1652: Household Income Finally Up! AOC "Dow Soars," David Collum Pt2

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Welcome to episode 1652. And we have our guest part two today talking about the year in review. And this is important stuff because those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And I have bad news for you. Even though we're going to learn from history today, we're still going to repeat it.

But the good news is, the good news is folks, that US household incomes increased more in 2018 than in the previous 20 years combined. Did you hear that? I said combined. Yes. Why did US household income suddenly explode in 2018 after decades of tepid growth? The answer is not difficult to find. Now here's a tweet from aoc. Yes, that brilliant AOC who could not be more clueless about business economics or anything other than Marxism. So.

She says Dow soars, but wages don't. Inequality in a nutshell. Hey aoc, I'd love to be critical, but you're actually right about that. Okay, so AOC actually was right about one thing, amazing as it is. And why, why is that income inequality increasing? Well, you know what I'm going to say, don't you regular listeners? Richard Cantillian, my second favorite economist, the Cantillan effect. And you, dear listeners, at least most of you who are following my plan and have been listening to this show, you get to take advantage of the cantillion effect because you, by following this plan that I've outlined, buying good quality income properties in linear markets, maybe a little bit hybrid ish, even heading over closer to the dark side, but still okay, and financing them with three decade long fixed rate debt at artificially and historically low interest rates, are becoming a cantillionaire. Why? Because that puts you close to the money. You don't have to work on Wall street, you don't have to be a bankster. You're a cantillionaire just because of the way you have structured your investment, the way you have structured your finances by being a good income property investor. So Bureau of Labor Statistics, this. Basically, I'm looking at a graph. I'm looking at a tweet, actually, from the evil Jack Dorsey's company. Yes, Jack Dorsey. Anti Liberty Jack Dorsey, who looks like Charles Manson with his beard and all. He's not going to win any awards for looking good as he ages, is he? No, he's not. He's definitely not. I'm right about that. Okay, so from 2002 to 2015, adjusted for inflation, wages did not budge. No growth, zero, zilch, nada, nothing. No growth. Okay? But in 2018, they surged more than at any other time by far in two decades. Wow, that's an economic miracle. If you're an Austrian economics fan, you look at the business cycle and you think, well, in 2016, when a new administration came in, we were long in the tooth in the growth cycle and we should have had a recession, but we didn't. The economic growth went on until Covid 1984, and then it suddenly started growing again Right after a brief respite there. And it looks like this year we're going to have pretty darn good growth. So all of those naysayers who say we are in a bubble, I don't disagree that we are in the everything bubble. I just want you to know that for the record. Okay, but we don't know how big the bubble can keep blowing up.

I did a fantastic interview today that I will probably air next week with Steven Leeb, Dr. Steven Leib, who has written, I think, nine books now, two great books on China and what to Expect out of China. He's a commodities bull. We talked all about construction materials and how the builders are facing such short shortages and paying huge premiums. And you know What? Look, for 18 years, I've been teaching you about packaged commodities investing, assembled commodities investing, and as such, that's what we're talking about now because these building materials have just become so expensive. Look, every economist will tell you about one indicator, one commodity that is sort of a special commodity. Well, what is that special commodity? It's also referred to as a color. No, I don't want to hear any racist stuff because it's nothing like that. It is. And it's also referred to by a title, like a. What would I want to say? College degree. Yeah, college degree title, I guess. Yeah, a degree title. And it is a doctor. What is this commodity? The Doctor and the Color. It's doctor Copper, Okay? Copper is this sort of benchmark commodity that economists look at, and Dr. Copper is doing pretty well. And guess what is powering your devices in your home? Copper. Copper wire. That's what's in your walls. Okay? So that is very significant. Now look at this. Real dollars, real dollars, median income, median household income by year. So adjusted for inflation. Now, we know that inflation adjustments are subject to argument for sure because they manipulate the cpi. It's kind of arcane. Well, not kind of, but a lot. And weighting, substitution and hedonic indexing, and I've taught you all about that before. But suffice it to say, real median household income by year. You ready for the numbers, folks? Here they are. If you are somewhere where you can write them down, you know, take notes, take notes, take notes. We'll test you later. Okay, Here you go. 1999, $62,600. 2016. This is depressing. Wow, this is really depressing. Depressing, depressing, depressing.

