FinTech Fridays The latest trends in FinTech, Crypto, & Payment Processing

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast with your host Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you education— educational information about business payments, fintech, decentralized finance, and the technology businesses use in today's world. And in today's episode, it's Fintech Friday, where we talk everything financial technology, which is pretty much the basis of the show. But we decided to switch it up a little bit and go live on Fridays and give you guys a little bit of a, you know, a taste of everything that we talk about all in one.

Uh, and today we're going to be talking about the, uh, small businesses, small businesses, and what kind of challenges they're facing. We're facing as a business owner, what kind of challenges we're facing through some of the legislation that's going on in Congress.

A lot of stuff.

All right, I don't like to promote like organizations, but there's quite a few organizations who are putting out you know, ways like petitions. So you can click on the petition and write to your congressperson and complain. One of them is NFIB, which is the National Federation of Independent Business Owners. Okay, so, um, so far they had one campaign because Senator Dick Durbin, my favorite senator, We've been trying to get him on the show, but come on the show, Dick Durbin. We're trying to get him on as a guest. So one of the things going on is, you know, he's trying to update this Durbin Amendment with this Durbin 2.0, and now tons of companies who are involved in the payment space and the banking space are all saying like, that's not going to work. And, you know, he's trying to claim like there's no competition against Visa and MasterCard. But it's not true because there's plenty of choices of where you can get your merchant services from, how you can process payments, and there's tons and tons and tons of alternative payment methods out there. Nonetheless, to talk about that, he has, you know, he's kind of— what he's proposing is there was already a lawsuit Hey, Ma. Hey, Justin's mom. There was already a lawsuit back in 2006 where Visa and First Data got into a lawsuit, and then the judge ruled that it was an antitrust violation. So, you know, if that— you know, I looked it up today to see where it is, and it's still stuck. Yeah, you know, in the starting position. I I think that he does— says this, these things, because it's good front page, you know, stuff. They like bash on big companies, right? Some other stuff that came out in the news the other day about crypto was that Congress is now demanding— which I thought was crazy, he's hilarious— mentioned it on the podcast, like the last 10 years or so of like all their transactions on Coinbase, Binance, FTX, all these different companies. I don't know why they want the information, but they want information. And then they're also going after pretty much every fintech company and all— anybody who's doing anything with payments, like outside of a credit card processor. They want information on what they're doing with all the data, like what do they do with the data. Meaning like, like, you know, they're collecting all this data.

What type of data do they collect?

They collect people's name, address, phone numbers, email addresses, your geolocation of where you used your credit card.

Okay, um, who's asking for this?

Congress. They want to know what these companies are doing with the data. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter.

I mean, being a, you know, digital marketing guy. I mean, when we look at the data for the, you know, we set up campaigns targeting that, you know, the demographic or whatever, you know, right?

But I'm saying like they want to know what they're doing with it. I don't know why they're asking. The same thing always comes up about that competition and innovation. Yeah, committee, and their talk about how innovation is outpacing regulation. They just don't know what to do with all these companies. I mean, I'm contacted by, I would say, one new— one to two fintech companies that I've never heard of before every week, especially since we had the podcast. I mean, more and more I'm getting approached by fintech companies, right? They want to show me their product. What do I think about it? Can we do anything with it? I mean, yesterday somebody showed me a product where You can attach a card reader, a special encrypted card reader, to your computer through a USB. Then you get a special card, which they're actually going to send me one. I think it's very cool that we get to try out some of these products, right? So then you would log into the website, swipe the card, and then it would open up this encrypted email file so I could attach a bunch of documents to it. Send it to you, or I could send you the email with just the link in it, and then you could attach your documents there, and then they would come back to me all encrypted. Then the only way to unencrypt it is to have the encryption code, which you can send to somebody in an email. They could click it, and then they would be able to open up that encrypted file. It can send like 20 to 30 megabytes. I think 20 megabytes is pretty much what most, um, people can receive in their email box. I don't think you can receive anything more than that. I know Microsoft Office is 20 megabytes.

Yeah, I don't remember the limitations.

Yeah, but whatever, it's cool.

It's— I use Google Drive.

Yeah, well, people are getting worried now about their documents and— yeah, what can happen to them. I think it's— but shit, they just— never mind. Information is everywhere. So yeah, I don't know. It's crazy. I get an email from Credit Karma. Oh, your information is on the dark web. Okay, great. What? I mean, now what?

No, like when the IRS told me that someone has claimed over $50,000 in unemployment benefits in the state of California under my name. What am I— what can I do about that?

Nothing. It's crazy. That's what I mean.

Like, why?

How How come they don't have like safeguards in place? Like, oh, where's the guy's ID?

Where does he live?

Yeah, where does the person live?

I mean, come on. I don't know. It doesn't seem like you shouldn't be able to claim unemployment benefits that easily, right?

Exactly.

I mean, I, I don't know what to say about that.

