1284: FICO Scores, Mortgages & the Death of the Gig Economy?

When we found you and your podcast, it was like, okay, this is what we should have done the first time. It's like the properties make sense the day you buy them.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial independence Day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to episode 1284. 1284. Thanks for joining us today. Adam is here with me. Well, he's not here with me personally, but virtually or physically, I guess, what's the right word? But he's here virtually, coming to us from Austin. And I am, of course, in Palm Beach, Florida and headed to Chicago today to the Windy City. Adam, I'm going to go hang out with our client, the Rabbi Moffic, who has been guest hosting some of my Solomon Success show episodes. He's doing a great job, huh?

I have to admit, I've never really listened to Jewish sermons before, but some good stuff.

Yeah, he's really good. Yeah, I enjoy it. And the Solomon Success show, of course, is one that I started, oh, maybe 10 years ago, give or take. It's biblical principles for business and investing. So that's good. And you know, half the Bible applies to the Jewish faith, so the Rabbi came forward and volunteered to do that. And he's got some good stuff up there. So I'm going to see him in Chicago. I've got a meeting there. Should be fun. Should be fun. I want to remind everybody, please continue sending me your real estate spam and your investing spam. You're getting spam from these various real estate promoters, investment promoters, and send it over. We appreciate what you've sent so far. You can Forward it to reviewsasonhartman.com reviewsasonhartman.com and if you have a question about any of that spam you're getting from these guys, type it in there and we'll answer it for you too, if we can. If we can. A lot of these guys are shady Shady, Shady. And we just want to see what they're doing out there. I try to subscribe to some of their spam myself, but it's always nice to have more spam, right?

It's what everybody loves. What everybody loves.

Yeah. It's like being a hoarder. You know, the disease of being a hoarder, Spam hoarder over here. Right. Okay. Well, there is a vehicle, not a automobile, but a financial vehicle that I have been investigating deeply. And you know, when I start looking at something and I get intrigued with it, I go down the rabbit hole. And I've been going down the rabbit hole on this one. And this vehicle used properly. Used properly could be better. Well, it's certainly better than the Opportunity Zone, the overhyped Opportunity Zone. That has never impressed me. But hey, if I'm missing something, tell me what a fool I am. Go to jasonartman.com ask and tell me why. I don't get it about the Opportunity Zone. We've done some shows on it. I don't get it. I think it's highly overrated. So it's definitely better than that. And by the way, I'm going to be talking about this at Profits in Paradise in Orlando coming up next month. But I think it's also better than the 1031 tax deferred exchange. Now, that's a tough one to say, Adam, because I think the 1031 tax deferred exchange is like the Holy Grail.

Pretty sweet deal.

It's pretty awesome. Yeah. Pretty darn awesome. So if it beats the 1031 tax deferred exchange. Wowza. Wowza. Wowza. I am impressed. And I think it might. I've been talking with tax advisors. I've been talking with attorneys. I've got written documentation. I've got a retainer agreement sitting here on my desktop. And I'm thinking of pulling the trigger on this personally for my own use, for my own account, and also thinking it would be good for a lot of our clients and listeners. So we'll be talking about this and taking a deep dive into it at Profits in Paradise. Get your tickets for that at Jason Hartman Live. Jason hartmanlive.com and we've still got Early Bird for a few more days, and that's a great deal. So check that out, Adam. FICO scores. FICO scores. Maybe a year ago now, I was going to say quite a few months ago, maybe a year ago, we announced that FICO scores were the highest they've been in a long, long time. Can't Remember the exact amount of time, but it was on a prior episode. So you can go find that. Go to jasonhartment.com always use the search engine on the website. Very handy tool to search anything on our past podcast or in our blog or anywhere on jason hartman.com. what's going on with the FICO scores now?

Well, a year ago was apparently a long time ago because nowadays the average FICO score is at a new record high and it's over 700. Now. It's at 700. Six is the average FICO score, which will get. Assuming you have the money for a down payment, that'll get pretty much anybody, an investment property loan. But we've talked about it before. It's not too surprising because people are coming out of the Great Recession and haven't been able to get big loans. But the good news is, the really good news is the fact that people who are 90 days or more late on a mortgage payment is all the way down to 2.8%. And people who are 90 days or more past due on a credit card is down to 8.6%.

So in other words, 8.6 of the people in the country with credit cards are slightly delinquent. Right. Or no more than 90 days delinquent.

Right, right. And a decade ago it was 13%. So it's a pretty.

