Ep. 2431 - Billionaires Aren't The Problem

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Whether you're doing a few million in revenue or hundreds of millions of bucks, NetSuite helps you stay competitive in ahead of the curve. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get our free business guide, demystifying AI at NetSuite.com/Sharpiro. The guide is free to you at NetSuite.com/Sharpiro. Alrighty folks, it's time to say a bunch of stuff that's going to get me in trouble in the two online sphere right now. People on the left who live in mansions, who hate capitalism, and also people on the woke right, the new left, who also live in mansions, who also hate capitalism, but like to pretend that they like capitalism. They're going to be ticked. So, screw it. Here we go. Today, I'm going to defend private property and free markets in basic common sense, because these are the things that allow you to succeed economically in life. It is good to make more money by providing people better goods and services. It is good to be fiscally responsible. It is good to make smart decisions about your money. And most Americans know all that stuff, but a lot of Americans are being lied to these days. They're being told a bunch of junk that makes their lives actively worse. And increasingly, particularly if they are young and too online, Americans believe those things. So get ready. Today, I'm going to say a bunch of stuff that's going to piss off the left and the woke right as per our usual arrangement. They're going to get pissed when I say you shouldn't spend too much money eating at a restaurant if you're unable to pay your rent. They'll say that I'm saying that because I don't care about people. You see, it's better to be poorer and also keep eating at Wolfgang's stay-couse. And they will get pissed when I say that Amazon makes your life better and cheaper. They'll say it's better to yell at Amazon and try to shut down their business and tax them more because Jeff Bezos is bald and rich and has a yacht or some such. And they'll get pissed when I say that billionaires aren't inherently bad because they're billionaires. That actually immoral people are bad and that moral people are good. And that your tax returns have nothing at all to do with any of that. That billionaires are typically billionaires, not because they are stealing from the poor. Spoiler alert, the poor don't have much money. That's why they're poor. But actually they're billionaires because they make a lot of people's lives better. Better products, better services, or cheaper, which is good for you. So get ready. Here comes the blowback. It comes every time I talk about this stuff. Remember that time? I said people who can't afford to live in New York City, young people might think about moving if policies don't change because it's more productive to search outside of New York City and find some success than to sit there in your expensive apartment with your two roommates in Pizzeret and people got super, super mad. Remember that time? I said the social security needs to kick in later in life especially for people who are 40 and under today because people are now living 20 years longer than social security kicks in and that's really expensive and it's bankrupting the country. And also that when you hit retirement age, sure you can retire especially if you're working a back breaking job. But also you should continue to do productive things in your community because it's good for you on both a mental and spiritual level and people also got super mad. Well, here's the thing. I don't really give a crap about how people feel about reality. And here is the reality. The only way your life gets more affordable is one, if you make more money, two, your expenses get lower and three, generally products and services get more plentiful and better and cheaper. All three of those things rely on free markets and common sense. Why am I talking about that stuff? Well, because Jeff Bezos is making the rounds now. Listen, I disagree with a lot of stuff that Jeff Bezos believes and says, but he's getting ripped up today because he had the temerity to defend billionaires. Well, he's right. We get into all of it in just a moment. This is the Ben Shapiro show. So when Americans don't feel good about the economy in general, they tend to think that things are unfair. Unfair is just a substitute for, I don't feel good about things because this is human nature. It applies to our children. It applies to us. Whenever something happens that my kids don't like it was unfair, right? They deserve to think and it didn't happen. Okay, it's possible for two things as always to be true. The economy is not doing what it should be doing right now and there are problems in the economy, regulatory problem, subsidy problems, market distortions and all the rest. But generally speaking, the economic system in this country is mostly fair. It is fair because you have property rights in this country. You have the equal rule of law in this country as opposed to the vast majority of other countries around the earth and in all of human history. Nonetheless, a New New York Times in Santa Poles shows, quote, "The economic system in this country is generally either unfair to most Americans or fair to most Americans. Only 11% say fair to most Americans, 88% say unfair to most Americans." And the political and economic system in America, here are the options, need to be torn down completely, need major changes, need minor changes or need no changes. Twenty percent say need to be torn down completely. Another 63% say need major changes. Now, what kind of major changes are we talking about here? We talk about less government regulation, I doubt it. I really doubt it. Because again, politicians love lying to you. It is their favorite thing to do because the way that you win votes is by appealing to the lizard part of the brain. The part that says a bad thing happened, it's unfair, it's the systems. As opposed to a bad thing happened, life is full of bad things. What can we do to fix it? And maybe the government is the chief obstacle to fixing it. And this brings us to Jeff Bezos in the campaign against Bezos and billionaires more generally and all the rest. Bezos yesterday appeared on CNBC for a very long interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin. He said a bunch of stuff in this interview. One of the clips that is now making the round that people are upset about is that Bezos is now warm toward Trump too. And the reason why he is warmer toward Trump too than Trump won is because Trump too is very protect. So here's Bezos talking with Andrew Ross Sorkin over at CNBC. I think he has, I mean, I'm comparing him to his first term. And I think he is a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. And you know, so again, I've worked with all the presidents. I will work with all the presidents, you know, and I hope to do that going forward if they'll have me. But we need our business leaders to provide input into the administration, regardless of who the president is. Okay, Bezos then went on to point out that a lot of politicians use an age