The Treasurer, Debt, Birth-rate crisis, My Fav books plus more!

If you owe $1 million and can't pay, you're in trouble. If you owe $1 billion and can't pay, the bank's in trouble. If you owe $1 trillion and can't pay, well, you're the treasurer, because we've just passed that milestone.

So welcome to Jim's personal newsletter as well. This is on the Conversations with Jim's podcast and also the Substack, and obviously on LinkedIn. There's a lot of followers on LinkedIn now, Jim, that obviously see this. So we're going to go through a range of topics here. There's a lot here, so let's get straight into it. So let's Let's first off talk about your Birthrate Crisis book, which is coming out in October officially.

In October, big launch in the United States. We're really pushing it very hard, and we're pretty confident it's going to be big. Andrea, my co-writer, reckons we'll get 500,000 copies sold. I think so.

500,000?

500,000. She says that this kind of book is very topical. People are panicking about birthplace, birthrate crisis. Nobody's got a solution. Except us.

Yeah, because I think the thing is, if this hits the right market, there's a lot of the massive podcasts in America, like people know Joe Rogan, Chris Williamson, and these types of people as well have been talking about this, but no one's really come on with a solution.

Nobody has a solution. Nobody at all. And we have a solution. We're telling you exactly what's causing it and exactly what you can do about it, both on a personal level and also in terms of scientific research.

It's really exciting. I mean, if you use your chatbot as well, you can ask your chatbot about it. It gives some pretty good answers too. There's a lot of interviews which will be start coming out more and more of this as well. This is going to really ramp up, obviously, in October when the book comes out as well. So it might be even— obviously America's the goal, but I reckon in Australia this is going to get taken up. And I think so too. Yeah, we've already had—

and we reckon all over the world too. If it gets reasonable stance there, we'll take it into China, into Japan, into Korea, Eastern Europe, all these places.

Yeah, very topical. So looking forward to that. And the other one here is you've got, can you do a review for No Other Success?

Yes, that's right. Well, one of the things that will really help us in America is if No Other Success, which is my business book, my personal business book, can get some decent reviews. So I'm appealing to anybody who's read it or who'd like to read it, you can download it through the link.

It's free.

For free. Give us a nice review and it'll really help to push the book. Look, I think it's a great book. It's about— not about the success, my success, but it's success of so many of my franchisees and the values, the importance of family and so forth. So we'd really love you to get involved and give us some reviews.

Want to help out? We'll put that link in the description, obviously online and other places we're putting that link already. So please do that via there as well. Now, Jim, you've given us a few book recommendations as well, so let's get through these.

I've been doing a bit of reading, but I've put some of my favorites in here.

You've been doing a lot. So Shoe Dog, which is about Phil Knight, which is about the Nike story. So you want to talk about that one?

Yeah, yeah, it's a great book actually. I, I, I, I just read it again and, and it was It's fantastic because he had such a hard time. He started off being a distributor from Japanese shoes and the problems he had with them and the double dealing and stuff and how close he came and he couldn't get money from the banks and stuff. It was just, it's an amazing story. There's so many difficulties. It's an absolute page-turner. Oh, what's going to happen? It's just a fantastically fun book. In fact, I looked at the— I asked ChatGPT best business books of all time and it put it right at the top.

Yeah, yeah.

And good reason.

Yeah, it's a great one. I've actually listened to that myself, the audiobook. It's, um, Amazing how close he came to failure multiple times and how he got out of it, right? Yeah, yeah.

And a very, very honest account too. It's, it's, it's not varnished in any way.

A very extraordinary individual. The next one you've got here is Katharine Graham, which is personal history. What's that one about?

Now this is about the Washington Post. This is the lady who took over. Her husband, um, was an interesting character but subject to extreme mood swings and so forth, um, and eventually committed suicide in a very gruesome sort of way. But the personal story is fascinating. This is somebody who actually was on sort of first-name terms with John F. Kennedy and a lot of people. She just knew everybody, and so did her husband. And just what happened is an amazing story. It's just really, really intriguing. You just— actually, I stay awake at night reading it because it's just so interesting.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

I've got to get to sleep. What's happening? How does this go on? Very, very interesting book. It's her account, but very, um, very touching. What happened between her and her husband actually was in a way more interesting than even what happened with the, the big political leaders, even though she knew them all.