Pretty good drop. Very significant. Yeah. And on mortgages, everybody's paying their mortgage mostly, right?

Yeah. So the great part is, obviously they haven't been able to take out mortgages. Yes, that's one thing. But this would suggest that consumer spending is more in line with wages. If you're not outspending your income and you're able to start boosting your credit report, that's a really good thing for society. Even as people are fearing a looming recession. You know, we're seeing all that talk start spurring up again. But this is good news. It's very good news.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really good news for the stability of the economy. Now, certainly the economy is not without its debt problems, though. So let's not get too overconfident because we've got a huge $1.5 trillion student loan debt problem. We've got auto loan debt problems and credit card debt problems, but so far they're being managed. And when I say problems, I'm talking in terms of overall balances. But debt is high. There's no question about it. Debt is high, but it's being very well managed. And consumer confidence is very high. Consumers are spending, they're Optimistic. And by and large, I don't know. I mean, there are some very significant concerns about what's going on in China. The Chinese economy is very problematic. And of course, you know, there's this little thing called a trade war, or a trade negotiation, as I think it should be called.

It's veering more towards the war these days.

You think it's more of a war? Okay, fine. And there are lots of, you know, I'm not trying to paint some rosy picture here, but it's good and bad. But on the things that we've talked about here in terms of the FICO score and such, Wow. I mean, very, very good for the overall economy and what is really interesting, and maybe we'll call this millennial tech to some extent. I was hearing a story on my Alexa news flash, because the thing is always listening, and of course they're abusing our information and so forth. But that's another subject. Tangent alert. But I was listening to one of the flash briefings talking about this new credit scoring move. I've been following this for maybe 3 years or so now, and I think it's being pushed a lot by millennials entering the workforce.

I heard this one.

Yeah. It's interesting and I think it's very valid. I think they've got a good point. The FICO scoring model, it's pretty lame, actually. And I experienced this myself going through the Great Recession when I was doing loan workouts and strategic defaults on some of my own properties. You know, the lender would tell you, listen, we're not going to negotiate with you if you're paying the mortgage, so you got to stop paying. I pondered this and I thought, okay, let me see. My credit score has always been fantastic. I've always enjoyed great credit up until that point when I literally made affirmative decisions recommended by my lenders to get better loans. Okay. And I did short sales on some properties, and I thought, okay, well, I'm over my 10 loan limit already. And at the time, they had reduced the loan limit to four loans, where for a while you could only get four Fannie Mae loans. And I'm like, I've got way more than that. I've got way more than 10. So it's not like I can go get any more financing. Even if my portfolio was absolutely 100% perfect. They just weren't offering more than 10 loans per person, or at the time, four loans per person. And it later increased back to 10. And then as we came out of the Great Recession and I applied for credit I was thinking, this is so ridiculous. I've got tons of money in the bank and every other credit account I've ever had using like stellar perfect condition, except for the mortgages that I strategically defaulted on in order to do workouts, short sales, loan mods. And I thought, this is a pretty dumb scoring model. I've never declared bankruptcy. I've always, all my life had a great credit score except for these couple of circumstances where I intentionally did that. Along with, you know, 12 million other people in the country, they're losing out on a good borrower. And so now what they're doing is they are looking at ways to really improve the way they do credit scoring. And some of it could be unfair. Some of it has got some real concerns because we've talked on the show before about the way China is doing this social scoring where if you write something on social media, maybe you'll be denied credit or maybe you'll be on a no fly list for airlines. Really scary what they're doing in China, but hey, the US Is not China. And what they're doing now is they're trying to look at about 1,000 data points for borrowers when considering extending credit. And all kinds of funny things they've discovered in looking at just mountains and mountains of data. Doing lots of data mining contribute to whether someone is a good or a bad credit risk, including crazy things you think would be crazy, Adam. Like, do they fill out an application with all capitalization, all caps versus upper, lower case? They found that borrowers that fill out applications in all caps are bad credit risk. They're more likely to default than people who use upper and lowercase letters. How do you like that one?

Yeah, I was hearing. And they look at, I think they also look at your social media accounts to see if you're doing kind of what they consider risky things. And they look at, you know, your like.

Like what, picking fights or skydiving.

It's like looking for, like, if you're spending a whole lot on travel or if you're doing this or that. And they look at your like, energy bills to see if you're using energy efficiently or not at ridiculous levels. And I mean, whenever I was listening to it, I was like, well, this could be very helpful, but it's also kind of creepy just how much of your life they're delving into to get this score.