old technique which is pick a villain. And the villain is typically people who earn. I think what's going on is that it's kind of a tale of two economies. So you have a bunch of people in this country who are doing really well. But you also have a bunch of people in this country who are struggling. So they would pay rent, groceries. And so what's happening here is politicians are using the kind of age old techniques. So there's this tale of two economies. And they're using this age old technique of picking a villain and pointing fingers. But the problem is that doesn't solve anything. And so like if you want to help the group of people who are struggling, you have to figure out real root causes and solutions and that takes skill. Okay, obviously he is right about that. Now, when he says that we are living in a tale of two economies, even there he is using left wing language that we're living into economies. The reality is obviously the economy is interconnected. And it is also true that in the United States until the war in Iran, wages were rising faster than costs in the United States. That's a reality. It is also true that Americans overall are richer than any human beings who have ever walked the earth in all of human history. That is also the reality. But he is right that if you are looking at the problem of poverty, for example, how do you solve poverty? The answer for most politicians is yell at the rich people and pretend the rich people got rich by causing poverty, which is untrue. Poverty is the natural state of all mankind. For all of human history, everyone was poor. The question is not why there are poor people in rich people. The question is why even the poor people in the United States are by any historical marker very, very rich. That is the real question. Okay, so of course, Bayzos is getting ripped up. The idea is that Bayzos somehow doesn't pay taxes. That of course is silly. He pays a lot of money in taxes. For example, sometimes say that I don't pay taxes or true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes. Again, if people want me to pay more billions, then let's have that debate. But don't pretend that that's going to solve the problem. You could double the taxes I pay and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you. You can't connect those two things, not logically. There are more examples. Why is rent expensive? Why is rent so expensive? I recently saw somebody blame it on Airbnb. Airbnb is not the cost of expensive rent. In fact, it's been almost no longer finished here one second. It's already been outlawed in New York City and rents are still very high. So we know Airbnb is causing high rents. What's really the cost of high rent is government intervention. And that's the point. That's the point. Is government intervention is causing the unaffordability problem. It is not free markets that cause things to be less affordable. Free markets things make, that they make things. All things that the free market encages and become cheaper and better over time because of competition. That is a reality. And companies that engage in those businesses end up contributing more to society than charity. And one of the big lies that's told is that if Jeff Bezos gives a billion dollars to charity, that is somehow better than what Amazon does. That is not true. It is not true. Amazon employees 1.5 million people. Here's Bezos talking about the realities of business. If I do my job right, the value to society and civilization from my for profit companies will be much, much larger than the good that I do with my charitable giving. Okay, again, he is right about that. And Bezos point out very obviously the economy is also not a fixed pie. At the basic premise of all socialist economics, that the economy is a fixed pie. You have basically a certain number of dollars that are made every year. And they need to be divided somehow. And the government should decide the fairest distribution of those dollars. That is not true. As he points out, when you have economic growth, when you have productivity increases, when you have innovation, the economy gets bigger over time. There are a lot of people who don't understand that there's a kind of zero sum fallacy. So they think that if there's a bunch of wealth over here, that there's a fixed pie. We've got one pizza and there are seven people and there are eight slices. Who's going to get two slices? That is not how economies work. So it isn't a fixed pie. It grows. And of course, he is right about that as well. Again, basic economics, this is just reality. The fact that people rebel against reality doesn't mean they're being smart. It means they are being manipulative. Are you coming up more of Jeff Bezos talking about AI and we will get to the left wing attacks on success? And that's what they are. They are not attacks on useful things. They are attacks on actual success first. One of the stranger financial habits people have is spending hours comparison shopping for a plane ticket that might save them 12 bucks. But then continue paying 80 to 90 bucks a month for wireless service without any question. At a certain point, you have to ask why, especially now that companies like PureTalk exist. PureTalk, which is veteran led back by 100% US-based customer service, now offers unlimited high speed data for just 34.99 a month. 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It's puretalk.com/supiro to switch to my wireless company, America's wireless company, PureTalk. And Pace has also talked about AI and how people keep saying AI is going to destroy jobs and he says, like, stop that. It's not going to destroy jobs. It is going to be like any other technology that will be dislocations. People will find new jobs and it will make the job that you are doing different. That's right. But the idea that AI overall is going to destroy every job. And if so, it would be different than literally every other technological innovation in all of human history. Every time you mention AI, they will be willing because I think they're deeply fearful and worried about whether they're going to have a job. Yeah. Well, the reason they're afraid of that is because all these smart people keep saying that. So there are so many smart people. They aren't smart. And they are saying, oh my God, you know, there are going to be no more radiologists because you know, AI can read X-rays better than a radiologist can. They're going to be no more software engineers because AI can program better than a software engineer can. These people are wrong. So what's really going to happen is that it's going to elevate all of these people. Okay. So again, he is not wrong about that either. And he points out that even if there is an AI bubble in terms of investment, that's normal. When there's a new tech, a lot of people pour into the area of the tech. And then the worst companies get cleaned out. This happened with cars. It happened with computers. It happens pretty much everything. We're in a phase where every experiment is getting funded. So what that means is that like the good ideas are getting funded and the bad ideas are getting funded. And