The Cost of Living Crisis — In the Tank Podcast #537

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Get out.

[00:00:37]All right, we are now live. Welcome to the show, everyone. Well, President Trump has dropped his lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for the creation of what Democrats are calling a slush fund for his allies and what supporters call justice for the wrongly targeted and what the Department of Justice simply calls an anti-weaponization fund. But for our main topic today, we are going to dig into the cost of living crisis, especially as it impacts young Americans. Gen Z young adults say that they are totally cooked and are not very convinced by the old advice that what they need is to cultivate a crisp handshake and better budgeting skills.

[00:01:15]How right are they? I don't know. Uh we are going to find out. And we are also going to talk about what is actually going on with our economy. And for Unhinged, we have press members at it again. This time, credentialed New York City media are blatantly out in support of the murderer of Brian Thompson. All of this on episode 537 of the In the Tank podcast.

[00:01:50]Heat. Heat. N.

[00:02:14]Welcome to the In the Tank podcast. I am Lana Lucin, your host. And as always, we also have Jim Lakeley, vice president and director of communications at the Heartland Institute. Sam Carnick, senior fellow at the H Heartland Institute. And special welcome everyone to Hartland's state government relations manager, Samantha Filmore. Thank you so much for being on, Samantha. We called you like super last minute for this, so I'm really glad you were able to make it.

[00:02:38]And as always, guys, we also have producer Andy Singer in the background keeping us moving along and also uh cutting me off with funny drops. So as as is duty. All right, so before we get started, if you want to support the show, you can go to hartland.org/inthetank and donate there. Please also click the thumbs up to like the video. And remember that sharing it helps us to break through YouTube suppression. They really do not like us. Even just leaving a comment helps, too. If you're an audio listener, you can help us out by leaving a nice review. All right, I'm going to get us moving along here because Samantha cannot stay for the whole show today. Um, but if if you guys have any big news that you want to mention to the chat here at the top of the show, anybody?

[00:03:27]I'm singled out. Nope, nobody has a All right, then we will move it along. All right, so we're going to start with Unhinged. And I have not watched the clips for this yet. As usual, I I try not to watch them unless I already accidentally like came across them. But oftentimes Jim is the one who finds these for us. And apparently he really found a doozy. Uh so I will be leaning on Jim for this. We can just play the clip now. Um we have credentialed press corps members outside of the murder hearing of Luigi Manion and we are going to see uh what they have to say.

[00:04:04]>> That's all I want to say. Brian mom that lady said something on Inside Edition.

[00:04:10]I said I said what I said. I don't give a >> His children are better off without him.

[00:04:15]They need to learn to not be like their dad and enjoy the blood money, kids.

[00:04:24]>> Um, I'm standing on this as Brian Thompson. I don't give a [ __ ] about millions of Americans.

[00:04:31]>> I liked it. Brian Thompson was a terrorist and more people should acknowledge this and it be appropriate.

[00:04:42]You should be dancing all the graves with the people who profit off of killing you. That's completely called for and unprecedented and normal. This has gone on for too long. This should have happened decades decades ago. Okay, this is long overdue. I had been waiting for someone like this mysterious hero >> to appear.

[00:05:08]He answered my prayers. If you guys are okay with someone like Brian Thompson being around and that being a part of our society, that says more about you as a person because you look absolutely monstrous defending someone like that who participates in social murder.

[00:05:24]That's what we call social murder. He's responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden. And I remember Americans celebrating when Osama bin Laden was killed. It's not like we don't understand heroic violence or like when violence is good. Um there's like that's like as American as Americans.

[00:05:48]>> I mean why do we protect the second amendment so much? Is it to allow people to shoot up schools or is it for us to protect our democracy?

[00:05:56]I think it's to killers.

[00:05:58]And I'm not saying, you know, we should all take up arms, but when your democracy is eroded and there's no other option, like what are we meant to do?

[00:06:05]What are we left to do?

[00:06:06]>> We're backed up into a corner. I mean, if we can't change the world, I just want to be here. So, we don't have a choice. Uh that's why, you know, uh desperate times desperate measures.

[00:06:22]>> I liked it, says the goth girl. I wanted you to see the mannerisms. I want you to see the cutesy curtsy. I want you to see the hand signals as they talk about Brian Thompson being somehow similar to Osama bin Laden. So Stacy, the reason that I want you to see all that is not to give those young ladies fame. I want you to see all that to understand that those are the people that will smile and giggle and curtsy and hand gesture you on your way to the gallows. What I'm providing you today is not fame. I'm providing you knowledge. and perhaps for them infamy.

[00:07:00]>> Yeah.

[00:07:00]>> Yeah. I'm gonna I I have a feeling, Jim, that you probably um have a lot to say about this, so I'm going to just hand it off to you right away.

[00:07:11]Yeah, I got something to say about that.

[00:07:14]First of all, these are not some redneck cranks living in a cabin uh you know in the upper peninsula play acting revolution as part of the Michigan militia which was treated by our justice department by the Biden justice department as the most dangerous threat to the peace of America. These are urbane influencers with uh college educations. One of them was a fullbrite scholar.

[00:07:41]So these are highly educated urbane uh influencers and the New York City of Zoran Mandani, the communist mayor um gave these people press passes to cover the Manion trial.

[00:07:56]Um, and here they are coming outside the courtroom and saying to reporters, I'm very glad they did this actually, that everybody who's not down with the revolution, um, should be slain publicly and and for their families to suffer if they're not also worthy of being slain as well. I I suppose and Manny Manny again and his staff had to know who these women were. Uh I read a story today in the free press that talked about how difficult it actually is to get uh credentialed as a member of the media by the city of New York. It is not easy. Somebody from City Journal, a conservative publication from the Manhattan Institute tried to get a press pass for this and was rejected. Um so they know who they are giving these passes to. Um and with these press passes, they have been given the stamp of approval by the city of New York. And this is if we needed more of them, and we need more of them, but we see this on this program all the time. This is a big mask off moment. Communism is and always will be a political philosophy of mass murder. And they will kill you with these smug and satisfied looks on their faces, with being very stylish, with the hair just so with the little pompador over her forehead and everything just just perfect, or the goth hipster look over there. Um, and the the goth chick said, "If we can't change the world, I don't want to be here." Well, you know, that's fine and dandy for yourself, but the point of the revolution is not uh the the the point what she expressed there was that we want to change the world, and if you're not down with that, I don't want you to be here. Um, I'm just going to stop there before we get this entire channel taken down.

[00:09:48]Well, I'll pick it up.

[00:09:51]The these three women remind me of characters in fiction, and they're very good characters. I I really uh find them quite revealing of uh certain tendencies and a mentality. They remind me very much of a particular fictional character, Madame Defles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, which is set during the French Revolution. And Madame Defar is in fact part of the low level in the bourgeoisi. She and her husband owned own a tavern I think it was. And um they uh she sits beside the guillotine while people are being executed and she's knitting and and is a a very fascinating and well-known character. And I would suggest that anyone who wants to understand where we are today, um certainly the the communist revolution is a uh a touch point and one that can give us some insights. But it seems to me that this sort of uh mentality is embedded deeply in modernity uh from the enlightenment. the very the very beginnings of the Enlightenment in the 1700s and uh read a Tale of Two Cities which is set during the French Revolution and get a a really good perspective on uh where this mentality comes from and where it leads. The fact that that such insignificant people as these three young ladies clearly are um they have their credentials from the city of New York. That's that makes sense to me. Uh insignificant people who are uh can be used by the authorities to make the case that they want uh is a very common thing. But I do think that this is embedded in modernity. And it's something that's going to play out over time here uh as it has elsewhere. And we don't know quite where this is leading, but I have some pretty good ideas.

