This is a Terrible Idea

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]What are your thoughts on people thinking you can abolish the payroll and income tax altogether if you increase sales tax by 10 to 12%? I think those people are either A, downright stupid or B, downright evil. First of all, moving the tax burden from payroll and income to sales basically places it all on poor people.

[00:00:18]>> [laughter] >> Basically places the entire tax burden on people buying regular goods, which isn't poor people. It's extremely regressive. But secondly, it wouldn't even come close to covering the shortfall. Like I mean, that's not nearly enough. However, many states are trying to do this, especially with regards to the property taxes. Many states trying to get rid of property taxes, which is one of the few taxes that hits wealthier boomers, and replace it with sales taxes, which hits working poor. It's horrible. It's really, really, really stupid. It's very bad.

[00:00:45]It's backwards and it's just another sign of our tax code being favored to the wealthy and the old. Really the old.

[00:00:50]Not even the particularly wealthy. Like people that have one house or whatever.

[00:00:53]Just the old. It's the boomers. Like the boomers have truly dominated our tax code. Even like the recent thing they're talking about no tax on social security and [ __ ] It's like all this [ __ ] is just taking money. We're not cutting spending anyway. So like we're affording things by taxing working poor more or working middle class more, but not the wealthy and old. Yet property tax exemptions for senior citizens. It's like you can't get more directly blatant that it's a giant [ __ ] you to the young.

[00:01:18]It's just a giant [ __ ] It's just like It's just the boomers who vote most.

[00:01:22]That's why you have to [ __ ] vote, bro. Even in local elections, it's all controlled by the boomers who care. Care enough to vote. And they have voted every level to be better for them.

[00:01:31]They're not more people, they just vote more. They don't have jobs. Yeah, I mean, there's like a structural part of it where I think we should have a I mean, if we had a mandatory vote, I think it would be good. But even like voting being a holiday, strongly encouraged, you being able to vote easier, day before, at whatever. Like that [ __ ] would be better. Because right now, there's a strong incentive that makes it easier for people who are established and own homes and have flexibility to vote. And people who have to work, it's harder. Voting week, I don't know, whatever. But I think it should be mandatory, honestly. I don't know, you should get a bonus or a penalty if you don't. I don't know, there should be something. Usually bonuses are better than penalties, but whatever. There should be a voting holiday paid for by the company. No, I hate that [ __ ] I hate health insurance being tied to companies. The company should just only focus on doing what the company does. And we shouldn't tie health care and voting incentives and anything else into your company, cuz that makes it so only big companies have an advantage cuz they can offer these benefits. And that small company it's it's just stupid. It's [ __ ] dumb. And we should completely separate the two.

[00:02:25]We should just tax the company if we have to, but the government should handle government [ __ ] and company should handle company [ __ ] And they should never should the twain should meet. They should let companies vote on THEIR EMPLOYEES' BEHALF. NOW we're talking. Wait a minute. What if Pepsico gets Yeah, they have 30,000 employees, they get 30,000 votes. And you as an employee don't really get to vote, but you've given your vote over to your employer. That's kind of a good idea.

[00:02:46]Because obviously they're going to know what's best. That's actually not a bad idea at all. And it would save a lot of time cuz the company definitely will vote. We'd get a lot more participation because the company definitely will vote. I should be able to sell my vote to the highest bidder. Technically, you can right now. You can do that right now, theoretically.

[00:03:01]>> [laughter] >> Nothing stopping you. Isn't that illegal? I mean, was Elon Musk taking a hundred million dollars and doing like million dollar daily registration sign-ups for voting illegal? Maybe in the letter of the law, but they got away with it. You could throw up a poll be or a an auction. An auction to determine which book you're going to read. And it's like a book of Democrat policies and a book of Republican policies.

[00:03:23]>> [laughter] >> And it's like, "Whatever wins this auction, I'm going to really learn more about their policies." And you're not really selling your vote, but it's like obvious what you're doing. You could do that. Can I steal other people's votes?

[00:03:32]It would be interesting if you carried around a vote card, and anyone that steals it from you can steal your vote.

[00:03:37]So you could walk around pickpocketing all the votes. It's like flag football.

[00:03:42]>> [laughter] >> It's a stamp card so after you vote 10 times you get a free ice cream cone.

[00:03:46]That's not a bad idea either. You have to find votes like Pokémon hunt. One extra vote per 10 votes. Yeah, let's give more voting power to the boomers.