it's because investors in this at this moment haven't learned yet how to discriminate between good ideas and bad ideas. And that's okay. Because the good ideas will pay for all of the losers. So from a point of view of civilization, of society, this kind of industrial cycles can actually be very healthy because they drive the technology forward. So we shouldn't worry about being in a bubble. No, even if it does turn out to be a bubble, you shouldn't worry about it. Because the bubble is driving investment. And a lot of the investment is going to turn out to be very healthy. Okay, so everything that he is saying here is right. In some classical economics level, it happens to be right. But saying right things comes with severe consequences these days. Zoran Mamdani, who of course doesn't know his ass from his elbow on economics. He calls himself a democratic socialist, which means he's never produced a useful thing in his entire life. And somehow became mayor of New York. Apparently because New Yorkers have suicidal tendencies when it comes to their economic program. And he said when when Basel said you could double the tax I paid, it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you. Mamdani said, I know a few teachers in Queens would beg to differ on what basis would they differ? Sure. So on what basis would they differ? They would have to explain why taxing baseless who takes that money and he puts it in the bank or he invested. And then the bank now has more money to lend out at interest, which lowers the interest rates, which makes for moral liquidity. And if he spends it, other people are getting jobs from his spending and if he invested, other people are getting jobs from the companies in which he is investing, they're going to have to explain why that is. Again, Arthur Laffer, the famous economist, he points out that if it were really true, the government redistribution is some created jobs. And why is it that when the government confiscation rates of wealth are 100% there are no jobs. And the answer is because if you kill innovation and you kill investment, you kill the jobs. And it's a very easy pitch for Zorn Momdine to sit there being a completely useless leech on society. And talking about who's some sort of great hero. By the way, he thinks of himself as, you know, truly a great, he literally put out a picture of himself on Twitter behind a bunch of microphones next to a picture of FDR behind a bunch of microphones. Why? Because he's going to do a Twitch podcast called Talk with the people. The series will be available pretty much everywhere. And he's going to stream like Hassan Piker or something because this is what we now expect from our dumbass politicians, not fireside chats with FDR, dumbass streaming with Zorn Momdine. Well we all look forward to his transformative take on economics. But again, what we have right now is not a rebellion truly against the male factors of great wealth as FDR would have put it. What we have right now is a rebellion against reality. We have a rebellion against basic economics and it's going to make everybody poor and dumber. Another symptom of this, the Kevin O'Leary, again, as an investor who you know from Shark Tank, well, he was doing an interview and he made the critical mistake of saying that if you earn $70,000 a year, you should not be having lunch for $28 a day. He said this on diary of a CEO who's even Bartlett. I can't stand it when I see kids that are making $70 grand a year spending $28 for lunch. I mean, that's just stupid. Just think about that in the context of that being put into an index and making 8 to 10% a year for the next 50 years. Now he was getting ripped up on this, ripped up on this. How could Kevin O'Leary say this? We need our $28 lunches. Okay, so you can do it. It's a free country. But he's giving basic financial advice. And we now live in the world where if you give basic financial advice, like if you can't afford to live in New York City, perhaps you should take a job elsewhere that allows you to have an upward mobility. Allows you an upward economic trajectory. I got, I'm still getting ripped up by that by the online folks, particularly on the woke right. Well, O'Leary said this and suddenly he was the bad guy. Can I just point out that let's say you live in New York City and let's say you make like $70 grand a year. The chances are that you are paying about $20 grand of that in taxes to the federal, state, and local governments. So you have maybe 50 grand left over. If you spend $28 a day on lunch, you will be paying over 10 grand a year just for lunch. Hey, that's the point that O'Leary is making. But again, if you say things that are in line with basic people don't like reality and they get mad at reality, especially if there are a group of people telling them they don't need to live in the world of reality. One of those people is Fran Liebowitz. I have no clue why she thinks she knows anything about economics. But she is comparing all of these billionaires to the robber barons of old. Now first of all, the idea that the robber barons of old did not provide extraordinary wealth to the country. That ended up itself as a lie. That was a propaganda stick talking point in the late 19th century, early 20th century. which is that Rockefeller and Vanderbilt were Robert Barons. It's the same, nothing changes over human history really at root. And there's tremendous anger at the Titans of industry who actually created modern America. But she says at least those people were great as those should have liked John Jay Rockefeller or something. But the people in modern finance don't employ people. They do. Here's Fran Leibowitz. Every time someone suggests this, they say, "I'm moving. Go." They add nothing to New York. In the olden days, in the 19th century, those Robert Barons, they employed people at least. They employed thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. All this money, magic, and close no one. It is in no product. It has no goodbye go. We're moving a far to go. We don't need you. No, she's an idiot. Author, she's a moron. First of all, who do you think provides all of the investment capital that gets companies started? Who do you think actually is investing in all of these startups that generate the employment? Is Jeff Bezos the bad guy? Amazon directly employs 1.6 million people globally. People who are using Amazon as a way of selling products. That's another two million jobs. Elon Musk, the big baddie here. His global workforce is 150,000 people. Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook, his meta, has 70,000 employees. In the notion that you kill private property and modern finance and somehow the economy gets better is absolute stupidity. But it is part and parcel of a lie that is being sold to you that if only you hand more power to centralize government, if you hand more power to Bernie Sanders or a hand more power to Tucker Carlson or if you hand more power to people who want control over the economy, they'll bring you back to some placid agrarian past in which you can fish in the evening times and write poetry in the morning. It's just trash. It's stupid. All right, you're coming up. Bernie Sanders rips into Jeff Bezos and also self-driving cars plus the United States targeting Raul Castro and much more first. Now, time really starts to move quickly when you become a parent. It moves really, really fast. My three-year-old just became three. I mean, it feels like just yesterday he was born with another one coming. 