The American Comeback Plan

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Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. It's me and Zach taking your questions, but first going to talk about some of the things that are on everyone's mind, including the discourse around AI and jobs. Uh, which I've been enjoying, sort of. And then like a quick note on Spirit Airlines, which, um, I'm gonna miss. Uh, did you ride Spirit?

I did, twice. Same. Sort of regretted it, but it was priced well.

Multiple times. I mean, there were a bunch of times on the campaign where it was the only way to get from point A to point B in the timeline. And like, no frills, definitely discounty, but you know, got the job done. And objectively, this is bad for consumers. It's bad for workers. It's bad for people that like cheap air travel. It makes me sad that Spirit is gone.

I remember. So like most people buy their airlines or their tickets as like in aggregators, you know, you look up on Google Flights or Kayak or one of those.

Yeah.

So if you didn't— I remember the first time I was like, Spirit looks so cheap. I'm going to do Spirit, not knowing enough about their brand, if you will. And so then then you're disappointed where you get there. You're like, wait, it cost me what to put my bag on this plane? Or it cost me what to get a water?

They do upcharge you, etc. Their point, um, bring a bag.

But if your expectation was I want to get there as cheaply as possible, it was a great offer.

Yeah. And I mean, and it's a bad thing for the industry. Um, there, you know, there was a point when it looked like, uh, they might merge with JetBlue, and then JetBlue offered them and And the feds put the kibosh on it.

Liz Warren and the Biden administration were very anti. I don't know, but some say they'd still be bankrupt now because of fuel prices. I'm not sure. I don't know enough.

I think objectively blocking that merger was a mistake.

I think so too.

I think folks that did that were shortsighted. And it's one of the things that I see out there where people are like, hey, big business, you know, don't want to merge, be consolidation, fewer choices. But it's like some of these businesses would have a rough go surviving. And, you know, you don't think about that. Yeah, but here we are. So objectively, the figures who blocked the JetBlue-Spirit merger have egg on their face.

Yeah. Oh, it's one of those— the Democrats do— both parties do this. Democrats do it a lot where it's sort of performative and not— it sounds good to protect the consumer, but in reality it probably would have been more helpful for JetBlue to have a bigger piece of the pie that sort of forced more competition with the others.

Maybe some of those routes would still happen.

Yeah.

I mean, so the reality of these airline routes is that a lot of them are somewhat unprofitable to maintain. But then if you were that little small town, let's call it, you know, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, you're pumped to have an airline coming. In and out for sure. Yeah, it's just bad. Like, it makes me sad. I mean, now people are talking about whether JetBlue survives, which I dearly hope they do. They're actually a huge hub here in New York. I mean, I don't know if you've been in and out of there for sure. Yeah, it's not lately. So, you know, it's like it's— I mean, the elevated fuel costs are going to be bad for consumers generally, but they're going to be the worst for airlines.

Yeah. And I know, you know, gas has gone up since this war, which seems relatively unnecessary. So that's certainly a factor. Airlines are tied to—

yeah, I mean, the gas prices are just, you know, they haven't actually completely incorporated the cost of the war. But I think we're going to see elevated gas prices for quite a while. It's going to be terrible for consumers. I just filled my car this weekend and it was more expensive than usual. And I noticed that it was like, oh, you know, there's going to be it's going to contribute to a very ornery mood and it's going to be bad for consumers who are trying to travel. Yeah, this summer.

Yeah. Speaking of bad for consumers, always curious about your AI updates.

Well, so the AI and jobs, it's been like I've been doing a lot of writing on the impact of AI and jobs. And I had this piece that went mini viral, which is like the end of The Office, and I called it the fucking thing and We're going to get rid of a lot of white-collar jobs and, and going through the various impacts. And I saw in lockstep about 10 days ago, a bunch of major accounts on social media came together and said, look, all this fear-mongering about AI and jobs is really bad and it's not right, so, um, let's put it to bed and AI is going to create all these jobs. And one major company, I believe it was Salesforce, came out and said, we are going to hire 1,000 college grads to work with AI, just showing that, you know, this isn't going to decimate, um, all of the entry-level white-collar work.

Okay.

And to me, like, they realize just how bad the narrative was for them, and it's starting to turn various local politicians against data centers and the rest of it. And, you know, like the number I saw, which has probably gotten worse since then, was that AI's approval rating was 26%, which is lower than everything else, including ICE. Yikes. And so—

Worse than ICE?

And so the AI head honchos were like, look guys, like, people hate us. And so now they're trying to say, no, no, everything's going to be okay. Many new jobs will result. Which, by the way, of course, many new jobs will result. It's just they're gonna be vastly outnumbered by the jobs going away.

Right.

And, and, and, and so that, that's been interesting to me to see some of like the, this material come out because it's pretty clear to me that a bunch of them got together and were like, yo guys, like let, let's put out the message that AI is good for jobs.

