a bit worse.
[00:13:20]  So a lot about this really strikes me.
[00:13:25]  And one thing in particular is, I actually don't see this as much anymore, but when this sort of crisis began, I think a lot of people both sensed rupture and opportunity.
[00:13:36]  I saw like a lot of people, particularly on the left, saying like, oh, well, this will prove that we need Medicare for all.
[00:13:42]  Like this will actually usher in something like that, some sort of change like that.
[00:13:47]  Or I saw people saying like, this is going to be total collapse.
[00:13:50]  This is going to be desolation, Mad Max style, everything.
[00:13:54]  And while I think it's always important to prepare for total collapse, even in more placid times, it's very clear that neither of those things are happening.
[00:14:05]  And what in fact actually is happening is that all of the shit that is bad about everything is just continuing but worse.
[00:14:16]  Yeah, I mean, I think that, yeah, I think there's been a couple of things.
[00:14:21]  It's almost as if if there was a rupture or if anyone sensed an opportunity with a possible rupture, it certainly was capital as they're, you know, going through and clearing out excess populations in, you know, in the employment market and what have you, which we can get into.
[00:14:44]  But in terms of everything else, yeah, like what you said, what we're seeing is an acceleration of processes that were already very much in place.
[00:14:56]  And we should say before we get into these stats that at this moment, the United States has just surpassed 150,000 dead, which is a remarkable milestone for not even August.
[00:15:11]  Remember, this really started.
[00:15:13]  in March, April, I mean, in late February, March, really ramping up in the U.S.
[00:15:21]  We have no idea what the fall is going to look like in terms of the actual virus and where it's sitting, but there are already basically second or if you, depending on how you're looking at it, third waves that are occurring over various countries in Asia, including Hong Kong, which is now, I think, having the most severe lockdown currently anywhere in the world,
[00:15:44]  because it's where it's public gatherings are restricted to two people, which I found very, it's like just banned public gatherings.
[00:15:52]  I don't know if that technically qualifies as a gathering.
[00:15:55]  I know, I know, but I found that very funny.
[00:15:59]  You know, there's been a huge outbreak of cases now that colleges have started opening, which has been a real problem, particularly in states like Florida, Texas, and California.
[00:16:10]  And kind of how you were joking that all these things are intersectional, but they actually are.
[00:16:15]  You know, Florida, Texas, and California having some of the biggest outbreaks.
[00:16:21]  You know, these are major economic powerhouses in the country, these three states, for various reasons.
[00:16:28]  And that has its own cascading effects, right?
[00:16:33]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:16:34]  And a lot of that, I mean, I think listeners to this will especially to this podcast will especially realize that we've been very critical of the sort of herky jerky nature of the government response, not being able to essentially decide which direction we're going.
[00:16:50]  If we're going for, you know, herd immunity, which I do think is the actual sort of underlying plan here.
[00:16:56]  Or it doesn't make sense for some states to totally shut down and close and then other ones to stay totally open.
[00:17:03]  That is not a way to contain a pandemic in a country.
[00:17:06]  That is a way to contain a pandemic temporarily, locally, but there's no concerted federal effort here, which I think that is really striking and is really different from a lot of other countries because you essentially have both ends of the spectrum occurring, sometimes even in neighboring states, where one will be totally locked down, very few businesses open, people, mask laws, et cetera.
[00:17:32]  And then you have whatever, 100 miles away, somewhere where it's almost like nothing's happening.
[00:17:39]  maybe some less than 50% of people wearing masks and everything open, people going out to eat.
[00:17:46]  And that's why we're seeing, I think, this sort of like rolling waves of coronavirus.
[00:17:52]  And I think that even in these like New York and states like that, well, maybe not necessarily New York, but like certainly a lot of other states with stricter lockdown restrictions that have been in place since the beginning, those I think will start to open up again, like Los Angeles did.
[00:18:07]  And then there will be further outbreaks there and they'll close back down again.
[00:18:10]  Yeah.
[00:18:11]  And this, you know, this opening and then closing has insane effects on the economy too.
[00:18:18]  Absolutely.
[00:18:19]  Yeah.
[00:18:19]  Because what you see is all these restaurants and small businesses, especially, you know, if they got, you know, small business loans from the government or PPP loans to stay open through these state closures, then they get geared up to reopen.
[00:18:35]  Then the state shuts them down again.
[00:18:37]  And a lot of business owners have found themselves being like, we can't keep doing this.
[00:18:40]  We can't keep operating.
[00:18:42]  And so closing businesses.
[00:18:44]  Well, yeah, I actually was reading a Yelp economic report, which I think is using mostly data that's actually from Yelp, which kind of makes sense in this context.
[00:18:54]  They are saying that 60% of the restaurant closures they're seeing are permanent.
[00:18:58]  Yeah.
[00:18:59]  And they're also saying that it made clear by the report that increased coronavirus cases correspond basically directly to areas where things reopened, like Florida, South Carolina, Nevada, Texas.
[00:19:16]  And I think that, okay, that's happening there now, but I think we'll probably see that everywhere.
[00:19:22]  After there are outbreaks, places, of course, consumer output really takes a nosedive, which makes sense.
[00:19:31]  So as for the numbers, as of July 10th, 26,160 restaurants in total closed on Yelp.
[00:19:40]  And about a little over 15,000 of those, actually almost 16,000 of those permanently shut down, which is a ton of people.
[00:19:48]  Yeah, that's a ton of people.
[00:19:50]  I should mention too that, you know, these are not just like your neighborhood restaurant.
[00:19:55]  Like Starbucks and McDonald's are closing locations, like a lot of locations, actually.
[00:20:00]  McDonald's, I think, is closing about 200 locations nationally, which is quite a bit.
[00:20:06]  I think they operate about, I actually don't know.
[00:20:09]  I think it's about 13,000, 14,000.
[00:20:11]  But that's like, you know, it's not just the landscape of neighborhoods, which we'll get into, but it's a good chunk of jobs as well, as well as like businesses in local communities.
[00:20:23]  Well, that's the other thing too, is like, fellas out there, you know how you go to the same bar every Friday night to drink two Coronas.
[00:20:31]  Well, not Corona's now, but maybe Bud Light Limes, and then lock yourself in the bathroom, take a Taurus 38 from your pocket and sit on the stall while you just shove it in your mouth over and over again, like you're fillating it.
[00:20:44]  Oh my God.
[00:20:44]  Well, almost 6,000 bars are closed.
[00:20:48]  And of those, about almost edging up on half of them are permanent.
[00:20:52]  And it's true, even in San Francisco, a bunch of bars that I used to like to go to shut down good, for good, excuse me, permanently.
[00:20:59]  And these numbers will rise.
[00:21:01]  And the same thing's happening to gyms.
[00:21:03]  The same thing's happening to any of these businesses that require people's presence somewhere in a room.
[00:21:10]  Which is basically like all businesses, by the way.
[00:21:13]  And I know that I'm sure that listeners of the podcast will remember we had sort of, we had talked about this a while ago, I think with Alexander Skags, but like, you know, we are already in the midst of a retail apocalypse prior to the coronavirus, but we're now in like a complete and total like bankruptcy Armageddon.
[00:21:35]  Like I, it is, what we're seeing is really wild.
[00:21:39]  There's been, you know, I think one of the latest ones is Asena group, which is like a mega retailer that they, they operate about 3,500 stores nationally and they filed for bankruptcy.
[00:21:56]  They're closing.