[00:12:04]Yeah, Doug in the chat says, "It's okay.

[00:12:06]Say what it is, insanity." And I would I would disagree with that. I think that these women probably are at least somewhat sane. Um I think they're just evil. Um >> yes. Yes. I I I agree with you completely. You know, GK Chesterton, get in a Chesterton quote. Here we go. Uh said that the the person who uh is is mad is not the one who has lost his reason. It's the one who's lost everything but his reason. And what he what what Chester was saying there is if your premises are false, you're going to reason. You're going to reason correctly no matter what. You may twist things and create fallacies because you're trying too hard to reason and reason away things. But if you are reasoning from bad premises, you are going to reach abominations. And that's what's happening here. They're reasoning from bad premises. that the fact that you do A and B happens down the road, that doesn't mean B was caused by A and it doesn't mean that you were responsible for it. The notion that that uh this man killed more people than Osama bin Laden is just terrifyingly wrong. But it's logical. It's logical when you take their premises. And I I request respectfully uh all our listeners do not take these premises and do not allow people around you do not allow people around you to take these premises and and to and to run with them and to pretend that that this is the truth.

[00:13:44]It's not. When something is obviously untrue, it probably is untrue.

[00:13:50]>> Samantha, I don't know if you have much that you want to comment on this. Um, it's just like >> our our our fellow ladies are not doing okay there in New York.

[00:14:01]>> No, I mean, well, first of all, obviously that's morally repugnant. Um, but I'm not surprised. I mean, these are likely the same people that we saw on social media celebrating when Charlie Kirk was killed. um as we move into modernity, as we move more into um extreme liberalism and socialism, there's almost like a I hate to say it and there's no other word, but like a blood lust. They are totally fine when anyone who does not fit their narrative is killed. Whether it's a capitalist in the case of of um I believe it's Brian Thompson, I'm I'm not sure if I'm misremembering that. um or if it's someone who is not like a person of color. How many white people have been killed in New York City and then they continue to let um all of these um violent criminals back out onto the street without parole and then you can continue to have repeat repeat offenders and so much violence in New York City. I think in general it's just the push to the ultralleft into socialism and ultimately without getting too religious it's it's a departure from Christ. We're no longer a Christian nation. We're supposed to um or most religions, most Abrahamic religions can they condition you and you are taught to love everyone and treat everyone with respect and not bring harm upon anyone. And these people are so out of touch with those basic principles, those principles that guided our founders, those principles that guided the foundation of our of the creation of our laws. And yeah, they're they're happy some children are fatherless. It's disgusting. Um, but yes, that's that's my take.

[00:15:38]>> It reminds me I saw I it had never crossed my mind that there existed people who um unironically thought that it was just to kill the children of the Romanovs.

[00:15:52]Um, but I recently started coming across people online, especially like on Blue Sky and those, you know, cesspits of of leftist thought who um who would say things like, "Well, it actually is good to kill the children of Thesar because even if they were disenfranchised and disinherited, they still would have that like um memory of their parents and the lifestyle that they were used to growing up in. And it was likely that they would be able to climb to some kind of prominence on their own afterwards and we can't have that. So, it's good that the children were killed. And I thought just like what Sam was just saying about like terrible logic. You're like, "Yeah, you're probably right. If the if the children of the Romanovs were allowed to survive, they almost certainly would have become wealthy in their own in their on their own right.

[00:16:54]It It's evil. Like it's it's catastrophically unspeakably evil to support that position and yet it's logical.

[00:17:05]>> Right. And that just kind of goes into what I was saying. anyone that does not fit their narrative of convenience or is like in in the way of their ultimate worldview or the goal of the world that they want to live in, they would happily celebrate the violence and the death.

[00:17:18]And I mean that they that actually Makavei writes about that in the prince about discontinuing bloodlines and wiping out entire civilizations if you are to continue to move on. Um and I only say that to kind of sound smart like Sam. I'm gonna reference some old uh political philosophy just once in the show so I could have my name on the check mark on the on the tick board next to Sam. Um it is a it is a school of thought that has been promulgated throughout centuries. Um but it's an inherently amoral one and like I I said anti-Christian and anti- anyone who believes in any god.

[00:17:53]>> Yeah. Well and and Darren and Loki in our comments here just said I thought it was interesting that they praise the second amendment. I know that they were claiming it is there to murder, but it's the first time I've heard any far-left person support the Second Amendment.

[00:18:05]Well, >> fortunately for you, you are um shielded, I guess, from the like very far-left in this country because the very far-left in this country has been pro not pro- 2A necessarily, but certainly pro them getting to have firearms. There's entire like communist and socialist gun clubs in this country, and there have been for many decades. um they just haven't been so prominent until recently. And I and I only laugh because it's kind of it it flies so in the face of the kind of caricature that we have built of what the left is over the last couple of decades because of the way that they tend to behave. uh you know, you get like an Obama or Biden or something um who, you know, they're not going to go out and say this kind of stuff that um that these women are saying with regards to Brian Thompson, but their allies are and have been.

[00:19:05]These people have always existed.

[00:19:06]They're just able to be front and center now because we've become so polarized.

[00:19:13]>> Yeah. I mean, we we usually talk a lot on this podcast about how ignorant communists are about economics. I mean, Mad Donnie is that with almost every policy is is he's proposed. You know, most prominently his publicly owned grocery store thing, which is laughable.

[00:19:28]Um, and it's going to take three years to build. It's going to cost probably 20 times what it would cost to open a private one, and it will actually make food more scarce. But, um, but with with that e with those economic arguments, we kind of give them the benefit of the doubt, right? you know, we think they are ignorant rather than, you know, stupid or even evil. They just don't understand how the world works. But then when they celebrate the murder of people who disagree with them, it shows that they are not ignorant. They are tyrants.

[00:19:56]They are evil. And they are endorsing and trying to bring upon this world an evil ideology. They have all of the characteristics of every kami national leader ever, which is an irresistible instinct to handle opposition to their unworkable ideas with murder. One at a time is fine. Mass murder is even better, but it doesn't matter because um the only way to get to utopia is to get rid of the people who are standing in your way. And uh it is dangerous obviously and it is quite I'm trying not to be angry. I'm trying to be I'm trying to think about sadness but I can't be sad about this. This is the face of evil that they anybody who thinks any murder is justified because um like like Sam said earlier don't accept any of the premises that these women have put forward because they are not uh grounded in fact. But um and I might I'm actually even reluctant to even address the issue that they are supposedly um talking about where murder is justified and that's the cost of healthare and our insurance system in this country. Um, I would remind and I'm going to bring this up in the other topics in a much less angry way, but I would remind these three ladies that well for one thing, the heartless two published a book by the recently departed Peter Ferrara called the Obamacare disaster and we are a free market think tank and that book was aptly titled because the argument that more government involvement, government control over the health care system is going to bring down prices and bring and uh make it more affordable.

[00:21:39]and more accessible for people never closer in your hand to the doctor who's giving you care, the the less distance there is between those two things, the more efficient it is and the cheaper the care becomes. But Obamacare set up a system in which the insurance companies, everybody's insurance rates have gone sky through through the roof. you know, the Harlem Institute, we're a nonprofit organization, but we provide obviously health benefits to our our full-time employees, and those costs have been going through the roof over the last um 10 years or so, even more. And that is a result of the policies that these three ladies would certainly have voted for if they were old enough to do it back then.