I saw that there's this inherent risk on it where if you're a company, you're automating away all these jobs with AI and then you're, you're sort of kicking your customer base out of the workforce, out of the, you know, out of the workforce in some ways. Like, well, you can make a cheaper product, but no one can afford it because the country's unemployed.

Yeah, there have been some papers that come out saying that. It's like, look, if we all do this, then no one can buy our stuff.

No one can buy anything. Yeah, which makes sense.

It's sort of a massive pressing problem. Um, so by the way, I think that's directionally right. Um, they're, they're going to destroy a ton of the remaining middle class.

Well, I mean, these companies are doing philanthropy. This is sort of what Salesforce is doing. Like, we're going to eat the cost and hire 1,000 people we wouldn't have hired to prove concept. That's probably not sustainable. I don't know.

Yeah, I know.

You know what I mean?

You run some numbers.

That's like, they probably— that might be a write-off. And so, like, you know what I mean?

I mean, Oracle very publicly fired 30,000 people to save $8 billion, and then they said simultaneously, we'll be investing $50 billion in data centers. And the amount of money that is now going to build data centers is higher than the amount of money that's going to commercial office buildings. So it's literally the case that the server farm is the new human, the new real estate, that you don't need human workers. Um, and, uh, and that's the way all of this stuff is going. But then they realize this is, um, very, very unpopular, and so they're trying to, uh, like change the narrative.

Let me ask you a deep question-ish, like The question I want to ask is why? You know, in a sense that we know this is like, it's one of those things like we all know it's bad. We know we're losing jobs, yet we keep doing it. And is this just a straight result of capitalism? Like it has to grow to exist and sort of why you wanted a human-centered capitalism? Is that, is the system driving this? You know, I'm just curious.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's incentives. It's like everything else in American life that a lot of which we don't like. So a lot of the incentives are market-driven. And by the way, one of the things that popped in my head when I'm talking about this is movies. It's like people want more variety in movies, but the problem is like no random $50 million original concept movie is going to make its money back because of depressed returns. And so all you're going to get is superhero movies and, uh, Oscar, you know, and something, you know, that's built on, um, pre-existing IP.

Yeah.

Um, so that the market incentives are very contra to what, um, people think— would think of as like pro-creativity or pro-art or pro-risk-taking. Um, and then there are a lot of people who are really mad about this, um, merger between Warner and Paramount. Yeah, because they're like, oh no, like, there's going to be like two mega studios signing off on all productions, and so we're just going to get like homogeneous crap, and no one's going to be able to say anything, um, interesting or controversial.

Yeah.

Um, writ large, by the way, and this is something that makes me super sad, is that the number of Hollywood productions has shrunk industry-wide by, let's call it, 30 to 40%, and the workforce in LA has shrunk by the same number, right? Where they just came out at a recent, uh, hearing where 65,000 workers have left Los Angeles County Uh, because— and most all of them were in the entertainment industry at every level. So we're talking about like camera people and grips and caterers and makeup artists, they're like all that, like that entire set of middle-class jobs has gotten wiped out. And the— and obviously that also means that there are a lot of actors and like, uh, creators who are on the bench like doing nothing. Um, and so, so you have this like massive set of market incentives that are going to make, you know, certain forms of movies exist and others not. And then you apply this to AI and the corporates. So it's like, hey guys, we've come up with this AI and it's going to give rise to trillion-dollar valuations for companies because investors are just going to bid this stuff up to the moon. And, uh, it's going to be bad for workers in various corporations, but you, the head honchos, will get rewarded if you cut workers and replace them with AI and your bottom line will get better. I had a CEO of a publicly traded AI-enabled company reach out to me, which happens sometimes because, you know, it's like whatever, had breakfast and he said his revenue has gone up threefold and he's cut 30% of his staff. And the more savagely he cuts his workers, the better his company is going to perform.

Jesus.

So he raised his hand and said, yo, this is not sustainable and we're going to have to do something about it. That's why he reached out to me. So he's exceptional, just that he's trying to do something. But I'm sure that there are hundreds of CEOs in the same boat that have not, you know, like, I mean, what are they going to do? They're saying, well, shoot, I either lose my job or I cut like X thousand people and they don't live it, you know what I mean?

Like, what's the typical private equity entrepreneur living lifestyle-wise? What are they doing? They work in Manhattan or Silicon Valley, Manhattan, and they take their train to a nice suburb in Jersey or New York. And the people around them are doing very similar things and they're doing well. And they talk about doing well. They're, you know what I mean? Like, they're not— they're not seeing the people losing their jobs. They're not, you know, like they may see— they read the articles, but it's not— it's not like lived, you know?

Well, certainly, I mean, And these people are typically going to get 7, 8-figure payouts, maybe in some cases more. And they're trained in activity of shareholder value maximization. And then it's like, well, what am I going to do? Like, keep these extra $2,000?

It's their job. They're literally just doing their job in a weird way.