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It matters a lot when your business depends on your website actually functioning. See fewer carts go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their shop pay button. Sign up. We're $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com/shapiro. So Bernie Sanders, of course, has been attacking Jeff Bezos for years and years and years. Here he was on May 1st, ripping into Jeff Bezos for using robots because you see robots are inherently bad. I don't know what the stung robots are. They're alive. What do they do? Why do robots moving and doing things? Well, I come from, we used to use marinets. I don't know why the robots are moving all by themselves. What's happening? Mr. Bezos himself just recently is now working on creating a $100 billion fund to quote unquote automate factories in America and abroad. You all know what automating factories means? It means ending working class people making a living in manufacturing. So if Bezos gets his way. So this is a revolution coming which happens to be the most consequential transformation of society in world history. We're not prepared for it. We're looking at a moment where there are driverless vehicles all over the country and if we don't figure this one out, we're going to lose millions of decent paying jobs in transportation. Okay, again, the Luddite anti-tech nonsense that he is spouting. The idea that all the jobs go away, this is the same crap that was being promoted by literal Luddites back in the 19th century, people who wrecked machines because they were afraid the industrial revolution would impoverish the workers and destroy jobs. It turns out it did precisely the opposite. If Bernie Sanders had been an adult, he was around when we made the transition from the horse to the horseless carriage. But if he had been an adult then, he would have been railing on behalf of the wheel rights. This is nonsense. It is nonsense. And this idea that we all, as consumers, are supposed to pay more money to subsidize industries that are being technologically advanced. Or by the way, that tens of thousands of Americans should die every year in car crashes, which could be prevented by automated vehicles. I know there's this big push against automated vehicles. Right now, again, it's the left. It's also the well-grite. It's an absurdity. Automated vehicles will make sure your parents don't die in a car crash or you. That is what they're going to do. They're going to save time and they're going to save money. And that will be a good thing. Think about the tech that you use in your life. Think about the tech that you use every single day. Was using your parents' life was better off when they couldn't use a computer to do research when they didn't have connections to the internet. And what you actually had to do was go down to like a filing cabinet in the New York City Public Library to look up a basic fact and take five hours from your day to do it. It's all ridiculous. But again, this is the push. The push is that markets are bad. Innovation is bad. Tech is bad. And certainly the easiest way to attack innovation and tech because most people think they're good. The best way to attack that is to attack the people who get rich off of doing those things. So Bernie, here he was in March, attacking the billionaires who he says are pushing AI to become richer and more powerful. A technology which in many respects will be able to do anything that a human being can do and do it better. And what people have got to ask themselves is who is pushing this revolution? And the answer is not surprisingly, the wealthiest people in the world, Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Ellison, Mr. Zuckerberg. Why are they doing it? You think they're doing it to improve life for working people? I don't think so. They're doing it to become even richer and more powerful. It's always hilarious to me how it's as though two people like Bernie Sanders, people who are rich and powerful. They develop products and services that have no consumers. They must be forcing it on the American people like by force. Now what's always astonishing to me from people like Bernie or people like a Zorn Mamdani, the only one with the gun is the government. That's the only party in this entire transaction that has the gun. The only people who can force a policy on you at using actual force. That would be the government. It is Bernie who holds the gun, not Jeff Bezos, not Elon Musk. You want to know who's driving the AI transition? People who want to use AI, business people who want to make their businesses more productive. And consumers who want their products to be more affordable. All the same kids going to Bernie rallies are using Chatchee PT to write their essays. That's the reality. Now we can ask questions about how AI is deployed. What are the best uses of AI to brand new tech? We should ask those questions. But this notion that unheated capitalism, that it's just the evil billionaires who are somehow foisting through free market choice, through you making choices. What's on you is stupid. It's also catastrophism of the highest order. And as I say, it embraces the anti-capitalist left and the anti-capitalist right. There's a right that also longs for an agrarian past. Senator Josh Halley of Missouri, he tends to dip into these waters from time to time. He's now claiming that 30 to 40% of college graduates may be unemployed because of AI. College graduates have been booing AI at their ceremonies this week, whether it's been reading it out or they're just booing every mention of AI. What do you make of that? Well, I make up the fact that a lot of these college graduates don't have jobs. know it's like a group of college grades recently college seniors actually and that they were giving me very similar sentiments about a i they were saying that they they can't find jobs uh. that you know like thirty forty percent of them are unemployed and uh. they blame that a i for the so you know i mean they they they will be right we've got to make some choices about a i to make sure actually it's good for the american workforce and i think a lot of these college grants don't think it will be who is the we who is the we the politicians the government is supposed to make choices about what's good for the economy and the workforce typically that doesn't and particularly well by the way the actual unemployment rate for recent college graduates people age twenty to twenty seven approximately five point six percent according to washington post analysis of new york federal reserve data now again none of this means that there are no problems in the economy it does mean that when you attack the very mechanisms for creating wealth when you attack the tech industry