[00:22:24]But it is the left that created the problem that in their evil minds think murder is justification to somehow write that wrong. Um it is the leftist policies that have caused what she thinks is a disaster in the health insurance industry in this country.

[00:22:41]>> Yep. And only make it worse. I'm sorry.

[00:22:43]I'm going to cut you off for a second here.

[00:22:45]>> Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast.

[00:22:53]There's no time for joking, Andy.

[00:22:54]>> Yeah, sure did. We are We are moving along. Whoops. Sorry.

[00:22:59]>> These are the same people who would absolutely celebrate if Donald Trump like was killed or any other conservative member of of um our government. I I know so many people that like have said, "Oh my gosh, I got hope.

[00:23:11]He has a heart attack." You know, it's just crazy things. It's just absolute They It's a blood loss. Anyone that stands in their way, they have no human empathy for.

[00:23:21]>> Yeah. Quickly. Yeah. quickly add that uh demonization of your opponents is this this is exactly where that leads and that's what's been going on for decades now. And demonization of your opponents, your opponents are normal people who are just trying to live and just trying to um make their way in the world. This the this man who was killed, I I'm sorry, I can't even remember his name.

[00:23:47]>> Brian Thompson.

[00:23:48]>> Yes, Thompson. and he he was a a CPA, a certified public accountant, and he worked hard and he just made it to an important position in the world. Who knows, maybe he would have done very good things. Won't have that chance to find out.

[00:24:06]>> Yeah, >> I think I'm sorry, one I think one very important thing um on top of what Sam says is that if we continue to demonize our opponents, there will never be common ground met. there is you you completely throw out any propensity for resolution if the other side is evil and if you view them as such and I think that's where we've gotten in our mainstream political ideology um which leads us to a lot of problems that we deal with at the heart institute but it's it's rely problematic and troubling >> absolutely right well Jim had alluded to you know how health insurance or health care in general has gotten so expensive so that's why the main topic today is about the cost of living crisis We're not going to get into the healthcare stuff too much this time around uh because there are some other angles to hit this from and I really wanted to talk about this and and part of the reason why is because Sam you just had a new housing affordability policy study come out and also at the same time there's a like viral discussion going on or just the discourse on the Gen Z part of X uh where everybody is arguing over whether it's reasonable to suggest that young people might have a spending problem. And uh I want so before I get into this topic, I'm going to offer a trigger warning here. Um in this segment, we are going to be generalizing about different generations of Americans.

[00:25:29]If you are of the generation being discussed and what we say does not apply to you, then you are not who we are talking about. I am a millennial. I think technically I might be a zillen like just right on the on the edge there in 95. Um, I do not strongly identify with the stereotypes of my generation.

[00:25:48]And yet, I do not get mad when people make generalizations about millennials.

[00:25:53]And, you know, they call it the MI generation. We have to be able to generalize about generational habits and statistics in order to help explain why those habits are changing over time amid different generations.

[00:26:07]Population averages are not indictments of your individual character. So, that is my warning. Every time we have to talk about different generations, we get comments from people upset or feeling offended that we're we said mean things about boomers or we said mean things about Gen X or or millennials or whoever. Not talking about you. I'm talking about statistical averages. So, Gen Z, two things can be true about Gen Z. One, the economy is really rough. you just entered the workforce during COVID or afterwards or just before and inflation has been absolutely insane due to the government. We will talk about that in a minute. But also look guys, it would not kill you to skip Door Dash once in a while. Um you know what is it usually something like 30 bucks for a single meal delivered to you with all the fees and everything. If you skip it for a while, a couple of weeks doing without, you can set that cash aside and put it into something that can help protect what you've earned better than Chipotle can. Precious metals do not taste all that great. They are not good for your digestive system, but they are good for your savings. And that is why at In the Tank, we trust Advisor Metals over all of the other metal selling guys. And that's because we know that the person running the place is the best of the best. A great friend of Liberty, Ira Bashettsky owns and is the managing member of Advisor Metals. He has decades of experience in precious metals and is the only person in the physical precious metals industry who has the Commodities Futures Trading Commission Federal Registration. That's a lot of words.

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[00:28:46]Thank you very much. All right, with that out of the way, I really don't about them. Affordability right now is more difficult for millennials and zoomers and than older generations.

[00:29:01]Right now, 84% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 believe that the economic conditions in the United States are either bad or terrible. 81%, that's 84% of 18 to 24 year olds. 81% of 25 to 29 year olds believe that economic conditions are bad or terrible. So the vast majority of people under 30 years old believe that things are awful.

[00:29:28]Housing is the biggest issue that has a large difference in that generally generational impact. I think um high high home prices benefit people who have houses already, but it makes it harder to get that first home. So Sam, you recently wrote a study on this and discussed it in a uh Life, Liberty, Property um article. So in your report, you say that monetary inflation in the early 2020s aggravated long-term housing affordability crunches and turned it into a housing crisis. Reducing inflation will alleviate the short-term crisis. The nation must then turn to the long-term problem, a stagnant supply of housing. So if you can expand on that a little bit or tell us.

[00:30:11]>> Yeah, thank you Lana. The the the premise of the paper is well the idea of the paper in fact is to correct the record and make it clear why we have an affordability crisis. And the the the short story of it is I encourage people to read the paper. Uh it's very it's it's done in terms that regular people can understand. It's not too technical.

[00:30:35]I don't I don't think um but the key thing is that we have had a housing affordability problem now for really a few decades and the the big reason behind that is that the amount of housing that we're building has been decreasing for a variety of reasons but all those reasons are caused by government and it's the federal government and the uh state and local governments have put so many restrictions on housing and the federal government and the central bank which is a product of the federal government.

[00:31:13]Let's remember that the federal reserve although it's supposed to be independent and so on and so forth was created by government in the first place. So this is all uh uh these are all products of of government uh actions and the these government actions restrict what people can do in terms of in terms of building, selling, buying and occupying housing and and and maintenance and things like that are all also affected too. So interest rates for example affect the housing market very much. Well, what has happened here is that over the decades, it's become more and more difficult to uh buy a house and to afford a house uh because we have had an incredible amount of immigration. We we our our population is one-third bigger than it was in in the 1980s uh when when um uh when we got a deal that in immigration would be slowed. Uh and remember President Reagan signed off on that and some cynics at the time suggested that well you're going to get your amnesty but you're not going to get your cuts in immigration and that was exactly what happened. So because we've added so many people to the to the uh market uh so many buyers and on top of that we have added many more in the 21st century because the millennial generation and the the uh generation Z the zoomers have hit the marketplace in the last well start about the last decade or so and so you've had an incredible intensification of people wanting to buy homes and in particular wanting to get those starter homes. And on top of that, the building of homes decreased radically starting in 2008 because of the great recession and the intensifying re restrictions on finance which were brought about by the the uh the Barney Frank bill which was uh in the late Barney Frank who who just died a day or so ago. um the the that put so many great uh heavy restrictions on how you finance things that it is it it really just shot the the market of uh from creating sufficient supply. So the number of house new houses being built has been very low since uh DoddFrank.