So that individual, I do not blame. You know, it's like, I mean, it's not fantastic, but if you were the CEO of a publicly traded company, it legitimately is. Do this or you will lose your job. And, and so then it's like, well, what are we going to do? Like, you know, and by the way, if I get canned, they're just going to bring in some other person.

Someone else is going to do it.

Yeah, who's going to do it? So it's like, here we go. So that stuff is a function of both this version of capitalism and the incentives of being a publicly traded company and then an exec therein. And I try to explain to people, you know, it's like, look, imagine if we spent trillion a trillion dollars on intelligent machines to replace you, which we've done. And then it's going to go around savagely cutting everybody. And then right now there's a backlash coming. So like, oh shit, oh shit. Like, let's say that it's not happening, right? And because our media environment is so cloudy and confused, like, that's actually—

some message will get out.

Yeah, that's like a legit strategy. Oh God. Meanwhile, you know, and then, and then the layoffs will, will happen as they happen. Thank you, listeners. Please make sure to like and subscribe. And if you have any questions, send them to mailbag@andreyang.com and we'll do our best to answer them. Thank you.

So one of the questions we got, we have a mailbag, um, but one of them is about UBI and tech. This is a question from James, but I want to frame it kind of what you're talking about. So James said, one question I always had in regards to UBI is how the payment amount is determined. Do 18-year-olds and Indiana get the same amount as a 65-year-old in California? Could it be determined by demographics, location, age? What's, you know, but then there's migration to localities of higher payment, et cetera. But I, I'd love to like reframe that question as Elon Musk has talked about, I think he's said I'm not universal high income, universal high income. There's something has certainly shifted.

Yeah.

Our, our, our logic when we were, when you were running for president was that we need to do this now because this has to be the base and we build off it. We haven't built the base. Yeah, it's now happening. It's happening like crazy. Um, it's actually happening to white-collar office workers faster than it's happening to blue-collar manufacturing workers, even though it sort of happened in, you know, before in some ways. I'm curious your thoughts on what you do from a UBI policy standpoint to navigate this? Let's say you could do it, you know.

Oh yeah, of course. I mean, which I do think about a fair amount. Um, so I, I think the step is universal basic income. I'd probably step it up from the $1,000 a month. Uh, I looked up the numbers, so like the equivalent today would be something like $1,200 a month. Okay, go $1,200 a month and help people manage the transition. Um, in terms of the question, let's say rural Indiana versus California and the cost of living, the rest, the rest of it, In 2020, I said we're going to ignore all distinctions. We're just going to have the same amount. And I believe that's a better approach because you don't want any administration or games playing around. It's like, oh, I really live in— my house is here, I live here. It's like, I don't want to, I don't want to care. Yeah, we're just going to get, get you the money as long as you're, you know, an American, uh, and you can move around, you can do whatever you want, like, you know, and If someone says, oh, that's not fair because things are cheaper in rural Indiana than in California, let's say, it's like you can move to rural Indiana. There's nothing stopping you.

And you have the ability to with this income.

Yeah, I'd actually kind of enjoy it if you did go because I think a lot of these rural areas could use some more people. So there are, you know, I mean, the other thing is there are all of these reasons why people live in more expensive locations. That, you know, around the opportunities, but like also lifestyle and lifestyle and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah. So like to me it'd be like, look, make your own decisions. We do not want to administer where you live, cost of living adjustments and the rest of it, like where it's going to get you the money. Oh wait, I want to cut in with something fun. So appreciate your Touchgrass t-shirt. Go ahead and model it for everyone.

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Famous as Zach's mother.

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I think related to like one of the questions that Alex sort of asked, like considering tech startups and innovation where it's going, how do you balance economic activity with mass unemployment? And we've talked about UBI, but I'm curious if there's other policy things we think need to be happening to slow this down, to adjust for it, to react to it. Um, and maybe some of it's some of the ranked choice voting and open primary stuff you're talking about, independent politicians. But I'm curious other policies in your mind's eye to fight this or navigate this?

Yeah, we should be investing a ton in technical education, apprenticeship, vocational. Tens, hundreds of thousands of open positions there, and a lot of people are aging out. Yeah. So that's a policy thing I think everyone can agree with. Now, this questioner is essentially suggesting, do we need to put the brakes on? For some of these innovations to keep jobs around. And let me say, I'm not someone who loves that approach because you end up having to make a very distinct choice. It's like, why these workers, not those workers? If there's one thing that I think you might want to put a brake on just because it's going to be a major problem, it would be automating truck driving. It's just such like a core livelihood. for so many people. It's like the number one job in a majority of states, something like that. Um, but by and large, the task should be to try and make it so that people could shift jobs and not, um, want to go out in the street and, you know, like shoot somebody.

Yeah.