There you go. So check that one out. Personally, I haven't heard that one, so I might check that one out myself. And the next one you've got is Robert Iger: The Ride of a Lifetime. So most people know him as Bob Iger, obviously with Disney. So we're talking about that one.

Yeah, well, it's good. It's just talking about how he, how he made Disney grow and the different decisions he made. It's more of an orthodox management type book, but still interesting, talking about how you get creativity into a major company and how you keep that going. It's a good account. Everybody should know, interested in business, should know about Bob Iger.

And now these ones here are all like biography or sort of autobiography type books, right?

Yeah, I like biographies. I like business biographies. I'm not quite so keen on books that tell you how to do it. I wanna know what somebody actually did. I like the concrete examples. And it's just, you just listen to these things and you read them and then you come across, well, You get ideas. I find that's the best way to learn about business, to know what other people have done. Why were they so successful? And then what can I learn from that?

Absolutely. And then to go here, to succeed in business and life, read and listen.

Yeah, well, that's the story, isn't it? Um, people just— you've got to, you've got to immerse yourself in, in, in good things. Now, it could be podcasts, and it could be, it could be books, it could be audiobooks, which, you know, people have got time exercising, driving, whatever. If you constantly immerse yourself with great ideas, you sort of learn new things, but it also impresses them. Like, my diet has become a lot healthier in recent years, and it wasn't because I, I learned anything new. It's because I was listening to books and they kept on saying the same thing over and over again. So you start thinking, well, yeah, maybe I should have more vegetables and a bit less— and it becomes part of your way of thinking and you're part of your self-image. It just— You keep on listening to good stuff and good ideas. Eventually they seep into your mind and they become part of your personality. And I find that's been a great, a great help.

Well, we do know a lot of— I know a lot of franchisees who are successful, they listen to a lot of business podcasts during the day. So they'll be out there in the field and have their AirPods in and they're listening to, you know, all business books, right? And they're absorbing how to scale and all these things as well. So yeah, absolutely.

The best, the best business people are not the people who are smartest or the people who've got the most money or Or the most educated, people that keep on learning and keep on growing. That's the secret. I am not particularly brilliant in so many ways. I'm bad at so many things, but I'm always learning.

I do think when you look at a lot of successful entrepreneurs, a lot of their younger lives is just reading, right? You've got Bill Gates. I know Musk as well has read a lot. Um, you've got obviously yourself read a lot of stuff. I think Warren Buffett read a heap of stuff as well. So there's a lot of different people.

He still reads. Yeah, he still spends hours a day reading.

Yeah, really important skill to develop and learn. All right, now let's get into the big juicy ones here. 7-Eleven ripoff. You wanna talk about that?

This is disgusting. This is really unbelievable what these guys have done. 7-Eleven, we have somebody who buys a business often for several hundred thousand dollars, spends 10 years building it, gets to the end of the 10 years, and 7-Eleven says, okay, now we don't want you anymore, you can sell. So they try and sell, and 7-Eleven says, no, no, no, no, knocks everybody back. Okay, then it says, all right, well, You're out. Bang! Puts a lock on the door, throws them out, takes the business back and runs it as a company-owned store. Now, to my point of view, that is theft. That is no different to somebody going up to somebody with a gun and saying, give me a million bucks. That is just disgusting. And I find absolutely appalling that the federal government can get these ridiculous disclosure documents, massive, massive documents full of verbiage that nobody reads. And all this garbage that goes on and yet absolute rip-off behaviour like this, they just say, that's okay, go ahead. You know, you multi-billion-dollar company can come in and steal a million-dollar company off a small Australian businessman. I just think it's vile. How on earth does the government allow this to happen?

Yeah.

And we are so angry about it, we've offered to fund them if they want to take a lawsuit against 7-Eleven. Because it's just outrageous. We're also offering a free franchise to anybody who's been ripped off, and we've actually got our first guy going through. You do building inspections. He's a great guy. He's got a building. He's going to be a terrific franchisee, and it's all every every cent paid for. Now we're still going to try and help him to get the money back from his his from 7-Eleven because they should pay him, but we're still going to give him a free franchise regardless.