It's depressing. 2016. So here we go. 17 years, real dollar, median household income is only $62,898. I mean, that is just disgusting. That is so depressing, I can't even tell you. 2019, we went up significantly. $68,700. Wow, that is a giant increase. I mean, over $6,000 in three years in real dollar, adjusted for inflation, income growth. A very nice raise. What I'm looking at. American workers finally got a raise, and a nice one at that, after a decade and a half of flat wages. Amazing what tax cuts can do. Yes, tax cuts make the economy boom, but it is very uneven, as we know. And technology and the winner take all society and regulation that protects the big established industries and billionaires and oligarchs, tech oligarchs. It's absolutely pathetic and disgusting. But there are some good signs in it, no question about it. I won't even bother to mention who was president during this time when real household income soared because, well, then some of those really prejudiced people will have a fit because they'll say, oh, you can't discuss the Donald Trump. He's evil. All right, well, guess what else? Do we have time for this? Do we have time for this next thing? Before we get to our guest today? Yeah, we might as well. Look, as real estate investors, I talk to you a lot about math, especially ratios. I say that ratios are the most important thing. They really are the most important thing.

Yes, it's the ratio. When you consider any statistic, what is the question you have to ask compared to what? So when you consider income or GDP or population or immigration, or the number of arrests or the crime statistics or, you know, police brutality or anything, you need to always consider that on a per capita basis because the per capita gives you the answer to the Jason Hartman question. Which is compared to what? So that gives you the answer. And you always have to think in ratios. That's why I talk about the RV ratio, the rent to value ratio, noting that it is not called the rent to what I paid for the property in 1999 ratio. It's called the rent to value ratio. The value today, that's what is important. But not in Oregon. Yes, the Oregon Department of Education is asking students to, in single quotes, show their work. End of single quote. Meaning snarky. Right. In math class, as a form of white supremacy. Yes. The concept of mathematics is now, I guess.

Being considered subjectively. No, math is no longer an objective scientific thing.

Yeah, it's racist. So there you go, folks.

You know, you just can't make this stuff up. I mean, listen, I guess I'll say it this way. You know, most people would say one plus one equals two, but even I will be a little optimistic about it in the information age, in the age when it's amazing time, an amazing time to be alive, as I. I don't say as much as I used to because I'm having my doubts, frankly. But in some ways it is an amazing time to be alive, for sure. But here it is. Here is my fuzzy math. You ready for it? One plus one doesn't always equal two.

In the age of scalability and amazing technology, one plus one could equal 11.

Do you get it? It's two ones next to each other. It's not two, it's 11. Right. So there you go. But that's not what they're talking about with these idiots in Oregon, right? No. They came up with an 82 page instructional guide that lists all the ways in which.

White supremacy is perpetuated in math class. Wow. And this guide is called A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction. Hmm. I'd love to hear your comments about this. Go to jasonartman.com ask and tell me why you think the Oregon Department of Education has it right or has it wrong. Yes. Last thing I'll say on this, it says that this culture of supremacy infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions. That's what the guide reads. Coupled with the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuated harm to. And they list a bunch of Various supposedly oppressed groups, Right? Ay yai yai, I guess. Yeah. And it says, oh my gosh, look at this one. It says the guide offers a year long framework for deconstructing racism in mathematics. It calls for verbalizing the toxic characteristics with respect to math. Now I don't know about you, but I think math is pretty much kind of just an objective scientific thing. But science is no longer science. I mean, look at all the crazy stuff we hear out there about this, that and the other thing in the middle of this whole surveysa sickness that is perpetuating the world and the absolute denial, alternative options and things like this. The absolute denial of science. There's crazy rules that don't even make any sense sometimes. I mean, some of them do make sense to be fair, right? On balance. But a lot of them just don't make any sense. So science is no longer science. Science is politics. That's what science is today. So they ought to call it. Well, poli sci is a major you can take in college, right? So we could call it polyscience, but maybe we ought to call this one the different way. We ought to call it.