[00:21:59]  Even the surviving brands that they own, which I think includes like Ann Taylor and Lane Bryant and these kind of like mall, yeah, these kind of like mall brands, they're going to close like 1,600 stores.
[00:22:11]  You know, I've read that the Mall of America, for example, has a massive, you know, has like a billion dollar loan out that it's, it will probably, you know, have to file bankruptcy under.
[00:22:24]  Like these are massive retail properties and massive companies that are not coming back from this.
[00:22:32]  J. Crew, I think, filed for bankruptcy.
[00:22:35]  You know, my fellow podcast workers here, you know, you know that I love a good J. Crew shirt.
[00:22:44]  Yeah, I mean, it's, I think that there's basically no future for any of these kind of stores, right?
[00:22:51]  Like, how could there be?
[00:22:53]  Yeah.
[00:22:53]  So Ascenda is listed at $3 billion, which makes it the third largest bankruptcy in the entire, during the pandemic, just behind JCPenney, which of course is about $8 billion.

=== Retail Collapse (15:23) ===

[00:23:05]  And Nima Marcus also filed for bankruptcy.
[00:23:09]  You know, there's another wave of this, that it's not just these businesses closing or reorganizing as sometimes is the case under bankruptcy law, but that, you know, I mentioned the Mall of America.
[00:23:25]  There's other commercial property groups that are about 90-day delinquent on loans as well.
[00:23:33]  There's one group, CBL Property Group, that has about 100 malls in 26 states that's $3 billion in debt right now.
[00:23:43]  It's nothing.
[00:23:44]  Yeah, it's most likely not going to make it out alive.
[00:23:49]  Now, this is, again, commercial real estate.
[00:23:51]  When that empties, when capital flees these areas, it's not coming back.
[00:23:56]  Yeah, it's gone.
[00:23:57]  And it's not just because of demand.
[00:23:59]  I mean, you know, you know, at the beginning of this, we talked or at the beginning of, you know, the pandemic, I should say, when we were doing those episodes on Corona and the economy, you know, we said we were facing down these twin shocks of both supply and demand, which made this economic crisis that much more difficult to combat, right?
[00:24:20]  And that's what, and, and, and we're still seeing that.
[00:24:22]  None of these crises have resolved.
[00:24:25]  None of these shocks have resolved.
[00:24:28]  No, I think we're actually still sort of stuck in that space where we don't see the effects of this fully, right?
[00:24:35]  Because malls are closed anyways.
[00:24:37]  You know, it basically makes no difference to me if the mall downtown, actually, I don't know if the mall downtown is closed.
[00:24:42]  I assume it is, if the mall downtown or Stonestown is closed or not, because it's already closed because of corona.
[00:24:49]  But it's when these restrictions are lifted and these places don't reopen that you're going to see basically a very different landscape in these towns.
[00:24:57]  Because right now, it's all just fade in the background, right?
[00:25:01]  And everybody's a temporary casualty.
[00:25:04]  Now, there's two kinds of casualties.
[00:25:05]  There are wounded and then there's, you know, there's fatalities.
[00:25:09]  And it's really hard to tell the difference right now, literally just by your eye walking down the street because, you know, every business is boarded up.
[00:25:16]  Yeah, every business.
[00:25:18]  I mean, it's really shocking to take in walking around downtown San Francisco or even here in Oakland and Berkeley is, it's like really shocking to look at.
[00:25:28]  Well, I was, I was, I was down in LA helping a buddy of mine move out of there a couple of weeks ago.
[00:25:34]  And I ran to a buddy of mine, Brian, who has this place, New California barbershop.
[00:25:39]  And I was like, are you, he was, he was there.
[00:25:41]  He was like locking up.
[00:25:42]  And I asked him, how many haircuts are you doing per day?
[00:25:45]  He tells me like four.
[00:25:48]  And it's like, he said the first two weeks after, you know, lockdown was lifted and he could reopen.
[00:25:52]  He was doing full schedule, although he had to have obviously significantly cut down on what he could do.
[00:25:57]  And now it's like four.
[00:25:58]  And I can only imagine that every type of business like that, same kind of thing.
[00:26:03]  Yeah.
[00:26:05]  You know, the other side with this, like, you know, just to get back to this commercial real estate, you know, Armageddon, which is really what, you know, and I can already like, I'm anticipating some listeners hearing that and going like, who cares if the mall closes?
[00:26:18]  I hate the mall, blah, whatever.
[00:26:20]  It's like, no, no, no, no.
[00:26:22]  Again, these things have cascading effects.
[00:26:24]  That's a ton of jobs lost and in towns.
[00:26:29]  That's like community infrastructure at this point, right?
[00:26:33]  If we have a service economy instead of a manufactured economy and the service jobs leave, what kind of economy do you have?
[00:26:41]  We don't have one.
[00:26:42]  Yeah.
[00:26:45]  You know, and the idea that they would ever come back is, you know, look, lenders don't want a bunch of these zombie properties.
[00:26:54]  Basically, like, you know, you've got a bunch of walking dead mall groups, real estate holding companies that have a bunch of property that isn't going to go anywhere and isn't going to make a lot of money.
[00:27:07]  So what do they do with it?
[00:27:08]  They get rid of it.
[00:27:08]  No one's going to lend to these guys.
[00:27:10]  No one's, you know, it's all, it's all walking dead.
[00:27:14]  It's like zombification.
[00:27:17]  And again, these things have cascading effects.
[00:27:19]  You know, commercial real estate prices take a nosedive.
[00:27:22]  You see the same thing in real estate, right?
[00:27:26]  And we're now looking at about, you know, 4.1 million mortgages are currently in forbearance.
[00:27:34]  Now, forbearance is basically when your, you know, your mortgage servicer, you know, the people that manage your loan or the lender basically allow you to pause or reduce payments just for a limited period of time, but it doesn't erase like what you owe on your mortgage, but it allows you to pause.
[00:27:55]  So 4.1 million mortgages are not being paid right now.
[00:27:59]  And again, I can already anticipate listeners saying, well, who cares about homeowners?
[00:28:04]  I'm not a homeowner, whatever.
[00:28:06]  Home ownership rate in 2020 is about 67.9%.
[00:28:12]  The median home price in America is about $280,000.
[00:28:17]  Right.
[00:28:18]  So we, you know, I know at least for us living in San Francisco, we have a warped view because it's impossible to own a home.
[00:28:24]  But like that's a big, that's two-thirds of, you know, the American public.
[00:28:31]  That's one of the highest homeownership rates since, I believe, right before, like, I think before like the 2008 crisis.
[00:28:42]  Well, the other thing about that, too, is that the people who are missing out on these payments and stuff are not like, you know, your doctor or whatever or the guy that's suing you for, you know, performing monster truck tricks very late at night in a gated community.
[00:28:59]  You know, these are poor people that are informed.
[00:29:03]  Yeah, they literally can't, they can't afford their mortgage.
[00:29:06]  I mean, and here's the other thing is that, you know, these things compound, right?
[00:29:09]  So it's not like, you know, you miss one payment, you miss two payments.
[00:29:13]  Well, now, you know, you're going to have to pay three, four more payments all at once.
[00:29:19]  Now, that's nearly impossible.
[00:29:21]  I mean, think about that too.
[00:29:23]  You know, if you're a renter, like everyone on this podcast is, in California, right?
[00:29:28]  Like if you are the way that the law is in California about this is that if you are, if you do miss rent payments during coronavirus, it's not like that's just forgiven.