[00:03:55]>> [laughter] >> People who have already voted a lot, your votes now count double. You get That's a good idea. That'll do it.

[00:04:01]Exclusive Pokémon card if you vote. I think they just really need to focus on making the I voted sticker like really cool. If they could really lean into that, then everyone will do it cuz they don't want to be left out. They need to make the I voted sticker a [ __ ] It's like [ __ ] sick.

[00:04:14]>> [laughter] >> Or they give you like a cool hat or something or like a cape. Like a little boo-boo collab. Yeah, you get like a custom I voted Labubu and that way you don't want to seem uncool, so you have to vote. I got a holo foil Dude, what if you have a small chance of getting a holographic I voted sticker that's worth a lot of money. Voting blind boxes, yeah. Wait a minute. In Australia we have sausage sizzles at every voting place. Dude, that's actually just a great idea. Wait a minute. You You actually solved it and it made it so much simpler. There should just be food.

[00:04:44]If you vote, they give you a hot dog or something. That's just a much better idea. People would be excited. That's the That's the number one way to get people to go to things is put food there.

[00:04:52]>> [laughter] >> Yeah, wait. Glizzys are the solution. A pizza party or glizzys or whatever.

[00:04:59]That's not a bad idea at all. You vote, you get a hot dog. You vote, you get a slice of pizza. Wait, a glizzocracy.

[00:05:06]Sponsored by Costco? True. I don't think corporations should sponsor elections, but >> [laughter] >> we're on the same page. Thoughts on Zoran's new tax on the wealthy? Yeah, it's cool. I think he said 500 mil. I think I saw the video. That's not a lot in New York, but it is cool. It's a good step. I think they should be especially cuz it's taxing people that aren't even residents. It's good that he's doing it.

[00:05:22]I like that he is making marketing material about it to get people on board, but it's not enough to be honest.

[00:05:28]>> [laughter] >> You know, it's like the easiest thing to get everyone on board with, which is like we're going to tax only wealthy land owners who don't live here. Yeah, you're just going to raise a lot. What you need to do is bigger taxes on the wealthy that do live there. Yeah, I I That's my favorite part of his mayorship so far. My favorite part of mayorship is that he's taking the budget seriously because no voter does, and you could very easily ignore it and borrow. People say cities can't borrow, they can. New York does. New York is in debt. They have borrowed, they are deeply in debt.

[00:05:57]They're almost indebted cities, and they could have done that. He could have kept going with that. And he's trying to balance the budget, and I appreciate that. I think that is the most noble thing a politician can do is try to be not kick the can to the next [ __ ] person. Talk about Live Nation Ticketmaster ruling. I shouted out Lina Khan on social media today. It's awesome. It's really cool. It's something her administration started, and then they dropped it when they got the new FTC chair, and then the states picked it back up. And the states have continued it, and now they are ruling against Live Nation. I don't know what it'll mean yet, but they have a massive monopoly, and they use it to [ __ ] overcharge people and throw in a bunch of fees and all that crap. It would be a great thing to break up. Live Nation [ __ ] sucks. Will my wife not put me in debt for Taylor Swift tickets now? I don't know about that. I mean, the thing about Taylor Swift is that she has a monopoly on Taylor Swift performances.

[00:06:42]And there's only so many of them, and the demand is die hard. And so, you just can't get those prices down. Even if she were to sell them at a loss, people would scalp them. It's almost impossible not to. You'd have to clone Taylor Swift to have multiple performances. It's just such a scarce good. But the thing about Live Nation is that they own all of the venues. They own the venues, and they own the ticketing, and so they have this monopoly that allows them to overcharge everywhere, and people can't go elsewhere. They can't Like a concert can't choose a different venue or It's like they've created a vertically integrated monopoly that it's giving them this fat tax that wouldn't normally exist if it was competitive. Only in the US? No, Live Nation owns venues outside of the US. They don't have as much of a monopoly outside of the US, but they're like a massive problem. Strict antitrust enforcement would go crazy in America.

[00:07:27]Yeah, my number one thing I would want is strict antitrust enforcement. Really, really, really focusing on making things as competitive as possible. Making sure that customers in almost every field they're buying things in have multiple options competing for their dollar. Be [ __ ] awesome. Next we can do is no tax on tips.