Absolutely. It could definitely be creepy and it could definitely go bad. And I'm sure it will and I'm sure in future years on show number 4283.

It's not going to take that long.

Oh, maybe not. We'll be talking about this and how it's being abused.

I mean, just think about if the Experian hack had happened when they had all of these data points. I mean, it's gonna be. It's gonna be open season on whatever company starts doing this. But one of the things, whenever I was reading this article about credit scores and everything, this I think has a lot to do about not being 90 days or more late, has a lot to do with the fact that people have actually seen wage growth on the lower end of the scale in the past couple years or, you know, past two or three years.

Hey, you know who you can thank for that?

Adam, I am aware you're your favorite president. So once they've seen Donald Trump is.

His name, just for the record. Okay, go ahead.

Yeah. Since they've seen the wage growth, as long as they haven't gone into a lot more debt, you know, if they continue sitting at the same level, obviously they're going to be able to pay off the amount that they have. But also things that were past due before. So I think the wage growth has had a lot to do with this. So, hey, all we really need is for the US Economy to continue providing wage growth.

Yes, yes. We'll see if we get four more years. And if our rather, at times immature president can pull that off. He's certainly good for the economy. Love him or hate him, it's certainly good for the economy. No one can argue with that.

And the good part is since they're getting wage credits growth and they're not late on mortgage payments or credit card payments, they have more income to actually pay their rent. So hopefully foreclosures will be going down too. Not foreclosures, but evictions.

Yeah. One of the things too, you have to consider is that credit management or, you know, making payments to creditors. Right. It's not just always a matter of having the ability to pay or having the money. Some of it is just being organized and responsible. And look, you know, the creditor doesn't care why you're not paying them. They just want to get paid. There is an element of that to it. I think certainly there will be abuses of these new credit scoring models that are emerging and they are definitely creepy. But certainly if someone has, you know, a couple million bucks in the bank and they've got some dings from some mortgages when the whole country was basically defaulting to get loan modifications, why wouldn't you make them a loan. That's crazy. I mean, that's a good borrower that's gonna be able to pay, that's gonna be forced to pay if they have to. Okay. It's just very unlikely a creditor would lose money on that borrower, especially if their prior history is good until this certain point, like during the Great Recession. Right. But, you know, most of this stuff has just fallen off people's credit reports by now anyway, so.

Yeah, well, a lot of it, they. Whenever I heard the story about it this weekend, a lot of it was due to millennials not being able to get credit. That's one of the big reasons they're looking into the other data points.

Right. Well, you know, that's the problem. You know, if you don't buy a car, which a lot of millennials don't, they don't really care about driving because they have ride sharing services and scooters, tutors in every city. I'm sure I'll see a lot of those in Chicago. I have a feeling if you live at home and don't participate in the economy, it's going to be pretty hard to have a good credit score and build credit. So you got to get out there and do things, and then once you.

Don'T have credit, it's really hard to get credit.

What does that mean?

Oh, if you don't have a credit score and you're over the age of, you know, a college age person. Yeah, getting credit is really hard. Like convincing somebody to give you a credit card. Brutal. I mean, I had friends who've come over from overseas. They moved back to the United States in their mid, mid to late 20s and they had a job. Everything was fine. They'd been fine back in Australia, where they were from, and couldn't get any credit here in the United States.

Right, right. I was just hearing a story about that. And a very successful person living overseas and couldn't establish credit in the U.S. when he came back, an American. And, and HSBC had a banking relationship. They made an accommodation loan to kind of get his credit score started in the U.S. so look, for better or worse, this is the system we have in the US and you gotta live within it to some extent. Adam, we gotta switch gears. We want to play another great example. We're going to play the soundtrack of one of the videos that was submitted in the Five Year Plan contest, because we've got our contest right now. So submit your videos. They are really easy to do and you'll learn a lot. Just by going through the exercise yourself, you might win free tickets to profits in paradise. You might win a free cruise. So we got some good prizes for you. After we play this video, we got to come back and we're not going to have much time to do this, Adam, but we got to talk about sex and the gig economy.

But not combined.

Well, sort of combined a little bit. It's not what you think folks, so I'll just tease you with that. Anything else you want to say about the audio we're about to play or the contest? Adam?

Just that you can find all the rules and everything@jasonhartman.com contest.

So go there and enter the contest and check out the details, check out the prizes and let's play this clip for our listeners and we'll be right back after this.