[00:29:41]  You still owe that money.
[00:29:43]  And so now you are in debt to your landlord.
[00:29:46]  And so if you haven't been working during all this, and if you're one of the many, many people who haven't been able to get unemployment, or if your unemployment is significantly less than what you are making because you have high rent, because you live in a city here or even kind of far outside a city, you're fucked.
[00:30:04]  You owe your landlord and you're going to owe your landlord for a long fucking time.
[00:30:08]  And eventually, I mean, there's a lot of loopholes to the California law.
[00:30:13]  And we've talked about this, I believe, on the show too.
[00:30:17]  Cost of Hawkins is the thing that prevents us from really doing anything about it.
[00:30:21]  And your politicians will still not support the repeal of it.
[00:30:26]  It's terrible fucking law.
[00:30:28]  Well, before we get into like the looming eviction crisis, which is another part of this, you know, I do want to just go through some of these stats, which are just completely stunning.
[00:30:38]  So over all, so over 8% of all mortgages are not being paid right now.
[00:30:43]  That's completely stunning.
[00:30:45]  And about 50% of families have reported a major loss in income.
[00:30:52]  When you look at sales, what's striking is that condo sales in, like, for example, in the Bay Area are plunging.
[00:31:02]  Like 16 to 20% drop in condo sales in cities.
[00:31:10]  It's like pretty crazy, which like, you know, I don't like condos or whatever, but this is, you know, a major part of new development.
[00:31:18]  There's so much new development that for now, at least in California, and I always like to look at the California housing market because it's a good bellwether for where the rest of the country is going.
[00:31:29]  But at least for now, construction hasn't stopped.
[00:31:32]  It hasn't dried up.
[00:31:34]  No.
[00:31:34]  But it will.
[00:31:36]  It will when these shocks like hit them, you know, hit these businesses that these changes to our economy, these changes are not going to, you know, that are possibly permanent or at least long lasting.
[00:31:51]  Well, especially here in San Francisco, almost all the new construction is luxury housing.
[00:31:57]  And a lot of the people who can afford things like that, luxury housing, don't necessarily need to live in the city anymore because a lot of those people have jobs that you can work remotely.
[00:32:08]  And I think we're going to be seeing a lot.
[00:32:11]  Well, I mean, the way it works, unfortunately, I mean, unfortunately, unfortunately, I don't really know how to actually pronounce that.
[00:32:18]  Right now is that a lot of these places are basically empty anyways.
[00:32:21]  I mean, there's tens of thousands of empty units in San Francisco.
[00:32:25]  I believe hundreds of thousands in the whole Bay Area.
[00:32:28]  But the way the real estate market works is that doesn't really matter.
[00:32:32]  They make the money building it still.
[00:32:34]  Right.
[00:32:34]  And what's interesting too about what's happening in California, and you mentioned the people that can afford to work from home, and again, it's unclear if this is going to end up being a long-term trend, but I suspect that it might, is that news, you know, home sales, new home sales are actually up, but not in cities.
[00:32:55]  So you're seeing condo sales and condo prices take a nosedive as people are saying, fuck this.
[00:33:01]  I don't need to live in the city.
[00:33:03]  What's the point of living into the city when I don't go to the Google office, when I don't go, when there are no restaurants to go to, when there's no movies to go to, when there's no nightlife here in the city?
[00:33:13]  You're seeing a lot of people run for the suburbs.
[00:33:16]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:33:17]  I think we're going to see a lot.
[00:33:18]  I mean, I read some statistic a while ago that in the first couple months of the pandemic, 35,000 people left San Francisco.
[00:33:25]  Yeah.
[00:33:25]  Which reminder, we are a small city.
[00:33:27]  We are less than a million people here.
[00:33:29]  And so that is like, you know, I don't know what percentage that is.
[00:33:32]  I'm not no fucking nerd, but that is a significant percentage of people.
[00:33:38]  And I'll tell you what, too, rents have dropped here.
[00:33:41]  Yeah.
[00:33:41]  They've gone down 12% in San Francisco, which is insane for the city.
[00:33:47]  I mean, they're still probably higher than basically any city in America, but it is fucking insane.
[00:33:52]  Yeah.
[00:33:53]  And I think they're going to keep dropping.
[00:33:54]  Probably.
[00:33:55]  I mean, look, you've got what, so Google just announced, just announced that they will be work from home until June 2021, which is, yeah, pretty shocking to come out and say that.
[00:34:12]  And you're going to see, you know, Google takes that lead.
[00:34:15]  You're going to see a lot of other companies follow suit and say, okay, well, now we're extending what, you know, Google knows something we don't.
[00:34:21]  So we're going to extend work from home.
[00:34:24]  But we should mention too, and again, this ties into construction and real estate and employment and all these things that we're kind of talking about, all these indicators, you know, Alphabet, which is, of course, the fare company that owns Google, but we should call it like in name only or whatever.
[00:34:42]  It's all, it's stupid legal jargon.
[00:34:45]  And also I hate saying alphabet.
[00:34:47]  That's a side note.
[00:34:48]  I'm sorry.
[00:34:49]  But Alphabet, you know, they, you know, they have a huge presence here in the Bay Area.
[00:34:56]  It's not just San Francisco.
[00:34:58]  You know, you've got Mountain View, San Jose.
[00:35:00]  They were working on a massive project.
[00:35:04]  We'll see if that continues to go through.
[00:35:06]  I don't know.
[00:35:07]  But they had also started about a $2.4 billion new office project in Manhattan, I think in Chelsea market, Which is, you know, that's a good chunk of change, 2.4 billion for something that I think they started construction in like October of last year, would not be able to be in use by anyone for, you know, probably another year.
[00:35:36]  Well, a lot of these companies are saying, like, oh, you'll be back to work by like next summer or something.
[00:35:40]  But like, again, that's something we see a lot with this pandemic is where people sort of pick an arbitrary date that's like in the future, but not like insanely in the future.
[00:35:49]  And that date is malleable, right?
[00:35:51]  Like that does them saying that doesn't mean anything.
[00:35:54]  That that is not in necessary response to any actual specific trends.
[00:35:58]  I think it just sounds like it's correct.
[00:36:01]  And like we've heard these sort of dates before, they could get moved very easily much further.
[00:36:06]  Well, the other thing too is that, you know, all these companies, and this happened very quickly with Twitter and Facebook, who tend to be a bit more mask off about, I mean, Twitter, I think out of necessity, because it doesn't make any money and Facebook because, you know, they're swine.
[00:36:22]  But, you know, they came out very quickly and said, you know, oh, well, actually, it's pretty cheap for us to have everyone work from home.
[00:36:32]  So we're probably going to just keep doing that, you know?
[00:36:36]  And what you're going to see is a lot of people, not just workers, become accustomed to this new lifestyle change, which I think they'll adapt to quite quickly, but also these companies where they're suddenly offloading a lot of the operating costs onto the workers themselves.
[00:36:54]  I mean, that was a big thing at the start of this pandemic.
[00:36:56]  People are like, well, you know, business is going to get disrupted because people's internet sucks and like, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:37:03]  But it turns out that this infrastructure actually does work for a lot of companies.
[00:37:08]  And so they have you at home paying your internet bill.
[00:37:12]  I'm sure not every single company makes you do that, but definitely some do, you know, on your computer at your house, already blurring that line or excuse me, blurring that already extremely blurry line between home life and work life.