It's not— it's absolutely nuts. The crazy part is they want tax, you know, the person, they got the money. Yeah, you didn't get the money, and then there's taxes owed, and then you got to go through a bunch of hoops and put it and get together affidavits and get it notarized and send it to the IRS.

And that was fun.

They gotta go look into it, and they got to go check with the state of California. Hey, did you ID this guy?

No.

Or how did you ID him, right? Of course, birth certificate. And then also in California, what's real—

oh, that's nuts.

And count— there's some people just make a fake birth certificate. Yep, online using, you know, Photoshop or Canva or something. But the other thing that's going on in California is really crazy, is right now there's like two crazy laws. One, they're trying to say, oh, they want to outlaw gas cars by 2035.

Never gonna happen.

And then meanwhile, they're putting out notices this week, oh, you can't— you can't charge your car at night. So now people have to work at home because they can't charge their electric car. They have a lot of— they probably have more electric cars than any state, I think.

Oh, I'm sure.

Yeah, they probably—

I mean, New York might be close, but I doubt it.

No, I mean, I'd have to go look it up, but it sounds like it because it's apparently a problem.

There's always something going on in Cali. You can't use your water, you can't use your electricity, you can't—

yeah, I saw something else where some city put out between like 5, like, uh, before 6 PM, they don't want you to run your AC lower than some, some crazy thing in San Diego. A guy was telling me about yesterday that lives there.

San Diego is beautiful. I don't know. Yeah, but no, but he was just telling me, worth the bullcrap that you gotta go through to live in San Diego.

Yeah, he was just telling me some notice came out, and then I saw this other thing where The state of California came out and they— and it doesn't make sense to me. They want to put it on like bigger fast food companies like McDonald's, you know, so chains. And I don't think they really understand, like, when these governors or, you know, Dick Durbin and these people in Washington come out with like a crazy law and they think like, oh, we're picking on McDonald's. Okay, McDonald's doesn't own every single McDonald's. Most of them are franchised out. Justin, you could be a— they have programs where, let's say you worked at McDonald's for years, right?

Right.

And then there's— you could go attend. They say, oh, Justin's a great manager. They send you to the McDonald's University. I know a friend of mine did this when he was younger. Yeah, he really was, you know, he didn't even finish— he didn't even go to college. He ended up going to the McDonald's University. And they gave— then they put him in a store where he was a— they gave him— he was the general manager, and he had to earn ownership over time, right? And then he owned part of the store, and every year he was there, he got more and more.

I've heard of this program before.

Yeah. And then he became the full owner of the location, right? And he got other— he was able to, you know, then go and get other locations and take them over.

And that bad locations, you know, let me improve them and make them here, right?

Yeah, then they become his. And he ended up having about 4 or 5 McDonald's, my friend.

He's doing well.

And he sold them, he sold them, and he sold a couple of them that he had in Chicago. Then he moved to Florida and he took— started doing the same thing here. I'm just saying, like, you know, they think like, oh, that guy's not— he's one guy, owns one, one or two McDonald's. Right? Okay, well, they want to put a thing on all these companies where they want them to pay the workers $22 an hour, and then they expect them to not raise the price of the food. I mean, I mean, I saw a picture the other day. I don't eat fast food, right? Me neither. So I saw a friend of mine sent me a picture of, you know, he went into Burger King or something, and a meal— guess how much the meal was? A regular meal, like a Whopper, uh, $12. Yeah, like $10 to $12.

Yeah, I mean, I was guessing, I don't know, but no, $10 to $12. I have had an Impossible Whopper because I, I love it, but I don't, I don't know, like, that's— I don't think it's like $8 or something.

No, no, but I'm saying like the burger, fries, and a drink was like $10 to $15. Oh yeah, first I was like, $10 to $15, you could just go to a regular restaurant. Pretty much like and get a burger.

You could definitely like— I went to Five Guys, I went to Vegan On The Go, right, and got a nice vegan Impossible Burger, right, kosher bun for $13 with fries.

Okay.

I mean, there's not much of a difference, right?

No, but I'm saying maybe it was a little better put, you know, you got a nice—

nicer—

a nicer bun. Yeah, maybe some nicer lettuce.

The fries were amazing.

Right, got fresher.

It was definitely fresher.

No, but I'm saying like, but it's the same price though, basically.

I mean, a couple dollars, right?

Yeah, but what I'm saying is, is how can the prices of the, of food at these fast food places— because they put in this $15 minimum wage right now, the prices of this fast food is becoming unaffordable to people. They can't afford to buy fast food. There's no more dollar menu. It's done. There's I don't even know.

Maybe there's a dollar menu, but it doesn't cost a dollar, right?

Maybe it's the $5 menu now. It's like the dollar store, just put a S or like a dollar sign. Dollars. Yeah, yeah, dollars menu. It's like the dollar store, it's not a dollar anymore.

There's nothing at the dollar store that's a dollar, right?

They have all this increased weight, you know. I don't understand, like, they don't know.

