Its Starting To Happen...

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Hey, Big A. Mainly a vod frog here. I noticed you have a lot of welders {slash} tradesmen in your chat. Have you noticed people going into the trades as a bigger trend? How did you notice that I have a lot of welders and tradesmen in my chat? How many of you in my chat are welders?

[00:00:13]>> [laughter] >> I'm not sure any of them have jobs.

[00:00:16]Somehow they Every time I do a job stream, they all have jobs and they all seem really nice. But in between it all feels like they don't have jobs. Between it all feels like they're I weld. Well, I do think I mean, I don't know if I don't know I haven't noticed it with my stream people, but I've noticed in general just from reading that there's a larger group of Gen Z, especially men, who have decided [ __ ] college, I'm going into the trades. And they might not even be wrong. That's the thing. They might not even be wrong. I think people who are younger are more and more looking at college with wary eyes. With wary eyes. Not that it's impossible that I know nobody will do it. Not that it's Just that like they're they're way more skeptical of like the purported benefits. Cuz they probably have older brothers or sisters or family who have gotten a degree and that are stuck with student loan debts and can't find a job in the field they want anyway. You know? So they're like, this this this might be a scam. I think there's I I Listen, it's a it's a it's a complex decision, but I I think that's true that more people are seeing it. But also, my understanding is this, and you can tell me I'm wrong if somebody's in the trades and knows more, but it's not like it's a free golden ticket. Like it's hard. It's hard work. Shit's hard.

[00:01:22]And like some people think like, "Oh, I'll just do that and it'll be [ __ ] easy clap." Like no, there there's some there's some difficulty to it. Not that you can't like Yeah, I think if you're able to get your own plumbing business locally, you can make fat stacks, but it's not like it's the easiest thing in the world. You like trades are always useful. I can't see AI fixing someone's clogged up pipes from pouring [music] grease down the drain.

[00:01:42]It is It is unfortunate that the greatest minds of our generation have been working on creating an AI that takes away our ability to write and read, but does not handle the problems of cleaning the pipes or the jobs that humans kind of don't want to do. I know a guy who's flipped three plumbing companies. I know a guy who's flipped three plumbing companies to investors.

[00:02:04]Dude's a millionaire but lives in a house he made out of two sheds put together.

[00:02:09]Sigma. That's badass. That's [ __ ] awesome. Stay humble, stay hungry. You know what I'm saying? If anything, I feel like he's a little bit tacky with the second shed. You know what I'm saying? As a streamer, I live in a single shed to show how man of the people I am. But he's mashing two sheds together like a [ __ ] rich ass coastal elite. Ooh la la.

[00:02:26]>> [laughter] >> Ooh la la. Look at me with my second shed, bro. That would I do have a gaming chair now.

[00:02:33]>> [laughter] >> TAKE A LOOK AT IT. Make fun of it if you must. I have a gaming chair. Yes, indeed. It's a [ __ ] DX Racer type.

[00:02:43]Two things two THINGS BEFORE YOU BEFORE you get on your high horses before all of you who are probably spine twisted on the edge of your single [ __ ] twin mattress on the floor of your bedroom.

[00:02:57]>> [laughter] >> Before you get mad at me for my chair, I got this chair for free. And my other chair, I broke. So, this chair's free.

[00:03:07]It was given to me for free. How am I How am I going to turn down free? Free 99, that's the best price. And it came with this. It's a magnetic neck pillow.

[00:03:19]>> [laughter] >> Did the Herman Miller have that? No, it did not. Hmm. Interesting that the fine folks at Herman Miller couldn't think to include a magnetic neck pillow. Herman Miller was selling chairs as a service.

[00:03:29]Oh, it has a decade It does have a long warranty, it's true. But the thing is, I think what they rely on is what a pain in the ass it is to mail a chair. For me to like pack up and mail a chair back is just a [ __ ] pain in the ass. There's a mustard stain on my shirt. Wait, really? [ __ ] Hey Hand Truck, I know I need to get a credit card to start building my credit up, but I'm not sure what I got to get. This is like a a common misconception. Listen, if you get a credit card and you can pay off all the bills on time, it will help you build your credit score faster, but that's not a huge deal. Your credit will build up naturally by just never taking on debt you can't pay.

[00:04:01]>> [laughter] >> If you have student loans, you pay them off on time, you have a apartment rent, you pay off on time, your credit score will be fine. People are like convincing you have to get a credit card to get your credit score up.