Like, you know, it's like, and, and you don't want to make like a, hey, this job's more important than that job, or this population is more important than that, because You know, there are gonna be changes all over the place. And one of the areas I think is gonna be a hotbed is healthcare because you have a very powerful medical lobby. They're gonna be like, hey, it's gotta be human looking at this, gotta be human doing that. And then people are like, eh, like, you know, does it? Yeah. Yeah.

You sure?

And maybe there aren't doctors around cause I'm in a primary care desert or like, you know, they're gonna be, be some issues there. But that is gonna be the environment we enter where people are going to be heading to the government for special treatment and protection.

You think national security has something to do with this too, in the sense, like, if someone creates artificial general intelligence, like, it's a— and like a supercomputer that's smarter than humans, like, it— we have a national security risk, I imagine. Like, there's a race here similar to nuclear bombs in the sense that if China beats it to us or Russia beats us to it or one of our adversaries, version of a problem. Oh, sure. Big problem. As opposed to truck driving, like you may slow some domestic economic growth, but it might be better for other versions of domestic economic growth. Let's call it sanity and unemployment and things like that.

Is it—

I'm curious your thought on the national security risk of this and how it makes that more complicated.

It is totally the case that we're in a very competitive environment, primarily with China.

Yeah.

And by the way, I do not think this means that you shouldn't regulate AI. You should have guardrails, should tax it. There are a bunch of common sense things that we should be doing while being mindful. It's like, look, it is true that whoever gets to artificial general intelligence is going to have a massive advantage economically.

Yeah.

I also believe though that the world is already essentially hiving off into the set of countries that are gonna use Western AI and then the set of countries that are gonna use Chinese AI.

Yeah.

I mean, really like, no, for real.

No, they won't use ours. Yeah. Yeah.

You kind of know who's who already.

We're gonna have our own.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that, that's the way it's gonna play out.

It's a weird time to be alive, man. Scary on one end. Exciting on the other.

By the way, like the, the, The breakthrough that I think people are underestimating in this dimension— not to freak everyone out, I'm sorry— but it's if you get to quantum computing, you can break any code. And that's something that's probably around the corner for both us and China.

I didn't love— I liked— I didn't love the newest Mission: Impossible movies, but that's sort of the premise of it, is sort of what do they call it, the Syndicate, wherever, where it just hacks everything. You know? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's going to get a lot easier to penetrate and hack something than it is to safeguard it because it's the way it's like a world of like all offense, no defense kind of thing. Jesus.

All right. Let's talk about something a little more interesting. Not more interesting, more positive and a little more uplifting. Yeah, I think it's uplifting or it should be uplifting. Someone asked about student loans. So this is a crazy stat I didn't know, but it sort of tracks what I've seen. So this is from Jeff. He said, Jeff said, according to the Wall Street Journal, federally backed student loans and mortgages are seeing increased defaults with 70% of people not repaying student loans. Do you support restoring constitutional bankruptcy rights for student loans, or how do you solve this, especially given what we just talked about with AI and everything else?

I remember a number of years ago, um, some lobbyists snuck in and changed the treatment of, um, school loans versus other consumer loans in terms of the way they get treated in bankruptcy court, right? That's what this person's talking about, I think. I remember at the time it's like, why are we treating this so differently? And then they acted like there's a massive risk that everyone was going to go around declaring bankruptcy.

It did make sense. You're a student, you're already broke, you might as well declare bankruptcy and then get out of your loans. I get that out the gate, though at the time there was no actual— like, that wasn't a real thing.

Yeah, yeah, it wasn't a thing. Like, it wasn't like, you know, there weren't droves of students declaring bankruptcy and then somehow stiffing Right, right, right. The loan makers.

Yeah.

So as a result, you know, I think treating these loans in the way that other loans get treated is something I think that's what he means by, like, constitutional treatment. Because, by the way, there is something around, you know, it's like there are laws against, like, indentured servitude. Yeah.

Which is what this is, a version of it.

Yeah. Which, you know, that used to be commonplace. In colonial days where you'd have indentured servants.

Yeah, I mean, you said not people being thrown into jail.

I shouldn't laugh because I mean, I mean, these rates are predatory too.

They're like 8, 10, 15% sometimes. Like, it's, um, that's, that's a lot, you know.

Yeah, I, I'm, I'm for— and you know, their administrative like ins and outs and like, uh, some of the economic term is moral hazard, which is you don't want to, um, reward bad behavior. Um, but people probably aren't surprised by this. Like, I'm for forgiveness of medical debt. I'm for working out school loans. I'm for like aggressively doing things, um, to try and lift the burdens from people, because a lot of this is born of institutions that are preying on a lot of people. Yes, selling them a bill of goods. And so, you know, again, you have to like get into the ins and outs and do it in a way that isn't that, you know, like doesn't set off cascades of bad behaviors. But if you have a choice between serving people in their lives, especially young people who you need to do things like buy a home, buy a home, start families, start a family, like get credit cards, whatever it is.

Yeah.