[00:37:27]  You know, they are, it's, it's this image I have of somebody working from home from like Google or something, where, or one of these companies is, is that you are, your keystrokes are logged.
[00:37:39]  A lot of these companies take a, I don't know necessarily Google, but just a lot of these companies take a picture of your face every so often from your, from your, from your work computer to make sure that you're there.
[00:37:50]  And, and you're like, every action is essentially monitored.
[00:37:55]  And so like, we, you know, we're, we're sort of trained to accept that, you know, without questioning it in the workplace.
[00:38:01]  But, but when the home becomes a workplace, that becomes like an almost different sort of acceptance there.
[00:38:09]  And it's, it's a dark thing, I think.
[00:38:13]  If the thought of your boss taking a picture of you from your computer every 10 minutes while you sit in your fucking living room doesn't give you the chills, then I don't know what does.
[00:38:23]  Yeah, I mean, you know, is it work from home or home at work?
[00:38:28]  You know what I mean?

=== Beware When Your Boss Says That (09:24) ===

[00:38:29]  Like, that's the kind of like, you know, fun little game.
[00:38:31]  And I'll say that like a lot of people made fun of me.
[00:38:33]  I think it was last year, I was saying, like, sorry to bother you is a documentary.
[00:38:38]  It's not science fiction.
[00:38:40]  And like, sorry, it is.
[00:38:42]  It was quite right about a lot of things, including how these companies, you know, want to operate.
[00:38:49]  Yeah.
[00:38:49]  I mean, the thing is, I was reading this thing.
[00:38:52]  According to Global Workplace Analytics, a typical employer can save about $11,000 a year for every person who works remotely half the time, which means I think in the future, after this, after, you know, I figure out some sort of cure for coronavirus, I think that like, even when some offices reopen, there won't be workers in there the full time.
[00:39:18]  Workers will be in there a lot of these places.
[00:39:20]  If they come back, they'll only come back part of the time.
[00:39:23]  Now, you know, as a side note, imagine how difficult it would be to organize labor where there is no, you know, shared space, where there is no production that happens in any kind of, you know, whatever modern version of a kind of factory floor, right?
[00:39:42]  Where like, you know, it is completely, it would be completely impossible.
[00:39:46]  And we should say too, and this is again, something that we've talked about or talked about earlier in these episodes, is that what you have then emerging is a completely binary economy, which is the people who work from home and the people who serve the people who work from home.
[00:40:03]  Yeah.
[00:40:04]  And you see a rise in these companies.
[00:40:08]  You know, you've got Postmates and DoorDash and Caviar and Grubhub and whatever all the delivery services are.
[00:40:14]  And you've got restaurants basically just operating for that reason.
[00:40:20]  Right.
[00:40:21]  Yeah.
[00:40:22]  I mean, one thing I really want listeners who are office workers or who work from home right now for basically any reason is beware the words flex or the word flexibility.
[00:40:35]  Beware when your boss says that.
[00:40:38]  Because every time a business owner says the word flexibility, they are talking about how flexible you are when they bend you over and fuck you in the ass.
[00:40:48]  Because that's all this shit is, is that now work is going to become way more intrusive.
[00:40:55]  You know, there's, there's this, you know, already that you see op-eds every so often.
[00:40:59]  It's like, should you be able, should you answer work calls at night or whatever, which no, you should not.
[00:41:05]  But now there will be no question of that because your home is your office.
[00:41:09]  And so you're always in the office.
[00:41:11]  You're always available.
[00:41:13]  The monitoring of you will increase.
[00:41:16]  It will become totally pervasive.
[00:41:19]  And you will slowly accept it because that's where you work.
[00:41:22]  You're at work.
[00:41:24]  Every company is going to be like this.
[00:41:27]  This is also, I believe, going to lead to a pretty big rise in contract work, right?
[00:41:35]  Because, I mean, already companies like Google, Facebook, or whatever employ a huge number of contract workers.
[00:41:41]  Like in some cases, a lot of these companies, it's almost half their workforce.
[00:41:45]  And of course, you lack a lot of our already meager labor rights.
[00:41:53]  But they're going to see, like, I think a lot of these companies, not necessarily in this next year, but within the next five years, 10 years, 15 years, they're going to see that they can actually streamline these processes and only have a certain amount of permanent employees with the rest of that work contracted out.
[00:42:07]  You know, like you don't need someone to sit there all day, maybe do a couple of things.
[00:42:11]  You can just hire somebody for one hour, two hours.
[00:42:14]  And so there's going to be a lot of people sitting at home looking at whatever new fucking app they come out with, going to the top and refreshing it over and over and over again so they can get some fucking, you know, 30 minutes, an hour of work from whatever, you know, ghouls out there who are willing to pay them.
[00:42:30]  It's going to drive wages down.
[00:42:33]  And, you know, the other thing it's going to do is it's going to wreck your fucking brain to be alone all the time.
[00:42:39]  Well, I mean, also, it's going to do a couple other things.
[00:42:41]  One, it's going to put workers directly in competition with one another in like app form, which is, that's the like cyber future like scariness.
[00:42:48]  You know, it's always to fix that.
[00:42:50]  But also, like, you know, we should, again, I want to say like these were trends that were already in place.
[00:42:58]  And what we're seeing is a complete and total acceleration of them, like we mentioned from the top of the show.
[00:43:04]  But I've known all this was coming.
[00:43:07]  Yeah, but we're seeing it really, you know, foaming at the mouth right now.
[00:43:13]  It's like making its presence known.
[00:43:15]  We should say, though, for the people who don't have jobs, like the future also doesn't look great.
[00:43:23]  Yes.
[00:43:23]  I mean, basically 31.8 million people in America are unemployed, which is that that's that, you know, again, we're recording this on Wednesday.
[00:43:35]  So more, so unemployment numbers will be released tomorrow, which is Thursday.
[00:43:38]  So this is for the week ending July 18th.
[00:43:41]  31.8 million, you know, again, all unemployment numbers should be read with the caveat that this does not include people that have fallen out of the labor market, which is to say that people are not currently looking for work.
[00:43:59]  So you should expect that number to actually be higher.
[00:44:03]  Just as like a sticking point, and this is something that actually really annoys me, when the Lion News media reports these things out every Thursday morning, you know, they're tippy-teppy on their little laptops, work from home, tippy-teppy.
[00:44:16]  And they get these press releases from, you know, the labor department, and they just read the top line.
[00:44:25]  They don't go down further to get more information in the press release.
[00:44:28]  So they read the top line, which says 16.2 million claims.
[00:44:34]  But those are only state claims.
[00:44:35]  It doesn't include federal claims.
[00:44:37]  So they say, oh, 16,2.8 million, which if you saw that or heard that on NPR on the radio, which is where you would find or listen to NPR, you would be like, oh, that doesn't sound so bad.
[00:44:52]  Because it's wrong.
[00:44:53]  To be clear, Liz, I actually listen to NPR.
[00:44:56]  When I do Zumba, we don't do it to music.
[00:44:58]  We do it to NPR.
[00:45:01]  I mean, occasionally there's music at the, you know, the tiny desk shows or whatnot, but usually we're just dancing to it.
[00:45:06]  Yeah, I mean, it is.
[00:45:08]  And these numbers are going to keep going up, baby.
[00:45:10]  And I, you know, the thing is, you're correct that these don't include a lot of people.
[00:45:16]  A lot of people engage in precarious labor.
[00:45:19]  That that is totally able to be like erased from any of these conversations.