Scietix.

Ashley, what's a good name for this Scietix?

I don't know. Give me a name for this fake news.

Oh hey, hey.

She got it right. She says fake news. There you go. I love it. That was good with that one. We'll leave it at that. Okay, so hey folks, we have got check in with your investment counselors for a bunch of different web classes we have nowadays and some just really good stuff going on, some good free resources out there for you and of course an update on properties and different opportunities to invest that we have for you as well. So check in with your investment Counselors, go to jasonartman.com or in the U.S. call us at 1-800-hartman and let's get to our guest and let's hear the rest of this year in review. And after this episode, I don't think you could accuse us of looking at the world with rose colored glasses. No, you can't. But the one piece of good news we definitely have is that housing is booming and it looks like it will continue to boom for a good year, if not longer. So don't wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and then wait. That has always been very good advice.

All right, here we go back to.

Our guest from Cornell University in the thick of the politically correct world at Cornell University, Dr. David Colum. Here he is.

They target me better signed up with a better, more appropriate tire than I would have gotten. Maybe, but it's just their gigantic advertising budgets throw a tax on the system. I don't need them scraping data to try to tell me what to buy, because I know what to buy. I know what I mean.

Okay, so lest we complain too much, I know we got off on this track, but what do you think is going to happen? I mean, what are your thoughts about inflation? First of all, we both agree it's already here, but how much worse is it going to be?

Well, so if you read some of the ancient archives, it talks about the idea of inflating away debt, which appears to be the subplot that they're doing now. Here's the problem. The way you create inflation is through creating more debt. And so if you ask, where did all this inflation come from? You say, we created huge amounts of additional debt. So we're not inflating away anything. We're creating the debt scenarios. And so I think the whole idea of inflating away debt might be a fiction.

Tell us about that. Because, you know, one of the strategies that I love using in with real estate investing is that you get these cheap 30 year fixed rate mortgages. You let the tenant pay the mortgage for you and then inflation pays the debt off as well. Which is a wonderful strategy. It seems to be what the US is trying to do to China. But why do you say, what do you mean?

When you're, you're saying based on the receipt end of your mortgage, on the receiving end of real estate is some other person who's not getting adequately compensated, right?

Yeah. It transfers wealth from the lender to the borrower.

That's right.

So if I'm a boomer with a 60, 40 portfolio or whatever, my 40 is returning nothing. And that returning of nothing is, is so that people who at one point in history had something of value, we call it capital, and I needed something, I needed capital, or someone else needed capital. So you need the capital for your building. I have capital. I lend it to you. You hope to turn the capital into some sort of wealth creation, build new buildings, you build apartment complexes, and then you rent them. Right? That's wealth creation. I am compensated for giving you access to my capital, the Federal Reserve. By blanketing the earth in free money, they've essentially rendered capital worthless. And so why would you ever borrow from me at, let's say, a fair rate, if inflation 10%. I'd be charging you 12. Let's say inflation is 10%. I charge you that let's say we're both nuts and inflation's really 2. I'd be charging you 5. I can't get 5% for my money and so they're taking my money. They somehow rigged the system such as the lenders get nothing, which means therefore pension funds are getting nothing, pensioners are getting nothing. And they're gonna send us sailing up a cliff because this has a bad ending.

Oh, for the pensions. It has a very bad ending. And when do we start to see that? Is that five years away, 10 years away? How far in the future is that? Because these pens, pension plans, they can't get any return on their money without taking inordinate risk. And same with any kind of endowment or just anything.

Well, I don't know. It's going to be one of these things where when it happens, it happens. I don't know when it feels like we're really near the end. The Gamestop euphoria and all that stuff and Bitcoin. All these things that are happening in investing are investors reaching for yield.