And it makes me super sad how we're seeing less dating, less marriage, less childbearing, less, less house buying. And so anything that pushes us in that direction, I'm for.

My friends and I debated this where it's like, so on one hand you have this economic boot on your young generation, which is miserable. The other hand, like, I do— I know people that just, they got some sort of unemployable degree and got a ton of loan, or ton of loan, and to get them— to get that forgiven, where someone who paid off his own loans, like, I sold my— I sold my soul. I went to Wall Street and like Didn't love it and worked for 8 and a half years, whatever it was. And so on one hand, it's not fair to someone like myself, if you will, for doing that. But on the other hand, I also don't care at this point, you know, and I also want society to stay strong and whole. So I like, I see the argument, you know, I think a lot of people have these arguments. The reality is we can't just be like, oh, it's hard or it's complicated, so we shouldn't do any— like, that's what we're doing now. We're just not doing anything. And I do think I was sold a false bill of goods when you're 17 years old, you know, you got to go to college, so you have to take out the mortgage, especially now because college degrees are going to get devalued systematically. And it does set up a system where college just gets more expensive because they know you can finance it with loans, you know?

Yeah.

University didn't care.

Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm about trying to get the boot off people's throats.

Gerrymandering. It's been in the news. This is from Joy, but I think we've got a lot of comments on this. With the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act and the increased gerrymandering politics around the nation, how do you feel about partisan gerrymandering? Is it fair for Dems to start redrawing maps in the way Republicans have in Texas and will try in Louisiana? This is a fun one because they're both, both parties doing it. They did it in New York. If you look at the congressional map of New York City, it's like they're literally drawing around Certain areas. I'm curious your thoughts. I don't think we ever talked about this.

Yeah. If you are in a conflict, unilaterally disarming yourself seems dumb. And so I get Democrats are like, oh, snap, they just like got themselves extra seats in Texas.

Oh, we all get why they're doing it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then we need to fight fire with fire.

Yeah.

Wherever we have control. Totally understood. And here's what I would say is that I think partisans will say, like, we got to do everything we can in our power.

Yeah.

And then I think independents and voters should be looking up and saying, like, oh, man, like, I'd prefer not to have this gerrymandering. Yeah. Right. So, like, I think we all have a role to play because we all know in an ideal world voters are choosing their representatives and not essentially the other way around, which is happening now where it's like, hey, I'm going to slice and dice the voters. I know what you're going to do. Make it so that every seat's safe-ish. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, so I mean, the numbers I always throw out when I speak, 15% approval rating for Congress, 94% reelection rate for incumbent members. And so like the two parties have colluded to say like, let's just make it so there are very, very few actually competitive races and swing seats. And so I feel like my job as like an independent and a reformer and someone who's like striving for the ideal is to be like, gerrymandering bad, what these parties are doing wrong. Nonpartisan open primaries with ranked choice voting would be the nonpolarization path. And so let's try and do that. And so like, I'm anti Gerrymandering from both parties. And then the partisans, you know, unfortunately their role will be like, we gotta like max this thing out. And so like, I understand the need and the tit for tat. And I do understand also that if you think you're in this existential conflict, like, you know, throwing down your weapons and letting the other side do it, it seems super dumb. But, you know, and like my side, it's like, look, I'm pro-voter, pro-actual democracy, pro-independents being able to vote in elections that they're paying for. And so, like, you know, I'm just going to be anti-gerrymandering. And that's the role that I'm playing. Yeah.

I mean, the truth's in the middle. You got to navigate this. I will say this. There's some Dems being like, we have to do this because Republicans are doing it. At least what I've seen is it has been going on for years, decades. Like, we've been doing this for a long time. And the thing that I'd be—

I'd be angry agree about is like, if that Dem's like, hey, we got to do this, and that Dem also was alongside Dean Phillips saying, hey, Joe Biden, what's necessary for democracy is that we have a primary, then I'm looking at the person being like, okay, okay, you're like principled and you're just like pro-democracy when, wherever it is, and you were willing to fight your own leader and, you know, his administration.

Yes.

But the vast majority of the people are not in that boat. Like, there were like No primary for Joe Biden. Oh, and we must gerrymander to our— like, to the max and be like, then I don't love, you know, I mean, because then there's no principle. It's not like, oh, we need to be able to vote for our leader. You know, it's like, yeah, at that point then you're just like, whatever my party says, I'm into. And so that, like, I think that's like a different— yeah. Conversation.

Dean Phillips is the ultimate litmus test. Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

Like, where were you in 20— 24. 24. Yeah. Where were you? You know, you were lining up. Great. That's fine. But we just know you're team Dem no matter what.

Yes.

And the team principles, morals, democracy be damned. You're team Dem.

Process don't matter. You know, it's like cancel primaries. Sure. Whatever.

Yeah.

You know, that's what our party wants to do.

You will follow your party off a cliff.

Yeah.

