Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 488: Iran, Iran So Far Away

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Episode 488: Iran, Iran So Far Away · Words & Numbers

0:00
Coming up next on Words and Numbers, the food pyramid.
0:03
How to become a millionaire? See a Weaver.
0:05
And collapse of a regime. All of us and more coming up
0:08
next on Words and Numbers, a civil original production.
0:11
Check us out at civil.com. That's C ivl.com.
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Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony and.
0:17
This is words and numbers Ant what's new and exciting in your.
0:25
World Somebody sent me an article from AOL.
0:29
I This is aol.com, which is AOL. Or still a thing?
0:34
Yeah, I don't know if whether it's a thing, but apparently it
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still has articles that it posts.
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But this is one that was at least the the idea was making
0:47
the rounds about a year ago. A pops up every once in a while,
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and it says the average worker would need to save for 52 years
0:56
to claw their way out of the middle class and be classified
1:00
as wealthy. That's a bunch of red hot
1:03
nonsense. Well, it is nonsense if people
1:05
pass this, this kind of thing around saying, look, here's
1:08
proof that, you know, it's stagnation.
1:11
You're just stuck. And if you're born to the middle
1:12
class, that's the way it's going to be.
1:14
And in fact, there are similar things.
1:16
Something about if you saved all of your money from the time that
1:21
the universe first came into existence, you still wouldn't
1:25
have as much money as Elon Musk. Right.
1:28
It's only 6000 years now, right? Even if it were, you'd still
1:33
have more than Elon Musk because what both of these articles are
1:38
are ignoring is the interest rate on savings.
1:42
You know, I mean, it's miraculous.
1:45
Yeah, this is, look, if you just put the money under your
1:49
mattress, yeah, this is right. You'd have to save for 52 years.
1:53
But the whole point of a financial system is to enable
1:58
those who don't have the money now to borrow from those who do
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have the money now. And everybody's better off.
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And interest is the price you pay for that.
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And of course, you know, if you're going to ignore it, well,
2:10
all right, you're going to save for 52 years.
2:12
But anyway, nonetheless, I pulled some numbers and I wanted
2:16
to know how much would the average American have to save?
2:22
Forget about being classified as wealthy, which is actually a
2:27
somewhat lower bar. I'm asking the question, how
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much would you need to save to end up with $1,000,000 by the
2:33
time you retired? So in all these cases, I'm going
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to talk about someone who begins saving at age 22.
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So, you know, right after you get out of college or you get
2:44
yourself established out of high school, whatever it is age 22 to
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age 67 right now, let's look at the median American, the guy in
2:53
the middle. And by the way, all the numbers
2:57
I'm going to quote here are adjusted for inflation.
3:00
So when I say $1,000,000, I mean $1,000,000 as we understand it
3:05
today. It's purchasing power.
3:07
I'm talking about here. Take the median, the guy in the
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middle, not the average, the guy in the middle American.
3:14
And over the course of his career, he's going to earn a
3:18
bunch of money. And let's suppose he saves at 5%
3:24
above inflation, which is, which would be like if inflation's
3:28
running 3%, that would be like 8% interest, which is not at all
3:33
unreasonable. I mean, that's 8% interest is a
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mix of stocks and bonds. Someone who's 22 shouldn't be in
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bonds at all. You should be entirely stocks.
3:43
And there you're talking, you know what, maybe 10% or more
3:46
above inflation. But let's let's suppose we're
3:50
just 5% above inflation. So it's rather conservative.
3:53
This person would have to save 10% of his wages, 10% every
4:01
paycheck, and by the time he retires he's got $1.6 million in
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the bank. And is that take home or gross?
4:10
Ah very good. He saves 10% of his gross, he
4:16
ends up with 1.6 million. If he saves 10% of his take
4:20
home, he ends up with 1.2 million.
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Pretty good either way. Yeah, and and so, you know,
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people can argue about, well, you know, in today's climate,
4:30
it's, you know, really hard to save 10%.
4:32
OK, fine. But it's not impossible.
4:35
And what's the payoff? You retire a millionaire.
4:39
It's my firm belief that 10% could be cut out of almost
4:41
everything. Yeah, you would think so it and
4:45
I pushed the batter I said So what about because here when I
4:48
talk about the median American, the median American in when
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you're in the the low to mid 20s, you're earning the median
4:56
American about 43,000 gross and it goes up as you progress
5:01
through your your career. But let's suppose instead we're
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talking about someone who is in the bottom 20%, the bottom 20%.