[00:45:26]  That number will rise.
[00:45:29]  It was already rising.
[00:45:30]  That was already, everyone could see that's sort of the future of how a lot of industries are going to go.
[00:45:35]  But, but boy, that is, that is going to increase.
[00:45:38]  Yeah.
[00:45:38]  Well, so you're looking at about 20%, a little over 20%, again, reported of, you know, the workforce is unemployed.
[00:45:47]  Now, we should, you know, we mentioned the small business apocalypse, right?
[00:45:53]  So you've got these compounding bankruptcies.
[00:45:55]  You've got these, you know, which will pause investment, which will pause, again, construction, which would cause more job loss, right?
[00:46:03]  But you've also got now from a part of the CARES Act was the PPP loans, right?
[00:46:10]  The paycheck protection program.
[00:46:12]  Now, the way that this worked was that, you know, businesses that received them, which a lot of small businesses did, should probably mention a lot of very not small businesses.
[00:46:22]  Also, a lot of charter schools, David.
[00:46:24]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:26]  They, you know, they all got in on the on the free money, which, you know, respect, I guess.
[00:46:31]  But yeah, so the way that it worked is that there was about an eight-week window, which I believe has actually since been expanded or extended, excuse me, that you had to use these federal loans for like for employee reasons to keep employees within this window in order for them to convert to grants.
[00:46:55]  So no one wants to pay any of this money back to the government, which is what a grant would be.
[00:47:00]  So everyone had an incentive to spend this money.
[00:47:03]  Now, that eight-week window is going to end soon.
[00:47:08]  And so you're going to start seeing new waves of job slashing.
[00:47:14]  And that slashing is not, it's going to be permanent.
[00:47:19]  These jobs are not coming back.
[00:47:20]  I'm talking about, you know, airline companies are going to start slashing jobs again, probably September, October.
[00:47:27]  I'm talking about, you know, we're going to see more energy companies go under.
[00:47:32]  I think two or three now oil companies have filed for bankruptcy.
[00:47:36]  So you're going to see more consolidation there.
[00:47:38]  That's more jobs.
[00:47:39]  Now, again, remember, regardless of your feeling about oil companies, I don't think Brace and I have any good feelings about them.
[00:47:46]  To be clear, Exxon did pay for my military training.

=== Job Slashing Looms (15:38) ===

[00:47:53]  Yeah.
[00:47:56]  You know, regardless, that's a ton, you know, fracking and refineries are massive jobs program in this country, you know, unfortunately.
[00:48:08]  So you're talking about a lot of people that are going to be out of work that, again, those mortgages aren't going to get paid.
[00:48:15]  There aren't those, those jobs aren't coming back.
[00:48:19]  And, you know, again, these have these cascading effects throughout the economy.
[00:48:25]  Yeah.
[00:48:26]  I mean, it's, it's, that's the thing about all of this.
[00:48:28]  And that's, that's the thing that I mentioned this before, and I keep thinking about this, is we can't even, a lot of this is not visible to us yet, but it's happening.
[00:48:37]  Like, you know, these are all like, like, I don't know if we read that part, but Wellbeck said, like, we see all these statistics, but they're like hard to kind of touch and to feel and get the shape of.
[00:48:47]  But this will start to take shape and it's not going to be, it's going to be an ugly one.
[00:48:52]  Yeah.
[00:48:52]  I mean, I, yeah, I think part of that, you know, just off the top of my head, you know, that mirrors the pandemic in a lot of ways, right?
[00:49:02]  Like the pandemic feels silent, not just because of the way that, you know, the symptoms, you know, take so long to develop and there's so many asymptomatic cases and whatever, but also in that, you know, when you look at the populations, we've got 150,000 recorded dead at this moment.
[00:49:21]  You look at the populations where this is really taking off, where people are really, really dying in mass numbers.
[00:49:28]  There are already populations that capital has squared away, right?
[00:49:32]  You've got the outbreaks in the nursing homes.
[00:49:35]  No one's seen, you don't, you physically cannot see these, right?
[00:49:38]  They're bidden to by law.
[00:49:40]  Unless they touched your family, absolutely.
[00:49:42]  You've got massive outbreaks in almost every prison.
[00:49:47]  No one, you know, that's not getting reported on.
[00:49:49]  I want to put a note there.
[00:49:51]  Almost 2,000 prisoners in San Quentin have coronavirus.
[00:49:55]  I think 12, at least 12, it may be up to like 16 now prisoners have died from coronavirus too.
[00:50:02]  They get they don't they don't really get their phone calls anymore.
[00:50:05]  Obviously, they don't get visits.
[00:50:06]  Yeah.
[00:50:07]  I mean, it's it's the American prison system, which by the way has like two fucking million people in it, right?
[00:50:12]  Is is is somehow getting worse.
[00:50:16]  Yeah.
[00:50:17]  And, you know, in addition to that, you've got then the huge outbreaks with farm workers and at meat packing plants.
[00:50:25]  Now, these meat packing plants, it is horrifying what's happening there.
[00:50:32]  And the, you know, they refuse to shut down.
[00:50:36]  Workers are dying.
[00:50:38]  Workers' families are dying because they all, you know, a lot of these people live in multi-generational homes.
[00:50:46]  And they're getting, there's no recourse.
[00:50:48]  They have to work.
[00:50:49]  Oh, and in a lot of like populations like people who do farm work and stuff like that, who may not have papers necessarily, they're afraid to get tested.
[00:50:58]  I mean, that's been a big problem here in San Francisco where people who don't have citizenship don't want to get tested because rightfully so, they probably do not want their names on any government list.
[00:51:10]  They certainly don't want to have any contact tracing.
[00:51:12]  Yeah.
[00:51:12]  And I'll say, you know, part of the reason why this doesn't feel real is like the media isn't exactly reporting on these populations and what's happening either.
[00:51:25]  You don't get a lot of reporting on the factories in Los Angeles that are refusing to shut down, even as literally all like four or five workers in their factories die.
[00:51:35]  You don't get a lot of reporting on the labor strikes that are happening throughout the agricultural sector all up and down the West Coast.
[00:51:44]  You don't get a lot of reporting on, you know, the everyone knows how horrifying the private nursing home industry is.
[00:51:55]  But like awful.
[00:51:56]  Just like even before all this and what, you know, these people can be, you know, depending on the companies, you know, I don't, you know, whatever, just absolute predators, absolute vultures.
[00:52:08]  And the way they take advantage of families is horrifying.
[00:52:13]  But there's very little reporting on what's going on in these nursing homes.
[00:52:18]  And, you know, Cuomo sent sick populations into nursing homes to die, thereby infecting more people.
[00:52:25]  Where are the stories on this?
[00:52:27]  You don't get any reporting on, like you mentioned, the over 2 million people in the prison system who are also dying.
[00:52:36]  Because again, capital has already secured these populations as expendable.
[00:52:42]  Yeah.
[00:52:43]  And they are.
[00:52:44]  Like, it's, it's a prisoner in death row died in San Quentin, I think last week.
[00:52:50]  And like, I mean, that is, that is tremendous and how the virus has just swept through there.
[00:52:55]  And the government's basically doing nothing to prevent it.
[00:53:01]  I don't know.
[00:53:02]  It drives me fucking crazy.
[00:53:04]  Like, this goes along with what we were saying earlier, is that none of these things are new.
[00:53:09]  Conditions for workers in America are dog shit.