[00:33:56]So what you those those are all things caused by government and then on the local level uh which is local governments are made by the state. So the states are responsible for this but the lo on the local level where this is occurring. Obviously you have zoning but on top of that you have an incredible amount and a very elaborate code uh building code um items and restrictions and those are based yes on safety but they're also based on the uh convenience of the and the profits of the big players in in in that world. So if you make things very complicated, what happens? Uh people have to hire somebody to do things that ordinarily they might be able to do themselves. So all of this adds to the expense. So the government has made housing much much much more expensive. And so you you put all that together, housing now for a lot of young people costs more than 50% of their their wages. Now, this is very interesting because when you make that comparison between the millennials and the boomers, you find that the the wages and incomes for millennials are higher than boomers at the same age. What what boomers were making when you correct for inflation was was less than what millennials are getting now. So, that's an interesting uh statistic. And then housing in fact is less expensive for millennials and zoomers than it was for boomers. Now wages have been rising much more rapidly than inflation since the beginning of last year. So we had this huge burst of inflation and that played out through the economy and made people feel much less uh much less wealthy than they were. And that has to that and and it came it came up so fast that it takes a long time for wages to catch up. Now, we're never going to have the prices go back down. Uh that's not how things work. But what you do is the wages uh rise more rapidly so that your real income catches up and kills off the effects of the the original inflation.

[00:36:20]But that takes time. It's going to take easily two or three years to five years to get it all rung out. But the reports are continually and consistently about what young people feel about the economy. And as I mention and I mention all this in the life, liberty, property uh item that there's a reason they feel that way. It's not irrational and that is the enormous cost of higher education.

[00:36:50]The cost of a college degree has more than doubled in inflationadjusted terms, not just nominal terms, but in real terms since the boomers went to college.

[00:37:00]And the quality of the product has absolutely plummeted. Now, this was all caused by guess who? The government.

[00:37:08]Massive increase in federal spending on higher education. And it was absolutely u metasticized during the Obama administration. the the amount of spending on uh federal spending on higher education has been incredibly high. Now, this money poured in. All right. And because it was borrowed and the expected payoff of a college degree was was very high. It was terrific. So, the customers didn't pay as much attention to the fundamental quality of the product. The students and the parents were just, okay, this is what it takes to get a college degree.

[00:37:47]So today's younger workers, they who especially those who have those college degrees, they had every reason to expect that they would be getting twice the real wages that the boomers got. Now that was impossible. It was never going to happen. And so that disappointment has led to anger, to blame, to scapegoats.

[00:38:09]And the scapegoats are capitalism and capitalists, which is exactly what they were taught in college. And those three uh young ladies that we saw at the beginning of this uh episode uh are absolutely perfectly characteristic of that. So this is the real problem that the generation uh that the the the two generations that have been coming into the workforce and the housing market in the last few years, the millennials and the zoomers were given a a uh story about themselves and about their situation that was simply false. It was terribly false and it was wrong for people to do that. And we at the H Heartland Institute have been saying for years the truth about what was really going on. So as a result of all this, the higher education sector is going into a much needed reorientation and it's going to bring lower prices and better product, but it's going to take a while. Harvard just announced, Harvard University just announces ending grade inflation. We'll see if that turns out to be true. But the point is that this is playing out now. uh to repair what government did. It's going to be up to the young people who are who are affected by this whole situation, who are feeling this disappointment to recognize the reality behind it. Who actually caused this? I'm not saying who is to blame. I'm just saying who caused it and what caused it. It wasn't capitalism. It wasn't the uh greedy landlords. It wasn't uh greedy investors.

[00:39:57]Having money, having private investing money coming into any field is a good thing. You get more of whatever it is you're investing in. So, it wasn't those people. It was government that did this.

[00:40:12]And the government that did this was elected by the boomers, the lost generation before them, generation Jones, generation X, and yes, the millennials.

[00:40:27]So, we're we're all we're all we were all part of this. Um, but what could we do? What could those of us who oppose us do? We at the H Heartland Institute have told the truth over the years. and what we what we very strongly understand to be the truth. So, we need to get that out there. And that's what the purpose of this paper is and that's what the purpose of shows like this are and the all the follow-up work we're doing in uh articles and opeds and the like is to to show people that this is that capitalism is not the problem. Markets are not the problem. We don't have free markets.

[00:41:10]free markets are the solution. So, we need to spread that word and I encourage everyone who uh watches the show and listens to it to to spread that word and to get this information out to their friends and associates and family.

[00:41:25]>> Yeah. And also, and I, this is something that I try to hammer in as much as I can, but it doesn't really seem to stick um with, you know, certain I don't know, certain groups just have a really hard time with this. Telling like Jenzers that their concerns are not anything to be concerned about and that they're just like, you know, egotistical, stupid, greedy, whatever. um is not going to stop them from voting for a mom Donnie who says actually no your expectations are fine for life. Um it's the capitalists that are stealing from you and all these people who are calling you lazy and entitled and blah blah blah.

[00:42:07]They're the ones who have put these conditions on you and they're going to take that route. Um, so there needs to be like some kind of empathy for young people from the older generations. However, two things can be true at once. One, cost of living for young people is difficult. They have a lot of unique challenges that they're facing. Whether it's, you know, you you are convinced or it's hammered into you from the from like 8th grade until senior year of high school that you have to go to college in order to get a good job and that, you know, and they're like taking away our technical schools and stuff in high schools. Um, they're, you know, at my high school at least, it was like a given that you were going to get into college. Uh I believe that certain schools in certain states, certain public schools in certain states um receive like rankings based on how many of their students go on to college. And so there's a huge incentive from high schools to push everybody onto the college track whether or not it's reasonable. You can't blame a 18year-old or a 17year-old for having that message being shoved down their throat, you know, from every angle.

[00:43:26]uh from you know most of the time many of their parents, from the media, from their teachers, school administrators, everyone is trying to get you on that college track. And then you do it and then you graduate four years later or five years later with a degree that cost you 50 grand a year.

[00:43:47]Just you were just doomed from the start. Um and uh and so and so I think that there needs to be um you know kind of like a reasonable balanced discussion about this, not just saying that Gen Z are stupid and entitled and then so now that everybody has these degrees, they are not the the competition for jobs that require degrees is immense and the value of a bachelor's degree is much lower than it was at the same time as the monetary cost to get one is much higher.

[00:44:23]So, that's an incredible difficulty there. Um, and also our culture is just like rotting from the inside out. So, they're so they're dealing with that as well. Um, so I I really I want to emphasize to any Jenzers who are watching this that we're not, you know, we are about to talk about a a spending problem that Jenzers do have, but we're not blaming you for the economic conditions that you live in, except on this one point. All right, so that's my transition here. Um, and I'm going to uh see if uh I think we have a clip for this. Hang on just a second. Uh the fact So we have a clip of Kevin Olirri talking about Oh yeah, actually we can go to this first now that Andy has brought this up on screen. Okay, this is a credit card company study from a credit card company out of Canada, I believe. Um, I do think that these numbers are probably about right for Americans as well, especially metropolitan area living Americans. Um, as you can see, it's not just Gen Z. Every single generation has increased the relative percentage of their spending on food um, on restaurant and delivery compared to the generation before them. every single generation spends more eating out not just not in terms of percentage of the amount of money that they spend on food than the previous on the one hand I would say this is evidence that we are actually like relatively richer than we were in the past and also that there's a lot more availability of different like eating out options of course you know since co especially the delivery services absolutely exploded um there's I don't know like 20 different companies that you can choose from to have your food delivered to you. You can even have uh even more than in the past your groceries delivered to you. And each subsequent generation has taken more and more advantage of these services. Um however the so the fact of the matter is that Jenzie does eat out a lot more than previous generations.

[00:46:47]But if you're already struggling or you feel like you can't afford a home or you can't afford whatever, spending a large percentage of your food budget on eating out is is not the way to go. Uh we are all part of this trend, but it's it's not so it's not such a good strategy. Here we have a clip from Kevin Olri uh that I want to pull up.