They're going away from lending money to major corporations and the mortgage backed security markets and things like that and going to things where they can actually get a return. This is a massive reach for yield and it'll end badly. There's a maximum that says more people died reaching for a yield than at the point of a gun.

If you are the junk bond market now, junk bond market, corporate junk bonds return something like 5%. That's not a good deal when those things are defaulting, which by the way, they are going to start defaulting because of all the commercial real estate is going to go to hell because of the COVID shutdown. At some point the whole edifice just topples. And you say, well the Fed's going to save us. Well, don't be surprised if the Fed says no, we'll clean up the mess. And so they'll step back and let the whole thing go and then say, okay, bring in the cleanup crew. Meanwhile, a lot of people are going to get hurt. So I see surveys of what people are expecting. The average investor, Joe Six Pack Investor thinks they're going to get 15%. We're at top 1% valuations in equities. They think we're going to get 15%. We can't even get a positive return on bonds. They think they're going to get 15%.

Fidelity and the various pension funds are assuming 7.5%. They're not going to get 7.5% either. If you listen to the Smart guys, they're saying next 10 years, maybe annualize, negative 5%. So the system at some point is just going to snap. And the Fed, instead of letting controlled burns clear out the fuel and sober people up, we have a situation where the Fed has convinced everyone that there's no risk now and that you have your seatbelt and you can't be heard, you've got airbags and the Fed's there and you can't be hurt. Stability breeds instability. That's an old maxim, too. Well, the Fed has tried to create the air of stability and. And then when we have this mess, who's going to go hang the Fed from the nearest trade? They're going to say, oh, we didn't see it coming. Greenspan said, oh, we had an error in our model. Yeah, the error in your model was between your ears, you moron.

They don't have a model, they're just winging it. So I think the question is, do Powell and the gang know? Are they terrified or are they arrogant? They think they can somehow pull this off? Are they King Knut, which, by the way, the Canute story is vague as to what actually he said. And I can't. I ask the smartest guys, you know, some bright guys, and they don't know. They think it's sort of a combination of arrogance and ignorance, but they somehow think they can pull this off. And I don't, I don't think it's even theoretically possible to have a soft landing. I just don't know when we're, we're going to have enough fuel in the tank in this flight to make it to the crash site.

To make it through the crash zone.

To the crash site. To the crash site.

Oh, to the crash site. Yeah. And this, this disaster that you're talking about is an inflationary price.

I don't know. I don't know that. I don't know that. I used to be all inflation. I really believe Bernanke heard these guys when they said a determined central banker can create inflation. I'm not positive they can. Now, if they really, really, really are desperate and they say we are just going to send the printing presses worrying until we get inflation, then they can get inflation. But they're going to have to do it in the face of horrific data saying they're making a mistake. In Weimar, Germany, when they ended up with thousands of percent inflation, they went from 1 Deutsche Mark becoming worth equivalent of 4 trillion Deutsche Banks later. It's this ridiculous thing. They were so proud of their ability to print Deutsche banks in the volume. They thought it was good that the system demanding more money because it was inflationary. And they thought, well, then we should provide more money. And this wasn't antiquity, this was the 20th century. They did not understand that the printing of the money was creating the inflation. How they could not know this, I don't know. But they didn't. They were proud of their ability to print money. It was like a stat, oh, we can print X deutsche marks today. And that's what Bernanke.

Well, Germans are just proud that they're being efficient, even if they're efficiently wrong. Right.

But I think the Germans are probably going to be one of the early Western countries to recognize we're on the wrong path because they've been hurt by it too much. And so I think we're likely to be one of the last ones to recognize. By the way, during this crisis, there's great stats out there. The United States took on huge debt. China did not add any leverage. China got through this crisis without adding leverage. So guess who won that?

