Episode 405 Scott Adams: The State of the Union

Joanne, you're always fast. First one. Hello, everybody. Come on in here. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. I will be your host. Scott Adams and I will have coffee, and I think you should have some, too, or the beverage of your choice. I think it's time. Raise your cup, your mug, your glass, your stein, your chalice, your thermos. Put your favorite beverage in there. I like coffee. And join me four for the simultaneous sip. Oh, yeah, that's good stuff. So how many of you watched the State of the Union last night? You've probably at least seen clips from it. And the most important question you have is, how'd he go? Did he gain anything? Did he lose anything? I will ramble about that in no particular order. Number one, presentation. I thought he was lacking energy, at least at the beginning of the State of the Union, but he may have been trying to just play it serious. So it's possible that he just dialed down his energy to stop scaring people. So I thought in terms of presentation, it lacked a little energy. In terms of content, I don't think he made much news. Some of the things he said are being fact checked, etc. One of the things he said apparently went off script to say this is that he wanted more immigrants, not fewer. And people said that can't be true because he's done a bunch of things to limit legal immigration as well. But I'm not sure that fact checking passes muster because it seems to me that you have to get your. Your legal system up and running and your merit system and everything before you turn up the volume. So I think the fact checkers were wrong on this. And I saw an article in Reason, Reason.com that did not look reasonable for the first time. And the idea was that he's done a number of things to restrict legal immigration. So it's not true that he wants more people coming in legally? Well, I would argue that we don't have a merit. We don't have a merit system in place, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole, the whole Trump philosophy is that if you have a merit system, bring as many as you want. You know, there's no limit on volume, or, you know, at least it's not a low limit, but you would bring in lots of people if you had a system to make sure you were getting the people most productive. Now, one of the fact checkers said that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are good for the economy on net. And this seems to me like one of those climate change situations without Doing a deep dive on the question of whether illegal immigration is good or bad for the country. Let me tell you how it would go. I would make a claim and somebody would say, here's my link that shows you that immigration is bad for the country, the, let's say the economy. And then somebody else would say, that's a bad study. Here's my link showing that it's excellent for the economy and on and on until eventually somebody would say something that I couldn't check or didn't understand or both. So it's almost impossible to even know the answer to that simple question. Does immigration help or hurt the country? Now, of course, the most annoying and stupidest thing that happens on the question of immigration is that one side talks in absolute numbers and the other side talks in percentages. And while they're not even having the same conversation, they're accusing the other one of being wrong. Well, the very first thing you need to do in order to accuse the other side of being wrong is to be on the same topic. If one of you is talking the number of people and another is talking percentages, and the context here is the percentage of crime. So apparently there's probably good data, probably good data that says that the immigrant community, both legal and illegal, And I think it's true if you look at them individually. But it's always a little murky when they report that data have a lower crime rate than the rest of the country. Lower crime rate than the rest of the country. And that's sort of the CNN MSNBC argument that it must be racist to keep them out for crime reasons because that doesn't track with the data because they have a lower crime rate than the rest of the country. Now, some people are saying that's not true, but let's say it is true. Just to follow my point to its logical conclusion. My house is in a region of the country where I have a very low crime rate. So I live in a, in a neighborhood with low crime rate. Should I leave my doors unlocked? Because when I get robbed, which is guaranteed, even in my low crime rate area, if I leave the garage open, somebody will steal from the garage pretty much every time. Or at least if you, if you left your garage door open for six months in a row overnight, the odds of getting robbed are basically 100% even in my neighborhood. So should I leave my door unlocked or even open when I go to sleep because I live in an area that has a lower crime rate than other places? Does that make sense? It does not. Because When I manage security for my home, I only care if there is crime. Yes or no. The only thing I care about. The only thing I care about. I'm glad I figured out the trick for blocking the critics. One down. I don't really care what the rate is when I'm trying to not get killed. I only care that I could get killed. Yes or no. So on this count, the critics of the president are just not. They don't seem like credible players because they're avoiding his topic. They're not refuting it. So if CNN and NBC want to say the President is wrong or to refute his points, they should not be talking about the crime