[00:47:11]Um, >> can't stand it when I see kids that are making 70 grand a year spending $28 for lunch. I mean, that's just stupid. It's just think about that in the context of that being put into an index and making 8 to 10 8 to 10% a year for the next 50 years. Stop buying coffee for $5.50. I can I can walk around with anybody for a day and show you that they're wasting 15% of their money, sometimes 20. Stupid stuff. You know, you go to work, you spend 15 bucks on a sandwich. What are you, an idiot? It cost you 99 cents to make a sandwich at home and bring it with you. So what if you bring it with you? Bring your own water if you have to, or your own drink, or bring your own coffee mug. You start to add that up every day, it's a ton of money. Most people, particularly working in metropolitan cities that are just starting out on their job, making their first 60,000, piss away about 15,000 a year on stupid stuff. And that's what they should stop doing.

[00:48:09]May I say uh quickly, okay, boomer, but >> no, don't start.

[00:48:15]>> But he's right. He is right that if you if you care about these things and if you you care about your future, you will make sandwiches and bring them in or hard-boiled eggs, whatever it is you you like. And yes, bringing in your own water and even maybe spritzing in some flavor into it or whatever.

[00:48:37]But the problem is that the millennial generation and the the Gen Z have been brought up in a time of incredible inflation.

[00:48:53]And what inflation does is it flattens the time hor uh the the the time preference. Meaning you would rather spend money now >> than later because money spent now buys more than it will a few weeks from now, let alone a year or a month from now.

[00:49:10]So, it's hard to convince people that they're they're getting a good deal if they save their money and invest it instead of just buying things. And that the reason it is hard to convince them is because it's false. It's not true that that that they're that they're going to get a better deal by by uh putting the money aside. Uh they were getting we were getting nothing from our bank account. If you put money in a in a bank and just put it in a savings account, you were getting literally nothing. What was it 00025% or something? And so you you're dis and and all of this was caused by government regulations.

[00:49:49]So you are making pe making it foolish to save and you're making it foolish to invest in in small ways that to invest in small ways and then you say ah you fool you're not investing in saving.

[00:50:04]Well maybe they're the ones who who are thinking straight and you're the ones who are causing all the problems. It's no maybe in my view they are the ones causing all the problems. None of this none of this is caused by market failure. What is all caused by is government stupidity.

[00:50:25]>> Yeah, Jim, >> that's my my rant.

[00:50:30]>> Thank you, Sam. That was a very good rant. the gym. I do think I mean Kevin is right in so far as he's saying you know if you're worried about cash for rent and stuff then you shouldn't be spending money on um you know eating out so much or whatever and in metropolitan area it's actually very difficult just from social pressure not to do that right it's the same with we all spent a lot probably at a out a lot more in college um than I do now just because like the social pressure uh Not, and I don't mean pressure in like a negative way. I just mean it in like, you know, you're living with a bunch of young people and they're like, "Hey, we're going to go out and get pizza or whatever." And you're like, "Okay, I'll come with." And then you end up spending like all of your money on food all and your and sometimes adult beverages. Um, so but I do understand that this clip of Kevin Olri went viral and young people are furious at it. I can understand, even if he's right in some ways, I can understand why the optics of a extraordinarily wealthy person telling people to pack a lunch um is not great.

[00:51:41]You know, it would get you kind of angry, you know. Um it it's so I I I feel I I have a lot of empathy for the um the or sympathy rather for the frustration when this guy is talking like this. Um but what how do we how do we fix it?

[00:52:03]Because it's kind of between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, you have people online right now who are saying like having hot meals delivered to their house from Chick-fil-A or whatever is a human right. And on the other hand, you have people saying the economy is terrific. You have nothing to worry about.

[00:52:21]>> Well, I mean, neither of those things are true. I mean, uh there's somebody from the Heartland Institute who has been on this podcast quite a bit. Um uh I see him in the office um you know every week and we have lunch together.

[00:52:37]Um about half the time I bring leftovers from home. Uh half the time I'll run downstairs. There's a little cafeteria in our building and I'll grab a sandwich and you know come upstairs and yeah it's about as expensive as uh Kevin Olirri says they should be paying 15 bucks for for a sandwich but that's just the price for things today. Thank you. Uh Biden economy and the skyrocketing inflation which is uh very unfortunate. It hits everybody but it does hit younger people just getting their career started harder than anybody else. And that's absolutely true. But this person I'm talking about never gets lunch outside. He has a young family that he has started and I've even offered to buy him a sandwich and he says no it's fine and he because he brought his own. Every day he does this.

[00:53:22]So, you know, Kevin Olirri's brand is to be, you know, he is jokingly I think he calls himself Mr. Wonderful, which is the inverse of what he is because on Shark Tank, he is probably one of the meanest ones, if not the meanest person on that show. It's it's it's his shtick.

[00:53:38]I get it. And nobody wants to hear that the way they're living their life is the main source of their financial problems.

[00:53:47]But the fact remains that, you know, no matter who you are, there is some truth to that to to that statement and nobody really likes to hear it. Um, especially younger people. Um, you pointed out very um very correctly, Lana, earlier when you talked about student debt. Student debt, it's much much worse now than it was when I went to college between 1988 and 1992. And why is that? It was because of the free government loans for everybody. So it right as Gen Z was starting to begin their adult lives, the difference between the cost of something or the price of something and its actual value was being completely separated because you could just apply for a government student loan. It doesn't, you know, so there was no real cost to you in the beginning. So you didn't really grasp it. And I was actually talking with my wife about this today. You know, we knew we were going to talk about this today. You know, when I was a young man, um, you know, I was not wealthy by any means. I worked two jobs and, you know, it's hard to save money when you have to pay use all of your money to pay for bills. Um, and I had to do that, too. You know, it's it's tough for every generation when they start out, believe it or not. I know that you know with all there's all sorts of reasons why there are unique challenges to the rising generation right now but that does not mean that the generations before you did not have their own challenges that were just slightly different but financially we're not that much different than we are today. But one thing I remember I saw this commented on on Twitter this week and I think it's pretty apt.

[00:55:24]Money used to be money, right? It was cash. It was in your hands. Um, and it's harder to save, I think, when you don't ever really see your own money. I mean, again, I'm Gen X, and of course, we had credit cards. I had a credit card. Um, but we used to go to ATMs.

[00:55:40]Remember ATMs? I think they're pretty much a dead technology today. I can't remember the last time I went to an ATM.

[00:55:45]In fact, I've been carrying around the same like I've accumulated $20 bills. I think I'm carrying about $212 in my pocket for like three years because I never use cash. Nobody goes to the ATM.

[00:55:56]But when I was a young man, I'd go to the ATM. I'd sit there and think, "Oh gosh, can I get $60 out? I should probably just get $40 out. I should just get $40 out. That's all I need to go out with my friends." And then guess what?

[00:56:08]Guess what's on that little receipt that would come out? What's left in your checking account, which was, you know, $212 and my next paycheck is not coming for another four days. And so I was always acutely aware of how poor I was every single day when I needed to have money. But today, I like I said, I don't use cash anymore. Um, I get annoyed if anybody even asks for cash. Um, I use Venmo and PayPal and all sorts of stuff, but certainly Gen Z, I'd be s I'd actually love to see if somebody could look this up. What percentage of of Gen Z even has a traditional bank account?

[00:56:43]Is all their money just put into a Venmo account or to PayPal and everything is digital? So, I think when you when you're separated from have from real physical money, from having to balance a checkbook, from having to write out checks and put them in an envelope and mail it off to the cable company, um I think it it it doesn't certainly doesn't help your financial literacy when you don't really actually ever um see physical money.