I've seen a meme the other day, they had like a pack of Nihilators, a bag of Doritos, the little quarter water juices. Yeah, the little Hug juices, and a Honey Bun. And that was literally a buck when I was a kid. Actually, that was less than a dollar because the Nihilators are like 10 cents.

Oh yeah, I remember, like, when I— I'm a little older than you, but I remember going to the store. You could— for— you could have— you would collect pennies for 5 cents. Exactly, for 5 cents you could get a candy bar, dude. Hell yeah, a whole candy bar. But it would go to the bottom of mom's purse run out of the house like, ah, I'm running to the store. 50 cents. Yeah, 50 cents. You get a whole thing of candy and a soda.

Penny candy?

No, and a soda. Yeah, for real.

You'd have a quarter, you get 25 pieces of candy, they count it out at the thing, and they give you a quarter. You go get you a bag of chips.

Or sometimes you have those big gumball, like a big candy machine. You put a nickel in there, you get a whole handful of candy. I mean, no, but how much were those Boston baked beans?

You remember those things? Like 5 cents, right?

Yeah, all kinds of candy bars. A Hershey's bar was a lemonade or a nickel.

Lemonheads were like 10 cents.

Yeah, everything. It's crazy. But I'm just saying, like, then wages go up, right? And then prices go up, and then they go, oh, the corporation, the business is greedy. What do you— I don't understand. Like, there's rent to be paid, utilities to be paid, you gotta make money. No, and you have to make money. You're investing money into a business. You take your money, right? You put it— you invest it to open up a business, and then you have to charge people. No, like, and then I'm reading today on this website, right? They're talking about like what's going on, like what kind of thing is Congress trying to pass, right? So of course I wrote to my Congress.

I was reading it. The way that they write it on the website, it makes it like impossible to understand.

Yeah. What Congress is doing.

Yeah.

Well, no, that's why I go to these.

I've read it 3 times and I still don't understand.

No. So I go and I read like, oh, well, what's going on? Like, what are they trying to pass? So they're trying— what they're trying to do is they're trying to kill basically like small businesses, right?

So they're trying to go that far.

They're in— okay, Allen likes to jump over there. Okay, well, they're not going to try to kill it. But what they're doing is, is it's just going to cause prices to go up.

Everything's going to go through the roof, right?

You can't keep— you can't increase taxes.

What is the other—

and wages.

The credit card thing. Can you explain the credit card thing?

What that Durbin wants to do?

Yeah, you got to explain that better.

What he wants to do? Yeah. Oh, so Durbin basically is saying that Visa— he tries to portray it like Visa's owned by Justin and MasterCard's owned by me. And we're like two people. He's Visa, I'm MasterCard, and that's it, right? And that's it. So there's like two guys and they're taking everybody's money. We're just getting in, we're grabbing all the money. It doesn't get— like, what is he talking about? Visa and MasterCard? Listen, you have a portfolio of stocks, right? Maybe you have a 401k, you have an IRA account, you got a mutual fund. Visa and MasterCard's probably in there. And then you're buying in on what this guy's saying, right? Oh, these companies are bad. Oh, the banks are bad. Everybody's bad, right?

According to Dick Durbin, right?

And he wants to complicate everything. I saw an estimate. It said to, to, to make this extra network on the side.

What does that even— that's the part I was having really—

he wants some extra network.

What does that even mean?

He wants to create— he wants someone to create an extra network, which it's already there. It's First Data, right? They must be shoveling money into his campaign. FIS, First Data, they must be the biggest donator of all time because they're the ones who lost the lawsuit, really, to Visa in 2006. So they want to— so they want to have this special thing because they process credit cards for Chase, Citibank, a whole host of banks, right? They process the credit card. So they want to have this separate network. I'm disconnected because when you say network, okay, so basically when you process a credit card, it goes through the Visa MasterCard network and Visa and MasterCard make a ton. They make like 0.13% of a percent, which is—

and they're the ones that created this whole thing in the first place, right? Without Visa and MasterCard, you and I would not be able to go to a grocery store and pay Whole Foods the $300,000 for our 2 bags of groceries, right? If it wasn't for Visa or Mastercard, correct?

They created the whole thing. Yeah. So they want to cut them out, right?

And they won't not just cut them out, they want to—

well, it's an antitrust.

They want to add people to it, right?

They want, they want to say like, oh, Visa, Mastercard, you're not being fair, you need to let other people join in. And they have Discover's part of it, all the cards that Discover supports, which is a boatload of cards. Diners Club, UnionPay, the list is long. Go to Discover website, see all the cards that run on their network. American Express rides in the network. And then banks, they're the ones who are making all the money, not Visa and MasterCard, because banks collect the interchange, which is 90 or 95%.

Turbin doesn't want that.

He doesn't understand that.

No, I just don't think he wants the people to know, right?

He doesn't want people to know. He just wants to point, oh, Mr. Visa, yeah, bad, bad, bad, bad, to the Wizard of Oz, right?

Boogeyman in the sky, right?