You know, and the Republicans, the same thing. Dean was my litmus test, certainly. We got a bunch of questions on independent candidates and accountability. So the last category, this is from Joel. Joel said, the Forward Party is focused on fixing how we choose leaders, but what happens after someone takes office? American democracy runs on norms— is related to what we're talking about— unwritten expectations and a few penalties or enforcement mechanisms. Do you have any thoughts or ideas how we could reform our laws to help those in power be more accountable? Term limits. Go ahead.

Yeah, yeah, term limits is the thing that pops into mind for me. So a lot of the folks who run on Forward are of a reform bent who then are like, look, I wanna do my thing and then get out. And less opportunity to do what I think this questioner's suggesting, which is like become part of this entrenched self-dealing corruption class of leaders. Yeah. You know? And I agree with the questioners. Gist, which is like, look, a lot of the norms around our leadership are kind of, uh, self-governing. Like, you know, if you have someone in, they decide to become like a total asshole and lunatic, like, you know, like, like that, you know, as long as they're not a criminal. And even then, if they're a criminal, like, at this point, you know, is their own party gonna impeach them, etc., etc.? The goal would be to have a party, and I do believe Forward is this, where, you know, we're about good practices and policy and we're not going to defend you if you do become a loon. That way it's like, whereas right now the Dems and Republicans will defend their folks regardless of what they do, right? And then they'll just be like, oh, the other side's worse, you know? And whereas Forward, I think, you know, we're actually built like, hey, if you come in and then start like violating all the, you know, things we hope for, we hope for, then we'll just be like, you know, we are not with you anymore.

And there's probably pros and cons to it. But you see that and the stuff that happened with Swalwell is like they— oh my God, like, but this is what happens. You're a—

when you're a party mouthpiece, which is what he was, he got elevated almost to the governorship of our most populous state, which is a farce. I mean, they don't—

they don't want— and they don't want you anymore. They were sitting on these accusations, whether they're And they seem to multiple women on record. So seemingly a lot of weight to them, but they've been sitting on these for years, you know, like they occurred years ago, you know. So they were waiting for the right time where they didn't— they didn't want him to be the mouthpiece anymore. And that's what he's sort of— he's talking about these sort of like checks and balances in the party, whether it's committee placements or fundraising requirements they have to get to get the, you know, like they keep you in— Pelosi runs a tight ship, you know.

Yeah, no, it's true. And you again, you saw with Dean Phillips where like everyone just fell in line. Yeah. And attacked Dean. Yeah. Often, God, you know, it's like often in the press it was really disheartening. It's one reason why, by the way, I'm so thrilled to be an independent now is that like defending that crew when they got Donald Trump elected essentially, you know, twice. And so that there are folks now who are talking about, it's like, oh, you know, um, everyone's going to vote for Dems in '26 and '28 because Trump's so unpopular. True, I think that's largely going to happen in races around the country, but the Dems have never been so unpopular. And even if people hold their nose and vote for Democratic candidates in a lot of these precincts, which I think they will, it's not going to be like, oh, we love Dems again. It's just we, we're really down on whatever the hell is going on. Yeah, whatever's going on, because they don't like the war, they don't like the tariffs, they don't like the corruption, they don't like ICE. They're like, you know, you know, there's a bunch of things I do.

I mean, I say as friends, like, look, you know, people are like, where do you align on the political spectrum? It's like, I don't care. Rational human being, that's the team I'm on. And I don't agree with everything Zoran says, but he seems to be, you know, like, I'm on team I want good things for people.

And, and, but one of the fascinating developments of this past period has been, and this has been driven in part by the like Abundance movement out of, uh, Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson and whatnot, but people are wising up to the fact that there are a lot of, um, mismanagement issues in the blue cities and states. Yeah. Like people are looking up being like, hey, like there's, there's some problems. Yeah. And, and I'm enjoying that aspect because You know, it's like, like that to me is really the most salient set of issues. It's like, how are you actually going to deliver results for people?

Yes.

And these machines actually aren't really well designed to deliver results.

No, they're not.

And then they say it's like, hey, it's their fault. As I was like, no, it's just the machine is corrupt and correct, insider-y and wasteful and like a bunch of other things.

Yeah. I mean, this is Abundance talks about this, Barry Weiss talks about this. Like, you know, the Dems just can't be like, we're going to tax more, we're going to tax the rich. If you're unsatisfied with government, you don't want to pay more taxes.

Yeah, I mean, one of the numbers I'm seeing out there is that New York City is spending $40,000 per school child to really not great results at all.

So the worst— and we have as a nation, we spend more per capita on children to educate them and with some of the worst.

Yeah, you've got like a system that's just kind of soaking up money. And then the Democrats would be like, oh, the problem is the billionaires. It's like, is it? Because if you were to tax them and put more money in the system, I don't think we get any better.