[00:57:06]>> Samantha, how about you? I know you have a young family and you guys are, you know, you've you've run into all the same struggles that all the rest of us have. Um so, I'd love to hear what you think.

[00:57:17]Yeah. Well, I guess I would consider myself one of the also anomalies. I remember coming out of college and taking my first job and my salary was so low that I would like literally go through the grocery store once every once a week and like be doing math in my head as I was like pulling things off the shelf. like, "Okay, this plus this will feed me for like four days and then like that'll that means I have like $15 more dollars to spend at this trip to the grocery store and absolutely lived off of like soup and popcorn and ramen noodles and cereal and all the other fun um caricature type foods that absolutely you can live off of if you are on a budget." And I was I would occasionally Door Dash, but it was a very special treat for me. Um, but no, I think it's to build off of what Jim has said. I have so many for I am the very I think I'm the last millennial. I am 1996.

[00:58:11]Um, so I'll be 30 this year, so this is like I think yeah, technically um I'm the very last of them. But I have so many friends who have said verbatim like, "Well, we're not going to be able to buy a house anytime soon. Like, might as well just have fun now or like might as well just go get that Starbucks or order in." It's a really unhealthy set of logic, but it's it's true. And the like the supply and demand is so hard. There are so many boomers that are homeowners and have homes. And I live in a metropolitan city. And just you have to inherently be bidding 60 $80,000 over the asking price to even consider winning a bid for a home. um much less being able to afford the down payment or the mortgage. Um but we are in a culture that has promulgated just reckless spending. How quickly can you go onto Amazon and just order things you need?

[00:59:08]Same with Door Dash. And exactly to Jim's point, you're not using cash.

[00:59:13]Everything is pulled digitally. All of your bills are pulled digitally. If you select the paperless option for your gas company or your electric company, you're not even physically seeing how much money you spent on on utilities that month unless you are hawking your bank account every day, which everyone should be to know what's going in and out.

[00:59:32]That's my like unsolicited financial advice, I guess. Um, but yeah, I mean, I have a young son. I have two young sons, but the one who can speak will be like, "Oh, mommy, like just order it off of Amazon so nonchalantly like that."

[00:59:47]because I'll tell him, "Oh, you know, we need this and I'll order it." Um, but in his mind, you just, you know, click a few buttons on a phone and it'll show up at your house. And I think as much as he's he's three, so he's a toddler. But there are, I feel like, adults who feel that way, too, like, oh, just order it off of Amazon. I need it. I'll get it now. We're almost living in an age of ultra comfortability. Everyone needs to be 100% comfortable all of the time. Um, and I think that that's our problem. No one is like really well now people are really struggling but like if you are like me and you grew up in the 90s and I had one parent who worked and we lived a comfortable life. I have enjoyed growing up in an in in an in an America that was prosperous and that where we could have little lux not excessive luxuries but my family could go out to dinner and we could go to Disneyland and we could go take a family vacation once a year and now those are things that are becoming further and further out of touch for young Americans and it is a culmination of the student loan debt the like howing housing affordability crisis what food costs insurance and I think and this is I'm kind of going on a rant right now but in my mind and in so many others I'll speak for so many others the American dream the American way was that you will work hard and you will be able to pro provide a life for your family that you did not have so my parents never went to college but I was able to go to college and I paid for it with loans and now and my husband was the same way and now we are working very hard to save for our kids so that they who knows if college will even be relevant or whatever in 20 years. But we're trying to save for them so that they can go to college and not take out loans so that when they enter into the workforce, they can focus on saving for a house instead of spending anywhere from 10 to 20% of their income on student loan debt. Um, and that's that's the dream and that's what where I think we're getting so lost is so many people are working so hard to keep themselves above water that they're asking themselves tough questions like, should I have a family? Should I start a family? Will I have one kid or will I have two? Like, and it's really stunting a lot of the decisions that these people make. So, again, then you say, "Wow, that's really stressful. I'm kind of sad. I'm gonna order some Chick-fil-A to feel a little bit better and like maybe that milkshake could like cookies and cream milkshake will like make me feel a little sad about my dystopian future of a life. Um, and don't even talk about AI maybe taking your job in a few years.

[01:02:27]Um, so not to give a lot of excuses for these younger generations because I've done it. I've been strict on a budget. I still am on a budget with my family. Um, but it's it's hard psychologically. It's hard. Um, and it's not fun having wealthy older people tell you that you shouldn't get Chipotle, which you shouldn't, but anyway. Anyways, that's my rep.

[01:02:51]>> Yeah.

[01:02:51]>> Yeah. No, I've heard I've heard it the same thing from friends of mine. Um, and but especially people from like my sister's generation. She's a couple years younger than me. Um and and what I'm hearing it called is um financial nihilism where they're thinking like look I'm not going to be able to save for a house by skipping Door Dash like >> right >> so I might as I may as well like enjoy a meal that I like right now because I'm not going to be able to afford a family and a house and vacations and whatever.

[01:03:27]So why would I like, you know, live small when it's not going to pay off in the long term? And so and I and I really do understand that perspective. I I I don't think that it's the right perspective to have. Um but it's >> I think again not an irrational one.

[01:03:48]I was going to say I think frontal lobe development helps. Like I I know for a fact that when I turned 25, I was like, "Oh, wow." Like things make so much more sense now. Like I could um and I joke about that all the time. I loved like brain science and the way that it affects decision- making. And something that I don't think is talked about nearly enough is that all of these young people, most of them from college to entering the workforce scientifically do not have the fully developed frontal lobe, which is the part of your brain that tells you like helps you make long-term decision domino effect thinking, especially with finances. Um, so I and another just random Samantha anecdote is that's why I think people should not be able to vote until they're 25 or at least paying for their own health insurance. That's my we've we've always joke around the H Heartland Institute with various um voting reforms. I'm like that you have to be paying for your own health insurance if you want to cast a vote in this country.

[01:04:44]Um completely derailing the topic. Um but that's a lot of a lot of younger people feel that way and then I I hear those things and I'm like well yeah like that's not good logic but it makes sense and you're young and it's it's so hard.

[01:04:57]Um I actually have to jump off now you guys. Thank you so much for having me.

[01:05:01]So I'm going to use this to say goodbye.

[01:05:02]Um, this was such a joy and I hope to see you guys soon. I'll see you guys.

[01:05:06]We'll have you on again. Everyone, >> if so long, >> let me see.

[01:05:13]>> I I No, I just real quick I call it economic black filling. You know, it's like why why even bother saving? Like you said, Lana, you know, they've they've just taken the black pill.

[01:05:21]They've given up. Um, it's completely understandable. I think in today's economy >> the the attitude that uh Lana and Sam that you both um articulated a few moments ago is we have to understand where it's coming from though. It is caused by policy there there's the the high expense of houses is caused by high regulation.

[01:05:51]That's that's really what is coming from this the suppression of supply and the the high inflation is caused by government high federal spending. I I demonstrate this in the paper. High federal spending brought on the inflation because the Federal Reserve, the central bank had to monetize it is what it's called. It's it's a process and and you can you can get it from the paper. But the fact is that excessive government spending causes inflation.

[01:06:20]there's simply no way around it. And so this attitude that well I'm not going to be able to afford a house is not irrational.