He wants to just point at the boogeyman and say it's all bad. So one of the estimates was that it would cost each credit card company to incorporate this extra network over $5 billion each. It would drive the cost of credit card processing through the roof, which means your interest rate would go through the roof. Your interest rate would go up, your cost of merchant Processing will go up. Everything's gonna go—

product itself is gonna go up.

Everything's gonna cost more, gonna just create more expense. He just doesn't— he's just completely— they're just completely out of touch. They think like, oh, there's a livable wage. No, the— you think there's got to be other ways to stimulate. The only way to stimulate the economy, okay, economy is not run by all these big businesses. Okay, the economy is run by small businesses, and the economy of the world runs on gasoline and oil and petroleum and coal. Whether Joe Biden, Dick Durbin, and whoever else over there in Congress on the green team, no matter what they think, right?

I don't know.

Listen, Elon Musk came out, he goes, all this stuff pushed for green energy He goes, it's not going to work. He goes, you're 30, 40 years away from trying to swap it out. I actually did a math problem.

No, right when we did this, right?

I did the math problem. How many cars are there? You were shocked. Yeah, about how many cars there were. And if you made the maximum amount of cars they could possibly make, it was going to take 30— it would take 20 years just to get halfway there. So you can't just cut out, you just can't rip the Band-Aid off and go Well, we're not going to use gas anymore.

Yeah, the whole 2035 thing in Cali was— seems a little bit of a force, right?

But this other stuff that's going on with small— all these things that they're trying to talk— that they do in Congress, it affects all businesses. You— when they forced in the $15 minimum wage, listen, you, you— the— everybody got a raise, right? Okay, everybody got a raise. All the prices went up. You can't expect the business owner to work for nothing. They opened a business to make money. People think everyone— some guy said to me one day, he goes, oh, you're a business owner, you're evil, you make probably make a million dollars a month. I go, I wish I made a million dollars a month. No, but that's what they think. People think because they read, they hear this stuff on the news, I think people are making, you know, $100 grand a month, $200 grand a month. The average small business owner makes maybe between, let's say, $50 grand, $50 grand up to maybe $200 grand a year. A year?

Yeah.

Not a month. Yeah.

I was about to say a month, bro. Shut up. That ain't—

listen, some people get more successful and they're making more money than that, right?

I mean, $5 grand a month is a decent living, bro. Right.

Not anymore.

I don't know.

Not right now.

Not right now.

No, no, not now. It's not. It was 3 years ago.

Not now.

3 years ago it was— things cost less. Now things cost more. But now they want to increase the corporate tax rate to 28% without lowering the, the rates for small businesses. So they're just going to drive up more, more inflation. Raising the top income rate on individual and small-owned businesses from 37%. We're already paying 37%. Now they want to put up to 30 point 39.6%. They want to eliminate the step-up basis, which just means you step up, your tax goes up a little bit each year. And they want to— because when you make more money, when— as you make more money, then your taxes go— you pay, you pay less tax the first year than the second year. When you make more money, you pay a little more tax. It's like to help you out to help you out so you continue to grow your business. It's nice, right?

And they want to take that out.

Yeah. And then they want to add in a 3.8% surtax, which I call that double taxation, right? I'm already going to pay 37%, but now you want to add on almost another 4% that I'm going to pay on my corporate tax return, which right now we— when you're an S corp or LLC or right? You file a tax return, you pay zero. Whatever you made, you put it on your personal return, and then you pay higher tax on that because you're paying like 37% tax, right?

Right.

Getting killed, right, with taxes. 37. Now they want to say, no, you're going to add— we're going to take another 4%. I'm telling you.

Yeah, that part I don't like.

That part— go on this NFIB website, there's a free form, click it. Send that thing, complain to your congresspeople. I mean, I'm, you know, I literally—

that's crazy that they're going to make a business pay taxes on the, the money that you're gonna already have to claim on your personal tax, right?

So now they want to— it's double taxation. Do you agree that that's double tax?

I agree. That's okay, we agree, Allen. I fist bump.

Okay. No, because that's just taking money away. What do you— how can you know?

I mean, it's not a huge amount of money, but that's enough money, you know, that's someone's kids' private school tuition or something, you know, every year, right?

It could be the raises for the employees or whatever it is, right?

Vacation, extra vacation day.

Yes, paying for— it's taking money away.

That's crazy.

You know, then they want to take— then they want to— this is the part where I'm just like out of my mind.

Like, this whole thing makes Allen out of his mind.

This next one is just completely blows my mind. Right? They already did it for crypto. Now they want to do it on your money for your business. They want to— they want to have— they want to tax unrealized gains.

That's— yeah, no, that's not gonna happen.

Okay, that's insane, right? So they want to say, Allen, your house is now worth $500 grand. I didn't sell my house. I paid whatever. Now it's worth $500. We want you to pay tax on the $500. Why? What are you talking about?

I didn't sell it, bro.