rate unless they also leave their doors unlocked at night under the theory that they live in low crime neighborhoods. So why would you protect yourself against a lower than average risk of crime? And the answer is, of course you would. You would always. You would. You would. You would always do that. All right, so. Here's some other takeaways. I was watching Van Jones on CNN talking about how the way the president talks about immigration is racist and in part because he talks about the crime and the danger. And when you do that, it leaves the impression that it's racist. And we've kind of created that. We've come full circle in this weird kind of interpretation of what's going on with immigration. And I feel like this is what's happened. I think the president was saying aggressive things about closing the border for the last three years. And because the Democrats have talked themselves into that being a racist position, they're sort of cornered because they've been saying it's racist to control the border. And now when it comes down to the nuts and bolts, it's harder for them to say, well, no, we disagree with the experts. And so they've got to kind of like border security. But at the same time, they can't like the President's solutions that include some barriers. So here, here's where I think it's morphed. I think their argument, and they don't quite say it as specifically as I'm going to, but I believe this is actually a fair representation of the argument. I think the argument is that they like border security. Now I'm talking about the mainstream Democrats, they like border security, but because of the way the president has talked about it, the way he has worded things, it has changed a border barrier into a racist symbol. So in other words, they might like a border barrier's efficiency, they might like border security. They might agree that certain types of places need certain types of barriers. They might agree on all of the details of the engineering and the security, you know, security concerns of the border. But in their minds, the President has transformed a wall that would have been a good solution before into a racist symbol. And they don't want the country to be presenting racist symbols, and they don't want to be associated with it, and they don't think you should either. So here's the question. The next question. Would Democrats believe that the wall was a racist symbol except for the persuasion of their own candidates and the media? Doesn't it seem to you that the media and the Democrats are what turned a border security into a racist object? I don't believe there was any time that the President said, these walls are totally racist. Give us more racist walls. I'm pretty sure there's nothing the President said about the barrier that turned it into a racist object. 100% of that persuasion came from his critics. So it was the cnn, the msnbc, the Hillary Clintons, etcetera, Who turned that into a racist symbol. So they're complaining now that they can't build the thing they want because they themselves, or at least their side, has turned their own best solution into a racist symbol. Am I wrong? I'll say that again faster. The Democrats are complaining that they can't build any wall like things because they're racist, but they're also the ones that made that happen. There was no point at which the President said, give me a racist wall. That all came from their side. All right, so there's that. Now, of course, we've got the two movies on one screen element to this, which is I'm seeing Trump supporters saying, my God, it's the best speech he's ever written. He became president today, he nailed it. He's sure going to get reelected. And then you go and look at the other side. They're saying, of course, the direct opposite of that. Somebody saying, yes, you were wrong. Thank you for the detail. Yes, you were wrong. All right. The funniest thing that happened. Well, there are a few funny things. One is that the women who came to the State of the Union wearing the all white, they all sat in one big block, or most of them did. And so they were very visible. And it was one of the big stories of the night. President Trump managed to turn this big group of women dressed in white who, I think it was kind of a protest. Was it was the all white celebrating the gains of women or was it a protest? I don't know. I don't even know exactly what it was supposed to be. But I'll tell you what it turned into. President Trump actually managed to use them as a prop. So he used them as a prop and made them stand up and cheer. Let me address something here, because too many of you are commenting on it. Many people have cleverly noted that dressing in all white reminds them of the kkk, which reminds them that Democrats were the party of the KKK a million years ago. I have no interest in that argument. I have zero interest in conflating the Democrats with the kkk. I don't want to be part of it. I'm not going to laugh at it. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, not gonna retweet it. And I don't encourage you to do it. I know you're having fun and you're, you know, kind of giving back what's been given to you and all that, but I just don't care what people, you know, 50 years ago were doing. I don't care what dead people were doing 50 years ago, even if they were called Democrats. It's a complete waste of your energy. It's a terrible attack. It doesn't move anything forward, and it's not as funny as it should be. So that's my opinion on that. So you don't need to ask me about that anymore. Let's talk about. So the president did not make any news talking about any emergency declarations, but that's probably good because it's, you know, it's not time to make that decision yet. So it would not have been useful. It would not have been useful to make some announcement about an emergency declaration. Now, the president's overall term seemed very inclusive. He did. I thought he did a great job on the African American outreach. Didn't you. Didn't it seem like he did a tremendous job on directly going against any charges of anti Semitism, which I think he's. He's bulletproof on that. But even though they still attack him, he's kind of bulletproof on the pro Israel stuff. But I thought he did a great job talking about second chances and prison reform, showcasing some of the people who had turned their lives around. And I think that was the best message of the night. To me, the best message of the night was the Alice Jones and the Gentleman. I don't remember his name, but the first person released under the first act plan, and what he emphasized was that these people who had made a serious effort to become productive citizens and were being rewarded for it That's a tremendous message. I love the second chance. I love the forgetting the past. I love the rewarding people who worked hard and tried to make a difference. So I thought that was all a. And when he called out the success of women, I thought he seemed sincere and, you know, celebrated with them that success. So in terms of how he did on the racism charge and on the anti women charge, the stuff he usually gets, I think he did really well. Except. Except, and this is a big except, I'm going to agree with Van Jones on one thing. He does leave himself open to criticism when he talks about crime coming across the border. Now, I'm sure on a persuasion level it works. So I don't have any doubt that scaring people about crime works well for his base. But it has such a big downside. And the downside is it makes him vulnerable to being interpreted as being racist. And it's his biggest problem. So if I were advising him, I would look to modify his message about crime coming across the border and either do one of two things. You either just tone down the way you talk about it or you go directly at the criticism. The direct criticism is that the immigrants have a lower crime rate. I would love to see him embrace that. I'd love him. You know, if I were advising him, I would say you need to say in public if that's true, by the way, you know, obviously it has to be true in order to say it, but if it's true that immigrant communities bring less crime, I think you should say that, say that directly and then make his argument. Because his argument is that if you're dead, you don't care what the rate was. That's the argument. He can praise immigrants and he can praise their low rate of crime. If it's true, and I'm still. I'm going to give you an argument why that might not be true, but I think he needs to say, you know, I'm not here to protect the percentage of you. You know, my job as president is not to make sure that you have a better rate of survival. It's to make sure you survive. I'm not trying to make sure that a lower percentage of people got killed. I'm trying to make sure nobody gets killed. So I think he can win that, but he has to go at it directly or just stay under that field. Because every time he walks on that field, I feel like he's playing for a tie and playing for a tie. It just doesn't get you anywhere. It gets you exactly where we Are he's playing for a tie, it doesn't feel like he's playing for the win. All right, here's the argument, here's the argument for why it might not be true that immigrants have a lower crime rate. I do believe that the people who come in here for high level jobs, the people who come in here legally and the people who have college educations, if you told me they have a lower level of crime, I would say that makes sense, of course, because if you looked at any college educated group of people, they would have lower crime rates. So if you're throwing in all of the highly skilled people who come in here to work in Silicon Valley and all the other highly skilled people who come in as immigrants, I would totally, I could easily imagine that they would have a lower crime rate and I would like to have more of them. But if you're talking specifically about the illegal immigrants now, apparently there are statistics that even that group has a lower crime rate. Here's the problem with believing that statistic. Don't most crimes happen to your own in group? In other words? Yeah, here somebody's ahead of me. It's less reported because, correct me if I'm wrong, but most, most, most black people who are victims of crime, it comes from the people that they live with, which is other black people. It's probably true that white people commit more crimes against white people, probably true that Hispanics create more crimes against Hispanics, et cetera, et cetera, because you commit crimes against the people who are nearby. And if you're part of an illegal immigrant community, you probably spend a lot more time with people in the same boat. Now, if you are an illegal immigrant and you commit, let's say, a crime of violence, or let's say rape, which is violence against another member of an immigrant community, will the victim report it? And I would think not, wouldn't you? So if our official statistics are that illegal immigrants have lower crime rates, I just have to ask, do they feel comfortable reporting crimes? Because if most crimes happen to your in group, in other words, you do the crime against the people who