[01:06:32]And the notion that you would say look if I can't afford a house why do I care whether I buy from Door Dash or I I I make a sandwich myself. It's there's no difference. It's not an irrational thought. It's it's it's got some foundation to it. And so what we need to understand is why the the the fundamentals of our economy have got so off track. And I think we can get into some pretty good um theories about who benefits from this and and why uh governments would do these things. And it seems pretty clear to me that that we're creating we've created a crony capitalist system that is nothing like free markets. And the solution to this is not more government, more of the things that created the problem in the first place. The solution is the thing that was destroyed by government and that will will solve the problem by freeing people to build houses and to buy houses as they wish, which will make prices make sense. The prices of things make sense when people are free to buy and sell. when they're not free to buy and sell, prices don't make sense. And when the currency is debouched, the prices don't make sense. So, fix those two things. Fix regulation, fix the currency through lowering spending, and young people will start to save for houses. Right now, doesn't make any sense for a lot of people.

[01:08:19]>> Yeah. Let let me just add to that a little bit. Uh like you said Sam, government policy is what's made the economy not as strong as it could be because and especi and and frankly it's leftist democrat policies.

[01:08:33]Not that Republicans are perfect on this on this topic. That is certainly not the case. But a lot of the troubling economic conditions that we are in right now are the result especially over the last four years before Trump's second term of the policies of the Biden administration and before that you know QE1 and QE2 and QE3 all this money printing government spending absolutely exploded um at the end of Trump because of COVID but then it just kept going up and up and up under Biden. The more the government spends and is involved in the economy, the less power that the dollar in the private sector has. It's it's competition works in the economy too when it comes to to money. But what is the number one put it this way?

[01:09:21]Democrats, if you were to take it by age group, have one age group that votes more for the Democrats than any other age group. If you take it from young people to middle-aged and to older people, and that's young people. I looked it up last night. It's it's around 60% of Gen Z votes Democrats. In fact, well, we've talked about a lot on this podcast. Those three disgusting evil women are Gen Z. Um, and they're socialists, right? But you're voting for the policies that are creating the bad economic conditions that you're in. um as you tend to get older and understand better how the economy works and how life works, you tend to be more conservative over time. But um you know, Gen Z is in a way, not to blame them, but they're voting for these policies that are making life more difficult for them and making the economy uh harder to recover because you know, Sam, you say it on this podcast probably at least three times per podcast that we do not have a free market in the United States.

[01:10:22]that we do not we've never actually experienced free market capitalism. Uh we have something very very different from that, but it's still better than than full-on socialism. Uh and then just one last thing, you know, we had that um that graphic up on where each generation gets their food and I think the number was 64% Where is it? There it is. Uh, no. 68% of the food Generation Z eats is either at a restaurant that they that they go to or have it delivered right to their door through Door Dash or something else. There is no justification for having that percentage of the food that you eat for your entire life um coming from restaurants or having it delivered to you. Um, so there is quite a bit of truth to what uh Kevin Olirri said in in the in the clip that's gone viral and has had generations bashing their their digital heads against each other on Twitter for the last uh 36 hours or so.

[01:11:20]>> Yeah.

[01:11:20]>> But you know that that's that's a that's an abs that's that's not sustainable.

[01:11:24]You can't >> you can't live like that. No, you shouldn't live like that. Learn how to cook. Cooking at home is actually a pleasure. I do it. I love to cook.

[01:11:34]>> Yeah. Well, so so the arguments that I've seen uh to that end are well, I've seen some really stupid arguments um from uh left-wing journalist Taylor Loren said that, you know, people who are struggling financially or poor people don't have the time or the capacity was the word she used to cook a home-cooked meal. Um which is incredibly insulting I would think. Um the time thing is one thing. There are a lot of people though who work you know multiple shifts, multiple jobs and they still somehow manage to have time to cook for themselves. Uh it's a it's a issue of priorities but I also think that there is probably a very significant amount of cultural influence.

[01:12:24]Um, I think that because in general, previous generations have been uh like have have succeeded in building wealth.

[01:12:36]A lot of these kids are probably raised more than in the past. I know I'm going to get comments from Jenzers who were like, "We were poor when I was growing up." I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about in general.

[01:12:47]there were more there was more affluence in um their like childhoods and now they're downwardly mobile >> which is something that's somewhat unique in American history. I do think it's true that Gen Z and also part of millennials um especially after they come out of college in massive debt and they got a degree in something that they thought they were going to be able to find a job in and it turns out that job doesn't actually exist anymore. they are downwardly mobile and so they grew up being able to go out to eat every week or their parents would order, you know, Netflix when they used to order it. Um, and uh, and a pizza or whatever every week. They have all the different cable channels. They have HBO. They have all that stuff. And so that's their like baseline expectation for how the middle class or even the lower middle class lives.

[01:13:41]And now they're struggling. and now they're paying they're living in when I lived in South Louisiana, not a wealthy area of the country. Um, I was looking at apartments and this is part of the reason why I I ended up moving to South Carolina, not because it's less expensive to live in South Carolina, but just because I could um find better conditions for for owning my own home.

[01:14:06]Um, I could not find an apartment that was not like actually in a terrifying neighborhood uh that I wasn't willing willing to put up with for less than $2,000 a month. That was crazy. That that that's in South Louisiana. That's a that's a terrible terrible price. And I was a little bit spoiled because I lived in a sketchy sketchy sketchy apartment in college. um that was like a tiny studio apartment that's um probably a 10 foot by 20 foot cell basically. Um that that did not have a kitchen and it was like $450 a month or whatever. Um that was sketchy enough, but uh the the cost of rent is so phenomenal that these kids are are coming out into after they leave college. or even when they're in college, they have all this student debt and their expectations are that they're going to live at least as well as they did when they went into college um with their families and it's just not the case. Uh I think that's shocking and it's very um it's very depressing and um radicalizing frankly for a lot of these kids.

[01:15:27]Well, you know, suppressing investment is certainly not the way to fix this, which is what the Senate bill uh the home ownership bill would do. Uh it's it's it's absurd and stupid and wrong and and we we have this tendency uh to to say, "Well, there's a problem here, and so let's have the government restrict people more so that it'll fix the problem." How are people ever going to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it unless they have the freedom to make the choices to experiment? You know, they they people say that uh states are the laboratories of democracy, but common sense and wisdom come from learning from other people's mistakes.

[01:16:15]You know, they always say the smart person learns from his mistakes or her mistakes. Uh, I think the smart the smarter person, the smartest person learns from other people's mistakes. And that's what we need. I think we need more freedom to make mistakes. We need more freedom to be wrong and to be stupid and to goof up and then we can all learn from that and and learn exactly what works best. But this system of saving everybody from their own choices is the essence of the problem.

[01:16:49]And until we until we get out of that uh mentality, this is just going to get worse and worse.

[01:16:59]>> Yeah, absolutely. Um we had a another Gosh, I I pulled a article that just came up, a jobs report that was reported over at Fox News. Um, and it surprised me in some places, did not surprise me in others. Sam, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Uh, so the jobs report published over at Fox News here says, um, private payrolls added 123,000 jobs in April, well above the prediction of 75,000.

[01:17:32]March's gain of 186,000 jobs was also revised up to 190,000. So government payrolls contracted. I wonder why. By 8,000 jobs in April, the federal government's workforce shed 9,000 jobs for the month, while that decline was partially offset by a gain of a thousand state government jobs. Local government employment was not changed very much.

[01:17:54]And then the manufacturing sector shed 2,000 jobs in April as economists pled um had expected a gain of 5,000.

[01:18:05]I wrote about those uh th those elements earlier this week uh in a in a piece that uh is about to appear. Uh this is this is exactly what's happening is that um the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress uh with a little help from uh Senator Federman, bless his soul, bless his heart, um they're they're try what's going on here is they're trying to normalize things.

[01:18:34]They're trying to get things back to normal where the economy actually reflects the choices of human beings.