[00:07:42]>> [laughter] >> Can you debunk, steel man some of the issues I talked about with the capital flight to other places? Uh it's a fair concern in the United States. I mean, there is evidence people are moving their residence at least to different states. And then even if they stay in a place that's high tax, they're residents of somewhere else. The evidence I've seen is that it's not so effective on country level except for the ultra mega wealthy. The ultra mega wealthy can flee countries to avoid tax, but on an individual level people can easily much more easily flee states. And so I I don't know. I don't like that the states of America are in a race to the bottom on taxes. I think like state taxes should be more standardized or something. The idea that like there's some states that are so controlled by wealthy boomers that they are cutting all their property taxes, state taxes, and everything, running on debt, and just like letting that [ __ ] ride. Like Florida. Florida is a horrible horribly managed economy that is just cooking itself for the benefit of its current boomers. It's like a national tax. We have a national income tax. What I'm saying is the states are funded by state taxes, but each state has different taxes, which leads to be a competition for people to move between states to try and get the best taxes. If it was like a flat 10% tax for the state in every state, that would be a lot better.

[00:08:48]Whatever, whatever it is. I just think having these vastly different tax systems across state lines is causing a lot of weird [ __ ] What's the implications of a state defaulting?

[00:08:56]Yeah, the implications of local governments and states taking on debt they can't pay is vastly degraded public services in the future. It's like fewer employees at all [ __ ] state services.

[00:09:06]It's [ __ ] worse health care. It's worse roads. It's worse schools. It's It's the people of the state getting worse public services. And also they just can't borrow anymore, which they need to do to keep funding. So So people will be forced to get on their grind set. Sign me up. True. [ __ ] true.

[00:09:20]People in Florida, if there's any young people left, you're going to have to grind like crazy. He's smuggling a Xiaomi cars through Mexico. Dude, I've been wanting to talk about that. All the CEOs, all the Japanese CEOs plus Ford again, just [ __ ] cowering, just talking like they've seen the end times about Chinese cars. It's crazy. The Honda CEO, the Toyota CEO, and then the Ford CEO again being like, "We just can't let these things out.

[00:09:45]>> [laughter] >> It'll destroy the economy." They're spooked, bro. Yeah, they talk about Chinese EVs like Dario Amodei talks about Mythos. Yeah, Mythos. Yeah, 100% 100%. They talk about it like the end times. They talk about it like the idea that they'd have to compete with the Chinese EV is a death nail for all companies. It's crazy.

[00:10:01]>> It is crazy, bro. How the [ __ ] are people smuggling an entire giant ass car?

[00:10:05]>> People aren't really smuggling uh Chinese electric vehicles into America.

[00:10:08]Not easy to smuggle, and you'll get it taxed. But if you were to do it, you would just buy it in Mexico or Canada and drive it. But obviously they are checking for that. It's more like if you're driving it around, you ever get pulled over for anything, and they run your license and registration, and you know, shit's going to get back to you.

[00:10:20]It's considered uh smuggling. It's [laughter] really you can You can get massive fines.

[00:10:25]>> Can't you just pay the tariff?

[00:10:26]>> I think so, but actually I'm not sure.

[00:10:28]For some of the EVs, possibly you can, but for some it's like a de facto ban.

[00:10:32]Like you can't even pay the tariff and get it. It just not up to code or something. Yeah, something about Yeah, there's something. There's some license that hasn't gotten or passed. You just can't buy them. Something like the Ford CEO on the pod. I would love to ask a car company CEO about the [ __ ] wave of Chinese competition. That'd be awesome. But all I want is the SU7. I'm really not going to buy anything until that happens. It doesn't look like it's going to happen. Oh, wait, I had to take a clip here. How do you see your clips on Twitch? Did I ever tell the story about OddShot?

[00:10:56]>> [laughter] >> Have I ever told the OddShot story when I worked at Twitch? That is so crazy.

[00:11:01]Okay, I'll tell you because most people are new and they don't know it. If any of you guys have been around on Twitch for a while, there was a period of time where there was this platform called oddshot.tv, and it was like clips. It's what clips is now. It was OddShot clips. People used to share OddShot clips on Reddit and stuff from Twitch. Like it'd be like, "Oh, here's a cool moment. Here's the OddShot." It was like the thing. You know, I'm a I'm a lowly brand new employee at Twitch. I got no clout. I got no hoes. I got no nothing. I'm not paid well. Nothing. It's like early days of Twitch. But I go to every event.