Am I gonna pay that? Where am I getting the money for that out of thin air? Was gonna— they asked Mark Cuban about this, right? One time Mark Cuban said, he goes, that is not— that's insane. He goes, if you said I gotta pay taxes on unrealized gains, like, you know, he owns the Dallas Mavericks and he owns a bunch of companies, right?

I own almost a billion shares of Shiba, right? So that's like saying You gotta pay the tax.

Well, if Shiba was worth, let's say, $100 each, right? No, but you didn't sell it.

I know, that's what I'm saying. So like, if she was— so like, if I had trillions of dollars, right, from my Shiba coin, right, that I would have to pay a tax on that before I sold it, right? You guys are out of your mind, right?

So that Mark Cuban said, he goes, that makes no sense. Right? Because they act like, oh, since Mark Cuban owns all this stuff, he must have like some stash of like a billion dollars, like at Bank of America, right? There's like a stash.

No, he's got his mattress, right? He slid a hole in his mattress, right?

He's got this cash, right? Just because somebody— they say, oh, this guy's worth a billion dollars, or this guy's worth $5 million, that doesn't mean the person has $5 mil cash.

No, it just means all of his investments is probably—

right, that's what it's worth if he could sell it right now.

Everything that he sold it right now.

So Mark Cuban's like, like the jerk, he's like, I'm just good. He's like, if they want to tax unrealized gains, he goes, I'm gonna have to start selling stuff. But he goes, nobody's gonna want to buy it because they don't want— they're not going to want to deal with the taxes either, because then when they get it, they're going to have to sell part of it to pay their taxes. I mean, this is just— this kind of stuff is very like— who brought that up? This is brought up by the Democrats in this Build Back Better blah blah blah that they're trying to cram through. It's these bills that they have, all these Build Back Better bills. Yeah, they got the Build Back Better Act, the Build Back Better bill, though. Then they got this Wage Theft Prevention and Recovery Act, which is this thing to keep raising the minimum wage. They want to— all these things are regulations that are going to increase the cost of doing business. The Labor Department even says that it's out of control. They can't, they can't deal with it. It doesn't make any sense. They got all kinds of bills that, that they're trying to do. Then, then there's other bills that they're trying to stop all this stuff. So then there's another one that they got where they want, they want to mandate employers provide paid sick pay and retirement accounts for all their employees. Where's a small business going to get this kind of money from?

I don't know, but I looked into getting like, uh, like, you know, like just that type of stuff for myself when I was running a business. I couldn't— there was no way I could afford any type of that stuff.

Yeah, it's nuts. I mean, then they're talking about establishing a complicated and inflexible federal government agency to oversee family-run businesses. Are you kidding me? They're going to create another agency to look at family-run business and family— that, I mean, basically when you say a family-run business, they're basically saying any small business. They're just hiding it with a word. It's just crazy what they're trying to do. And they're— and they want to— and they want to change how small businesses— small businesses, like how much money, how much expenses you can have. You're going to tell me how much expenses I can have for my small business? If I'm spending the money on software like StreamYard, you're going to say, nope, you can't deduct StreamYard. You can't deduct your, your electric bill. You can't deduct the alarm. We don't think alarm is necessary, right? I don't know. I don't know.

I'm in your area, it's below 40%, no alarm.

I just don't understand.

Like, I just don't understand Congress.

And like, I don't understand with what, with what they're doing. I, I, it does— when I read this, you know, like, I see the headlines, all power to the people, man. No, no, but this is the headline. Like, I see the headline on CNN, oh yeah, we're going to increase the tax base, we gotta tax businesses, right? So they make it sound like all these people that own a business have, have these piles of money everywhere, right?

They do make it seem like if you run a business— I mean, my own family would make it sometimes 'Well, you have your own business, blah blah blah, you can do whatever you want.' No, the fuck I can't. I'm broke. Like, if I don't work, I don't get paid, right? You know, typically, you know, a lot of people, you got sick time, you got vacation, personal time, whatever time. And you know, in small business world, the small business owner, he doesn't put in his 40— you know, 40, that's laughable, right? 60, at least 60 hours a week, bro. We're not getting paid.

Like, I—

and after that, it's not like you— when you got to office, you got your rent, you got your electric bills, you got your all the other overhead.

Exactly. You know what I mean?

There's not a lot of money left. Like, when I say I was making $50 grand a year, that's great. Like, you know what I'm saying? But I didn't have much to show for it, I'll tell you that.

No, it's hard work. And then you got to reach like a certain point where, okay, now I can add on an employee. You know, oh, now we can hire an employee. I mean, listen, I started this business 2001. Me, me and Dave, we had no employees, right? Then we got to a point like, okay, now we got money coming in, we have enough money, we can afford one employee. We hired one employee, we had to decide what they were going to do. Then we hired a second employee, then a third employee, you know. And now we're in a, you know, in another little, you know, growth mode right now of, you know, oh, we're working on a project, right? And if the project goes well, you know, we're probably gonna need more employees, right? It's more expense. I mean, you can't run a business without employees. I mean, I went— I've gone into some restaurants recently where I go to the restaurant, right, that's empty tables, a whole section is empty. They go, we can't seat you. Huh, what? The guy, they're like, yeah, well, I could sit you down, but you know, we don't have waiters, we don't have waitresses to work, wait staff to work the— no, it's really to work the area. And I was driving around and I was actually a little bit shocked. I saw a lot of places that went out of business recently, went out of business. And that's Florida where everything is basically open. I mean, but now, hey yo, If you're out there, Florida's open for business. Come on down, right?

