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Which state will replace Florida as the snowbird destination? · The Financial Exchange Show

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Zada and Mike Armstrong.
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Speaker 2: Chuck, Mike and Tucker with you, kicking off the second
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hour of the Financial Exchange. Markets some negative movement today,
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nothing huge, but the Dows off one hundred and eighty
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six points about half a percent. SP five hundred down
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twenty two points, about four tenths of a percent, and
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the Nasdaq down ninety two points about half a percent
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as well, so retracing some of Friday's gains. But nothing
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huge that we're seeing there. Bond's the tenure Treasury up
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four basis points to four point oh two percent, back
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above four percent for the first time, and I don't
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know what he's think about four to six weeks, Yeah,
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something like that. We've got oil today continuing on its
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upward move, up a dollar sixty five a barrel to
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seventy six oh three. Another two percent ump up there,
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and triple a the national average four Gas prices starting
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to move up just a touch, but it was falling
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all through the weekend. We're now now at three seventeen
2:01
and four tenths of a cent. That's up one tenth
2:03
of a cent over yesterday, still well below a week ago,
2:07
where we were about four cents higher. A month ago
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we were eleven cents higher, and midsummer we were about
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thirty three cents higher. So overall oil prices moving up,
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but gas prices not really budging at the moment. And
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we've got gold today with no real movement down four
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dollars and twenty cents an ounce to twenty six sixty
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three and sixty cents an ounce. Piece from the Wall
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Street Journal here that I think is going to be
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a major story for the next decade, which is the
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Florida housing market. It's titled the Great Florida Migration is
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Coming undone and specifically talks about look in particular, the
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last few years you saw this huge influx of people
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down to Florida. And the premise was fairly straightforward on this,
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depending on you know who you were and the age
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and everything. Cost living in Florida typically lower than in
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the northeast or on the West coast. Great weather year round,
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it's warm, it's sunny, you've got all kinds of available lands,
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so the cost of building housing or buying housing was
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relatively affordable. And hey, everyone's doing it, so join in
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because it's it's great.
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Speaker 3: And for you know, a specific also wealthy group across
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the northeast. The tax friendliness of the state played a
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compelling role too, right. Sure, you know, if you're worth
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half a million dollars, it's not going to make a
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big difference. But if your work worth half a billion dollars,
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then residing in Florida makes a hell of a difference.
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Speaker 2: So you know, in terms of the trend that we saw,
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look it was it was very pronounced in like twenty twenty,
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twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two. But you're starting to
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see some signs of problems here. And there are a
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few different issues that you have. The first is the
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state's insurance market is completely broken, and that's not an exaggeration.
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Speaker 3: So as of August of twenty twenty four, Citizens Insurance,
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which is Florida's state run insurance company, had one point
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two five million policies in force. In August twenty nineteen,
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which was just five years ago, Citizen Insurance only had
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four hundred and twenty thousand policies active. The population of
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Florida has not tripled in five years, No the number
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of insured, the number of homes that are now insured
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by the state's insurer of last resort has tripled.
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Speaker 2: And if you look at what that means, look the
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insurer of last resort, the money has to come from somewhere,
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which means, hey, absent any federally funded taxpayer bailout, it
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pretty much means that state taxes would have to go
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up if that state insurance fund is exhausted. So you've
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got two real problems that have now come to the forefront,
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which is the insurance pricing is just nutty. In Florida.
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You could talk to just about anyone who's been there
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for more than five years and they'll tell you that
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their insurance premiums on their home have probably somewhere between
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doubled and quintupled, depending on the exact person that you're
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talking to and where they live. So that's made the
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housing market way less affordable just as a result of, Hey,
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how much those costs have gone up. On top of it,
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you've got this question out there, Okay, if I am
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on that state insurance policy, what happens if we get
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hit in an area where there are a ton of
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claims in the state can't afford to pay them.
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Speaker 3: Now, by the way, again, I know we're gonna get there,
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But other than Miami area, Miami Dade County, Palm Beach,
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Brower County, the hurricane that's bearing down right now is
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bearing down in the second most populated area of the
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state of Florida, and thereby I mean I'm looking right now.
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You can go Google a map of insurance policies that
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are on Citizens Insurance company. But unsurprisingly, other than like
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I said, Miami Dade County, Palm Beach County, Broward County,
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the highest concentration of policies is in Pinellas County, Hillsborough County.