Hello, my name is Jeff and this is our plan five year plan for retirement. We're actually the Joneses next door. Let me introduce you to them. On the left is my son Harrison, then Nathan, then my beautiful wife Christy, myself and Grace. We are the Joneses next door and we're planning for retirement because we've spent a lot of money over the years. We have to get a plan going. Let me tell you first about my experience with money. I was raised by a father who was a school teacher and a landlord. He invested in small houses and in commercial real estate in the 70s and 80s and even though he was a schoolteacher and had all sorts of time off to raise us, he was able to pay for my middle school because he didn't spend anything. He was really the millionaire next door and he was my dad. But the other influence I had was my wife. She's beautiful but she likes the good life. We send our kids to private school, we have a big house, we have a fancy car. We enjoy finer things. I'm a little bit conflicted because of my upbringing but when it comes to my wife or my dad having the most influence in my life regarding money, I must admit I've sided with my wife. So we have a lot of expenses and a few years ago we started getting serious about looking at the bottom line and how we are going to ever retire. We've always put money away in 529 plans and we even paid off our primary residence. Additionally, we've had money going to 401ks, we've maxed out our 401ks and we've invested in our post tax account. And even after 15 years of working as doctors, we aren't even close to meeting our Goal retirement number. In fact, if we were to retire right now and just went through our post tax account, we would only have 15% of that number. Actually, that was in 2014. Now it's up slightly. But we needed another plan to get to retirement early instead of just keep working another 15 years hence. We had a plan to buy rental homes, just like my dad did, and to use the cash flow to help fund retirement. I started listening to Jason Hartman's podcast, and after doing so and pulling some money out of savings and refinancing our cabin, my wife wouldn't let us touch our home. But refinancing our cabin, we were able to start making income from rental income. In fact, after two and a half years, we now have 25% of that goal number for retirement coming out each monthly by cash flow. Because we bought 18 rental homes and I purchased an office where I practice. Our post tax account, it's gone up a few percentage points and the 401k has gone up a few percentage points. Those percentages, the 17s up top, are basically what we could expect to make from those accounts if There was a 4% yield each month. So now we're at the point where it's 2017 and we are thinking about what we're going to do the next five years to get to retirement or at least an option of retirement. Right now we have 42% of that money available, 25% is coming from rental homes, and the post tax account is yielding 17%. So that produces money that's available, 42%. So that's up from 15%, which isn't bad, but we're not yet close. Our future money, if we wait until we're 59 and a half and start taking 4%, yields from our investment accounts would be closer to 76%, which doesn't sound bad, but we're not 59 and a half yet. So our next plan is this. And that is to pay off one mortgage every eight to 10 months and buy a new home on mortgage every eight to 10 months, will pay extra mortgage to our cabin to have that paid off in five to seven years. We'll stop funding 529s in five years and Christie will be given the option to retire in five years and maybe me as well. And this is how we are going to institute that plan. Basically from my job on the left, I will fund all of our expenses. From my job, I've actually made a profit account in my business. And from that we're going to pay extra towards the cabin, our second home. So that in five to seven years the cabin paid off. And then Christie's income we're going to use for investments and I've broken down the percentage of her income every two weeks we'll take 50% of that money and put it towards rentals. 30% of the money will still be going into investments in the stock market. 10% will go to our nest egg and 10% will go to a referrals account. We have extra savings other places. Our nest egg is. This is a nest egg that we use just for emergencies on a month to month basis. By doing that over the next five years, this is what we hope to achieve. 50% of our goal income will be coming from rentals and 26% will be coming from the post tax account producing now money of 76% which isn't bad and probably will be able to cover our expenses. I may still need to work part time, but I won't have to work full time at that point. If we look at future money however though and include our 401k plans, we'll be able at 59 and a half have 120% of our income. Additionally, shortly after five years our mortgage on our second home will be gone and our 529 plans should be fully funded to cover college for three kids and at least one, if not one and a half graduate school educations. The car lease will probably be gone and our credit cards may be higher for travel and or etc. But I think we'll have enough money by that time. It's exciting for us and if we go back and think about five years we were in 2014 with only 15% of our money coming from our post tax account. It's hard to imagine after 15 years of working that we only have that amount needed for our goal retirement. But I think this shows that rental investing has been so far good to us and it is a good option for us to supplement our retirement money and it gets us to our goal much faster than if we were to continue investing in the stock market alone. I want to thank Jason Hartman for all his insights and helping us. Even though we've had some bumps in the road in Chicago, we're going to weather the storm and come out ahead. And I also want to thank everybody else who's helped us get to this point.