Would the system be better, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I don't think our results— I don't think all of a sudden Objectively, like, like, our—

we fund our veterans really well. You still see homeless vets, you know what I mean? Like, we— there's plenty of healthcare, same thing. We spend more money on prisons.

Really, really poorly performing institutions.

Yes. In that vein, like, if you're Andrew Yang president, okay, first 90 days, let's call it you get one bill, you know what I mean? You get some executive orders, blah blah blah, but you get one bill. You're gonna include UBI in it. So let's just assume this comes in with that package, okay? And then What are you trying to get across Congress? What are you trying to get through? Democracy reform?

Certainly there'd be a democracy reform package around either Democracy Dollars, which people love, nonpartisan primaries, money out of politics, term limits, ranked-choice voting, like that suite. But you know what just popped in my mind? Actually, the pro-abundance agenda, be like a race to the top for localities that get rid of zoning regs. And you have, yeah, like, uh, you know, essentially going YIMBY, which is Yes In My Backyard, and people being willing to develop housing and to have like giant carrots and pots of gold for it. But you know, Austin, for all—

Austin's killing it that way. And that's—

yeah, and the rents are going down. And like, there's no immutable law that says rents have to go up. It's just because we're used to a constrained housing environment.

Yes.

And then more people want to live there and then it just like, you know, goes up and up and people think that's like a law of nature. It's not. No, I mean, just build more houses. Yeah, we're just bad at actually building, solving problems. And the way it worked in Austin is that they essentially said if we do not approve it within whatever the term is, like 4 weeks, it's auto-approved.

I love that.

Right. I mean, like, they've essentially switched the default. Yeah, because the default in a place like New York is you cannot do shit unless we sign off on it. And if it takes us forever to sign off on it, then you're just out of luck, right? You're out of luck. That's just the price of doing business in our, like, all-important environment. And then, you know, you know, that's like the opposite.

And so, so that's always bothered me. It's like, this stuff ain't rocket science, you know what I mean? Like, it's not— you've done— there's certain people that do really complicated things. You've built some things that are very complicated. But some of this stuff that we're talking about, it's like more houses would bring the price down, you know?

Yeah, totally. It's just, uh, it's just— and this is, by the way, something that should, you know, upset people— is that you've essentially divided the country into property owners and non-property owners and advantage the property owners in various ways. And then as soon as you're in the property owner club, you're like, stop building. Like, yeah, right? It's like, I don't want the crowds, I don't want, um, I don't want my house price going down, I don't want my housing prices to go down. So it's like like nothing changes. Yeah, as soon as I get into the property money class.

Yep, I get it. And look, if homes are cheaper, then people are less, you know, they're less concerned about the price going down, etc., you know. But, uh, you know, uh, you know, Bill Clinton said something a while back. I'm trying to remember, it was right around— it might have been right after Trump got elected, or it's like, what would you do for the Democratic Party now? And he said something like my first bill would be, I would call it the American Comeback Plan or something like that. And it would be like all encompassing of all the stuff we're supposed to be doing and make people go against America's comeback, you know? Which I think what a good president should do now. What we're seeing now, we saw Joe was like, we're gonna get infrastructure passed. And Trump is like, we're gonna do whatever the hell, some sort of tax situation or God knows what. I think we're thinking too small, certainly. And, you know, like, I don't know what the infrastructure bill— I have no idea when we start to— it's assuming that the government's going to be able to build. Yeah.

And this is one of the things you realize, too, is that our government doesn't have like— and one of the things I was campaigning on in 2020 was I called it kind of cheekily like the Legion of Builders and Destroyers.

Yeah.

You just went around and built stuff because the— I mean, there's an Army Corps of Engineers, but that's not what they do. Like, those guys, like, build bridges and war zones and maintain the levees and like, but they're not actually going around like building infrastructure, right? Um, so the way the government builds infrastructure is essentially sending a check, and then they send the check to a state or a city, and then the state or the city then starts to process like the awarding of contracts. And then there are various firms that, you know, like bid on the project, and then the incentives go off, and it's naturally corrupt.

It's— I don't mean that in like a net, but it's like, you know, There's lots of construction companies to pick from. Who do they pick? The one that takes them the nicest dinner, or their buddy from college or high school, or whatever.

And the incentive too, it's like, hey, I have an overrun, you know, we're over budget, you know, you made more money.

That's— and what happens is everybody makes extra money, whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah, that's why everything's twice expensive and, um, takes too long. Takes too long. And like in California, the, um, shining example is like the high-speed rail to nowhere. I don't know if you've seen this. I have seen this. They spend billions of and like, no one knows what's going on. Yep. Um, so that's the frustration so many Americans feel. But I will say, you know, I think a UBI would be like the single biggest signal to Americans that things are actually changing and heading in their direction. Like, if you get money out to people funded by AI, be like, oh my gosh, like, you know, this is— and that's like the fundamental balance that is gone out of whack. Like, when, when we were campaigning, I used to make like the giant Amazon claws, like sucking vitality out of like the, you know, main streets. And, and now like the claw is much, much bigger, and it's AI. AI is going to suck dry the office parks, it's going to suck dry your kids' brains, it's going to suck dry art, it's going to just like suck it all dry and hoover it up. And it's like, hey, we're gonna soak trillions of dollars of value, and our companies have gotten bid up to this. And like, if this value starts actually circulating broadly, that, that's really the only way out of this mess. I mean, so John Arnold like tweeted something recently that was the same case I made on CNBC, which is like the, the transformation, like this is the big opportunity. Is typically you tax things you want to discourage.