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Speaker 2: Which is Saint Pete, and Tampa, which is right in
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the path of Hurricane Milton that is going to be
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coming through in the next few days. So you're starting
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to see this thing where, hey, it's becoming cost prohibitive
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to move there. And this is, by the way, without
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even factoring what's happened to home prices, which between twenty
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seventeen and twenty twenty four, home prices doubled in the
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state of Florida, So it's no longer as affordable as
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it used to be. You still get hey, there's no
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state tax state income tax or anything like that, so
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you still have some benefits. I'm not trying to say
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like Florida is all bad, but from a financial perspective,
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a lot of people who move down there are finding
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it tougher to stay down there because the costs have
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moved up way faster than in other parts of the country.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know that the math changes a lot
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if you're still looking at it from eastern Massachusetts or
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the New York City area. Right if you're doing the
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math on that move, it's still making a lot of sense,
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albeit a lot less sense than it did in twenty seventeen.
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But I mean, you're in upstate New York, you know,
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you live in Rochester and you're talking about moving to Florida.
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You're probably talking about a cost of living increase. You
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go from you know, other parts of populated areas, even
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across New England, New Hampshire, Florida. It's a bit of
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a punt in terms of you know where you are
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going to see cost savings. And there's more to this,
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how you know Florida housing market that we're not getting into,
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not the least of which is the new laws that
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have been put into place when it comes to older
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condo buildings down there and how those are just falling apart.
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If you weren't familiar, I think it's any condo over
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the age of thirty years is being required to have
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a full engineering review of it, and in many cases,
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you know, face improvements in the millions of dollars to
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make sure these things don't collapse in the flood or hurricane.
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Speaker 2: So all of this is adding up to a Florida
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property market that is seeing significant inventory builds. And you know,
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now in some parts of the state has higher inventory
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levels than it did in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen.
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Speaker 3: Interestingly, not big price drops.
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Speaker 2: Which something has to give there, like something's going to
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have to break as far as where things go, because
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again it's eventually someone who's listed that house for sales says,
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I gotta sell the place, I gotta move on. So
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we'll see how this progresses. But one of the biggest
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trends in the last this is not even just like
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a two or three year trend, but this is a
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sixty year trend. Basically since air conditioning became affordable ish
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and kind of the norm has been this migration towards
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the south, specifically the southeast. The southwest came later. You know,
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that really started in earnest I feel like mid nineteen nineties,
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late nineties, somewhere in that ballpark.
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Speaker 3: But this moved to the south.
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Speaker 2: The east has been you know, this this multi decade
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trend that we've seen, and it's in danger of being
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upended by the affordability of Florida specifically just not working
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anymore the way that it used to. And I think
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the key point that I would make here is that.
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Speaker 3: It's already reversed itself pretty considerably, and I think it
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could be on the cusp of getting a lot worse
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with the state of insurance nets in that state. That's
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not a solution, Like, yeah, you could make an argument
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that Citizens insurance Company right now is subsidizing the overall
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market and is one or two hurricanes away from collapsing
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a need into jackup premiums even higher after you know,
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you know, you've already seen people down there see insurance
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premiums get hyped four hundred percent in some cases.
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Speaker 2: It has the potential to be very very bad.
9:55
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Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about third quarter earnings because
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we're we're on the verge of them kicking off later
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this week here. According to data from fact Set Earning Insight,
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Q three twenty twenty four is expected to show four
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point two percent year over year growth in earnings. So
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this is something that would be the fifth straight quarter
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of year over year earnings growth, but obviously some some
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slowing that we're seeing, at least to this point. The
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interesting thing is that fact Set thinks that this is
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going to be dare I say, transitory as far as
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the slowing earnings growth. Q four is expected to be
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fourteen point six percent year over year earnings growth and
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calendar year twenty twenty five expected to be fourteen point
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nine So to be.