Yeah, that's interesting. But China, overall, I worry about China in the short term. I don't worry about them in the long term because they got a big demographic problem headed their way. So you push out 10 to 15 years and I think China is not a contender in terms of taking the number one spot from the US Maybe before that they would, but then it'll regress.

No, but they could be part of a cannibalization of us. Right. So this could be one of these things where it's like Walmart and Lowe's battling each other and there's no one left on the battlefield to clean up the mess.

And so China, you probably meant to say Home Depot. I'm guessing Home Depot.

Walmart and Amazon. Home Depot and Lowe's. Yeah.

But it's quite possible that they will be part of our demise without actually themselves winning either. I have no trouble with that. We're just putting on too much debt. History shows no one ever puts up. There's only one example of a country that got way, way, way out of whack and picked up this much debt and grew their way out. That was Britain in the 19th century. They clawed their way out, but they were an empire and they were not yet a finished empire. So I don't see the wealth creation in this country that will pull us out of this debt maps.

It's interesting though, because it's so uneven. There is a massive wealth conc. And like I said earlier, watch old TV shows, watch old movies and it's so interesting to watch say Columbo for example, which I think Colombo was a brilliant detective and he always had his funny mannerisms and things. But you watch Columbo or Heart to Heart or any old show and say Columbo is investigating like a wealthy person, right, in a crime and he goes to their house and that house is nothing compared to what you see wealthy people having today. And the kind of wealth nowadays is just like massive oligarchical wealth. It's absolutely staggering. These tech billionaires. And we're going to see trillionaires in the not too distant future.

I think there's a brilliant book coming apart, I think it's called.

Oh yeah, yeah, Charles, I read that, yeah, Charles Murray, yeah. He was one of the co authors of the Bell Curve, I think.

Exactly. So he became very contentious. But coming apart is this brilliant expose about how he talks about what's changed over the last say 70 years. And he points out that when the greatest generation was in charge, there was not the visual difference in wealth. So that it was not status to have a huge house. My dad was really pretty wealthy and we had probably a 2,000 square foot house. He ran a construction company with 350 people employed. Right. Nowadays he'd be living in some damn 6,000 square foot mansion. He lived in a 2,000 square foot house, sort of typical post war kind of house. And standards to get into schools were not so stratified. There were all sorts of changes that have occurred. And this growth in wealth status and class status that could argue why we're in such a mess now because now that now we have a culture war going on.

Yeah, well that's a good area to kind of switch gears to is the culture war. And I know we've got to wrap it up, but the censorship, the gloves are off. With everything that happened in the election, nobody will deny anymore that there is massive bias, massive censorship. And the world is being run by the corporatocracy and the tech companies and the corporatized media and it's absolutely disgusting. Can that pendulum ever swing back? You know, feel free to talk. You know, I mean, what happened to Trump I thought was just absolutely insane the way they vilified him.

Even worse than vilifying Trump is vilifying Trump voters.

Right, Good distinction.

I am staggered by the number of people who are using a language that should sure as hell sounds like 1930s Germany. And they're talking about deprogramming us. They're talking one of the Prominent journalists made reference to cleansing the world of Trump supporters.

Oh, yeah.

And another one made reference to drone strikes against Trump supporters.

So this is not just sore winners. Right. These are not people who are not winning gracefully. They won the election. They're saying things now they're talking about things like, oh, here's when Jewish privilege. Now they're talking out there because the wealthy are also highly popular with the Jews. If I were a Jew, I'd be going, scary crap. I've been down this path before. I've seen how this one ends. And they're doing this in the white privilege. And the whole narrative of it is so caustic. And it's not coming from the right, it's coming from the left.

And what's interesting about that is the two groups you mentioned, Jews and whites, many of them seem like willing victims in their own demise.

I mean, a lot of pushback.

Yeah.

And the fact that you can't even post an article on Twitter, on Facebook, without risking getting kicked off the site. I got kicked off Twitter for a week because I criticized Fauci in an admittedly off color way. But the narratives are getting squashed like bugs. I just tried to search something. I showed my brother a video, and then he said, it's been deleted. Already went looking for it. All you find are counter attacks against the narrative that it made.