[01:18:42]rejoices of human beings when that happens again that you you get what I mentioned earlier that that process of experimentation where people try things they work or they don't work and if they work they do it more if it doesn't work they do it less with government if something doesn't work they do more of it when you say oh we're going to we're going to solve uh poverty by spending more money on it and then poverty increases you say see we have to spend more money on this it's the opposite opposite politics works the opposite way of free markets and free people. And we need to get more of the latter and less of the former. And as we do that, you will see these things happening where the the jobs that we're getting now are real jobs. The jobs that we were getting in 2022, 2023, 2024 were government jobs and they were not productive. things get produced in the private economy. You can make the you can say that government uh adds to the the value of private economy of the private economy that that's uh the Keynesian position but it doesn't.

[01:19:54]It's a net negative and everything other than other than enforcing contracts uh valid contracts that are not products of force or fraud and stopping force and fraud. That's all government can really do or really should do. And so when you have a free choices by free people, you you find the truth of what people really want, what really appeals to people, and you can you can have more of that. When you try to say this is what people should want and this is what people are going to get, then you can be wrong all the time. And the more wrong you are, the more sure you are that you were right in the first place. And that is why you have Montami as president of New York City.

[01:20:48]The idea that 115,000 uh jobs added in April, I'm actually uh pretty surprised by that.

[01:20:57]you the job numbers haven't haven't looked good for a while and they probably won't overall for a while because people forget how many tech jobs have been just zeroed out. I asked Grock and Grock should know it's uh from X it's from Elon Musk Mr. tech himself that how many um just give me an estimate of how many since the beginning of 2025 so the beginning of Trump's term how many tech jobs and then how many media jobs have been eliminated in that time and the number is about anywhere between 350 and 450,000 tech jobs according to Grock have been uh are no longer necessary because mainly because of AI and how many media jobs happily about 5,000 media jobs I think that's a pretty good start. We could probably do better than that. But uh so the idea that jobs numbers are even going up at all considering the way AI is starting to uh displace people, it starts in tech. It's common everywhere.

[01:21:58]Um yeah, as you said, Sam, there's there's a lot of there's a lot of correcting that needs to go on and AI is only accelerating that.

[01:22:05]>> The reorientation that's going on in higher education that I mentioned is going on in the economy. We're getting jobs out of government. That's a very good thing. We're also getting jobs out of uh places that were over valued and were getting a lot of money, especially in capital infusions, and weren't actually making any money. They weren't making products. They weren't making any of the services that anybody wanted.

[01:22:30]>> You know who a lot of the people are that are probably losing their jobs.

[01:22:33]Then I know that there are good like there are probably coders and stuff who are losing their jobs. But I'll tell you who's definitely losing their jobs. And that's those like girls who are going on TikTok and annoying the heck out of everybody being like, "Here's a day in the life of my tech job." Because she has an email job at a tech company at Google or something. And then she's going and spending a ton of money on like the corporate food in the corporate food lounge or or the the cafeteria they have downstairs in the in the c um corporate campus and stuff and and doing their little like Tik Tok dance girl boss things. Oh, their AI is coming for them for sure. They're they're probably the first ones that are getting slashed.

[01:23:12]>> Well, what else?

[01:23:12]>> This is this is a really good point. Job destruction is good as long as job construction is happening. And that's what's happening now.

[01:23:22]>> Yeah. And talking about government finance jobs, I mean I read a story the other day u about higher education that I think a hundred universities and colleges have already closed over the last I think either 12 or 24 months and that pace is going to accelerate because of a demographic bomb that has already gone off that people don't realize the university staff mostly administration has exploded over the last 20 years but the number just that physically exists the number of of well especially certainly for Americanborn children the number of people who could go to college because they are now 18 and graduate from high school has been shrinking a lot in the United States over the last couple of decades and so there is less need for university systems uh the way they are today than there was when I went to school 30 years ago. So you're going to start seeing layoffs unless the federal government's going to bail out all of these um colleges. Sure hope not.

[01:24:23]But you're going to start to see some layoffs at universities and you're going to see a lot of colleges and universities close.

[01:24:31]>> Yeah. So, you know what I I basically I don't I don't think for one I'm I'm skeptical that AI is going to be as much of a obliterator of jobs in the US as people are presenting especially if and we don't we don't touch on the immigration issue all that often uh on in the tank but I think that you know the people are starting to look around and say you know hey it's kind of crazy that we're that we're hiring like millions of people who are not res you know permanent residents of the United States. We're hiring all these people from abroad to come and do these like not not necessarily low skill but definitely low input low background jobs um that historically like people right out of college could do. they could work for a phone bank or something and you know it's mind-numbing terrible work. Um but they could do that to so to they could put some money on the table and and finish off their degree and go and find the real job that they want to work for.

[01:25:37]Um but all of that has been taken up in large part by a lot of uh both illegal and you know H1B type immigration and the same is true of our like fast food places and stuff. all that stuff. All those jobs that would traditionally go to younger people that don't have a whole lot of um uh experience in a workforce yet uh have been going to a lot of people from abroad.

[01:26:04]I think that's probably going to get killed off by AI in part. And from there, I think the people will be so upset about AI taking these types of um jobs that there's going to be very little stomach for imported labor uh from the public anyway. And so I think I think you might see some returns. That's my optimistic take on what's going to happen. I think you'll see some returns to having people be able to have actual like first foot in the door. no experience necessary jobs. Um I think I think a lot fewer of those will will go to H-1Bs in the future because of AI.

[01:26:50]Quite true. And the the point is that the bigger point is that whatever it is, whatever is best, whatever is the best use of resources, whatever is the best uh places for human beings to put their effort will happen if you stop trying to force it. If we if we stop having the the uh backed by if we stop having policies backed by machine guns and and jet planes and so forth uh telling us exactly how what the future should look like, we'll be a lot better off and we'll have a much better future. If the government is deciding everything then it's going to be much much much below what is optimal simply because as uh Hayek Friedrich Hayek the great economist pointed out they can't know they just cannot know all the things that you need to know in order to make those decisions but what what can know is the people on mass and that is who we should rely on >> right so in conclusion you guys. Um, it is hard for Gen Z out there. It is genuinely difficult. Uh, they are struggling. Also, you can probably be a little bit smarter with your with your budgeting. Uh, and all of this is ultimately pretty much just the government's fault. That's kind of the inconclusion of our of our program here today. We did not get to our third topic, but I think that this was so important that I'm glad that we spent the whole time talking about it.

[01:28:25]Anyway, um our third topic was just going to be or our second topic was just going to be on the um anti- what was it?

[01:28:32]What did they call it? The anti-weaponization fund. We can talk about that another time or not at all. I don't know. Anyway, so thank you guys so much for being on the show. Thank you all of our audience members for joining us in the chat and also in our silly little polls. But that is all the time we have today, unfortunately. Thank you everyone for your attention to these matters and we are live every single week on Thursdays at noon central on Rumble, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, all over the place. Jim, what do you have for our audience today?

[01:29:02]>> We have at the same time on these same channels. The Climate Realism Show is going to be another banger. So, hope to see you tomorrow.

[01:29:09]>> Absolutely. Sam, >> the affordability paper is available at hartland.org right on the front page there. I have an article at the blaze today and there's also the Substack stcarnic.substack.com.

[01:29:22]>> Yes, absolutely. For audio listeners, please rate us well in whatever service you're using and leave a review. Thank you so much to all of our usual panelists and also Samantha who had to duck out a little bit early, but I very much appreciate her coming on. Um, and also of course to all of our viewers. We will see you again next week.