are nearby, who are a lot like you in a lot of ways. I just don't know. We'd know. How could we possibly know the crime rate? So one thing the President could say is point that out. You could say, just because the crime is committed against their own population, that doesn't mean we can forgive it. And I think you could separate the legal immigrants and say we want lots more of that, because we do, and then say that the illegal immigrants are reported as having low crime. But ask yourself if they would report a crime. He doesn't even have to make it as a statement. You just have to look at the camera and say, ask yourself, do illegal immigrants report crimes against themselves and your common sense, if such a thing exists? I question whether common sense exists, but let's just say that you would immediately conclude that, no, of course they don't. Of course they don't report crimes at the same rate as everybody else. Why would they? It would be ridiculous. All right, so I think the President has that one area that he can improve a lot. But here's the interesting thing. It's probably his biggest weakness, not counting health care. I feel as though the argument about the President being racist against African Americans is sort of shrinking, isn't it? Ask yourself this. When was the last time President Trump was accused of being racist specifically, Specifically against African Americans? I think the answer is, well, 30 years ago, there was that thing. But I don't think as president, there's any charge that he's done anything except being helpful. And, you know, the prison reform thing being a good example. So his, the charge of his, quote, racism seems to have been, it's now focused on illegal immigration and this wall. So he's managed to take this big, big problem. Hey, he's a big old racist. He's managed to sort of shrink it. You know, it's like, shrink, shrink, shrink, shrink, shrink. Now, people are not completely, people are not completely talked out of it, but I would say in terms of focus, it's shrinking. And shrinking is focused on this border stuff. So if he, if he makes a better argument on the border stuff, that sounds practical, he's got a good shot at re election. Yeah, the Charlottesville hoax is still prevalent. For those of you who don't know, the President said there were fine people on both sides of the statue question, which the media turned into, hey, he just said white supremacists are fine people, which he did not say. And so most of what the President is being attacked for in terms of racism, I would say put a percentage on it. But I would say 60% of what people think about the President's racial views are based on the Charlottesville hoax, which we still see on cnn, which is despicable. Let me say this directly. CNN knows, CNN knows that the Charlottesville stuff is fake news. They know that. I guarantee it. Don't ask me how I know, but I'm not guessing. They know it's fake news and they let their pundits say it without checking them. Now, I don't know how many of the hosts still say it, but maybe Don Lemon. I haven't. I don't know. But I don't believe all of the hosts say it. All right. Yeah. The Central Park Five thing was also a hoax. If you, if you dig into the details, you find out that the president ran a full page ad against crime. That was it. It was a full page ad about crime. And that people said he must be talking about the Central Park Five, which he probably was inspired by that, but he didn't even talk about him. And that turned into a lot more. Now, he did talk about him in interviews and stuff, and he thought they were guilty. But thinking people are guilty when the police also think they're guilty, it's not exactly, not exactly the biggest crime in the world. Yeah, he didn't mention race in the article that everybody's calling him a racist. There was nothing about it. It was about crime. All. Do you know the Charlottesville hoax happened before the vehicle attack? Not that it matters. I mean, I know why you're saying that, but even regardless of the timing of was obvious he was talking about the statute debate. He wasn't siding with white supremacists. That's just batshit crazy. Now, interesting, there's also the story about the Trump properties hiring illegal immigrants. Now, I think that story is probably fake news, and here's why I think it's probably fake news. I would be very surprised if the Trump Organization in any part of the world, in the United States. Let's just talk about the United States. I'd be very surprised if any Trump Organization hired illegal immigrants without checking id. Right. So if somebody has documentation and it looks good to you, that's a little different from saying you hired illegal immigrants. That's more like hiring people the way everybody else in the world hires people. And some of them were illegal immigrants. So I think it's fake news the way it's reported that. That would be my guess. Yeah. If somebody has fake IDs, you don't have a reason not to hire them if they are otherwise good. Now, I saw an article yesterday, and I wish I could refer to where it came from, but the, the essence of it was there's a prediction that the population of the Earth will plateau and start falling. And when it starts falling, it will fall forever. And apparently there's some sciency thinking behind it. Part of the thinking is that as societies become wealthier, they tend to have a lower birth rate. I suppose that's part of it. But there's actually a thought that one of the biggest problems in the future is a lack of people that will run out of people, especially young people. So