[00:04:12]Don't I think the only reason you should get a credit card over just a debit card and spending what you have is if you have something with incredible points. You know, like a Chase Sapphire Reserve or something and you put your rent on there and you auto pay it every month so you can get the points. But that's that's again like whatever. It's like not I think people overthink that stuff.

[00:04:31]Listen, I'm I'm super anti-debt, bro.

[00:04:34]You you will feel better the less debt you get into. You'll just feel better.

[00:04:38]You'll just having having a bill coming up that you are worried about paying is the most stressful thing. It's the most stressful thing. Dave Ramsey arc, listen, he's right about that.

[00:04:47]>> [laughter] >> He's right about that, dude. I think that's why it's good advice. I think that's why it hits. For real, we paid off my wife's student loans this year and it's great feeling. Yeah, it's [ __ ] awesome. It's It's way better than having, you know, a few extra things you could have bought. Extra stuff. It's the freedom.

[00:05:03]The freedom of less debt is so much nicer than like a [ __ ] Gucci belt or a [ __ ] whatever whatever you could have bought, dude. Is it nicer than a jet ski?

[00:05:12]>> [laughter] >> Dude, probably because when the jet ski bill hits, it's [ __ ] sucks, dude.

[00:05:18]Yes, like you buy the jet ski you're like this is awesome. I'm jet skiing around and then the jet ski bill hits and you're like wow, this [ __ ] sucks.

[00:05:25]You can buy now, pay later your rent payments. I saw that, too. They're having like debt for rent payments. It's [ __ ] crazy.

[00:05:33]If you're doing that, you're at the end of being cooked. You're at the final end of the cycle before you default. Debt for rent is like you just don't have it.

[00:05:41]You don't have the income to necessitate what you're spending. How How do we afford rent at minimum wage other than debt? Listen, I understand I mean if you're in a high cost living area and you're making minimum wage and you're not going to find a spot, then you're going to have to get Listen, I'm just saying what you're going to have to do.

[00:05:54]You're going to get [ __ ] roommates.

[00:05:55]You're going to get roommates or something. If you can live with your parents, live with your parents. Like it's way better than [ __ ] taking out debt for rent, dude. That's I'm just Listen, I'm not saying it's You're confusing me saying like this is good.

[00:06:08]This is the way society should be, which I'm not saying. But I'm also saying in the reality of it, the solution of hey, I'm going to take got a bunch of debt is not the one to take. You will You will not be happy with it. You'll be Have you heard of Obligo? They let you avoid rent deposits, but it's just a loan. It's crazy. Yeah, I saw this. It's just a loan.

[00:06:26]>> [laughter] >> Just different fancy ways of loaning you money and charging you interest. The thing that pisses me off is my rent is more than my parents mortgage and I have no way to get a house. Let me be super clear. This is not the thing that pisses you off. This is the thing that is ripping apart the fabric of all modern society across the entire developed world.

[00:06:47]>> [laughter] >> Everyone's pissed off about this, dude.

[00:06:50]Everyone's pissed off about this. The young people seeing no reasonable path to owning a house is what is [ __ ] tearing me apart. I'll just move to Kansas or something. I lived in Kansas for a year and a half. Be honest with you, hated it.

[00:07:04]Too flat, too boring. I mean if you had friends, honestly, I'm of the opinion unique aspects of an area are less important than who is in the area. And that the day-to-day things that make your quality of life good are having friends and family. I know 14-year-old you wouldn't think that. 14-year-old me wanted to [ __ ] meet real life Pokémon.

[00:07:26]>> [laughter] >> Why I [ __ ] care what 14-year-old me thinks, dude? What would 14-year-old me think? I don't even know. At 14? Yeah, I was a dumb kid. But when I was like six or seven, I did believe Pokémon were real, but only some of them.

[00:07:39]>> [laughter] >> And I would militantly make fun of other kids thought they were all real. I would be like, "You're a [ __ ] idiot. You think Voltorb's real? You're so [ __ ] dumb. Pidgey though, that's real. That's [laughter] real."

[00:07:52]But this is true. I did I did this for for like, I don't know, a year and a half. I was like I was a militant confident child that some Pokémon were real. It's very It's rational, dude.

[00:08:01]It's just It's just It's rational thinking. Squirtle's probably real.

[00:08:03]Yeah, exactly. Squirtle's probably real.