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Speaker 3: Clear, why charts or who did you say, fact, that
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doesn't make this opinion. They aggregate the opinions of all
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the other analysts that are out there. But it does
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speak to something, which is the tremendous optimism leading to
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very high stock prices is built on the idea that
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earnings are going to expand dramatically in twenty twenty five,
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and that seems to sort of run in the face
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of what we just described in terms of the state
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of the labor market. Now, look, I can paint plenty
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of paths where we do get that earnings expansion. One
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of them might be the massive government spending that both
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candidates running for president right now are talking about on
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the campaign trail. But in the absence of that, you
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do start to wonder, can these multiples justify themselves if
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companies come out, for instance, over the next thirty days
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and say, you know, we're not so confident that we'll
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be able to boost earnings as much as we previously thought.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, you try to figure out where these projections come from,
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just because it's again you look at it, you say, Okay,
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earnings are projected to increase fifteen percent next year, which
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is like, that's that's a big, big chunk, and you say, okay,
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is that all going to be coming from technety with
12:33
you know, in video and Microsoft and whoever it might be.
12:37
That's that's in the AI game. You sort of try
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to figure out what's going on there, and I just
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have a hard time getting there as far as understanding
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it at this point, just because the other piece is
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if you look at revenue as an example, revenue growth
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next year is projected to be five point nine percent,
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So if earnings are growing by fifteen in revenue growing
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by six that means that your margins are widening significantly
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as well, so you're getting more and more profitable. Well,
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where does that profitability growth come from. We've seen a
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lot of companies say, look, we're having a harder time,
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you know, passing costs through to our end buyers, and
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so we don't have pricing power. Well, usually when you
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stop having pricing power, then you say, how can we
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cut costs internally? And it's rare that cutting costs leads
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to you know, more top line revenue growth.
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Speaker 3: So it's kind of you look at it and.
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Speaker 2: It's just it's a bit pie in the sky. It
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strikes me as an optimistic picture but I.
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Speaker 3: Don't know. I mean, the problem is that you and
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I think probably both would have said the same thing
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in the fourth quarter of or at least I would
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have in the fourth quarter of last.
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Speaker 2: Year, which is a really good point. So let's go
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back to the end of last year, just as kind
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of a reference point here, and let's say, okay, if
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we're looking at you know, what we saw for what
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do you want to do January or December, like kind
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of looking at what project when? What projections were for
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this year December? So let me pull those up here,
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just give me one second. Well, I carry the three
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and divide by x, and then okay, here we go.
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The numbers projected and this was at the start of
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or this was the end of last year. Twenty twenty
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four earnings growth was projected to be eleven point eight percent.
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This again according to fact set from January fifth, So
14:29
like the very start of this end of December calendar,
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your twenty twenty four earnings growth was projected to be
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eleven eight revenue growth five to five. We're basically we're
14:39
not through three quarters yet, but we'll probably be pretty close.
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Speaker 3: Calendar.
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Speaker 2: You're twenty twenty four now projected earnings growth eleven eight,
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revenue growth five to zero, just pretty dark glose like
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it has come through so far this year. So the
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initial impulse is, well, they're never going to be able
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to do that. How could they do that?
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Speaker 3: Well, look, it turns out why you have Microsoft spend
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a few billion dollars on chips, they got pretty deep pockets.
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It's finally found somewhere to spend that money.
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Speaker 2: It's been largely concentrated in tech, where that earnings growth
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has been. So it's it's not showing up in you know,
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Coca Cola, it's not showing up in Nike, obviously, but hey,
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it's still is happening for the broad market as a whole,
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at least the broad large cat market. The small cap
15:25
markets are a different animal, sure, And so that is
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something that I think we do have to note, which is, hey,
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just because we say something looks like it's going to
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be hard to do, hard to do, doesn't mean impossible
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to do?
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Speaker 3: Right? Got it this year? And so you have to
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ask yourself about though, where does it come from? Could
15:43
be continued expansion of semiconductor investment, could be maybe it's
15:49
a really robust spring housing season. But some of these
15:52
things that we were talking about are starting to shift, right.
15:54
The idea that mortgage rates will be in the mid
15:57
five next spring a little bit tougher to get there
16:00
today than it was a week ago. And so you know,
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what are you going to rely on to get that
16:07
fifteen percent earnings growth? Or will you just be relying
16:11
on people saying, yeah, didn't come in quite where expected,
16:14
but I'm willing to pay more for those same stocks anyway.