5:12
The average person there is earning 16,000 gross.
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And let's suppose this person stays in the 20% his entire
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career. So he's earning 16,000 all the
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way through from age 22 all the way to age 67.
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If he saves 10% it I had to, well, let me put the interest
5:35
rate back. So we're comparing apples to
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apples. If he saves 10%, he retires with
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over a quarter million in the bank.
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Now it's not the million, but it's a quarter million on a
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bottom 20% income. So even poor Americans can, you
5:51
know, and if he jacks up the his interest rate, if he goes leans
5:56
more toward equities, he can get that up to half a million.
6:00
If he can save a little bit more, let's say 12%, thirteen
6:04
percent, he can get up to 650, seven, 100,000.
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So he's starting to get close to 3/4 of a million.
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Is it difficult? Sure, it's going to be
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difficult, but it's not impossible.
6:15
Well, that runs counter to a lot of narratives, so I don't I
6:18
don't suspect you're going to get a lot of traction with this
6:21
argument. No, you know, people push back.
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Actually, you know, James, who doesn't push back, it's people
6:29
who are approaching retirement who look back and say, you know,
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if I don't save 10%, it's the young people who say, Oh no,
6:38
that's can't work and I can't afford 10%.
6:40
I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying this is what the
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numbers. Say also and don't forget that
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the people who do save 10% and who do get between 1.2 and $1.6
6:50
million are also going to be eligible.
6:52
For Social Security, right? Yes, right.
6:56
So there's on top of that. Yeah, yeah.
6:59
So you can be impressive, but as usual, it takes habituation.
7:05
It's not home runs, it's singles.
7:07
Yeah, that's right. But time after time, yeah.
7:11
I wanted to talk a little bit today in the credit where it's
7:14
due department. You know, we've been very
7:16
critical or at least I have now that I think about it.
7:19
I don't think you've said anything one way or the other.
7:22
I've been very critical of RFK junior with his make America
7:25
healthy again nonsense and you know the anti vax business and
7:29
and the whole bit. But the FDAI think today or
7:32
might have been yesterday as we record released the new food
7:37
pyramid and you you would have to be I think so brazenly
7:44
resistant to evidence to say that the previous food pyramid
7:49
did any good at all that I I don't think I I could even talk
7:54
to you the. And it was the second one,
7:56
right? Because when we were kids, there
7:58
was a different 1 still. Right.
8:00
And let's just say the sugar industry got a hold of things.
8:05
What the current one? No, or the previous.
8:08
No, no, the, the, the sugar industry took a big hit with
8:11
this new one. And and when I say sugar, it's
8:14
not just sugar, right? It's it's refined foods, it's
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carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are sugars, and a
8:21
lot of people still, for whatever reason, can't figure
8:24
that out. But what do we see on the new
8:27
food pyramid? It's a lot of a lot of meats, a
8:31
lot of dairy, and very little by way of processed grains.
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And do I think this is going to make a difference in the eating
8:40
habits of the average American? Probably not.
8:44
But it'll filter in, I think, at some level.
8:48
And as it does, dare I say it, we are likely to become
8:52
healthier. So do you know who owns the FDA?
8:56
What part of government? Yeah, it's the Department of
8:58
Agriculture. OK, that's that's the one that
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owned the original. And here's the thing, when the
9:05
food pyramid first came out, it's the government saying here
9:09
are things you should eat. And everybody thought, well,
9:12
this, this must be the FDA or something like it.
9:14
The goal is to make us healthy. Department of Agriculture is not
9:19
founded to make us healthy. It's founded to support American
9:23
agriculture. For it to make farmers wealthy.
9:26
Yeah, and so the original food pyramid was eat like 20-4
9:29
helpings of greens or whatever it was.
9:31
Yeah. And when when you think about it
9:34
and when you and I were children, you dinner was always
9:39
the exact same animal, right? It was a meat, a vegetable and a
9:42
starch. And that was.
9:44
And that was that. And the idea that you would
9:47
snack your way through a day was verboten, right?
9:52
You know you'll spoil, you'll spoil your dinner, was what my
9:55
mother used to say. Well, this and this is the weird
9:58
thing, you know, as as you and I used to visit high schools, it
10:01
always took me aback when the teachers would tell some tell
10:05
the students something about they can have their snacks now
10:08
or late snacks were something kindergarteners did.