Right.

So we should not be taxing human labor. We should be not be taxing payrolls. Um, so what should we be taxing? We should be taxing AI and the bots. And then you wind up preserving jobs. You should also shift to a 4-day work week and a bunch of other things, but you like try and preserve the jobs, um, as much as you can. And you get the value from AI and the gang and, and you need to be taxing AI in a very real way because they're gonna do more and more work. And right now they're just not paying any taxes on it. The whole thing is insane. And so we, we're being set up to turn on ourselves and, uh, like Vinod Khosla, John Arnold, a bunch of other people are like, yo, we gotta like switch gears.

Yeah.

And so if we switched gears and then started, by the way, you would also then take the approval rating of AI and it would go from 26 to 76%. Because if everyone was getting money and be like, yo, this is like my dividend.

More. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, some more. As long as I'm getting like my fair share and, you know, it's like the rest of it, then I'm pumped.

Yeah.

And there are a bunch of AI high chieftains who are actually making some noises in this direction. Dario Amadei is like, tax us. Sam Altman's like, we should do an AI national wealth fund. Elon's like, universal high income. Like, people are all starting to head in this direction.

Yeah, I think that'll be my my own litmus test for the next presidential election is who's got the best plan on AI, who's comfortable talking about it, seems to understand it, you know what I mean? Because a lot of these guys don't. They never had a real job, you know?

Yeah, no, the worst. There are like a few big moves you should make, um, on AI that are like totally common sense. It's just that right now, um, people are scared to take a side on it because they're scared the AI industry is gonna spend against them and they have money in Congress. So they've already raised $150 million for this AI lobby and they're spending millions against like anyone who breathes a word about this stuff in the primary.

And it's easy for them not to talk about because they don't understand it anyway.

And so, so you're seeing a couple of like politicians take various points of view that are kind of immune from stuff like Bernie Sanders. I do think there's a grand bargain to be had. And shout out to my guy Alex Borris, B-O-R-R-I-S, who's running for Congress in New York. In New York. And I don't know if you've seen this stuff.

So they've been hammering him.

They've been hammering him. And their big accusation is that he's one of us. That's actually the most hysterical thing is that he's a Palantir guy. Yes. Yes. He worked for Palantir, passed a very sensible AI safety bill as a legislator in New York. And now the AI companies are spending millions being like, Alex Boris, he's a servant of AI companies. You know, I mean, which is, you know, as usual, the opposite of the truth. Um, so, uh, more power to Alex Boris, who's been on the pod and who I donated to. Um, I hope he wins. Um, uh, and hopefully more political figures start taking very common sense, um, positions on AI.

Certainly. Let's, uh, let's close. What's, what's got you positive right now? Where's your head at? What's, uh, something uplifting to wrap the show with?

You know, spring has sprung.

Spring has sprung.

Like gearing up, gosh, for like Memorial Day and the beginning of summer '26. So that's made me happy. This was a long winter.

Yep.

I'm pumped for Noble to be able to lighten people's load. So again, email matt@noblemobile.com for 6 free months, a screaming value. I mean, that's insane.

Yeah.

Like, are we losing money on that? Maybe.

A little.

I mean, because this is our gift.

Yeah, it's a gift.

Our May gift. It's like a spring gift to you and yours. Like, clean up your, you know, your wireless bills. And I'm excited about that.

I'm excited. My Buffalo Sabres are on to round 2 as we record this. It's probably game 3 or 4 by the time you get this. But go Sabres. They're America's team right now. Everybody would love Buffalo to win something.

I've been watching a lot of the NBA playoffs. I have. Go Knicks. Yeah, so, you know, people know me, know I'm like a lapsed Knicks fan though. Oh yeah, no, it's fine, it's fine. I mean, I'm pro things like good things happening for New York, so I'll probably go to a Knicks-Sixers game upcoming.

That'll be fun. Um, you know, LeBron's back, he doesn't age.

Yeah, I mean, this NBA playoffs, uh, it's been fun. I've enjoyed it.

Yeah. Uh, but anyway, love you all.

Thank you all. Hope your spring is going great, and, um, hopefully we will catch you over at Noble HQ. We're having, um, a big party here in New York on May 21st.

Yep.

If you go to, um, offlineparty.com, um, maybe we will see you there.

Hell yeah.

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