16:16
Speaker 2: So that's what's projected as far as earnings. Again, the
16:19
schedule in terms of you know what what's upcoming? JP,
16:23
Morgan and Wells Fargo kick things off on Friday. You
16:25
get some more banks Tuesday of next week, Bank of America, Goldman, Sachs,
16:30
City Group, Charles Schwab, PNC, so you know, kind of
16:32
going through that list, and then Wednesday you get Tesla
16:35
reporting I didn't realize they were so early in the
16:37
cycle of this quarter, but their next Wednesday. Other companies
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just you know that are of nope, but not the
16:43
same magnitude. Abbott Labs, Morgan Stanley or next Wednesday as well,
16:47
Netflix next Thursday, and then pretty quiet on Friday, and
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then the following week you get a couple more tech
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companies that start to you know, come through with with
16:58
their earnings. Afterwards, Tuesday, October twenty second, you got Microsoft
17:03
and Alphabet so hey, you got you know again some
17:05
some big names there. And on Wednesday of that week,
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you've got Meta. On the twenty third, and then on
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the twenty fourth you got Apple and Amazon. So it's
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it's all stacked up for that week in October. And
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to this point, most of those companies have given very
17:24
little to be concerned about over the course of this year.
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I mean, some of them have just been again continuing
17:29
to knock the cover off the ball, and they've been
17:31
in the driver's seat as far as where markets have gone.
17:46
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Speaker 3: Last minute announcement for all the stragglers out there. Tomorrow,
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this whole crew is heading out to Western Massachusetts the
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MGM Springfield for our live broadcast event of The Financial Exchange.
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That's tomorrow, which is October eighth, from the MGM Hotel
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there among others, discussing the upcoming presidential election, what we
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saw from last week's jobs report, what it all might
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mean for the future of the economy, taxes, markets, and
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most importantly, what it might mean to you and your
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financial future. If you'd like to join for any part
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Will give you a little bit more information, but again,
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You can get more information also by going to Armstrong
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so if you'd like to join tomorrow eight hundred three
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Speaker 1: The proceeding was paid for by Armstrong Advisory Group a
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Armstrong guide a specific financial, legal, or tax advice. Consult
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Speaker 2: Mike, there is a piece in the Wall Street Journal
19:40
today talking a little bit about some changes that are
19:43
happening for folks who carry credit card balances. And here's
19:48
the basic premise of it. I'll outline it here, I'll
19:51
quote from them. Actually, the average credit card interest rate
19:54
was twenty one and a half percent in May, hovering
19:56
around its highest level in FED data going back to
19:58
nineteen ninety four. And the average balance that balance carriers
20:03
carried was about sixty three hundred dollars in the second quarter,
20:06
up thirty one percent from the same period in twenty
20:09
twenty one, not great. Earlier this year, the CFPB, the
20:12
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, finalized an eight percent cap on
20:16
eight dollar cap eight dollar cap yep, that's a dollar sign,
20:19
not a percentage sign, and an eight dollar cap on
20:23
late fees. And right now, you know, up until then,
20:27
the agency said, look, late fees can be as high
20:29
as you know, forty one dollars even when a payment's
20:32
only a couple of hours late. So the question is, okay,
20:36
how is this potentially going to impact things? And just
20:42
as an example, what you had from you know, different companies,
20:47
Bread Financial, whose customers skew more lower income, got rid
20:51
of a soft cap of twenty nine point nine to
20:53
nine percent interest ahead of the new rule. So they
20:56
basically said, look, you're going to cap what we can
20:58
get in late fees. Okay, we got to get the
21:00
somewhere else. We'll just charge higher interest rates or at
21:02
least give ourselves the ability.
21:03
Speaker 3: Does anyone think that these credit card companies are just
21:06
going to say, yeah, sure, we'll just take a lower
21:09
profit margin.
21:10
Speaker 2: Synchrony said that they raised the interest rates on one
21:14
of their store cards to his highest thirty four point
21:17
nine nine percent, and putting a dollar ninety nine fee
21:19
for paper statements for some of their programs. So look,
21:24
no one likes being nickeled and dimed in terms of oh,
21:26
like you know, I'm late by a couple hours and
21:28
I got hit with this fee and it costs X,
21:31
Y and z. But when you look at how financial
21:36
institutions make money, it's rarely just oh, we charge this
21:41
one you know, this one charge and that's the only
21:44
way that we make it. And so it's a game
21:46
of whack a mole. Okay, great. Remember back in I
21:50
don't know when it was, it was in the last
21:51
decade or so, when you had all of these stuff about, hey,
21:55
you know, banks are charging too much on overdraft and
21:59
stuff like that, and you know, banks said, okay, fine,
22:01
we'll charge less on overdraft. What would they do, well,
22:04
they stop paying interest, you know, like they figure out
22:08
how to get their numbers where they want to get
22:10
them to.