10:11
Right. And they and they would have
10:12
lunch at like 10:30 in the morning.
10:14
Yeah, yeah. But but anyway, the the idea
10:19
that you should be eating a bevy of small meals every day that
10:24
each contain a bunch of carbohydrates, it made everybody
10:28
who ate that diet fat. And there are all kinds of great
10:33
reasons for that. I'll leave it to the listeners
10:36
to go ferret out that sort of thing if they're interested.
10:39
What I'm interested in seeing is what effect this will have on
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things like school lunches. Right?
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Do do do mothers take this to heart in any way?
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Because they did seem to take to heart the last food pyramid.
10:55
Right. Maybe it'll happen again, so
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credit where it's due. I I think whatever role Robert F
11:00
Kennedy played here was a good, good role, and I'm glad to see
11:03
it. I just hope we'll pay attention.
11:07
I think, you know, as much as as I am against the government
11:10
intruding in our lives, I think there are some things it does
11:14
well and it's good that it does them and one of them is
11:18
contributing to health. And I don't mean form health
11:24
insurance or anything like that, but you know, stuff that CDC has
11:29
done the research, the public awareness up until COVID.
11:33
I think CDC that largely my gut reaction is largely CDC was a
11:39
well respected government entity, lost a lot of that.
11:43
And I think that splashed on to other parts of the government as
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well. Sure, sure.
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And and look, I, I think government is data aggregator is
11:54
not such a bad thing. You know, government as enforcer
11:58
of certain things is a terrible idea.
12:01
Yeah. So, you know, somewhere you've
12:03
got to find the right ground. And notice I didn't say the
12:06
middle ground. I don't think the middle ground
12:08
is the right ground. I I think providing information
12:12
and stepping off and letting people live their lives as they
12:14
see fit, probably the right answer.
12:17
Probably. And of course it's the right
12:19
answer. We're happy to announce this
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13:05
That brings us in to the foolishness of the week.
13:08
And I suspect that the people I'm about to bring up are going
13:15
to be people that we talk about nearly endlessly.
13:19
And all of the people who are out there who are convinced
13:24
where Trump shills are anti Trump shills are going to love
13:29
this because I want to bring us Ant for the first time to New
13:32
York City. And its new mayor.
13:35
And it's Bran Spankin, new mayor, but it's not the mayor I
13:38
want to talk about. It's one of the idiots that he's
13:41
hired a woman named Sia Weaver, and she is in charge of making
13:49
rents affordable. I I hesitate to use the word
13:53
again because they were never affordable in New York City in
13:57
the 1st place, but she's a 37 year old woman who has referred
14:03
to home ownership as quote, a weapon of white supremacy.
14:08
Oh my God. A weapon of white supremacy home
14:17
owner, apparently. Apparently only white people own
14:20
homes. But.
14:21
But I digress, because upon just a tiny and, and I mean the
14:27
tiniest bit of digging, I found out that her mother owns a $1.6
14:31
million home. So I I dare, I dare say what
14:39
we're seeing here in New York City is white guilt coming home
14:43
to roost. What could possibly go wrong?
14:46
I don't know what to do with that.
14:48
I I could see I don't agree with the argument, but I could see
14:53
someone formulating an argument that owning a apartment building
15:01
that you rent out is somehow white supremacy, but owning a
15:06
home. Yeah, she was pressed on this
15:09
and and people asked her about the $1.6 million home and she
15:14
kind of burst into tears and ran back inside.
15:17
You're kidding me. Did it?
15:19
I wish I were to her that someone was going to find that
15:22
information. About 30 seconds.
15:24
Apparently not, and she is the director, just to be precise, of
15:28
the office to protect tenants. In other news, there is an
15:32
office to protect tenants. Right, yeah.
15:35
And of course it it's not going to occur to anybody there.
15:38
They're going to do all the things that they do and they
15:41
will probably make the situation worse because it hasn't occurred
15:44
to any of them that they're part of the problem.
15:48
Well, free child care through age 5 is also now a thing in New
15:53
York City, so they're hitting the ground running.
15:57
I look forward to watching the implosion that will be the city
16:01
of New York. But Speaking of implosions,
16:04
we've got a bigger thing to talk about.
16:07
Before we leave that I need to to explain for listeners who
16:11
might want some more detail when I say that that that they're the
16:16
problem. New York has has lived under
16:20
rent control of various forms for a long time and rent control
16:24
is one of those things like them, unsurprisingly,
16:28
unsurprisingly, like the minimum wage for all the same economic
16:32
reasons that you you think you're doing a good thing of
16:36
saying, well, rent is not going to rise above a certain level.