We've got a video coming out with that, and we've got a Mask his face and we've got to alter his voice.

It's interesting, he's so scared of them. They've got him to sign all kinds of threats and non-disclosure documents. So even though this guy's had a million-dollar business stolen off him, he's scared of these guys. That's how brutal they are.

Do you remember when you told us— he told us that he signed something saying I couldn't take any legal action or join a class action?

That's right.

Which is just crazy.

Which is ridiculous. But, but he— but they've got him scared. And this is the way these vast companies work. They, they work— they rule by fear. And they had these vast teams of lawyers and stuff, and they crush anybody who's going to take them on. I don't think he's got any real risk. I think if they tried to take him on after they've just stolen his business off him, there'd be no problem. And I've told him that, but he says no, he's scared of them. So we're making it— his voice is disguised, his face is disguised. It's like he's hiding from the mafia. Yeah, which in a sense, from a moral point of view, he bloody well is.

Yeah, pretty much. But it's going to be interesting to see how he goes as well, because obviously he's got a site-based franchise, they're doing a gyms franchise. I'm looking forward to catching up with him.

I think he'll be great, and it'll be interesting to see the comparison And I especially like to see the comparison between the way that 7-Eleven treated him and the way the gyms are going to treat him.

Absolutely. It's going to be interesting. We're going to follow up with him as well, and we have to probably mask his face and voice again, but that's going to come out soon as well. The next one you've got here, which is titled just If You Owe a Million Dollars... So what's that about?

Well, I think that's just if you owe a million dollars, you're in trouble. If you owe A billion dollars, the bank's in trouble. Sorry, I should say—

And can't pay.

If you owe me— take it from the beginning. If you owe a million dollars and can't pay, you're in trouble. If you owe a billion dollars and can't pay, the bank's in trouble. If you owe a trillion dollars and can't pay, well, you're the Treasurer, because we've just passed that milestone.

Pretty nice. And you got here some numbers. So interest on federal debt and state debts is $48 billion, Medicare benefits is $35 billion, and all of our police forces is Yeah.

So what do we want our taxes to be paid for? Do we want to pay for ever-rising— because debt is rising really, really fast. Do we want more and more of our taxes going to pay for debt? And that's going to get worse and worse and worse. So we have to have higher and higher taxes or lower and lower support. Or do we want our money going to things that really matter? What should taxation do with our money? Well, I think it should do 2 things. I believe what it should do is get rid of the debt, which was done back in the '80s. You know, you had Hawke and Keating start paying it off, and then Howard and Costello finished that, and we got rid of the federal debt. Why on earth should we be going into debt and causing more and more money so we've got less and less money to do the things we really need to do, like health, education, welfare, the important stuff?

Now here's one I'll put back to you, because this is what the Labor one-eyed sycophants put online. They'll go, now show the gross assets of Australia. So they go, show the assets. And I think it's the assets that we have actually outweigh the debt, or close to actually outweighing the debt. This is what they say online.

Well, we do have the assets. We have taxpayers who seem to be willing to pay more and more and more money. But this debt isn't actually building assets. It's not as though this debt is actually— like, you look at something like the Norwegian fund, the future fund they've got, that's actually buying companies.

Sovereign wealth fund.

It's a sovereign wealth fund. If we were doing things like that with the money, maybe you could think about it. But this money isn't being used for that. It's being paid to pay for bureaucrats. It's being paid to pay for inefficient, expensive systems and overpriced roads, overpriced railroads. That's what it's being used for. It's just being wasted. If it was building real assets, great, but it's not.

This is what I was going to say to you as well. When people say that, it's like, well, what assets? Like, what assets do you use, right? Like, let's say, what do you use? Infrastructure is the road. Maybe the trains. Like, I hardly go to the hospital personally. So what, what actual value for money, or what are the Australian assets that we have that are so valuable?