[00:53:13]  Labor rights in America are dog shit.
[00:53:16]  Prison rights and the ability of prisoners to have even something remotely close to a humane existence is so far from what the reality has been that it's basically like a different fucking planet, man.
[00:53:31]  And so what we're seeing with the virus is it's like an accelerant.
[00:53:34]  Like someone just threw this like lighter fluid.
[00:53:38]  And that's what we used to do when I was in Syria when we'd have to use fires to keep warm sometimes and to cook tea.
[00:53:46]  And what we would do, because they drink a lot of tea out there.
[00:53:48]  Sometimes some guys don't even drink water.
[00:53:50]  There's a Kurdish guy who hasn't drank water in 27 years, only tea, which is probably having some tough sleep there.
[00:53:58]  But we used to just like pour lighter fluid or gasoline, actually not lighter fluid, just gasoline onto the fire to heat tea faster.
[00:54:06]  And that's kind of seems like what's happening here.
[00:54:09]  This virus is just tossing gasoline.
[00:54:11]  And everything in America that sucks shit is being exposed.
[00:54:16]  But the problem is, the problem with that exposure is there's no one to do anything about it.
[00:54:22]  Well, that's what's been really shocking as we've watched this whole thing from March to now, which is basically we're basically in August, is there's absolutely no leadership anywhere.
[00:54:36]  Like not even, you know, like, I mean, you know, look, everyone knows how much I hate Democrats, how much I hate Republicans, how much I hate all these goons.
[00:54:47]  But like, it's shocking that zero leadership is able to step up and say, okay, no, actually, this is what needs to get done.
[00:54:57]  Like, it's just a complete and total abdication of responsibility on like literally everyone.
[00:55:05]  Like from the farthest left politician, whatever that means, to the furthest right.
[00:55:12]  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:55:13]  And I think a lot of that has to do, I mean, just speaking from sort of my own milieu that I unfortunately swim around in like a fucking catfish, is that like, I think a lot of people were demoralized and broken in a way that they don't necessarily even understand or fully fully grasp consciously by the Bernie loss and just like how total that loss and capitulation was.
[00:55:38]  And like what we have right now is we are watching like America decay around the edges and in the core in real time.
[00:55:47]  But there is no organization, there is no group of people that can do a fucking thing about it.
[00:55:51]  So what you have right now is you have a lot of very angry people sitting in their house on Twitter or fucking on Xbox or whatever, or just fucking staring out the window, furious, but unable to really lift a finger because there's nowhere to put that finger.
[00:56:08]  There is no fucking, there is no leaflet to pass out.
[00:56:11]  There's no fucking trigger to pull.
[00:56:13]  There's no fucking nothing.
[00:56:14]  Yeah.
[00:56:14]  And that, I think that will have this effect on people where we're going to see, I mean, and to be clear, to be clear, in this episode, we are not endorsing any sort of nihilism or detachment or anything like that.
[00:56:27]  That is not our full game.
[00:56:28]  You guys should know by now.
[00:56:30]  We're not doomers.
[00:56:31]  Yeah, that is not our fucking game.
[00:56:33]  But I do want to point out, I am taking a concrete view of a fucking concrete position or excuse me, a concrete situation right now.
[00:56:41]  And it is not good.
[00:56:42]  And the thing is, is you have to, I think a lot of people accept that in the whole and sort of the holistic way, but you have to accept that in the particulars.
[00:56:50]  And then you have to move past that and figure out what to do next.
[00:56:54]  And looking at history can very much help with that.
[00:56:57]  I think, you know, something that I want everyone to kind of like sit with and push back on in their heads is there's this idea that, okay, you've got what we're staring down, 30% unemployment.
[00:57:09]  You got a bunch of people.
[00:57:11]  I mean, there was a big graphic that was passed around about the percentage in each state of people facing eviction as by this Friday, the federal moratorium on evictions is expiring.
[00:57:25]  It's most likely that the Trump admin is going to extend that, but it's unclear when that will happen.
[00:57:34]  So you've got some of these states, you know, that over half of all Florida renters are facing eviction this Friday.
[00:57:44]  Like, I don't know what to do with that number, right?
[00:57:46]  I mean, these, these, these numbers are shocking.
[00:57:50]  And there's this, I've seen this idea where people go, oh, well, you've got, you know, people losing literally everything in their lives.
[00:57:57]  Now we've got, you know, oh, that's the match to the flame we need.
[00:58:02]  No, I've said this before on the podcast and I'll say it again.
[00:58:06]  Austerity does not breed agency.
[00:58:08]  Actually, quite the opposite.
[00:58:09]  If you are someone who has just lost their job and their home and has to figure out a way to keep their family safe, you are not about to storm the gates, right?
[00:58:19]  That's not where that impulse comes from.
[00:58:21]  And I think that there's this idea that, and you know, if you listen to this podcast for a long time, you know that Bryce and I are always pushing against this, this idea that something will spontaneously emerge, that some subject will spontaneously emerge that will, you know, show us the way and we'll be, you know, we'll suddenly have a rebellion on our hands.
[00:58:48]  And that's not how this works.
[00:58:51]  No, not at all.
[00:58:52]  I mean, I think people too are like pointing to whatever Chaz was and to what's happening in Portland and the federal agencies coming in snatching people up as like, well, this will spark the flame.
[00:59:05]  There is no Tinder to spark here.
[00:59:07]  What there is is a sack of potatoes.
[00:59:10]  The idiocy of rural life, as Marx called it, has spread to the cities.
[00:59:14]  And everybody, and what we're saying here in this episode, what we're showing is that that atomization, which got us into the situation that we're in today, where you have no organization, where you have no group you belong to, or where you have no sense of community or even neighborhood.
[00:59:29]  You know, you may not even, I barely, I mean, I do know my neighbors, but like most places I've lived, I haven't known my neighbors.
[00:59:35]  And all of that will further and further and further.
[00:59:38]  And now you don't even have your co-workers there.
[00:59:41]  You don't even have that fucking boring ass water cooler discussion or fucking, you know, you work at the garage with somebody because that shit is closed and you are at home and maybe you're with your girlfriend if you're lucky, but you're probably by yourself or with your roommates.
[00:59:55]  And that is a bad thing.
[01:00:00]  So you really like, that's what I want to say here is I think a lot of people here, so myself at times, slip into this sort of nihilistic depression.
[01:00:08]  But that is the fucking, that will kill you.
[01:00:11]  That will kill your fucking brain.
[01:00:12]  And that will detach you even further.
[01:00:14]  That will sever all your links with people.
[01:00:17]  And so, so, you know, I'm not here to necessarily give a prescription.
[01:00:21]  I mean, I do have a prescription, very simple prescription that people have been using for almost 200 years, which is to form an organization for the emancipation of working people.
[01:00:31]  But do not and beware, beware those fucking people that are telling you that we are on the verge of like a 1917 or some shit like that, because those people are misleading you.
[01:00:45]  They are lying to you.
[01:00:47]  Well, I don't even think we're in the 1890s yet, baby.
[01:00:50]  No, no, we're in, we're in fucking 1320, motherfucker.
[01:00:54]  You are a serf.
[01:00:57]  Bitch, you live in Alsace.
[01:00:59]  You are a peasant.
[01:01:01]  You need to give your fucking Lord the grain.
[01:01:03]  Your fucking children, you've had 15 children.
[01:01:06]  You've never taken a bath.
[01:01:07]  You've literally never washed your penis.