which is the future of america's economy when you attack innovation and productivity and when you attack the people who earn from those things you are destroying the very fundamental bases for economic growth as a country and the pathway to prosperity for individuals in the united states there's a reason why a lot of the sentiment is being fostered by russians and chinese and errone they would love nothing better than to watch america cut our own a kill east hendon economically speaking they would love it love it and now there's one thing that many of the billionaires are doing that is truly stupid and that is i've seen them play this game before they basically try to surrender by parts this is really dumb so there is a group chat that i am in that has a bunch of billionaires and like a bunch of tech people people who invest in in innovation and tech i remember a few months back they're having a conversation probably a year and a half back they're having a conversation about tax rates and they're all having conversations about what tax rates could we pay that would get people to stop criticizing us and the answer is one hundred percent that is the tax rate you could pay that would get people to stop criticizing it that's the reality but let's just be clear surrendering to people who hate free markets and who hate capitalism is not going to save you it is not going to save you again there's this tendency to try to feed the anti free market alligator and hope that it's you last so in that interview that basso instead with andro rossorkin over at cnbc he had to go out and pretend that bad economic policy is sometimes good economic policy because maybe that will buy him some love which is dumb it's not going to buy off anybody and there's a reason for that first bad policy is bad policy and if the bad policy you recommend doesn't work people will be mad at you recommending a bad policy it's not going to alleviate people's problems generally speaking so to take an example basso's put out a statement he said yes the united states has the most progressive tax system in the world the top one percent pay 40 percent of taxes at the bottom 50 percent paid three percent of taxes we can make it even more progressive by zeroing out taxes on the bottom half it's a small amount of the total tax revenue but very meaningful to people in this group well i mean we could lower taxes for everyone and that would actually increase economic growth but let us be very clear doing the thing that he is talking about i have no problem with nobody paying income tax i think there are other ways to tax people but if he thinks that that is going to buy him the love of people in the bottom 50 percent he's totally wrong first of all people don't like it when people like Jeff Bezos appear to be giving them charity they don't like it it makes them feel bad about themselves that's number one number two when you are Jeff Bezos and you recommend lowering taxes for people in the bottom 50 percent people who are shall we say vulnerable to the class warfare tactics that are pushed by the Zorn Mamdani's and the Bernie Sanders they say that's just you paying us off what we really want is your money it's about the punishment and bad policy sets up bad incentive structures that actually make political problems worse see here is again the thing right now in terms of the tax burden in the United States the bottom 50 percent cover virtually none of the tax burden in the United States that is just the statistical reality and if you have a political problem in which people are voting in order to take money from other people that first group of people who are voting to take money from you legitimizing that point of view that they are somehow being screwed by the system it does not alleviate the problem exacerbates the problem admitting stuff admitting guilt for stuff that you are not guilty for is both immoral and stupid and it makes people resentful so for example Bezos came out and he came out in favor of the New York City Kettitair Tax which is the tax on the second home that people are not inhabiting full time but again is truly stupid and one of the reasons it's truly stupid is because the expenses for the city on a second home are lower than they are if you actually live in the home but again he says this he says yeah the Pieditair Tax is fine he thinks that's going to buy him love he is wrong it is not going to buy him love in any way shape or form because the Pieditair Tax is morally wrong okay just because you own two houses not mean your second house should be taxed more than if you own one house there's nothing morally wrong with owning a second house in New York City in fact it drives the profit margins for the developers that allow them to build less expensive housing in New York City but here is Bezos again trying to stop trying to cater to people who hate you it's a bad move on the one hand it's perfectly fine to have a policy debate about whether you want to have a Pieditair Tax the second piece which is not so good is to go stand in front of him Griffin's house and act like he's some kind of villain he Griffin isn't a villain he hasn't heard anybody he's not hurting New York in fact quite the opposite and so that piece of it isn't right and there was no reason to do that a Pieditair Tax is a you know there's a very taxes on out of towners are very popular taxes that's why there are hotel taxes and you know hotels always have very high tax rates because why not tax the tourists and there are limits if you raise the hotel taxes too much tourists stop coming right so you have to be judicious but I think that the Pieditair Tax is a fine thing for New York to do and you know but it's a policy debate okay but it isn't a policy debate understanding that for the left it is never a policy debate it is never about bringing in the most revenue to the government it is always about forever and always demonizing the people who earn that is what the whole game is so you can try to disconnect those two things you can try to say all the Pieditair Tax is just a question of what's best policy and you know you might drive people out you might you might be able to get more tax that's not what it's about they're indistinguishable the point of Zorn Mamdanis Pieditair Tax is not to raise revenue the point is to stand outside Ken Griffin's house and yell at him that is the exact point Bezos should know this better than anybody he gave 10 million bucks to the Met Gala and he got dragged for it that was a charitable donation and he got dragged trying to feed the alligator in the hope that it eats you last is stupid policy it is bad policy and people should not do it they should not free markets work innovations work people making smart economic decisions with their own money that works and people who are preaching the opposite they're selling you shorts they are making your life actively worse and by the way all of the talk about how in the United States people at the top and are under tax let us be very very clear people in Europe are overtaxed at the bottom rates that's the reality if the idea is the billionaires are not