Just stay away from Fort Lauderdale.

No, but I'm just saying, like, but now with the price of gas and they're on TV, oh, gas went down a dollar, a dollar. Like, that's not gonna help. Gas used to be $2, now gas is 4 and change, right? It's almost 3 and change. It's almost $4, right? Depends where you go get it.

Yeah, you go on the south side by my house, you're gonna pay $4.

Right, but I'm saying something. Well, the closer you get to the highway seems the more expensive gas is. If you drive a little ways away and you're in a, you know, nicer neighborhood— no, a bad neighborhood.

And I was gonna say, in a nicer neighborhood it's usually cheaper.

It's more expensive. Go to Boca, it's over—

it's still 5.5 over there by my— like in the neighborhood of the highway. But in it— oh yeah, you are right. But in the neighborhood around the way, it's like It's cheaper.

It's like you could go— no, but if you go to Costco, let's say it's $3.50, $3.60, right?

But then it's $3.20 the other day.

Then you come over here, but you go to the corner gas station over here by the highway, it's $4 easy, right? I don't even understand that. I don't think there'd be—

it should not—

they, they take advantage of their location.

Do that, right?

Yeah.

If gas is, you know, if they're getting it for a certain amount of barrel Congress should say, yo, this is how much you guys could charge, that's it.

It's got it. I don't know, that's what I'm saying. Does it make— there's a big disparity of at least a dollar when you're driving around town.

I get it, like you're in the middle of Alaska, it's kind of hard to get gas up there.

Well, they're drilling for gas.

Oh, that's bad. That's a bad example, but you get what I'm trying to say, right? Like in the middle of Wyoming or something, like there's probably one gas station for every 200 miles, I don't know. Okay, whatever it is, I'm just saying, like, you could— I could understand why gas would be a little bit more expensive because getting—

they might have—

because getting the gas there is expensive.

But they might also have advantage where the rent— they're not paying much rent.

Well, exactly.

Their overhead could be a lot lower.

Exactly. Exactly.

But yeah, but things are going, you know, like you go into these stores now and tons of places have kiosks out right, that they're fighting back against. You know, they're making more rules, making it for where they need to pay employees more.

I get the— I get that people need to make more money, right? Right. Because I mean, I grew up poor, right? And I get it. And I know like with the, the inflation and everything, the raises, it's not helping. But I'm saying the people that— what people make doesn't go with what stuff costs right now, right? Like the same job, like my mom was working in a grocery store her entire life, right? Well, now retired, pretty much though. She couldn't have that job today and pay her bills, right? Like it was, it wasn't working out. Like she had to figure something out, you know what I mean? Because in, in that field, that's how much they get paid. So like, that needs to change, right? Did you know something?

Yeah, but I think the government needs to look at other things like, like how to reduce inflation.

I mean, giving a minimum wage worker $22 an hour isn't going to fix all their problems. No, because if they don't know, they're going to go up.

If they don't have financial literacy, if they don't understand, like, yeah, you know, where to go, that has to pay $22, they're gonna have to raise their prices. Of course, now $22 is not gonna buy you more. The only way to buy more, like a few years ago when gas was low right? Okay, that kept prices low on a lot of things, right? And then if businesses were healthy and doing more business, then they could pay workers more, more money. So then you had more money, and because prices were low, you could buy more, right? Well, you can't do that when you have gas so high. That's just going to drive prices up. Then you want to raise up, uh, labor costs. That's going to drive prices up. And then if landlords have to pay more taxes, guess what? They're going to charge more rent. And that's rent on apartments, commercial space.

I was talking crazy right now.

I was talking to somebody that had a restaurant, right? I go, dude, what happened? You had to close your restaurant? I thought it was so successful. He's like, yeah, but the landlord raised the rent like $1,000 a month. He said, you know how many sandwiches I gotta sell to make an extra $1,000 profit to pay the He goes, too many, not— can't do it. Because I told the landlord, the landlord said, oh, you don't want to be here, see you later, you know. So they had to close the restaurant. Terrible. Because, you know, $1,000, you know, let's say you only makes like, you know, a restaurant— people don't realize they're lucky if they see—

can you imagine what New York looks like right now?

Oh yeah, there's probably empty stores.

And my homie says, he said he walked down in Brooklyn, he was like, he didn't even know what it—

you know, like empty stores.

Oh man, everything's closed.

Yeah, because they— because they're putting everything— they're making everything so expensive on the labor side, and people are leaving New York, leaving California.