[01:01:11]  You're fucking, you've never used toilet paper.
[01:01:14]  Motherfucker, you have worms.
[01:01:16]  You are dying.
[01:01:17]  You've had 40 children.
[01:01:19]  Three of them are alive.
[01:01:20]  Two of them are child soldiers in the Duke's army.
[01:01:24]  Bitch, the greatest thing you can hope for is to die at the ripe age, or excuse me, the old age of 36.
[01:01:32]  You fucking can't read.
[01:01:34]  You fucking, you don't know what TV is.
[01:01:37]  You are literally, if you were transporting today, you would be the worst gamer of all time.
[01:01:43]  You don't know shit.
[01:01:44]  You literally probably don't even know what the direction left is.
[01:01:48]  I'm sure some medieval guys are gonna get mad at me for this.
[01:01:51]  Bitch, I've been to the Renaissance Fair.
[01:01:53]  I have eaten a large turkey wing, which the juggalos call bitch beaters, which I think is problematic, but a funny thing to call them.
[01:01:59]  Motherfucker, you gotta recognize where you are, and then you gotta get past that.
[01:02:06]  You gotta be unemotional.
[01:02:08]  I mean, I know I'm not being a great, a great, you know, display of that myself, but you gotta, you, you can't sink into this hole.
[01:02:16]  You live in the oopliette.
[01:02:18]  Your job is to crawl up the ladder, motherfucker.
[01:02:20]  You live in the hole.
[01:02:22]  You're in the hole.
[01:02:23]  You are a rat.
[01:02:24]  And the rat, when he's in the hole, gets fucked.
[01:02:27]  Oh, people only throw trash in the hole.
[01:02:29]  You know what?
[01:02:29]  You need to eat.
[01:02:30]  You need to eat a body and you need to carry the plague.
[01:02:35]  And you need to carry a plague around this whole world that will change this whole fucking world.
[01:02:40]  And all your enemies will vomit black bile and they will choke on blood and grow boils and die.
[01:02:48]  But only if you get together with your other rats and you come up with some kind of super plague to fucking end your enemies and end this nightmare.
[01:03:09]  Well, in our last part, I just want to end on this.
[01:03:13]  In the Republican bill, which by the way is not necessarily, that doesn't mean it'll actually, this is what's going to get voted on.
[01:03:18]  But what the Republicans proposed in the coronavirus relief bill, something I found really strange, which was $686 million for the F-35 fighter jet, which cannot fly in the rain.
[01:03:30]  $720 million.

=== F-35 Fighter Jet Oddities (02:00) ===

[01:03:32]  You can't let go of the F-35.
[01:03:33]  It will not.
[01:03:34]  If you are less than 6'8 and you try to get into an F-35 and eject, your head will literally be cut off by the point.
[01:03:42]  It is, it works worse than, do you remember that old, I can't remember what it's called, but it was like this old video game thing that came out in like the 90s or early 2000s.
[01:03:51]  It was like red.
[01:03:52]  It was made by Nintendo and you kind of lied down and put your eyes into it.
[01:03:56]  Virtual boy.
[01:03:57]  The F-35 functions worse than any virtual boy.
[01:04:02]  It's like dog.
[01:04:03]  If you peed on it, it will explode.
[01:04:06]  It is.
[01:04:06]  It's, oh my God, every time they're like, oh, testing out another one, like something horrifying happens.
[01:04:13]  Yeah.
[01:04:13]  Like a pigeon fly.
[01:04:15]  It's like, you know, the butterfly effect?
[01:04:16]  Like I step on a butterfly and a tsunami happens in Thailand.
[01:04:20]  Literally, if you do step on a butterfly in Hawaii, an F-35 will explode.
[01:04:24]  Yeah.
[01:04:25]  Killing hundreds of people.
[01:04:27]  So, all right, so this month's when you're like, fuck, dude, I don't know how I'm going to pay rent.
[01:04:31]  Like, I don't know what I'm going to do.
[01:04:33]  Think about this.
[01:04:35]  The Republican Party, and I'm sure some of this will make it into the bill, by the way, the actual bill that gets voted on, is saying that we should give $1.1 billion for the Navy for a fucking patrol plane.
[01:04:48]  $800 million for the National Guard who are going to come to your house and shoot your dog.
[01:04:53]  $65 million for a hypersonic missile defense system.
[01:04:58]  $200 million for Homeland Missile Defense System.
[01:05:01]  And by the way, when you are at the fucking grocery store trying to find the, when you go to the fucking Chinese grocery store, or excuse me, the Japanese grocery store hoping to find cheaper ramen than you have at Safeway, remember this.
[01:05:14]  The U.S., many people in the U.S. government are calling for us to give $290 million for a space-based missile sensor.
[01:05:22]  Layer, motherfucker, have fun getting evicted.
[01:05:27]  A bunch of other shit in there, too.
[01:05:29]  Almost $30 billion to the fucking Pentagon.
[01:05:31]  What a bunch of bullshit.

=== Pentagon Spending Madness (03:29) ===

[01:05:32]  Yeah.
[01:05:33]  That's, I mean, it's like, you know, every bill that Congress writes has like, you know, 300 billion allocated to the Pentagon.
[01:05:44]  It's like required.
[01:05:45]  It's like, and no matter what, they'll pass like fucking, you know, Democrats sweep in November.
[01:05:51]  If that's still, you know, if that's still on the table by then, I don't know.
[01:05:55]  We'll see.
[01:05:56]  Probably.
[01:05:58]  You know, they're going to pass like the Equality Act or whatever, and there will still be like 400 billion for the Pentagon in like, you know, some bill that says like we're all equal or whatever.
[01:06:09]  Yeah.
[01:06:09]  And remember, a lot of your fucking little favorite politicians vote yes on these budgets that have that Pentagon money in it too.
[01:06:15]  That are killing people like you in other countries.
[01:06:39]  Well, I'm feeling good now, baby.
[01:06:40]  I'm hyped up.
[01:06:41]  I liked your little monologue.
[01:06:42]  That felt that was good hype.
[01:06:44]  I mean, it's like, you know, because the thing for us is like, we want to do these episodes because I feel like a lot of this news just isn't out there.
[01:06:54]  Unless you're reading the FT every day, unless you're reading Boomberg every day, unless you're reading whatever every day, which, you know, we do for you, so you don't have to, but you should.
[01:07:04]  You're not kind of getting this large picture, like you said, of how all these things are happening and they all intersect.
[01:07:13]  Yeah.
[01:07:14]  I actually, I read, uh, I read Rimbo every day and do push-ups naked.
[01:07:21]  Um, because I'm like a little crazy.
[01:07:23]  I'm a bit of an urban artist.
[01:07:25]  Oh my God.
[01:07:26]  Uh, but yeah, we face a complex, uh, what was that Hillary Clinton thing?
[01:07:30]  We face a complex series of intersectional problems.
[01:07:33]  Yeah, that was great.
[01:07:34]  We should bring that back.
[01:07:35]  Remember, Pradesta's plan to defeat ISIS that started with defeat ISIS.
[01:07:39]  Yes, that was the best plan ever.
[01:07:42]  I'll tell you what, though, unbeatable plan.
[01:07:45]  You know what?
[01:07:46]  I can't argue with that.
[01:07:47]  If you want to defeat ISIS, you probably should defeat ISIS.
[01:07:51]  If my idea is to defeat ISIS, first thing on the table, defeat ISIS.
[01:07:54]  Absolutely.