So Adam, I saw the most ridiculous news story. I thought only in a socialistic left wing country could you have anything like this. It's so absolutely ridiculous. But it applies to states Too. States within the U.S. this is the drift of the things employers have to risk. It is really bad news. So this guy goes on a business trip. He's French. Okay. An employee of a French railway company, okay. Goes on a business trip, I guess to a conference, right. And has an adulterous. Now, hey, it's France. So everybody's into adultery there, right? Everybody has an affair in me front of France, I guess. Sexual encounter with a quote, perfect stranger while out of town on assignment and dies of cardiac arrest. And guess what? The employer is liable because it's considered a workplace accident. Just when you thought you heard everything.

Adam, thoughts?

Oh, man, this is. There's so much wrong with this. It's even.

You think so?

Oh yeah. It's the creep and the potential ramifications of that are huge. And I mean like we were discussing off air. It doesn't even necessarily just apply to that. It's everything while you're out, you know, if you're on a work related trip, it's anything, you know, this wasn't even during work hours, of course.

Yeah. And it wasn't part of the assignment.

Strangers.

Yeah, but I'm saying like he didn't sneak off into the, you know, hallway or anything. This was, you know, 10, 11, 12 o' clock at night, you know, and still expected to be covered by the insurance company. I mean, it's just, it's insane.

So this is what has happened to one degree or another in principle in places like Detroit, California, New York, the US in general, leaning this way. Canada, Germany, you know, all of Western Europe, France, obviously, where employers have such incredible risk. All of this burden is being laid onto the employer for ridiculous things. I mean, since the 90s in Anita Hill, now every employer has to be responsible for people flirting in the office. Right. And you know, I freely admit some of it is really completely uncalled for and people need to be fired. But the employer has to be the policeman, right? Not just that an individual has rights against another individual who harasses them, for example. It's the employer's responsibility. So the employer is responsible for this guy who goes and has an affair while on assignment during off hours. The employer is responsible for this, that and the other thing. It's absolutely ridiculous, the drift of this stuff and employers. I mean, look what happened in Michigan, right? In Detroit, you had a city that was like this world class city leading the world. It was one of the top cities in its day, right in the heyday of the auto industry and you know, Motown, I mean, Detroit was a big deal in the past and it just decayed into absolute disaster. And there are many reasons for this. Obviously the Japanese auto industry, etc. Etc. The Americans were blindsided, whatever. But one of the big reasons is the rise of the labor unions. And it's funny I'm saying this. Well, the auto workers are on strike now, right? And they just pushed too far and the employers just. They just couldn't deal with it. So they found alternatives, they went offshore, they did all sorts of things, right? And what you see with employers generally, and especially in places like California and New York, is they're just unwilling to employ people and they'll hire contractors and it'll be the gig economy. Now, we just had last week an attack on the gig economy in California, meaning you can't be a freelancer in California to some extent anymore. And that's going to hurt. I mean, who knows what. It's just too early to tell what that's going to lead to. But this stuff does not happen in a vacuum and it's very bad for the economy and the real estate market when these rights are expanded just way too far. And at some point the employers just say, look, we can't do it, we can't afford it. You see this in these anemic economies, which I would argue California has an anemic economy. You may not notice it, but it's been going on for years. France, Germany, very anemic economies. First world countries for sure. They're not Greece, they're not Zimbabwe. Okay, they're not disastrous countries. But all of this burden, this regulatory burden, just slows everything down and eventually everything just collapses under the weight of all these regulations and all these expanded rights and all these liabilities. So in California now, Uber and Lyft, I guess they're going to have to make their drivers employees. Wow. It's going to be impossible for them to operate under. Under that kind of requirement.

You're not going to agree with me on this, but I think that's a good thing, honestly, when it comes to companies like Uber and Lyft. Because Uber and Lyft are trying to get away with it and saying, oh, we're not a taxi service, but taxi.

Drivers aren't employees either. Basically, the way taxis work is they either lease their car from a taxi company or they own their car.

Right?

And they, they basically run their business, but they're not paid a salary.

Well, if you run your own business, that's one thing. But the thing is with Uber, I mean.

But wait, you Know, like, think of it just for a moment. Why is it that when you run your own business, you shouldn't get a salary? I think someone should pay. I think the government should guarantee me a salary for running my own business. I'm working hard. Why don't I have that right?