16:40
When in fact what you're doing is removing the incentive for
16:46
people who own land and buildings to provide more
16:49
housing and so. It's worse than that.
16:51
It's worse than that because what you're saying is, yes, your
16:55
rent won't rise above this level, but the rents of other
16:58
people will rise far above this level to make back the money
17:03
that you that the landlord loses on the rent control, right.
17:06
And it it becomes a very similar argument to the minimum wage.
17:10
Problem, yeah. Yeah, some people get a higher
17:13
wage, other people get fired. Right, Yeah, They get the higher
17:17
wage because it's on the backs of the other people that got
17:19
fired. That's right.
17:21
And you, you get a thing like we you had mentioned this in
17:24
happening in California not too long ago, California doing a
17:27
similar thing and all of a sudden apartments being
17:31
converted into condominiums and people complaining the
17:34
apartments are disappearing in places of condominiums.
17:36
Why? Because the condominiums didn't
17:38
come with a a cap on the rental. Imagine that people respond to
17:44
incentives. Phil met 11 but but Speaking of
17:48
incentives and that that's probably the best word to use as
17:52
a Segway into what we're going to talk about today, because I
17:55
want to talk about the unmitigated shit show that is
17:58
Iran right now. And I'm, I'm going to guess that
18:02
you're going to look at me and say, what do you mean?
18:05
Yeah, I, I exactly. You proposed this and I haven't
18:08
been paying attention to what's going on.
18:10
Well, it it's not you and, and this is the interesting part,
18:14
it's the media. There are 28 provinces in Iran.
18:20
27 of them right now are rioting.
18:25
Really, this regime is about to topple there.
18:30
The the descendant of the Shah of Iran is waiting to be
18:35
airlifted back in. That's where we are in Iran
18:40
right now. And the Western media is not
18:44
reporting on it. And there can be only one reason
18:49
for this. The Western media, and I'm
18:51
looking especially at the European media right now, but
18:55
the American media not too far behind, Everybody is so
19:01
ridiculously worried about offending Islamists that they
19:07
won't report on a nominally Islamic country throwing over a
19:14
theocracy because that just doesn't comport with the
19:19
narrative. I did some digging on this the
19:22
other day, fascinated by what I wasn't seeing, and I learned
19:26
that only 40% of Iranians refer to themselves as religious at
19:31
all. Really.
19:33
Yeah. Now, if that's the case, and I,
19:36
I have a very strong suspicion that it is, if that's the case,
19:41
then an Islamist government will require all of the 40 to be
19:48
fervently Islamic. And they're not, right?
19:53
They're the, the 40% are just the ones who believe in, in God,
19:57
right? And, and the rest of the people
19:59
just don't really care one way or the other.
20:02
And I noticed this when I lived in the Middle East.
20:05
It was one of the first things I, I, I really did notice when I
20:08
was there. I ran into a lot of Iranians in
20:11
my travels, and none of them cared at all about an Islamic
20:17
government. And that flew in the face of
20:19
everything I thought I was going to see, right.
20:22
And when you when you dig into these things a little bit, you
20:25
realize that a theocracy always appears strongest right before
20:31
it fails, right? Because you've say.
20:33
That before could you? It's the the last gasp, it's the
20:38
last gasp of a regime, right? The last gaps is always to
20:42
tighten everything up, right? We're losing control, kill a
20:46
bunch of people, tighten it up, make everybody miserable and
20:49
they'll fall into line, right? The beatings will continue until
20:52
morale improves. This kind of thinking.
20:55
And when, when I looked at Iran at the time, the median age in
21:00
Iran was about 34, very young country.
21:06
It it's up a little bit at this point.
21:08
It, it's rising. So they are aging.
21:10
And when a, when a demo, when you get demographic aging like
21:14
that, definitionally you're going to get a little more
21:18
conservative as you go, right, Because the older people are,
21:21
the more conservative they tend to get.
21:23
Why? Well, because they have things
21:24
to lose. It's, it's not because of any
21:27
internal disposition. It's because, all right, I've
21:30
managed this, let's not screw it all up.
21:34
But the people have taken to the streets in Iran.
21:39
They are looking for regime change.
21:42
And the the riots and the protests are growing every day.