I think we're in a horrible, horrible situation. And I don't know if this is darkest before the dawn and this will pass or if this is really the rise of authoritarianism. What I can tell you is there's nothing in the data that suggests this is different than previous murderous authoritarian regimes. There's nothing in the data that says, this is why this is just a fad, or this is why this is a passing thought. We are following the script perfectly to an authoritarian state.

And that is very scary. You know, David, over 20 years ago, I talked about how I said, if I get to live my whole natural life, which I hope I do.

I will see states secede from the union. Can the country stay together like this? Is there any, you know, Joe Biden and his. His bullshit unity thing, but, yeah, I mean, is there any coming together after all of this?

I don't know, but I'm not sure. I'm not. I'm not sure what secession achieve. So in. In.

And I'm also not sure what it would even look like.

Like, so in the Civil War, you have the state, you know, you have the slave versus free states. And so there was a natural dotted line wherever they, they wanted to draw it.

Right now you don't have that now.

So I've been talking with people about bug out plans. What's a bug out plan? Well, a friend of mine, Grant Williams, said he was sitting at a table with a bunch of hedge fund managers and every single one of them had a bug out plan.

Yeah. And he's the interest rate guy.

So, Grant Williams, he said that the bug out plan is where when things get bad, you make a phone call which kicks everything into gear, you drive to the airport, you get on your jet and fly and you go for Joe Six Pack. That's not a viable plan. But I have had a lot of discussions with people about what a more conservative bug out plan would be. And one of them would be to say where in the country as a conservative, as a person who would be potentially targeted, where could they live where they would not be accessible? And the two criteria, one would be population density low. Right. So the Dakotas, Maine, you name it. And places where you might see Trump supporters and places like that. So if I move to some small hamlet in Maine, I probably not get squashed like a bug, but if I'm in New York City, I'm at great risk. I got an email from a guy who's a distressed asset investor, who's anonymous on Twitter, but he's a prominent guy, and he said for the first time in his life, he feels unsafe because of his political views.

Yep. And that is a realistic statement. Sadly, yeah.

And I don't know why it feels like it's a left wing thing, but it's also possible I'm blind to the rights contribution here. I just don't know why.

Yeah, and what's interesting about it is you have the ultra rich oligarchical left and then you have the people burning down Seattle, Seattle and Portland and Philadelphia and Chicago and New York and you know, virtually every other major city, Minneapolis, don't forget that one. Kenosha as well. I mean, how do these groups get together? Why are they friends?

I think the latter on somebody's payroll. So I think the antifa model is actually paid sort of brown shirt equivalents. And so I'm not convinced. I'm not convinced the sort of super rich left wing enemy model is quite right. I actually think.

We'Re not being sort of steered by Silicon Valley because they're a bunch of rich left wing guys who have these views. I think it's deeper and darker than that. And I think this is about some globalist view and what they're trying to achieve. And I've talked to people about what that could be. You've heard about the Great Reset. Does anyone have a clue what that really means?

But one of the theories is that people in positions of power have a global overview and they say, look, we are running out of resources and we have to somehow dial back everyone's expectations and this is how we're going to do it. This is the big sort of grand conspiracy theory. The other is it's the opposition to the United States, which there's certainly plenty of detractors. Right. We have allies who would turn on us, I think pretty fast if they had to. And the questions are they trying to dethrone the dominance of the United States? I presume you've seen that World Economic Forum advertisement.

Of course.

And they talk about how the US is not going to be the superpower and you're not going to own anything, you're going to rent everything, but you're.

Going to be happy.

But you're going to be happy. And I go rent from. Boom. Right.

From Klaus.

From Klaus Schuler, Landlord, three books. I'm in the middle of his first of three books.

I just finished his Industrial Revolution book.

You know, of course I'm gonna 2015 book. Yeah, that's what I'm.