22:11
Speaker 3: You could come up with a policy that says, okay,
22:13
we're you know, in fact, Donald Trump campaign has come
22:17
up with a policy that is specifically designed to do this, saying, yeah,
22:20
we're going to cap things like credit card interest rates
22:24
and late fees. Do you know what will happen in that.
22:26
Speaker 2: Case, Yes, it's it's called a complete collapse of the
22:30
free market, and no one ends up with credit because
22:33
banks just say, fine, you're not gonna let us make
22:35
any money on this.
22:36
Speaker 3: We're not going to offer those products again. You know,
22:40
if a company is accused of misleading practices, if they
22:45
don't tell you that you're going to face a late
22:47
fee or interest on the credit card that you are
22:49
contractually signing up for. That's a problem and they should
22:52
be gone after. That's why this consumer Financial Protection Bureau
22:55
should exist. Correct If it gets to a point where
22:58
there is only one credit card issuer who determines all
23:02
the interest rates for the entire market and there's no competition,
23:05
that is another problem. You could make a compelling argument
23:08
to me that that's what we have in the actual
23:12
transaction marketplace, right Visa has I think fifty percent market
23:17
share there and there's just not a lot of competition
23:20
in that space you could go after, Like you could
23:24
convince me, hey, that's an important area for us to
23:25
go after to lower costs and increase competition because low
23:29
competition is leading to Visa charging outrageous rates to vendors.
23:33
That's probably true when you have a competitive market like
23:37
the issuance of credit cards. This is just the cost
23:40
of thing, and there is.
23:41
Speaker 2: No right to cheap credit like that's not a thing.
23:46
And also there's no right amount of either interest to
23:50
charge or late fees like it's it's not something. I'll
23:54
give you an example. Let's say that you had a
23:56
company that said, fine, we're gonna have no late fees
23:59
on credit card bills, They're probably gonna have either tougher
24:02
underwriting standards or higher interest rates because they like they
24:08
need to figure out how to make money and attract
24:11
capital in order to do so. If you have a
24:14
credit card that says, no, you know what, we're gonna
24:16
have no interest, but we're gonna charge you. We're gonna
24:20
charge you one thousand dollars if you make your payment late. Okay,
24:23
they'll probably have like again, a whole bunch of people
24:27
that are you know, really high credit scores because they're like, yeah,
24:30
like great, well we can do this. But they're still
24:33
gonna get like you, they'll find ways to make the money,
24:36
is the point I'm making.
24:38
Speaker 3: And I really don't find anything going on in the
24:41
credit card space.
24:43
Speaker 2: There's nothing like here, here's something that's predatory when you
24:46
have you know, you show up your first week on
24:48
a college campus and there's eight credit card companies offering you. Oh,
24:51
like here's how you start for a credit card. Yeah,
24:53
that stuff bothers me. I'm still not sure it warrants
24:57
like crazy government intervention though, Like okay, like the credit
25:03
limit on that cards like two hundred and fifty dollars.
25:06
Speaker 3: Here's the only government intervenition on that front that I'm
25:08
that I like. States like New Hampshire have now required
25:13
financial education as part of the high school graduate degree.
25:16
If you want a high school graduate degree in state
25:17
of New Hampshire, you must take a personal finance course.
25:21
I'm good with that. But you know, each sixteen year
25:24
olds how credit works. That's great. Other than that, get
25:30
out of here, Like the.
25:31
Speaker 2: Late fees are what's the what's the right level of
25:34
late fees? How do we determine its eight dollars? Why
25:36
is it not nine?
25:37
Speaker 3: I don't know ten? Why not seven?
25:39
Speaker 2: Why that's six?
25:40
Speaker 3: Definition of why not three? Big government? You know how
25:44
much money did we spend on the study to determine
25:46
it was eight? What should the late feed cap be
25:49
for fast food workers in California? That's where we're going
25:55
with since you know it's it's just.
26:00
Speaker 2: It's arbitrary, and all you're gonna do is again you
26:02
get credit card companies that say, fine, we can't make
26:04
it there, We're gonna make it somewhere else.