21:47
I, I reviewed some films that were, you know, beamed out the
21:51
Iranians, the regime, I guess, see, this is what you have to
21:55
do, right? It's, we're not talking about
21:57
the Iranians, We're talking about the Iranian ruling class,
22:01
the regime. The regime shut down Internet
22:05
access for the entire country yesterday.
22:07
Wow. If that happens or more
22:11
appropriately when that happens, they know they're in real
22:14
trouble because the last thing they want now is for anybody to
22:18
hear anything from anyone. And they, this regime is walking
22:24
a tightrope that's about the size of a thread.
22:29
I don't think we'll see. I, I don't think by summer,
22:32
maybe a lot sooner, but I, I think the Iranian regime that we
22:37
now understand to exist will no longer.
22:41
OK, so I I've got a bunch of questions.
22:42
First is they shut down the Internet.
22:45
Do you know is that still? Is it still down?
22:48
Yeah, yeah. I don't know how people are
22:50
getting information out, but they are.
22:52
How is the media not reporting on this?
22:55
Good question, I'm disgusted by it.
22:58
There's BBC. Country on the planet I know of
23:01
that does this, and that's North Korea.
23:03
North Korea. That's right.
23:05
The BBCI went to the BB CS website today.
23:08
Not a single story on this. Not a single story.
23:13
How did you find out all this? I, I have my ways, I have
23:18
sources everywhere. I people tell me things, I get
23:21
pointed to certain things to go look at and, and I could tell
23:25
you these, these riots are, are the real deal.
23:29
There are people in the streets by the 10s of thousands in
23:33
Tehran right now as we speak. James and I are delighted to be
23:38
working with Civil. For years, we've been pushing
23:40
people to think about how we can make the world a better place.
23:43
Civil's mission of upgrading society fits exactly with what
23:46
James and I have been talking about for years.
23:49
Civil helps us by allowing us to do what we do best, which is
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researching topics that are important and communicating
23:55
these to our listeners in ways that we hope they find
23:58
enjoyable. To see Civil's extensive list of
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content, including our podcast Words and Numbers and our new
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lecture series, Words and Numbers Live, visit Civil dot
24:07
com. That's civl.com.
24:10
All right, I got to push you further because our listeners
24:13
are going to want me to. How?
24:15
How can you know this in major news outlets not.
24:19
Oh, they know. They're choosing not to cover
24:22
this. They know.
24:24
Of course they know. But what do you hear out of
24:27
Great Britain? All you ever hear at this point
24:30
is that if you make a comment online, on social media for
24:34
example, that's critical of Islam in any way, shape or form,
24:39
you're likely to be arrested. Well, you think the BB CS going
24:43
to report on this? The Islam.
24:46
The Islamic. People.
24:48
In Iran, don't want an Islamic government anymore.
24:52
I'm. Seeing some confirmation of
24:55
this. This is from some Iranian site
24:58
Iran Insight and nationwide Internet outage has gripped
25:02
Iran, according to london-based Internet monitoring group Net
25:06
blocks. That's something we could you
25:08
one could follow up if one wanted to.
25:10
Yeah, No, you can find this stuff.
25:12
It's it's readily available, but you have to kind of know what
25:15
you're looking for. We we usually say, well, I'll
25:19
scan the headlines, I'll watch the Evening News, it'll come to
25:24
me. But it's not coming to you.
25:27
And it's not coming to you because the media is rigged and
25:31
it's been rigged for a long time.
25:33
And we've said it for a long time.
25:35
So this shouldn't be surprising to anyone.
25:38
It's disgusting. Not surprising.
25:41
As an economist, I got to push back a little bit because the
25:45
media outlets compete for viewers.
25:48
It seems odd to me that they would all get together on a
25:54
topic like this when all it takes is for one of them to
25:56
break ranks and get far more. Viewers than anybody else.
26:01
My my immediate answer to that is that the Western media
26:06
engages in groupthink to such a degree that they don't even see
26:10
this as an issue. They all see the world the same
26:14
way. I'm just guessing that you could
26:17
go to nationalreview.com right now and find an article about
26:21
the uprising in Iran. I'm just guessing.
26:24
I just looked Wall Street Journal.
26:26
Wall Street Journal's carrying it.
26:28
Shocking. Right.
26:29
So now it's going to be a right wing issue.
26:32
But I'll tell you something else that I saw that I kind of
26:37
predicted but worried wouldn't happen.