Yeah, yeah, that's older. I know, I know, but it seems like it's a lot of words. But he doesn't really say anything very significant.

Sounds like platitudes. Gut filled platitudes, I call them. And so the question is, what is it? Could be dethroning the dollar. Could be. I've become increasingly aware of the possibility that much of what we're observing is coming from China, even though we're not seeing the connection. It's not easy. For example, if you want to see who's probably not guilty, look at whoever's being blamed. The Russians are getting clobbered. I think Putin is simply trying to hold together a third world country from falling into its foundations. And there's no doubt he's a rough guy, but I don't think put gives a damn about our elections. I think he's just trying to keep Russia from imploding. China, on the other hand, there's some very strange videos coming out of China by Xi Jinping's right hand man talking about how they control the US's politics completely and how Trump disrupted that. Now they're okay again.

Why would he say that in a public forum? Right. And the answer, if you get the answer to that you'll understand what the point is. So I think, I think over time we're going to trace a lot more back to mainland China than we realize. I think that's going to be true.

Very interesting, David. I could talk to you for a long, long time about all this stuff, but do give out any resource or website you want to share and wrap it up for us with just any closing thoughts on any part of your urine review.

Well, you can reach me on Twitter for the time being.

Yeah, as long as you're still there.

Y avidbcolum. My email is easily accessed from my Twitter bio or anyone who wants to search davidcollumcornelchemistry. It'll be there. I'm not hard guy to find. Overarching view I worry about social change. I think we're in the middle of something so bleak and we're either gonna pull out of it or we're gonna push through it. And pushing through it's gonna be painful.

You know, I, I hate to bring you on another tangent because I know we gotta wrap up, but just on that, you know, if anybody was sitting in the 60s and they were sort of an older person or an establishment person, if you will, and they were watching Woodstock, they were watching Vietnam war protests, they were watching all the crazy stuff that went on the 60s and the early 70s, you know, they would have thought, maybe they could have thought, okay, I don't know what they thought, but maybe they could have thought, oh my God, the country's ripping apart, this is a disaster, we'll never recover from this. Are we thinking that now? Do these young people that are just way off on the wrong track, that are destroying these cities, that are just brainwashed by these educational institutions, do they grow out of it like the baby boomers did, or is this different?

Well, if there is a difference, I think back then, and I was a kid, so I wouldn't have known, but I suspect back then that at no point did the adults question the sort of the integrity of the system, meaning they didn't think that the system itself was going to collapse. So they're watching the kids saying, those worthless pot smoking hippies, hippies are a problem. The world's going to fall apart when they become in charge. The problem now is these crazy, crazy ideas are absolutely already infiltrating the adult world. And so various institutions are bringing in various cockeyed theories about how to engineer social change inside the companies. It's not just crazy campus behavior now. It has invaded the corporate boardroom.

Yeah, it really has. You saw that with what happened after George Floyd and all this crazy craziness. Yeah.

It's so. It's not just the kids.

It is also not just a weak subgroup of society in which the people who are in power, there's no doubt they're going to retain their power. For me, it's not that I think everything we have now should be retained.

Right.

I think change is important, but it feels like it could rip apart at the seams at the most fundamental upper levels. Right. We've got. If you look who's in Congress, there's some scary people there.

Oh, yeah, yeah. No question about it. It's like we have a whole new version of McCarthyism with this censorship and the, you know, putting Trump supporters on lists, and it's just scary stuff.

Jonathan Turley is the guy you ought to be reading if you're elected.

Do you mean Steve Turley now?

Jonathan, the George Washington University constitutional scholar who I think is at the level of potential Supreme Court nominee, although unless the Republicans get reelected, he won't get it. And he said this is the most dangerous assault on free speech in history right now.

I would agree with that. And a lot of people should be very, very concerned, including those who are benefiting from it, because guess what? You're next.

That's what they better know. Good point.

Yeah. David, thank you so much. You've got such great insights. We always appreciate having you on and keep the faith and keep in touch. Okay, I'll try.

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