Well, governments do a lot of useful things. Education, roads, public transport, health systems. All these sort of things are really, really useful. Police. They're all really useful ways to spend money. And I'm not a libertarian in the absolute sense. I think governments should take money Especially for those who can afford more and use it on useful things. I have a real problem with them wasting it, wasting it on debt and wasting it on over many bureaucrats.

Yeah, I think it's interesting to see that they're, um, the paid— I guess the Liberal people online, they keep saying, well, what about net assets, right? And that's the only seems to be comeback with it, right? And I find it—

As if the money is buying anything. It's not actually buying anything at all of value. It's simply subsidizing wastefulness.

Absolutely. And then you've got here to follow up with in Victoria. So there's a few stats around here you've put in regarding bureaucrats. So do you want to talk about that?

Yes, well, um, let's have a look at that. Since 2014, Victorian State Government has put on an extra 22,000 bureaucrats, which cost us $3.5 to $4 billion a year. Now there's a problem. My daughter is a doctor. And she's in a health system which is really, really overstressed, giving poor service to people. You know, huge queues even for the most basic thing in hospital. If we took this money from these extra bureaucrats and we spent it on the health system, we could have 20% more doctors and nurses, completely relieving all the bottlenecks, and we could give every doctor, nurse, teacher, police officer in the state a 10% pay rise. This is just the money that's being wasted on extra bureaucrats. And what makes it really worse is not as though the bureaucrats are actually producing anything. What they are doing is stuffing up the state because everywhere, all the time, when we're trying to develop anything or do anything, we have some bureaucrat saying, no, fill in this form and take— come back in 3 months.

Mm.

They're crippling the economy. this bureaucracy. And it was bad enough before 2014. The previous government wasn't that much better. But it's just got worse and worse and worse. And so the thing people have got to consider is where does your money go? Do you want it to be spent on extra bureaucrats who are going to gum up the economy and cost you more money, force up prices of housing and everything else? Or would you like your money, your taxpayers' money, to be spent on health, on education, on police, on all the things that we want done.

Yeah, 'cause I wanna make that clear because when we do this sometimes people go, when you say bureaucrat, they think teachers or nurses.

No.

It's obviously not.

No, I don't tick any of those. There are so many useful people doing great work and they need to be rewarded and looked after well. And we can afford to if we don't waste the money. The examples I think of, building regulations for example, you have this massive bureaucracy who sits there saying, okay, how can we stop buildings being built. Let's put more and more layers of complexity. Let's slow things down. We try to get things done and it just costs— it takes months or even years just to get permits to do the most basic thing. They do stupid things. They tell you, you've got to— you've got to— you want to build this building, you've got to get rid of those trees. But you can't get rid of the trees because the trees are things— oh, you've got to get an arborist report. But you asked us to get— no, I don't care. You asked us to get rid of the trees. I don't care about that. You've just got to get an arborist report on the trees. Why? Because they're trees. I've planted 1,000 native trees, doesn't matter, you've got to get it out and take several more months trying to argue back and forth. Just that kind of thing on so many scales. You go into the tourist industry looking at developing developments that can actually improve people's lives, that can provide jobs and stuff, and they are held up by bureaucrats all along the way. Look, there's a very simple way to do it. You could actually have a very simple building code And you could employ not a single bureaucrat. 'Cause then all you do is you privatize it. You say to any qualified person, you know, town planner, you can do this. So people go to private enterprise, they pay the cost, which we'd very happily do because they'll get something done in a week instead of taking 6 months or a year. And all those bureaucrats can go and find decent, honorable jobs doing something useful with their lives. So all these bureaucrats in planning, for example, they're a complete waste. They're worse than a waste of money. So we could take vast swathes out of it. Other things too. Like, for example, I periodically get asked to give my policy on equal opportunity for women, okay? That's one of the things they periodically ask. Now, I don't reply. I want to stuff the bastards up, actually. I don't really want to help them in any way. The fact of the matter is, If you want to equalize my managers, I have to fire a woman to employ her to replace by a less competent man because most of my department heads happen to be women. But if it was the other way around, be blowed to that. I'll put the best person in. It's not just some bureaucrat to say you haven't got enough, you haven't got enough women employed. It's a complete waste of money. And then the diversity consultants and so forth, they get paid massive salaries like quarter million, $300,000 a year. To make sure you've got enough diversity. Look, we should put the best person into the job. I don't care their gender, I don't care their race, I don't care if they're transgender, I don't care anything. I want the best person for the job, and it's not up to some multi-billion-dollar government bureaucracy to tell me, no, don't do that, do it our way.