sufficiently burdened in the United States and if we want a Denmark style social welfare system we need to tax like Denmark I'm just going to point out to you how taxation actually works in the United States versus in Denmark in the United States if you are in the bottom quintile of income earners you are receiving almost 70 dollars from the federal government in benefits for every dollar paid in federal income tax you're getting a lot more back from the government than you paid in if you're in the second lowest quintile meaning you earn somewhere between probably 30 and 50 thousand dollars it's six dollars for every dollar paid in for people in the middle quintile it's two bucks in 35 cents and for people in the top 1 percent people like pesos for every dollar they get they pay in in taxes they get four cents in benefits so pretty much all that taxes in the United States are paid for by the rich do you want a European style democratic socialist state again what you keep hearing from Bernie and from Zoran and from all of these morons is that if you just tax bassoes more magically European welfare benefits will appear wrong you want European socialist benefits if they European socialist taxes nor is top personal income tax rate of about 40 percent it applies to all income over 1.8 times the average norwegian income Sweden's top personal tax rate of 52.4 percent applies to all income over 1.1 times the average national income in the United States that top tax rate it kicks in at nine times at the average national income so what does that mean well if the average annual income in the United States about 90 thousand dollars something like that at this point 80 85 90 thousand dollars per household that means that if you were living in Sweden you'd be paying 50 percent of that to the government that's not the rate you're paying if you were in Denmark you'd be kicking in the highest tax rate at 125 thousand dollars per year per family even if you're in the lowest tax bracket in Denmark by the way you're not paying 3 percent you're paying one third of your money to taxes so economic lies they do not become us we should not fall for this nonsense and if you do fall for this nonsense you are going to make things worse from small towns to big cities Comcast is connecting millions of Americans to affordable reliable secure Wi-Fi at prices that are clear and consistent with a new five-year price guarantee backed by AI innovation resilient design and cybersecurity technology The Comcast Network is built to keep families and businesses connected and their data safe. 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Bernie is not concerned about people who are impoverished. Bernie is concerned about rich people he wants to tear to the ground while living in his vacation home. Hasan Piker is not interested in what happens to poor people he's fine with them frying out in Cuba while he's in the air conditioning inside. Hasan Piker is happy to shop at Cartier while living in a mansion and bitching about the American economic system. Stop vilifying the people who make money in this country. Again, there's a whole effort happening right now, mostly on the left, but also on the right. To vilify success. And again, it is not about fairness. It's not about fairness. I understand that poll data saying people think that things are not fair, but understand the attacks on bassoes and Zuckerberg and musk. You have to like those guys. You don't have to like how they use their wealth. You can think they're being conspicuous in their consumption. That's all fine, but let's be clear about this. The attacks on them right now, not about fairness and it's not about decency and it's certainly not about regular people living better lives. It's about politicians who think that if they brown knows you by telling you the system is unfair and that it's fine and actually morally good to rob the rich guys, they will win your vote. And that is a sexy pitch. It's always been a sexy pitch. Actually, you're justified in robbing people who have more than you. It turns out that violation of the 10th commandment is a very popular political agenda. That envy is a popular political agenda. If you tell people that the guy next door is rich because he's bad and he stole it, you're going to be more popular. And if you say that the guy next door is rich because he provided a good and service at a price that people wanted to pay. So who's making the case for envy? Democrats pretty much all of them. Our enemies abroad, who again would love nothing better than to seed class conflict in the United States in order to get us to destroy our economically dominant position. And increasingly, some members of the public, people who are being lied to and being told stuff that makes you feel good, but makes your life actively worse. You want about our life? Then try to imitate the things that the billionaires did to become billionaires. That's how you get a better life economically speaking. You should make money the way most billionaires do. And again, I know a lot of billionaires. And I have lived in the United States as a person who was like middle middle class as a child, maybe borderline lower to middle middle class middle class upper middle class and rich. And enormous amount of money to the government at various tax brackets. The reality is the vast majority of true wealth in the United States is created not inherited. Most billionaires in the United States started a business. And that business meant that they made better products. They out competed their competitors. They innovated something new. Now again, this is not making the case that all rich people are good and honest people who you want to babysit their kids. All rich people are not that. In fact, all anything people are not good and honest. There's literally no category of humans. Entirely good and honest. It doesn't work that way. Maybe the more men has come close. But human beings are human beings. Private property and free markets and your capacity to earn to make your economic life better. That of your kids. That is a good thing. And people who preach the opposite are happy to make your life worse for their own political and financial gain. Hey, now look at the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is steering directly into all of this. They are steering more and more into deep and abiding socialism and racism and anti-Semitism. It really is amazing. So there's a brand new pull out that New York Times, Seattle. And it shows that voters actually would like the Democrats to move more to the center. According to that same poll, in order to win the next presidential elections, do you think the Democratic candidate needs to move the party to the left, move the party to the center or not move it in either direction. In general, 52% say move to the center. On crime, 50% say move to the center. On immigration, 46% say move to the center. On economic issues, 42% say move to the center. Only 36% say move further to the left. On trans issues, 38% say move to the center. The only area where Americans think the Democrats should move to the left is on healthcare. And the