Part of the problem I have is the gig economy. I have no general problems with the gig economy. The problem that I have is that the way our society is set up, you can't survive on just the gig economy because you can't get, you know, you have the health care and the other benefits that you get through a full time employment. You can't really get health care if you don't have a full time job and you especially can't get affordable health care.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so let me tell you something. I'm going to come to your side of the aisle, your side of the political aisle for a moment here, Adam. The one thing that I was really very much in agreement with, you won't believe it about Obamacare, is that we have this absolutely stupid thing that health care is tied to employment. That is the dumbest idea ever and it needs to just go away. Okay? Why should my health care have anything to do with my job? Okay, now granted, I don't think the government should run health care. I just think that the insurance marriage with employment is absolutely silly. And you know, it makes the market stagnant because people won't leave a job to get a better job because they don't want to lose their insurance. Like your career choices should not be centered around your health insurance. It's just absolutely silly. Your career choice should be centered around where can you make the most contribution, where can you earn the most money, where can you be the most stimulated intellectually, where can you grow as a person in your career? That should be your career choice, not health who has the best health care. I mean, that's just absolute stupidity. That concept, that unholy alliance needs to end forever.

Yeah, but that's the problem is since it's still here, it creates a serious problem for the people who are trying to survive with just the gig economy. And some of the studies they've done show that most of the people who have jobs in gig economies really want full time jobs, you know, for the security and for all the benefits that come with it. But some of the problem I have with companies nowadays that are employing the gig economy is simply that they're doing it to avoid having full time employees. So they'll hire somebody as a Gig economy. But they're only. Call them a freelancer, okay, they'll hire a freelancer. But the only thing that person is responsible for doing is something that is integral to that business. At that point, you're basically a full time employee, but they're not giving you the benefits.

Right? And so. Right. Right after Obamacare went into effect, you saw all of these headlines that all of these employers reduced their workforces to what, under 32 hours a week so they wouldn't have to put them on the plan. There's always a reaction. None of this stuff happens in a vacuum. So as a society, we need to separate health care from jobs. Those really shouldn't have anything to do with each other. But healthcare should be private and so forth. And then it wouldn't matter if you're a freelancer or if you're employed full time. These are just arbitrary rules and they have nothing to do with it. But let me tell you something, if you want to summon a Lyft or an Uber in California, if these people have to go on salary, number one, there's going to be a massive shortage of cars because they're just not going to do it. I mean, Uber's losing money like crazy. Which, you know, they can't afford to operate now. How are they going to operate?

Well then, if they can't afford to operate now, why should they be allowed to exist? If you can't make money, you don't deserve to be in business.

It's okay if you don't make money for a while. Okay, Right.

But if you can't get the investors and you can't turn a profit, why should I care if Uber exists at all?

Fair enough, I agree. And the reason they can't make money is because they're trying. They're undercutting the market. It's too cheap. They can't operate at those prices. You know, they're trying to put the taxis out of business, which is a whole nother discussion. You know, we'll see how that one goes. But part of the dysfunction in our marketplace with tech companies especially, it's almost always tech companies that create this dysfunction in the economy, or I should say distortion, is that all of the investment capital, the venture capital rushes to these companies that are silly. Companies that are not operated like a real business should be operated. As I've said many times, guess what? Real businesses make money, okay? That's what a real business does. Fake businesses are funded by massive amounts of venture capital and they don't make any money. Now, sure, it's okay to be like that for a short period of time during ramp up or R and D phases. I get it, okay? You don't have to make money right away. But, you know, the fact that all of this money chases these tech companies, you know, the tech companies have a whole bunch of other abusive, disastrous problems that we discussed a couple days ago on the show. Just a total distortion in the economy. It's crazy. You know, if I got to run the world, it would be different.

There we go. There we go.

So, Adam, what else do you want to say about this? And let's wrap it up.

If you're going to have a gig economy and rely on it, that's fine. But you need to make it to where the people who want to work in just the gig economy can survive.

You do. And one thing we got to do is we got to end the healthcare tied to the job thing. It's just a silly idea and it needs to go away. The time has come to see those two part ways. They shouldn't have anything to do with each other. They should be separate. Okay, Healthcare, lots of insurance options. Lead insurance companies, sell across state lines, make the market more competitive. You know, there's a lot of stuff you could do to fix the medical system. Very complicated discussion. I'm certainly not an expert, but I have some ideas. Of course, everybody's got lots of opinions, including me, even though I'm not an expert. But, you know, it shouldn't have anything to do with your job. So that's that. Okay, Adam, let's wrap it up. Thank you all for listening. Go to jason hartman.com contest and get your entries in. We can't wait to see them. And Adam, anything else you want to say?

Not today, no. Hope everybody has a great one.

Happy investing.

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