26:06
Speaker 3: It does lead me to, you know one other thing
26:09
that I've just been getting closer and closer to Dave
26:11
Ramsey on which is most people probably shouldn't have credit
26:15
cards also, or at least use them regularly. Most people shouldn't.
26:21
They get tempted by the rewards benefits. There's a psychological
26:25
effect of having that very high spending limit. And most
26:29
people out there, it's not a huge majority, but you know,
26:32
about half Americans probably shouldn't be using credit cards on
26:35
a day to day basis. What percentage of Americans do
26:39
I'd be willing to bet of adults two thirds have
26:45
a credit card, three quarters.
26:46
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm just here we go. So from Forbes Advisor,
26:50
let's see, okay, credit cards, Tucker, can you can you
26:57
get me the music again? Yeah?
26:58
Speaker 5: I mean I am seeing eighty two percent.
27:03
Speaker 3: So they actually slice it by income level. This is okay.
27:06
Speaker 2: This is fascinating for families with incomes of one hundred
27:10
thousand dollars or more. This is according to the Federal
27:12
Reserve Survey of Household Economics, ninety eight percent of families
27:16
with incomes of one hundred thousand or more have credit
27:19
cards and use them. If you go down to families
27:22
with less than twenty five thousand income, it's fifty seven percent.
27:26
Speaker 3: Not likely to be issued in the first place.
27:28
Speaker 2: From an educational standpoint, ninety six percent of families with
27:33
a bachelor degree or more have them. If you have
27:35
less than a high school degree, only fifty two percent
27:38
of that demographic uses them. And then they also break
27:42
it down along racial lines, where the group with the
27:47
racial group with the highest percentage of credit card users.
27:51
If you are Asian, ninety two percent of Asian households
27:55
have a credit card, eighty seven percent of white households,
27:58
seventy three percent of Hispanic, and seventy one percent of
28:02
Black households, So not as much dispersion there. And yeah,
28:07
eighty two percent of Americans have a credit card and
28:10
seventy three percent of them have them by age twenty five.
28:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not really surprised by much of that.
28:18
Speaker 2: Here's the counterpoint to you know, Americans shouldn't use credit
28:21
cards from a fraud perspective. It's the safest way to
28:26
buy anything, whereas a debit card has all kinds of
28:28
risks to the end user.
28:29
Speaker 3: I don't disagree with any of it, but to me,
28:33
the fact that the average balance is sitting at sixty
28:35
three hundred dollars, and I think something like half of
28:37
Americans carried a balance sometime in the last twelve months.
28:41
Outweighs the fraud benefits, which I applaud and are great.
28:45
And I use a credit card for almost everything, so
28:48
I recognize that there are exceptions to this. But the
28:51
more and more I look at the data, the more
28:52
and more I become convinced that it's not the right
28:54
thing for most people.
28:55
Speaker 2: Baby Boomers have the most credit cards on average, with
28:58
the average boomer having four point six different credit cards,
29:02
while gen Z has two point one, Millennials three point four,
29:05
gen X four point four, in the Silent Generation three
29:07
point four.
29:10
Speaker 1: Just interesting.
29:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, forty eight percent of all users carry a balance,
29:13
like I said, And yeah, that's what we have going
29:17
on there.
29:18
Speaker 3: Quick break here, we got a little bit of stack Roulette.
29:20
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30:32
Speaker 3: Mike, What do you have for me?
30:33
Speaker 2: For stack Roulettes?
30:34
Speaker 3: An interesting piece here from The New York Times taking
30:37
a look at the portion of time Americans spend at
30:42
home and unsurprisingly massive surge in twenty twenty that has
30:46
not gotten back to normal levels. But what I found
30:50
really interesting about this was more that the trend well
30:55
before the pandemic was for Americans to be spending a
30:58
lot more time at home, nearly doubled, actually more than
31:04
doubled from two thousand and four to twenty nineteen in
31:07
terms of the minutes spent at home per day. And
31:13
I don't know what this all is caused by. If
31:16
it's you know, a you know, the Internet contributing, if
31:20
it's larger and larger homes that are contributing, But it
31:24
does speak to me, as you know, we've talked at
31:27
length about how there's been an increase in what people
31:30
defind as loneliness in a lot of surveys that have
31:33
been taken about the Americans over the last few decades,
31:35
and this would seem to be a contributing factor.