26:39
I've been seeing Iranians, regular, run-of-the-mill, decent
26:44
human being Iranians, tweeting, saying we look forward to the
26:50
day soon when Israel will be our ally.
26:53
We don't hate Israel, Our government hates Israel.
26:57
Wow. Or.
26:59
Does that throw a wrench in the works in the Middle East?
27:03
The stakes are remarkably high, yeah, and And this could be an
27:08
utter game changer. Yeah.
27:11
Not the least of which for the Iranian people who have suffered
27:14
this nonsense since 1979. Right.
27:18
Right, so this is a long time. You and I were children when the
27:22
when Ayatollah Khomeini took over.
27:24
Yeah. And here we are, all these years
27:27
later. And I don't know anything about
27:30
the Shah or his policies or any of that.
27:34
The only thing I can tell you for certain, and I've seen the
27:37
pictures of downtown Tehran in 1978, in downtown Tehran today,
27:46
and you look at 1978 and it you would not know that that wasn't
27:50
the United States. No, that's right.
27:53
In in New York City, for example.
27:55
And, and just to put put a finer spin on this, in 197778 you
28:00
could walk around in Tehran and see young women wearing skirts
28:06
on their way to school. Now, I don't know what you
28:11
really think about this for a second.
28:13
Iranian women aren't permitted to show their hair and in some
28:17
cases aren't permitted to leave the house.
28:20
Well, maybe this is a regime whose time has passed.
28:25
I I certainly hope it is. I I met a lot of people in the
28:30
Middle East and I liked almost every one of them.
28:34
They're just like people everywhere else.
28:36
But the crackpots, right? It's always the psychopaths who
28:39
find their way to the corridors of power.
28:42
And when they do, they do psychopathic things.
28:46
And they've been doing psychopathic things in Iran for
28:49
a very long time. And now as as people March
28:53
around in Iran mobilizing and demonstrating, they're not
28:59
chanting death to America or death to Israel.
29:02
They're chanting death to their own political leaders.
29:08
I watched a video yesterday, was a hard video to watch.
29:11
And those of us in the United States probably have an
29:14
immediate reaction to it because it's very similar in a way to
29:17
something we've all seen in the last couple of days.
29:20
But I watched a group of armed dissidents kill a police
29:25
captain, Right? So now the police know that
29:28
they're not off limits. And how are they reacting?
29:33
I've seen video of them firing shotguns into crowds of people,
29:36
just mowing them down. But as more police die, and they
29:42
will, and as more police beyond that say it isn't worth it for
29:48
me to keep this job, the power will collapse, the power
29:51
structure will collapse. And I I like Iran's chances,
29:56
actually. They've got something that they
29:58
can point to in the past that they want to get back to, and
30:02
they can combine that with some sort of meaningful
30:05
representative legislature and they could be a functional.
30:09
Place very, very quickly. And you know, the comparison
30:13
right now is between Venezuela and Iran.
30:16
Venezuela will not be a functional place for the
30:19
foreseeable future. It's probably going to be 20-30
30:23
years before any fruits come come to ripeness there and Iran.
30:29
I it could be working really well in a year and I'm I'm
30:34
interested to see where this all leads.
30:37
People think about Iran as a developing country, and they
30:42
forget that thousands of years ago, Iran was Iran.
30:46
Iraq was the center of civilization.
30:48
They had the universities, they had the libraries, they had the
30:52
culture when Europeans were still living in caves and huts.
30:57
Right when when Europe was in the dark ages, the Middle East
31:01
was where you wanted to be if you were an educated man.
31:04
Yeah. And, and that really changed.
31:07
I'm, I'm not going to get into the intervening variable.
31:09
I think it's obvious enough to anybody with eyes and a brain.
31:13
But Aunt, there's a bigger problem here.
31:15
And I know that that what could be a bigger problem than regime
31:19
change? But I Iran is running out of
31:24
water. Literally running out.
31:27
Really. There's a gigantic aquifer, or
31:30
let me be more precise, there was a gigantic aquifer
31:34
underneath Tehran which they were bringing up.
31:37
Most of the water and the aquifer ran dry.
31:42
And in what I call a fit of Middle Eastern science, they
31:47
drilled down through the aquifer to find another aquifer and
31:51
collapsed the aquifer. So now they have no water and no
31:59
aquifer to refill over time. It's not raining.
32:04
The rainy season should be right about now, and in a couple of
32:07
months going to be 115° all over the Middle East.