getting back to the immigration question, I think the President can make a big argument that the future of countries is how selective they are with immigration. It might be the number one thing that a country needs to do is become, let me say this in positive terms instead of negative terms. It might be that the greatest competitive advantage any country will have in the future is how well they attract talent from other countries. So if you imagine that we will increasingly be able to move from one country to another, at least physically. So if physically distance isn't so much of a thing in the future, you can usually figure out how to get from one place to another physically. But because the pool of qualified people might begin to shrink in the next 30 years, there would just be fewer people in the world, fewer people being born. People are going to be scrambling to get the good ones. So if the President is successful in setting up a good, let's say merit based immigration system, and he's simultaneously successful in plugging the other holes and getting a nice, efficient merit based system, that's when you turn up the volume. Because I definitely agree with the thought that if we're bringing in more geniuses from India, more geniuses from Asia, more geniuses from Africa, more geniuses from Europe, if we bring in more geniuses and at least people who are super qualified, that's pretty good thing for the country. You can't argue against that. There's a question about Jesus. I'm not sure how that dovetails into what we're talking about. I've also thought we might reach a future where the pollution is so bad in other places that if you can go on vacation somewhere where there's not pollution, that would be a big draw. You know, I've thought about going to China as a tourist and then I see the pictures of China and I say to myself, why would I ever be a tourist in China? Because the atmosphere is deadly. If I can't walk out without a face mask, I'm sure not going to go on any kind of a trip there. Now here's another trend that's important. If robots start taking all the, let's say, manufacturing jobs and manual labor jobs and a lot of other jobs. So if robots start taking human jobs, what types of jobs are humans least likely to take? My answer is jobs in the hospitality field. I'm on vacation right now and so I'M running into employees at the resort, you know, all the time. And I can't imagine I could be wrong about this, but I can't imagine a robot replacement for all of the many people who work in customer service. Because it's the physical interaction, it's the smile, it's the knowing. You've been heard, it's the human touch. Those are all the things that make it work. And robots will never be able to do that. Well, I won't say never. At least robots for the next 30 years probably can't do that. So it seems to me that the United States as a future, might want to do what I call the Costa Rica strategy. If you don't know about Costa Rica. And by the way, have you noticed that when we're talking about all these immigrants who are coming up from Central America, have you noticed that? You don't hear Costa Rica. You don't hear, wow, there sure are a lot of Costa Ricans coming up through Mexico and across the border is because Costa Rica, I hope I'm pronouncing it right, is it Costa or. Costa Rica has a really good economy, which is very well planned. And here's what they do, right? In Costa Rica, they built an economy around tourism and maybe some high tech, I think. But tourism is the big thing now. The beauty of tourism is that it creates lots of jobs for people who don't have a ton of education. So you go to Costa Rica and you get these great resorts and this great experience. And your, this is true. Your waiter, your waiter in Costa Rica went to college to be a waiter. Your bartender in Costa Rica went to college to be a bartender. Do you think the service in Costa Rica is good? It's really good. It's really good because they take that stuff seriously. They said our economy is going to be tourism. And you can't even be a waiter here unless you went to waiter college. Think about that. Think about how good their tourism is when you can't even be a waiter without going to college for it. And you feel it when you're here now, they've rejected fossil fuels. So Costa Rica apparently does have at least some, some fossil fuels. At least they have resources. But they've decided as a country not to exploit them and that they're. It's a completely, you know, it's the greenest country in Central America, I think. So they don't have a military because they rely on the United States and they're in a good part of town. No military. They're very green they're not exploiting their oil, even though they could. And they've turned tourism into a first class, very successful business that's working very well. When I was in Costa Rica, and this was several years ago, I would see these scary big trucks of, I believe they were Nicaraguans who were being trucked in to Costa Rica because Costa Rica didn't have enough labor. Their economy was so good and they had such good jobs that they couldn't even get enough Costa Ricans to work the fields. So Costa Rican agriculture had to ship in Nicaraguans in these scary trucks that were just like packed with people. Very inhuman. Inhumane. So I'm. My guess is that the United States is going to become sort of the tourist destination as the robots start taking our regular jobs. And then everybody just works at the resort and, you know, they, they're in customer service, but there's just a lot of it. By the way, I used