31:38
Speaker 2: I would think, why do you think we spend more
31:41
time at home?
31:42
Speaker 3: I mean, outside of the pandemic. You really have to
31:44
separate that piece for a moment here. I do think
31:48
the Internet likely has something to do with it. You know,
31:50
the vast quantities of in home entertainment today compared to
31:56
decades past, are significant, whether it's gaming, whether it's vast
32:00
increases in content that you can view at home. You know,
32:05
there was a time when if you wanted to see
32:07
the latest and greatest you know thing coming from Hollywood.
32:10
What did you have to do? You had to get
32:12
off the couch and go to the movie theater. Just
32:15
not the case these days, right, It's definitely different these days.
32:19
And you know, is there a group of people who
32:22
maybe in previous decades would have gone bowling or you know,
32:26
some other activity that are now gaming instead? Probably would
32:31
be my guest. But outside that, I have a tough
32:33
time explaining it.
32:34
Speaker 2: And look, I'm someone who grow grew up with the Internet,
32:38
so I look, I spent plenty of time talking probably
32:42
in the same like how much time did you spend
32:43
playing video games as a kid? Like, oh, I was
32:45
locked up in the basement for hours right by the
32:48
time I was like thirteen or fourteen. And again, I
32:51
know this doesn't sound like kind of gross to some people.
32:53
I was probably playing video games like two to four
32:56
hours a day on average. And I don't think that's
32:58
a crazy exaggeration. Now most of it was from like
33:01
the hours of ten pm to two am. Sure, but like,
33:05
I don't think we can just look at I feel
33:07
like every generation like, well, it's got to be the
33:09
video games. Video games have been around a long time,
33:13
and if it were video games. We would have seen
33:15
it before now is kind of what I'm getting at.
33:19
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean this is data going back
33:21
to two thousand and five, right, I mean that that
33:24
is when the biggest push of a lot of the
33:27
Internet as we know it today really came to life.
33:31
Speaker 2: Yes, which part of the Internet as we know it?
33:33
Speaker 3: It rhymes with rocial media. Yeah, social media.
33:37
Speaker 2: Come back to social media.
33:39
Speaker 3: And it's the death of all anxiety. Well here's the thing.
33:42
Speaker 2: So they're really positive things that come from social media,
33:45
like being able to access people who you wouldn't normally
33:47
be able to talk to and meet new communities. So like,
33:50
there's parts of it that I absolutely love, but by golly,
33:56
I think in the aggregate it might just be like
33:58
the suckiest part of tech technology from the last million years.
34:04
Speaker 3: It's it's really bad. Yeah, and the aggregate, the the
34:07
effect that it seems to have is first it has
34:10
this the.
34:10
Speaker 2: Most damaging effect, in my opinion, is that everything becomes performative.
34:15
And even if you don't think that you're performing on
34:17
social media, you are because you tailor the way that
34:20
you respond a certain way, because you're keeping up you know,
34:24
whatever image it is like no one's had a single
34:27
authentic conversation on social media ever, is kind of where
34:31
like even if someone's like, oh, I'm having a bad
34:34
day and you say, oh, it'll get better tomorrow, no,
34:36
like you're you're If you're really having a bad day,
34:39
don't post it on social media. And this is why
34:42
we're so lonely, I think is because we're using this
34:45
as a substitute for actual human connection and it's just
34:49
not so.
34:50
Speaker 3: It's the Internet in general. I think social media. You
34:54
go on social media, I like, I think it is
34:57
and I don't think it's like this thing that's gonna
34:59
be a album forever because humans evolved to figure out
35:02
all kinds of stuff.
35:03
Speaker 2: It's the problem that we're dealing with now. For the
35:05
first time in human history, we have too much information
35:08
instead of too little. Like that's the problem today is
35:12
there's too much information and we don't know what to
35:14
do with it, and we suck at interpreting which one
35:16
Whereas for the last like eight thousand years, it's been Hey,
35:19
I wonder why it rained today? Is it raining somewhere else?
35:23
I don't know? Is someone coming to invade my crops?
35:28
And now we'll let me go ask my neighbor. You know,
35:30
all this other stuff, quick break for the rest of
35:32
the day. We'll see it tomorrow and hopefully answer those
35:34
questions on the Financial Exchange and Springfield