reason for that is because the government has so heavily regulated and subsidized healthcare that no one knows what the hell is going on and people prefer simplicity to confusion. It really is about that. So naturally, what does that mean? Well, it means the Democrats are doing the same routine as the well-grey. They are completely captured. Democrats have decided to move left on all these issues by embracing some of the worst people in America as their candidates. This includes Graham Platner, the Senate main Democratic candidate, an awful human being, truly an awful person who's being touted as some sort of possible presidential candidate by the Democrats. They cannot disconnect from the heroin of left-wing politics. It's crazy. This is a clip of Graham Platner a couple of years ago saying that the murdered Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle, of American sniper, racked up kills by shooting civilians. His story is about how many people he was shooting, certainly tracked with the behavior of eyewitnessed and people I knew witnessed down at the Guv Center, which is relatively easy to get high numbers like that if you're less discriminating, you're fire than say more professionally and it would be. I almost felt like there was like a weird practical joke being played on me by the war that like all these years later, I'm like having to like people are telling me like, oh, look how great this guy is. These guys are amazing. Hero is this whole incredible thing, the the paradigm of leadership. And I'm just sitting there like, am I living in like an ultimate reality? What a wonderful person. This is the person they decided to nominate for the Senate. He called himself P hustle online and he complained about closing a tax loophole that allowed people to bang hookers in Thailand. What is the light he is? He said, spend your leave, the banging hookers in Thailand instead of getting bitched at by the wife back home and you could sell it as avoiding federal income tax. And he was enjoying that. We'll not ask what he was doing in Thailand or what sort of people he was engaging in prostitution with allegedly. He also reacted to footage of a US soldier taking machine gunfire quote this video never gets old. Dumb mother effort didn't deserve to live at least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantry men to witness and holding contempt poor marksmanship on the Taliban's part is the only reason this mouth reader made it home. He managed to make every possible leap decision possible when it comes to small unit combat. What it's like he also wrote in another post all cops are bastards. And back in 2014 he praised a full scale Kamaos raid as audacious. Looks like a pretty audacious plan that worked all certainly give credit where credit is due. I'm glad that the Democratic Party has decided to embrace the most extreme aspects of itself which apparently means now defending the Southern poverty law center. So you'll remember a few weeks ago we reported on the Southern poverty law center. The Southern poverty law center it turns out was donating money to white supremacist organizations and then raising money off the presence of these white supremacist organizations remember that's the allegation. Well here was the SPLC attorney defending paying that donated money to white supremacists Jim Jordan was questioning him. Is that appropriate to say tell your donors this is the extremist of the month this hateful racist guys really bad send this money but not tell those donors who you're taking their money from that we're paying this guy $140,000. Is that appropriate? Well we have public reporting that it over a dozen donors actually simple question money source. Fee source 42 got 140 grand from the Southern poverty law center was featured on their web page as extremist of the year or month or whatever they call these bad guys. And they were paying him and they were getting money is that appropriate simple question and donors have supported it and they keep trying to send money to the Southern poverty law center. Is that technique appropriate that's what I'm asking that is not unlawful to say that people have done. I didn't ask if it was lawful lawful as you said earlier your testimony the court's gone determined that when they go to when they go to trial. Representative from millagia paul of course congressional progressive caucus. She says that the SPLC is wonderful they're doing a great job. For decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center has sued and won jury verdicts against hate groups who conspire and facilitate violence against black and brown people. The center secured a verdict against the planners of the 2017 Charlottesville rally. The same rally, the Drew participants, who Donald Trump called "very fine people on both sides," and yes, I know what he said after that to try and defend it, but the entire rally was organized by white nationalists. And even after images and videos revealed that these participants put up their arms and Nazi salutes and violently injured counter protesters and cheered on the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, he stuck by that. SBLC has been winning. That's why Donald Trump wants to target them. Okay, hilariously, the progressives are now defending the people who literally funded white supremacists. People on both sides argument that Trump was making, which by the way was not about the white supremacists. It was about people who were four and against tearing down a statue of Robert E. Lee. That's what those statements were actually about. But the Democrats get more and more extreme every single day. So a new House Democratic probable nominee, a woman in Marine and Galindo, she is now in favor of imprisoning what she calls billionaire Zionists. She's a nut job, but again, being a nut job seems to be a prerequisite for running for higher office in the Democratic Party these days. When I say that I want billionaire Zionists in prison, that does not mean I want Jews in internment camps. So why am I getting a whole bunch of death threats and mega insults? She's a victim. It actually makes sense, I realize, like MAGA and Jewish Zionists apparently are the exact same people. They talk the exact same way. And that's because MAGA is developing Christian Zionists. That's how they want to create a religion state in the United States of America through MAGA, which that's the goal of Zionism is to create these white supremacist religion state. The goal of Zionism is to create white supremacism religion states as the Democratic House Democrat. Great job, guys. Really solid job. You know, of course, it is not just people like her. It is also Ilhan Omar. And she is reaching around hugging Thomas Massey. Of course, of course, the horse shoe is quite real. Here is Ilhan Omar talking about the magic of Thomas Massey and how everyone's being victimized by the nefarious Jews and their nefarious Benjamin's. You think that Massey was defeated last night because of his support for transparency in the Epstein files. Transparency act. Yes. And his anti-war stances, his advocacy in trying to make sure our tax dollars