[00:11:29]That's part of my job is I had to fly out to every e-sports event. You know, I'm I'm working every day, every weekend. I'm always flying. And so I meet a lot of people. That was one of the cool parts of that job is I met a lot of people in gaming and e-sports who I still know today. And I meet the guy that created Oddshot. I don't remember his name. This is a while ago. We have not spoken since and I'll explain why. I meet the guy that created Oddshot and he's super friendly and nice and we're we're kicking off, we're shooting the [ __ ] And I'm like, "Bro, I love your product. I use Oddshot all the time.

[00:11:54]Like as a power Twitch user that works there, it's like so sick. I'm always sharing Oddshots." And he's like, "Oh, that's so cool. You know, nice to meet you." He's like, "I've always wanted to uh He's like, "I've always wanted to talk with someone at Twitch about this product cuz I think I could integrate it even better or something." And I'm like, "Dude, no problem. I'll hook you up." So I, you know, I'm a [ __ ] I don't know anything. I'm just a new newbie guy. I go internally but next time I get back to the office, I'm like, "Hey." I go over to the engineering side of the office and I talk to this guy. I'm not going to say his name, but he's he was higher up there and I'm like, "Hey." I explain the story, Oddshot Oddshot. Do you think he could come in and meet with you guys? Can we can like set this up?"

[00:12:27]And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, sure." So I set the whole thing up. I give him the date, the time. Twitch pays for the flight, I think. He flies out. He comes into Twitch. I see him. I meet him. This is what happens. They bring him in. They sit him down in a room with all of the engineers who are separately working on Twitch's Clips product. And they ask him question after question and they just write it down. Like, "What did you learn from this? What is it?" They just brain drain like every aspect of what he's learned from doing Oddshot. And then, again, I don't know that. I don't know what the engineering team's working on.

[00:12:58]And then literally a month or two later, Twitch comes out with WITH [ __ ] TWITCH CLIPS.

[00:13:04]>> [laughter] >> AND DID HE BLAME YOU? SO THEN, AGAIN, I HAVE NO idea this is happening. This all filters out to me later. I'm the dumb I'm a kid I'm like 20 years old. I had just started. I'm just meeting people, okay? Then I go to another event in Texas and I see that guy there and he is super MAD AT ME.

[00:13:22]>> [laughter] >> AND I'M LIKE, "WAIT, BRO, I DON'T [ __ ] WHAT THE [ __ ] DO I KNOW? I SAID THEY SHOULD [ __ ] ACQUIRE ONCHAN. YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE TIGHT-LIPPED, BROTHER. What did he say? Again, this is all kind of a hazy memory. This I saw him at an after-party where I think possibly we were both drunk.

[00:13:38]>> [laughter] >> I don't remember exactly the details of how the conversation went down, but it does suffice to say he was upset. All right, and after we spoke, I don't think he was that upset at me, but he was upset at Twitch. And then when I brought the feedback back to the original engineering guy, he was like, "It is what it is." That's what he [laughter] told me.

[00:13:53]And I'm like, "Oh, well, damn, bro.

[00:13:55]Damn." So, I learned a little bit about business that day, bro. I learned a little bit, you know, that was my one of my first taste as a young man of the cutthroat nature of this whole Silicon Valley [ __ ] industry, bro. But true story, that is the literally the And by the way, you know, I have no insider knowledge, so theoretically they could have already had these features, but according to this guy, they brain drained him. They didn't put me in the meeting, bro. Brain drain sounds like it feels amazing low-key. Yeah, according to him, it doesn't.

[00:14:23]>> [laughter] >> That's why you've kept the chat message WooshTech a secret? Yeah, that's why.

[00:14:28]>> [laughter] >> Only Pixel, YOU WILL GET THIS TECHNOLOGY OVER MY COLD, DEAD BODY. I DON'T care how many [ __ ] CS:GO knives you offer me, I will never give you this incredible technology. It is the nuclear secret. Was? No, it won't happen. I'm sorry, brother. I'm sorry. Your bribes won't work here. You can't brain drain me. What if he just vibe codes it? I'm I'm pretty sure [laughter] you could.

[00:14:53]As far as I know, Auto cooked it up in an hour. I mean, Auto's the goat, but I think he cooked it up in like an hour.

[00:14:59]>> [laughter] >> It's not like it's I just think it's really funny.