to work at a resort for years, going through college. In high school, I worked at a resort. And it's a good lifestyle. Being an employee at a resort is a good lifestyle, even at lower pay. So. All right, so I'm just looking at your comments. Is anything else going on? That's about it, right? Isn't their standard of living pretty low in Costa Rica? No, not as low as Nicaragua. It's all relative. All right, I think we've covered it all. Rbg. Nothing to say about her. That's a wait and see. Northam. There's nothing left to say about Northam. You want to know more about my home coffee maker? It's a melee. M I, M I, E, L E. But it's an old one. So you, you should look into the new ones. Jussie Smollett. All right. Jussie Smollett. His story about being attacked by the people in MAGA hats. We don't know for sure what happened, but if I had to put a percentage on it, I'd say 95% fabricated, meaning there's a 95% chance that the Jussie Smollett story is not true. Now, I'm not sure it's not true because that would be 100%, but I'd say based on what we've seen and heard, 95% unlikely to be true. Stacey Abrams. So I watched Stacey Abrams reply. Here's what I remember of it. Nothing. There was absolutely nothing about Stacy Abrams reply that was interesting or memorable. I'm going to say this next thing very carefully. I'm not even sure if I can. I don't know if there's a way to say this without it being horribly taken out of context and ruining my life. Let's say that Stacey Abrams is no Barack Obama and she's no Oprah. Did that help me at all? Did that protect me? You know how the camera loves Oprah and you know how the camera loves Obama. And even if you don't like their politics and even if you don't like them personally, you would certainly agree that Obama and Oprah have, you know, charisma through the roof. Right? They can hold your attention. They can hold the screen. They can really hold you. Stacey Abrams doesn't have that. So that's as carefully as I can say it. She does not have that thing that makes me want to watch more of her. You can be mean in the comments, and I'm not sure I would disagree with where you're going with this, but she's in the world of television. She's a tough sale. And I'm trying to be as kind as possible while also being objective. Objectively speaking, I just don't know if television is her medium. I'm just going to say that. Telegenic, does that cover it? Maybe. Mediagenic. That's an interesting term. Yeah, I know. There's. It's dangerous territory, isn't it? All right. I don't think there's anything else to talk about, is there? It's time for another sip of coffee. Well, then I will just remind you that if you want health care costs to go down and you want to help people who don't have health care, my startups app called Interface by wenhub is now adding doctors. So we have doctors that you can call on the app and get a video call on demand. And if they're licensed in your state, and many of them are, they can even write prescriptions. And so you can get a second opinion or talk to a doctor about, let's say it's something embarrassing, you could talk to a doctor right away and you don't have to embarrass yourself to your regular doctor. And if you want to get a second opinion, which I find I often do, it would be a quick way to get one. You know, in 10 minutes you can, you can have a doctor on the phone and you're getting a second opinion. So please go to Interface by wenhub at the app stores and download it. It's free, just in case you need it. Now you might have a situation where there's somebody you know who needs some medical care and isn't willing to go get it. In that case, you might also want to refer to a doctor and you know, to be able to help your friend or family member. All right, let's talk about aoc. It was a bad night for aoc. Do we all agree on that? It was a bad night for aoc. Now, I can say that because I've been saying she has lots of good nights and in fact, we're still talking about her. So if we're talking about her, arguably it's a good night. But I thought she looked petty and small for her reactions, so she seemed petty and small, but we're also talking about her, so. So I guess she wins again. Bitter beer face. Is that a thing? What about Bernie? Why do I avoid Venezuela? Well, what is there to say about Venezuela? I'm not sure I have anything to add to Venezuela that isn't actually just the news coverage. The place is a mess. Socialism doesn't work. And, oh, I did like when the President said, we'll never be a socialist country. Yeah, thanks for priming me there. Prompting me. I don't know that he's right, because if I had to predict, I would predict that we will become a socialist country. You don't want to hear that, do you? Here's my prediction. The United States will become a socialist country when robots come. Because once the robots are doing all the hard stuff, it won't make sense to have normal, normal jobs and normal stuff. So you'll always have some billionaires who own everything. But I think that for a large percentage of the population, maybe in 50 years, you know, not right away, normal jobs will be rare and probably if you have a job, that'll be enough to get health care and housing and all that. All right. Bernie's face. Yeah, he didn't seem happy. It must be tough. Must be tough to be a Democrat in that room because you have to have that unhappy face the whole time, even when he's saying things you should be cheering about. All right, that's enough for now. I'm going to go do something else. I would show you the view, but it's still dark here. I'll talk to you later.