don't continue to fund each other's side in Gaza. You know, those 30 million dollars did not come from thin air. We know who's there for that money. Yeah. I mean, he said that Israel is the only country that has allowed to buy elections here, other than Iran for a while. And certainly in his case, in boring Bush's case, and Jamal Goldman's case, that statement seems to be accurate. That statement is in no way accurate. Israeli money is like Chinese money or Russian money or British money or French money banned in American elections. Again, the idea that the Jewish Americans and Christian Americans who did not like Thomas Massey stands on Israel and conspiratorial anti-Jewish nonsense that those people are somehow the Israelis is just another aspect of the stupidity being pushed by people like Elhan Omar. Bernie Sanders also doing strange and respect. Now again, I'm going to point out here that for the left, it is not that they have strange and respect for people who oppose Trump. It is not true. Bill Cassidy lost his sentence because Trump didn't like him. Cassidy voted for Trump's impeachment in 2021. Zero, zero strange and respect for Bill Cassidy from Bernie Sanders and Elhan Omar. The one issue that they all unite on is hatred of Israel and green lighting hatred of Jews. That is the one thing that they are all on the same page about. Here's Bernie Sanders. Again, as Jewish as a ham sandwich. Here is the political reality of today, of reality that we just saw yesterday in the election in Kentucky. The congressman Thomas Massey, somebody I have very little in common with politically, was defeated by nine million dollars in contributions from APAC and seven million dollars from Trump mega-donors. And what was the great crime that Massey committed that gended so much super PAC money in opposition to him? Well, he opposed the war in Iran and so do the vast majority of the American people. He demanded that the Epstein Epstein files be open, which is what the American people have wanted. And he refused. What a crime. What an outrage to be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump. Wow, so much strange and respect from the elderly socialist and useless derelict who's been a homeless person occupying a senate office for longer than I've been alive. Really strong stuff right there. But this is your new Democratic party. It is the AOCs of the world. The supposed modern Democratic party has been wiped out in real time. I mean, truly wiped out in real time. And they will defend extremism at every possible turn, every single possible turn. All right, informed policy news. Yesterday, the acting attorney general of the United States, Todd Blanche announced the indictment of Raul Castro is that the predicate to a possible move to capture Raul Castro and the same way he did Nicholas Maduro. Perhaps here was the announcement yesterday. Today we are announcing an indictment charging Raul Castro and several others with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. Okay, big standing ovation. Obviously, a lot of people are enthusiastic about that now. Should we go and get Raul Castro? And if we can do it, the same way he did Maduro, why the hell not? That seems to be a belief that all these countries are sort of one moment away from some sort of uprising by the people. President Trump says there will not be escalation with you, but they're basically cut off from oil. They don't have the ability to really have a functioning economy at this point. He says we're not going to raise the ante here. Should we expect any escalation here or should they expect anything? Yes. No. No, they won't be escalation. I don't think these would look the places falling apart. It's a mess and they sort of lost control. Representative Carlos Jimenez, Florida, he says that the Cubans are going to rise up at some point here. Should the United States attack Cuba? I don't think it's going to be necessary. I think the Cuban people themselves are going to do something about the regime. There's a lot of protests happen every day. Careful. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. And so, the pressure I think is working. That's the regime is in the weakest condition it's ever been. Okay. Excuse me, I just let it play out, but no, no, no, U.S. intervention is necessary. Okay. Thank you for your hearts. That's why. Okay. So again, I hope that's true. My great fear is that the United States keeps on bringing countries to the brink of regime change and then leaving them there and that all of the faith that's been placed in people to rise up themselves. Well, either they get shot in the streets on mass like in Iran or it turns out that the regime that we are basically propping up in places like Venezuela, that it's just going to hang on to power by any means necessary. Or in Cuba, just indefinitely, the impoverishment and starvation continues because people will might give up power. I hope that all of this is right. I hope that the Castro regime falls and that the communist regime falls and people actually launch an uprising. I will say that historically speaking, internal uprisings that end up, you know, cooling out the state in the absence of some sort of organized opposition in the country, that's pretty difficult. That is a pretty difficult road, typically speaking. Now, leave it to the left like Ben Rhodes. Again, unbelievable. This guy was a former deputy national security adviser to Barack Obama, literally named Hamas in the White House. Unbelievably enough, he compared Castro to Trump, which is just insane. One of those people is an elected leader twice in a robust democracy with constitutional checks and balances. And one of those people is an evil dictator who has forced people to leave his country on floating shabby's for the last 60, 70 years. Not the same thing, actually, as it turns out, but Ben Rhodes is a moron. So here we go. The absurdity of him talking about the corruption of billions of dollars being stole at the same time that Donald Trump, his family and his cronies, had been looting literally the American treasury or leveraging American power to get billions of dollars in crypto companies. Nobody believes that this is some earnest anti-corruption agenda. And then lastly, do we really think these people are credible in delivering messages about human rights and democracy as a dismantle human rights and democracy at home? No. So this is about power. This is about treating the Western hemisphere like our empire. And it's about something that no Americans other than that small political base of rubios is interested in, which is yet another regime change operation. about what a pathetic human being, Men Rodes is. The Obama administration literally sent Barack Obama to Castro to hug him. You remember this? You visited Cuba and basically paid homage to the Castro regime. Difference in kind from the Trump administration. Alrighty, coming up, we'll jump into the latest on Iran, the latest on Europe. You have to become a member to hear all of that, however. Go check us out right now. Become a member, use code Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. (upbeat music)