[00:08:05]Is he being sarcastic? This is exactly what I thought. I'm not being sarcastic.

[00:08:08]This is This [snorts] is what I thought when I was a child. And I was so confident in it and I thought I was I was opening people's eyes. I'm jealous of LA. The weather's actually good.

[00:08:16]Dude, LA has [ __ ] 72 and sunny year round fire weather. What it doesn't have? Affordability, ability to drive anywhere without being stuck in 2 hours of traffic, any solution for the homelessness crisis crisis.

[00:08:31]Those three things. In Ireland, there's been a ton more ads about selling old jewelry gold at pawn shops. That's probably not a recession indicator.

[00:08:38]That's a gold price indicator. Gold pawning shops make their money when the gold price is high. They can get a a big gap between what they'll pay you and what they can melt it down and sell to the market. And so, when gold price is high, which it is right now, it's like astronomically high, you're going to see more ads for gold gold trade-ins. By the way, I mean, god damn, it is high. And yeah, and why is gold high? Well, if you want to know, I mean, the reason gold is high is actually pretty complicated.

[00:09:05]The reason gold is high is because it smokes a lot of weed.

[00:09:10]>> [clears throat] >> I'll tell you the big idea. The big idea that made me start buying in gold a year ago, which is that This actually segues perfectly. This will segue perfectly, so. What, 2021? Maybe 2022? In like 2022 or 1, Europe and the US confiscated all of Russia's foreign dollar reserves. Upon doing that, they then debated actually taking them, seizing them. Right now that they're just held, they're not they're not No one's taking them, they're just held, but the interest they make is then and is now used to uh fund the war effort against the 2022 Russia. Anyway, this is actually a pretty big deal because this has not been done before.

[00:09:51]This idea of seizing a country's foreign dollar reserves. Um and once they did it, it sort of crossed a big line that meant every central bank that is not America sort of collectively realized that once that they needed to be less dependent on the dollar. They needed to have something else in their reserves than dollars because if they ever got on the wrong side of the US, it could weaponize the dollar against them. And so, what you saw after this moment, and this is like predicted that it happened.

[00:10:19]After this moment is that on net, central banks around the world started to with their net marginal dollar buy more gold. The biggest [snorts] example would be like China. China used to recycle all its like, you know, let's say let's say it's USA China, right? We give them dollars, they give us goods.

[00:10:37]And so, we end up with a lot of Chinese goods, and they end up with a lot of American dollars. And what they used to do is take those dollars and recycle them back in the system by buying American Treasuries. They don't do that anymore. Now they take those dollars and they buy gold.

[00:10:50]Uh and so, central bank purchases of gold since 2022 specifically have spiked. They've skyrocketed. Uh they're buying tons and tons and tons more gold than they used to. Uh and so, that's that was part of the thesis. There's more than that, but that's that's part of the thesis that there's a there's a gigantic price insensitive buyer, which is governments. They don't care what price the gold is, they just buy it.

[00:11:10]They just have dollars, we'll buy. And they are all buying tons more gold every cycle than they used to. I I I hit some serious writer's block on this presentation, and it's called I'll just tell you what it's called, [ __ ] it. It's called weird {slash} funny recession indicators.

[00:11:30]And it's meant to be a non-serious economics video about how everyone is calling everything a recession indicator. You know, including like Who Dat calling Ludwig videos recession.

[00:11:40]Anyway, I I have like uh you know, like 50 things and I think it's kind of funny, but then it is kind of serious and then I didn't know how to finish it. So, I've just [ __ ] noodled on it. But I think it's a good video if I can just finish it. Evan Gao, thank you for the 48 months. 4 years. My life is genuinely improved after meeting you A Truck. I'm not kidding. Wait, this is really nice. Wait, when did Evan Gao get so kind?

[00:12:01]>> [laughter] >> Who's Who's taking your account? Dude, didn't like 3 days ago you make a video >> [laughter] >> Anyway, that's very kind of you Evan Gao. It is funny that I consider myself um you know, actually friends with like Evan and Who Dat and >> [laughter] >> That's [ __ ] strange when you think about how it all started. I think I have like I like they could crash in my place if they were Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. I think that's that's wild. I thought all subs congratulations. Yeah, well, I'm I am close personal friends with every every one of my viewers and they can all stay here. So, smiley face.

[00:12:34]It's a big sleepover and we're all invited.