[01:07:55]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:07:56]  Can't argue.
[01:07:59]  Well, all right.
[01:08:00]  My nipples are hard.
[01:08:01]  I'm fucking juiced up.
[01:08:03]  Yeah, you go do some push-ups, baby.
[01:08:06]  I know.
[01:08:06]  I've been doing my push-up challenge.
[01:08:09]  Trying to get one down.
[01:08:10]  Oh, my God.
[01:08:13]  No, no, no.
[01:08:14]  It's like a thing that some friends of mine are doing where you try to get actually, you like, it's crazy.
[01:08:19]  Like, one guy lies on the ground naked, and the other guy kind of does also naked push-ups over him that you just do like really fast.
[01:08:27]  And it's mostly from the hip.
[01:08:34]  Well, Liz, a pleasure as always.
[01:08:36]  Yeah, the pleasure is all mine.
[01:08:39]  Oh, yeah.
[01:08:40]  Oh, okay.
[01:08:41]  You can have it.
[01:08:41]  Okay.
[01:08:42]  Thank you.
[01:08:42]  I took no pleasure in this.
[01:08:45]  It gives me no pleasure to report this.
[01:08:47]  And it gives me arrested for treason and is possibly facing the death penalty.
[01:08:53]  I'm sorry to see her go.
[01:08:55]  To be okay, to go back to that.
[01:08:59]  That's a great tweet.
[01:09:01]  One of the all times.

=== Utah's Fascist Echo Chamber (04:24) ===

[01:09:02]  So for those of you who don't know, a former labor, or excuse me, not labor, conservative MP in Britain who became like the Ur Russia gate person, Louis Mensch, once said that she was aware of that there were sealed indictments against one Stephen Bannon that basically he faced treason charges and the penalty of death.
[01:09:25]  That did not happen.
[01:09:26]  And Steve Bannon instead took out a bunch of loans and started a fake college for Nazis in Italy that didn't even work, which is insane that that didn't work.
[01:09:36]  That means, you know, that tub bullshit lard motherfucker couldn't do shit.
[01:09:40]  Yeah.
[01:09:42]  You know, the thing with Bannon is he, you know, he was right about a lot of things, but couldn't do any of it.
[01:09:48]  Like, he's just like not, he has a good, he would have a good read on things.
[01:09:53]  To be clear, I don't agree with Steve Bannon in case I need to make that clear.
[01:09:57]  But he would have a good read on certain things, but then couldn't actually do anything.
[01:10:01]  Like Marion Le Pen, who's the, of course, Uber reactionary in France, Uber, the leader, you know, upcoming leader.
[01:10:12]  The Front Nationale.
[01:10:13]  Well, no, she's the daughter.
[01:10:15]  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:10:16]  Marion.
[01:10:19]  Not Marines.
[01:10:19]  Oh, Marines.
[01:10:20]  Okay, yeah, I see what you're saying.
[01:10:23]  But she started a reactionary school as well that I think is going very well, which is something to keep an eye on.
[01:10:29]  Actually, you know what?
[01:10:30]  I got my BA there.
[01:10:34]  And it was pretty like, I mean, I don't know.
[01:10:37]  I went to Brigham Young too.
[01:10:38]  It was like basically the same as going there.
[01:10:40]  Oh, my God.
[01:10:40]  I played basketball at Marianne Le Pen's fascist university.
[01:10:45]  You know, remember that time on the podcast when we were saying how deeply weird Utah is?
[01:10:51]  Oh, such a strange place.
[01:10:53]  Very weird.
[01:10:53]  That's a nexus for you.
[01:10:55]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:10:55]  I got a DM from someone that was like, thank you.
[01:10:58]  Utah is extremely weird.
[01:11:00]  I agree.
[01:11:00]  And like, what on this whole thing about Utah, I got to send you.
[01:11:04]  Yeah, I would like to read that because I've had experiences in many states, and one of those is Utah.
[01:11:10]  And it's a strange and unnerving place.
[01:11:12]  I wanted to leave as soon as we crossed the state line more than basically anything.
[01:11:17]  I've never done that.
[01:11:18]  And if there's one, listen, what you got to do is join a hardcore band in 2007 and then go on a three-month tour.
[01:11:24]  You'll see a lot of things you wish you didn't.
[01:11:26]  I heard that Zion is lovely.
[01:11:29]  Oh, yeah.
[01:11:29]  No, actually, I formed my whole political ideology.
[01:11:32]  Oh, in Utah.
[01:11:33]  Yeah, Well, the thing is, so when I got sent to this, and by the way, there is, I'm nice.
[01:11:40]  It's like we're just chatting.
[01:11:42]  When I got sent away to that fucked up like cult when I was a kid, you would always get threatened.
[01:11:49]  I just said threatened.
[01:11:50]  It sounded like my voice farted or something.
[01:11:53]  You would get threatened by staff there with getting sent to a place called Provo, which was a lockdown school in Provo Canyon, Utah.
[01:12:01]  And the thing is, so my school is in Montana because of very loose labor laws.
[01:12:05]  Although I went there, but with someone who went there after me just filed child trafficking charges against, or just is getting the FBI to file child trafficking charges against the guy who ran it.
[01:12:18]  But you would always get threatened to get sent to Utah because there's like no laws there.
[01:12:22]  They can do whatever they want with you.
[01:12:26]  So any Utanians, that's what I'm going to call them from now on.
[01:12:33]  Listening in, DM us your Utah thoughts.
[01:12:39]  You want to see a really fuck.
[01:12:41]  Oh, yeah.
[01:12:41]  You want to see a really pathetic little hashtag is look up on Twitter hashtag Desnat, D-E-Z-N-A-T.
[01:12:50]  Because you will find a bunch of people who believe that they're going to get a planet when they die, like in like plate carriers in the Utah desert that like they paid with, you know, with their fucking, I don't know what these people do for work.
[01:13:02]  They work at the polygamy factory or whatever.
[01:13:07]  It's like fascist Utah 4chan people who are like, to be clear, I mean, I guess marrying nine women who are inbred is based in a way.
[01:13:18]  But if that's the base, baby, send me out on a mission.
[01:13:23]  Okay, we should wrap this up.
[01:13:25]  What a deeply weird ending.

=== Leader of the Church of Loser Dumbass Suckers (01:01) ===

[01:13:27]  Yes.
[01:13:27]  Unless you have anything else to do.
[01:13:28]  I was going to wrap it up, those fucking, those fucking polygamists out there.
[01:13:33]  I think that's against that's against Utah rules, right?
[01:13:36]  They're still, I mean, it's like they went underground.
[01:13:40]  It's like third-period Comintern policy, like ultra-left Mormons went underground and refused to cooperate with the more mainstream social democratic Mormons.
[01:13:51]  Yeah.
[01:13:52]  Oh, God.
[01:13:52]  Can't wait till they re-emerge.
[01:13:56]  Yeah, they will.
[01:13:57]  They're too horny.
[01:13:59]  Well, my name is Joseph Smith.
[01:14:05]  I'm Liz.
[01:14:06]  We are joined by producer Young Chomsky, the leader of the Church of Latter-day Suckers.
[01:14:16]  Wait, no, hold on.
[01:14:17]  Let me take that again, although don't cut the first part.
[01:14:20]  Leader of the Church of Loser Dumbass Suckers.
[01:14:26]  All right.
[01:14:26]  We will see you next time.
[01:14:28]  Bye-bye.