The worst one I heard— you don't have this on here, but, um, the Four Corners is doing a big exposé on the lobbyists in Canberra. So Christopher Pyne, for example, in the government for many years. Left politics and started up Pine Consulting. Now Pine Consulting is now lobbyists for Defence. So basically, but they, they went through it and so I think it was all the ex, um, ex-people in the Defence in, in their portfolios in government, around 60 of them have now left and become professional lobbyists, right? So that type of stuff that's going on in government as well is quite, quite a shame, quite a shameful thing. And obviously the state government as well, like Daniel Andrews got a consulting firm which is obviously consulting back To Jacinta Allan and now, you know, Ben Carroll.

More billions being wasted. We shouldn't be deciding economic policy based on, on what's in the interests of, of ex-parliamentary lobbyists. Yeah, that's not what we're supposed to be doing with our money. We should be using the things that are useful for the state. Money speaks overly loud.

And one that you don't have on here, but I'm going to ask you, is about Ben Carroll's announcement about the free dental. So they're going to start these 10 clinics. Apparently it's estimated to have They're gonna do 300,000 patients a year or something like that. They've already had a lot of dentists calling them out about the cost things, about they're saying it's gonna cost them $230 million. People are saying it's actually gonna cost you $300 million, $350 million. I don't know where they're gonna get that from.

One thing you know about any government spending, it's gonna cost vastly, vastly more. Look, maybe there's a case for— I don't think free government-controlled clinics is the way to go because the government's so inefficient, but maybe some sort of help to people. If you don't waste money on debt, if you don't waste money on bureaucrats, maybe you can give people a bit of help with their dental bills. But it's better done through private dentists. I got a fantastic dentist I go to every 6 months. Sarah's just wonderful and she does work for me and she's great.

Apparently dentists in Victoria are paid 30% less than anywhere else in Australia. So actually the lowest paid by 30%.

Yeah.

And what do you think about then that as a sign of desperation maybe from the Labor government giving out free things? They seem to like giving out free things and I think that seems to be their tactic.

Look, there's a limit and there's a lot of problem with welfare being badly misdirected. And NDIS is a perfect example. It's just gone ridiculously bloated. And over the years, people taking overseas holidays with their carer because it's necessary for their psychological mental health. I mean, there's lunatic stuff going on. We do have a responsibility to look after those in need. We do have responsibility to provide healthcare. We do have responsibility to provide education. There are basic things that the government should do. It should do it efficiently and it should Put it to those who really need help. It shouldn't be giving welfare to ordinary middle-class people who can afford to pay for it themselves.

The next one you've got here is why rent's going up.

Yeah, well, it's pretty simple. It's obvious. Okay, what they've done is say, okay, it's really, really hard to build houses. No, no, let's not touch any of that. Let's not touch any of that. What we're going to do is to make it less profitable to be a landlord by getting rid of—

Negative gearing.

Negative gearing, okay? So therefore, that'll bring the price of housing down because then the homebuyers can buy it. Now, the problem with that is anybody can tell you negative gearing is the one thing that kept rents affordable. Because the price of housing is so high, the only way they could actually make profit is by charging low rents, is by getting a tax advantage. So by getting rid of the tax advantage, it was completely predictable what would happen is Yes, property prices are going down, which is good, but rentals are going way, way, way up. So everything the government does is counterproductive. What you're actually doing is helping maybe the more affluent of the renters to buy a house, but really hurting the renters who are really in the poorest situation. So the people that are suffering most are the people who can least afford it. Now the other alternative, which they don't want to consider, is let's look at why houses expensive. And then if we get rid of the zoning problems, if we get rid of the stupid building regulations, if we get rid of all the garbage that pushes the price up, then property prices can come down naturally, and then rent's going to come down. And then people can buy houses and they can rent more effectively. You know, in American states, they've had a look at homelessness, and the people blame immigration. Nah, there's one factor that decides how much homelessness you have, and that's how wealthy you are. The wealthier they are, The more restrictive the covenants, the higher the rents, and the more people are dying in the streets. That's what it costs us. The zoning regulations, the building regulations are there. They hurt the poorest people in the community. And I do not think that's what a democratic government should be doing.