That's what he said too. He said, man, there's so many— he's like, dude, he was— he never— it was never so easy to find a place in New York. Yeah, meaning like an availability.

Yeah.

But like, he's like, dude, the rent is still crazy. He's like, you can't even—

well, some landlords will get desperate and just have to start renting for less money, or they're gonna have to, bro, right?

Like, New York is gonna have— is gonna go back to like how it was in the '90s, they said.

That's bad. There was bad crime back in those days.

That's what it's looking like.

Then, you know, finally like Giuliani came in, those guys. Sorry, I didn't really like him.

But stop and frisk is horrible.

Yes, but I'm saying like they had to put— they had to do a lot of stuff to get law and order under control.

Excuse me. Yeah, was there really any control? No, John Gotti's running around.

No, just saying, it was like— it was not good.

No, the '90s in New York was— I mean, the '90s in the United States were tough. Yeah, and it looks like we're kind of headed in that same direction.

Well, they got it.

Excuse me. They said that we haven't had— it was like 1989. We're like in the same, like, in this really weird, like, economic stage. It's like it hasn't been like this since 1989.

Well, the one thing they need to do— I, I could fix the problem right now. Drill for oil everywhere, all over the U.S. Drill, drill, drill. Get the price of gas down. That will start to— that will effectively in 2 or 3 months lower all the price of gas, and prices of goods will go down.

I don't know, man. I don't— I just— the drill, drill, drill thing doesn't— I'm an environmentalist guy, like, I love—

yeah, but we're getting the oil now. We're getting it from dirty countries who are not doing it as clean as we're doing.

I'm talking about the actual environment, right? That you have to You have to destroy ecosystems in order to drill.

They already got the drill and they already got the equipment in the ground. They're just not sucking the oil out because Biden shut off the oil. You can't get oil from there anymore. There, there, there. So now you're not getting the oil from there. Where are you getting the oil from? Venezuela, the Arabs. You think they're— you have— go look on, uh, did you see that Russia is is burning $10 million worth of petrol a day, just burning it up. Yeah, because they can't— no one's buying their petrol. The world stopped buying from them.

So then their decision is wasting it, destroy the unit.

Yeah, this is bad. That's what I'm saying. Like, the policies that's going on is not helping, you know.

Yeah, but I feel so bad for my grandkids some days. Today's one of those days.

You know, it's just we're in a crazy world right now, but this stuff in Congress got to stop. Write your congresspeople.

Yes, vote locally. I don't care about the president. I do, but you know, I'm just— yeah, I care about what's happening around me in my area. I, I, you know, what's going on in DC, I'm not ready to go in, uh, you know, a PP—

yeah, well, locally we have to make sure we put people in office and the local cities that you trust, that you believe is going to do right by us, you know, right?

That's it. That's, that's how you make a difference. That's how you make something change in your community is by voting locally. If you don't do that, and you're on the internet and complaining and all this, you're not making it.

Yeah, you got to pay attention who's running for city council, right? There, listen, in my town in Margate, that like dinosaur people people in office the last— before I moved, when I first moved there. And then finally some younger people started getting into office, and now finally there's this downtown Margate area. And the people who were in office made like some horrible deal, and then this company— with one of these companies that like decided, oh, we're just gonna— we changed our mind, we're not going to build a shopping center there and a hotel. We're, we're gonna put a bunch of apartments. And then whatever was in the contract, nobody paid attention to it because it basically said that they could do whatever they wanted, right, if they decided that the project wasn't going to be profitable enough. So they had a big fight that lasted for, I would say, about 7 or 8 years, maybe longer, with that company. Finally, it's over. Now the city of Margate, instead of people driving through it, they have this huge amount of land. It's like on 441, um, between Atlantic and Royal Palm.

Okay.

And there used to be like a carnival, there was a flea market there at one time. I didn't even know it was all owned by the city. There's a couple of shopping centers. Well, now they're going to be able to revitalize like that whole area. Yeah, it's going to be awesome to be able to put you know.

Oh, I've seen it. I actually seen that in the— I've seen that in the news, right? In the newspaper.

Yeah, they're going to be able to revitalize the area.

The same guy who did, uh, um, Brickell or something like down in Miami is—

yeah, I don't know who's gonna design it.

He's doing— whoever designed something in downtown Miami.

Yeah, the same thing in downtown Coral Springs. They finally got some good people in office over there. They're revitalizing like two corners that were just sitting there. With nothing there for years, and they're going to build apartments and, you know, nice stuff over there. Yeah, man, what's going to get done, you know?

I mean, there's one other, you know, like we keep talking about too, like legalizing cannabis would, uh, you know, all of the infrastructure problems the United States has, uh, would really— I'm not saying it'll fix it overnight, but the income—

yeah, we would produce—

generated from this—

talking about a multi-billion dollar industry.

Trillion, right? I'm gonna call it a trillion.

Okay, trillion dollar industry, right? Because we don't know what it is.

Yeah, exactly, right?

Trillion dollars.