32:10
And you know how this works with water.
32:13
It disappears. And rational projections hold
32:19
that Iran will literally run out of water in 2027 or so.
32:25
Wow. And what the hell are they going
32:28
to do then? It's already too late to fix it.
32:33
The catastrophe is predictable. Everybody knows it's coming.
32:38
But what do you do about it? My first reaction was, I guess
32:41
you better start building desalinization plants right now.
32:44
And it turns out, well, first, the only people who could do
32:48
that in that region are the Israelis.
32:51
Problem there. And there's literally no way to
32:55
build enough of them to service the population that they have.
33:00
So we're likely to see a catastrophe of, dare I say,
33:05
biblical proportions in Iran in the not too distant future.
33:10
And that presupposes that they get their political act together
33:15
prior to that. It'll still happen you.
33:17
Can't start addressing that problem until you address the
33:19
political. Problem until you knock out the
33:21
first one. So, I mean, my heart goes out to
33:24
the Iranians right now. They've got a world of trouble
33:27
in their immediate horizon, and I'm not sure all of their
33:32
problems can be solved. Well, a lot of them can be, but
33:36
if you don't have water, you're doomed.
33:39
And where are those people going to go?
33:42
They're Persians, not Arabs. They're not going to be absorbed
33:44
into Arab countries in the Middle East.
33:46
The Kurds will have a place to go, but the Persians will not.
33:51
And I worry about that. I worry about that in a profound
33:55
way. So now we wait.
33:59
But the the seed time of regime changes right now and the world
34:05
can't be rid of that regime fast enough.
34:09
And take a look at, take a step back and take a look at the
34:13
position that Russia now finds itself in.
34:16
Syria collapsed. Venezuela toppled.
34:20
Iran about to collapse. Who?
34:23
Do the Russians have left? Oh yeah.
34:24
They've got this little Ukrainian conflict that they
34:28
haven't been able to settle up for three or four years now.
34:31
Remember when they said it was going to take 3 days?
34:34
Right. Yeah, well, it didn't.
34:37
And Putin is beating his shoe on the table harder every day,
34:44
which leads me to believe he's very scared right now.
34:48
They're out of options. If the Chinese turn their backs
34:51
on the Russians, they're screwed.
34:54
So this is where we find ourselves geopolitically at this
34:57
moment in time. It's an interesting time to be
35:01
alive. I don't, I don't know if you
35:03
know this, but the Venezuelans were shipping out oil under
35:08
other nations flags and the United States boarded the Coast
35:13
Guard, boarded 2 ships and took control of them.
35:16
A third ship didn't allow itself to be boarded and was heading
35:20
all the way from Venezuela to Russia and the United States
35:24
chased it down, boarded it and took it.
35:28
The Russians are out on an island all of a sudden, and this
35:32
Iran business just makes it worse.
35:35
I mean, on the one hand, you you want the Ukraine business to
35:39
come to an end. On the other, I don't know how
35:41
wise it is to back Russia into a corner.
35:45
Well. They keep threatening to use
35:47
nuclear weapons. I I don't think they will, but
35:49
they might. But if if you allow Russia at
35:53
this point in time right now to grab Ukrainian territory and say
35:57
this is ours now, and the international community rallies
36:00
around the new deal that just got brokered, you've just taught
36:06
everybody that they can invade anywhere they want, and as long
36:09
as they can hold it long enough and cause enough bloodshed,
36:12
they'll be able to keep it. And that's not a lesson you want
36:15
out into the wild, either. Well, you think we would have
36:18
learned that lesson back in the mid 1900s?
36:21
You, you would think a lot of things right now and yet here,
36:25
here we are. So I've got, I guess maybe equal
36:30
parts hope and trepidation for the Iranians and their present
36:33
situation. And I hope it comes to a
36:37
relatively peaceful and quickly. I don't think it's gonna not
36:43
quickly and not peaceful. These are relative terms, right?
36:46
So how quick and how much bloodshed, because there's
36:50
always bloodshed at times like this.
36:52
There's already been some. There will be more.
36:55
Where it ends is anybody's guess.
36:56
But right now, if I were betting man, and I kind of am, I would
37:00
be betting on the Iranian people and against the regime.
37:04
By words and numbers, we spent a lot of time talking about what's
37:06
going on in the economy and the government, but fundamentally,
37:10
this all boils down to one thing.
37:12
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37:15
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37:17
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37:20
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