Look at a place like San Francisco, right? So you had— that's what happened basically, right? You had all the homeowners with big blocks of land would go and protest anything that was planned. Like the government wanted to do this and they'd go and do the local council and they've obviously got a lot of money and They sort of bribe or they sort of threaten to, you know, we're going to put money against your opponent or whatever it is if you don't do this, right? And that's that. And I think immigration, as you said, that's the easy thing for people just to point at, right? Whereas you've got— this is the actual issue.

It does make it worse when you have a policy that says let's do everything possible as government to stop anybody building anything.

Then we bring in a lot of zoning regulations, building regulations.

Let's force up the price of housing. Let's force up the price of rents by doing this. And then you combine that with massive immigration, you've got a big problem. Now yes, there are arguments for shutting down some of the immigration, particularly on people who are less likely to be helpful. I think entrepreneurs, people like that, people who are educated, people who are going to contribute, yes, that's great. But I think there's some people coming in who shouldn't, and we should do something about that. But the real issue, we should be making houses affordable by getting rid of zoning and by getting rid of these multi— massively— these building regulations. It's so difficult to build anything.

That's right.

People blame homelessness. They say, you say you're homeless because of mental illness. Now it is true that some— a lot of homeless people are mentally ill.

They do.

But the interesting thing is that the level of mental illness doesn't vary much, and yet somehow people where rents are more moderate, you have a lot less homeless people. Now some people may be homeless still because mental illness is a problem. But there's an awful lot who are not, who just simply can't afford to rent. And they go into the streets and their mental illness becomes worse because they've got nowhere— no place to be and they can't find it and keep a job, for example, because they, you know, they can't keep clean and so forth. So it just makes everything worse. People who are homeless are more likely to die. They're more likely to have psychological problems. They're more likely to use drugs. There's all kinds of problems with denying people—

Housing.

A place to live. What we need to do is to make houses affordable, rents affordable, get rid of zoning, and get rid of these stupid regulations that stop people building anything.

And that problem's getting worse in Australia as well, the homeless situation. A lot of mums who have jobs sleeping in cars and stuff like that, which is true.

Yeah.

Which I think is quite shameful, to be honest.

That's right. Yeah. And the only policy we get from the left is let's put more and more government money to make more and more overpriced buildings. But that just raises— that's just— first of all, they never build enough because they get so much local opposition. And secondly, you're paying more and more taxes to solve something which government regulations is causing in the first place. If you got rid of the zoning and you thinned the regulations down to a reasonable level, you wouldn't need to spend billions of taxpayers' money on doing something because the market will sort it out.

So let's say, for example, Obviously getting rid of zoning would be the thing. Is there anything else you could think of that would contribute? Obviously getting government spending back in check, obviously zoning. Is there anything else that you could think of? What about— is your, you know, obviously the treatment you're hoping to develop for mental illness and things like that, do you think that would be another big block of solving the problem?

Oh, I think so. If you can help people to be more productive, certainly the treatments we're talking about would help with things like work focus. Because there's a reason why certain people are actually easier to employ than others. People think that intelligence matters. It doesn't matter as much as you think. The best estimate is about 30% of your success in life is based on intelligence. The other 70% is much more on things like character. If we can help people to develop great character, then we'll solve a lot of economic problems.

Okay, so Jim, thank you very much for your time. So guys, we're going to put the link in the description for leaving the review for the book. Also sign up to birtheratecrisisbook.com. Check out jimpenman.com.au as well. We also have Jim Penman on Substack where this newsletter will already go out. Obviously Jim Penman on the socials as well where all this sort of clips and content's been going out, which has been going pretty viral, which has been great. So keep supporting that as well. Thank you very much for your time, Jim.