70% of the— at least 70% of the United States of Americans want, right?

But I'm saying we're not collecting any taxes on this stuff, right? And it makes no sense. And even the states that are collecting taxes, it's who knows what's going on with Colorado. They just— dude, they They got to be wasting all the money.

And no, they said that the schools are doing great, the, the roads are all getting fixed because they're collecting tax, right? He's right, you know, like they're not— the one thing in Colorado, the cost of living is crazy, I guess, for whatever reason.

I don't know why, but well, you got, you know, mostly like the wintertime, so you got high bills for snowbirds, heating and stuff, you know.

I don't know. Anyway, yeah, so like those type, you know, like Michigan's, they're their school, they ain't fixing their water problem. I don't know why, but, uh, you know, I mean, the places that have legalized for rec, you know, like, the infrastructure of that state is getting better. Yeah, yeah, they're doing better.

They're improving.

Yeah, California is California, you know. I don't know what they do with their money out in Cali.

Does it make sense?

They must spend it at the golf course.

Well, we don't know what they're doing with all their—

guarantee that golf course is nice and green though.

I'll tell you one thing, like, I heard in California— I've talked to some cannabis owners there, and they were telling me like some of the counties collect like a 30% tax on marijuana. Yeah, where's all the money going? They're not spending it on fixing the electrical grid because—

talking in that stuff, buddy. Someone's pocketing that bread.

I don't know what's going on with that. But, you know, well, let's just, you know, we'll finish up the podcast by talking about like There's a lot going on with fintech. It's getting very exciting. There's a lot of new different types of, um, companies coming out with ways to take payments and things like that, and we're very excited about that. The future of the payments business looks really great. We're going to shut down Dick Durbin. We're going to shut down— try to shut down on these small business taxes, because I'm telling you, you gotta— if we don't protect small businesses, it's going to be a nightmare. It's going to be a big nightmare because people are not going to have jobs.

Small businesses make the United States run, right?

Small bit more people work for small businesses than work for these mega companies.

How many Amazons are there? There's only— there's not a thousand of them.

Right?

There's only one or two in every state, right?

Yeah, I equate— I equate it to like you're driving down the street, right? So you drive down, like you come out of the office, you go down to Powerline Road, right? And you go whatever, north or south. Okay, when you drive down, you're going to go past what— there's a BJ's over there.

You're gonna go down by like 5,000 small businesses, right?

Exactly. You're gonna drive by thousands of them.

You're gonna go by these Everyone is a— every off— every, uh, what, strip mall?

Like strip mall and then office parks. Yeah, you drive by, there's 20, 30, 40, 50 businesses in there, each one, right? And you're gonna pass one or two big major, like, big, big box places, right?

A Walmart.

Yeah, BJ's. And they don't employ that many people. You go by BJ's, what do they employ? A couple hundred people. You drive by one strip center, there's 500 people employed in there easily., right? And one strip center, and you're gonna drive past 20, 30 strip centers and warehouses and all that stuff. This is where all the employees are. If they tax small businesses out of existence, it's not going to be good.

This, this, for all you guys out there not understanding, it'd be like everyone, all, and we all work for Walmart.

Yeah.

And that's not the case.

Yeah, that's what they— the government wants you to believe, that, yeah, everybody's work there's like 10 million people working for Amazon. No, there's no 10 million people. One thing I did notice with Amazon lately, which is a little bit weird, they must be cutting down on their trucks because I started getting stuff from Amazon in the mail again because they stopped all that a couple years ago. They stopped using the mail, UPS, and FedEx. Now all of a sudden a bunch of my Amazon doesn't come from the Amazon truck, it comes from The post office, UPS, FedEx.

I think it depends on where you buy the—

I don't know, it's weird. Yeah, it's the all—

I get what you're saying because the other day— I know exactly what you're saying because it's not always a UPS guy anymore.

No, no, but it used to mean the Amazon guy. Yeah, it was funny.

I was about to say something about something. Crap.

Oh well. Yeah, because they got away from it. Now they're back to it. But thank you to everybody. We're going to come up with some new stuff for FinTech Friday. So keep watching because we're going to roll out some new—

guy wants me wearing hats.

Don't tell us the secret. New fun stuff to do, and watch out for some new products that we got coming out, some exciting stuff we're going to debut on the— we'll probably make some big announcement on the show when we're ready to roll it out. And thank you for listening to FinTech Friday. We enjoy FinTech Fridays. It's a great time for us to have some fun, talk about what's going on for the week, talk about—

Happy Labor Day!

Yeah, everybody enjoy Labor Day.

Be safe, no drinking and driving, please stay off the road if you're indulging, for all you crazy people.

Rocky enjoyed the show today.

He was knocked out.

Yeah, he's had a couple of snacks and went to sleep.

He farted once and said, yep, I'm going to sleep. Take that, fellas!

You never know what's gonna happen on the podcast. We do it live, there's no editing. I hope everybody enjoyed it. Peace out, carpe diem, happy Friday!