Latest / The Rick Smith Show / The Rick Smith Show 10-5-2026

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The Rick Smith Show 10-5-2026 · The Rick Smith Show

0:00
[SPEAKER_03]: It's time for the Rick Smith show.
0:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, here is the voice of a working class, Rick Smith.
0:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And welcome, brothers, sisters working class heroes.
0:18
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the Rex Myth Show.
0:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks so much for being here.
0:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Today on the big program, lots to get to.
0:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Lots to talk about new AP, North Pole.
0:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Confirms what we all already know.
0:30
[SPEAKER_04]: The economy, not great.
0:32
[SPEAKER_04]: and the guy responsible for it, sitting in the White House.
0:36
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a mind-blowing moment because only 17% of people pulled a proof of Trump's handling of the cost of the cost delivered.
0:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Only 26% a proof of his management of the economy with 65% saying that his policies are responsible
1:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And look, that's not a messaging problem.
1:08
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a kitchen table, crisis.
1:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And you have Trump talking about the economy, like it's like everything's great.
1:15
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the greatest hottest economy on the planet evidently, according to him.
1:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I've yet to find the person in real life who thinks, this is a good economy.
1:30
[SPEAKER_04]: and understand, for most of us, the economy's as good as how far our paycheck takes us till the next payday.
1:38
[SPEAKER_04]: And as it rents continued to increase in his health care costs are just getting crazier and crazier.
1:44
[SPEAKER_04]: If your car breaks down, good luck on that.
1:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Every part of life is getting more expensive and understand.
1:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Trump was responsible for a lot of those, all of it actually, his tariffs, look, I'm a tariff guy, but it's a strategic tool, it's not a bludgeon, so you can't pretend like foreign nations are going to pay the tariff, it's not how it works.
2:10
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you remember, and now I go back, just throw in this out there.
2:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, by the way, 64% said Trump's tariffs have gone too far, 68% disapprove of his trade negotiations.
2:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Those are huge numbers.
2:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Those are important numbers.
2:27
[SPEAKER_04]: But you go back to the 2024 campaign.
2:31
[SPEAKER_04]: He was gonna end inflation on day one.
2:34
[SPEAKER_04]: August 2024, he said, starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again.
2:42
[SPEAKER_04]: to bring down the prices for all goods.
2:46
[SPEAKER_04]: That has not happened.
2:48
[SPEAKER_04]: We were gonna get cheaper groceries.
2:49
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, a vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper.
2:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Nope, that certainly hasn't happened.
2:57
[SPEAKER_04]: A gas below two bucks.
2:59
[SPEAKER_04]: He said that was gonna happen.
3:00
[SPEAKER_04]: His energy agenda would get gas below two bucks a gallon.
3:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And he was gonna drill baby drill.
3:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And yet, we're actually producing less than they did during the Obama era.
3:13
[SPEAKER_04]: claimed was going to cut energy and electricity costs in half, promised to slash them in half within 12 to 18 months.
3:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we'll pass that.
3:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just got my electric bill.
3:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Sorry.
3:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I wish I, you know, this is where I go.
3:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I wish I wish he was right.
3:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Because the the $477 electric bill I got,
3:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, just, just saying is not half.
3:43
[SPEAKER_04]: It's actually half more than it should be, uh, said he's going to cut the cost of a new construction in half.
3:52
[SPEAKER_04]: He was going to deregulate.
3:53
[SPEAKER_04]: He was going to do all this stuff.
3:55
[SPEAKER_04]: The cost of new homes would be in half.
3:58
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know that they're doing anything on this whatsoever.
4:02
[SPEAKER_04]: He also said, if you remember, he was going to impose a temporary 10% cap on credit card interest.
4:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Sorry for the guy who said he's kept all of his campaign promises and then some I think he forgot the ones that benefit us.
4:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I think he forgot the ones that benefit working people.
4:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Nah, he's right.
4:26
[SPEAKER_04]: He did keep the campaign promises for billionaires and he has gone beyond their wildest expectations.
4:32
[SPEAKER_04]: He has exactly spot on absolutely right for you and me.
4:38
[SPEAKER_04]: It's gotten a lot harder.
4:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And understand, his tariffs, which was predicted.
4:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've been saying this for a while.
4:46
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm a tariff guy.
4:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I think there are certain things that you need to use tariffs on for strategic purposes to protect national interest, national security.
4:55
[SPEAKER_04]: You absolutely, but this idea that we're going to tariff everybody for everything, that's trouble.
5:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Also, he said he was going to raise wages.
5:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I'm gonna cut the taxes for who wasn't you or me inflation was supposed to come down that was gonna raise our wages.
5:19
[SPEAKER_04]: He was gonna do all this stuff that, and again, remember promised, promised captain said I come back to for who, and this is this, this is an incredible moment because going into the midterms
5:35
[SPEAKER_04]: When 17%, 17% approve of your handling of the economy, and this is why in a lot of red states, Democrats are competitive.
5:51
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll see, we'll see, but hey, you might get 500 bucks back from, from him somehow with his goofy signature.
5:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I wanna hear your thoughts, Rick at theRickspendshow.com, right back.
6:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History in 2.
6:10
[SPEAKER_04]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1935.
6:14
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the year that San Diego hosted the California Pacific International Exposition, where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke the most memorable words about the rights of workers to organize.
6:27
[SPEAKER_04]: The goal of the exposition was to showcase San Diego and to boost the local economy, which had fallen on hard times during the Great Depression.
6:36
[SPEAKER_04]: The exposition was held in Balbo, a park.
6:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Exhibits included history, science, industry, and culture.
6:42
[SPEAKER_04]: To prepare for the expo,
6:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Improvements were made to the park paid for by the Works Progress Administration.
6:48
[SPEAKER_04]: The WPA was a new deal-era program designed to put people back to work on public infrastructure projects.
6:56
[SPEAKER_04]: The Expo kicked off in May and ran for 377 days with a break during the winter months.
7:03
[SPEAKER_04]: More than 7 million people visited the park for the Expo.
7:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Two of those visitors,
7:08
[SPEAKER_04]: was President Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, as part of his trip, the President gave a speech to 60,000 people at Belboa, Stadia.
7:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Earlier that year, the President had signed the Wagner Act, otherwise known as the National Labor Relations Act, which
7:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Guaranteed private sector workers the right to join and form a union.
7:28
[SPEAKER_04]: The president spent part of his expo speech celebrating that achievement.
7:32
[SPEAKER_04]: He declared, quote, a changing civilization has raised new problems with respect to the relationship between the employer and the employer.
7:41
[SPEAKER_04]: It is now beyond partisan controversy that it is a fundamental individual right of a worker to associate himself with other workers and to bargain collectively with his employer.
7:53
[SPEAKER_04]: President Roosevelt went on to acknowledge quote, new laws in themselves do not bring a millennium.
7:59
[SPEAKER_04]: The passage of the law helped to launch a new wave of union organizing across U.S. industry.
8:17
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you're wondering why there is a housing crisis going on and why single family homes are getting harder and harder to come by.
8:24
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a new paper out from the good folks over at the economic liberties project.
8:29
[SPEAKER_04]: They've looked at Phoenix.
8:31
[SPEAKER_04]: The title is Phoenix case that the single family rentals
8:35
[SPEAKER_04]: build to rent and undoing the corporate capture of housing.
8:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Sounds kind of dry, I need something punchier, but the reality is they point out that Phoenix has become a warning sign for working families as Wall Street, as bought up Main Street, and their targeting starter homes and building neighborhoods only for rent.
8:52
[SPEAKER_04]: You can never buy them.
8:54
[SPEAKER_04]: they also examine what policy choices we've made over the decades that have turned family homes into financial assets and pushed ownership well for most young families completely out of reach and that's why I've asked Laurel Kilgower to come share some thoughts with us Laurel was a policy analyst there at the American Liberty's project you can check out their website
9:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Great to be here, Rick.
9:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's start with my Phoenix.
9:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Why did you choose, why did you choose Phoenix?
9:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think the question is actually not why I chose Phoenix, but why Wall Street chose Phoenix, because it is one of another city along with Atlanta, which I also wrote a paper about, where Wall Street really was pioneering this business model of buying up single family homes to then use them as rental properties.
9:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And it also chose Phoenix as an area where it would
9:51
[SPEAKER_01]: back that create a new financial asset class basically.
9:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So it created assets that were backed by the expected rental income from the single family rental home.
10:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was something new for investors to invest in.
10:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I remember seeing the baseball player Alex Rodriguez.
10:11
[SPEAKER_04]: He had done an interview on some podcast that caught my attention and he said that he owns 150,000 door knobs, not him personally, but his group, his group, whoever the the vulture capitalists are in that group, they own 150,000 door knobs.
10:25
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't even call him houses.
10:26
[SPEAKER_04]: He called him door knobs.
10:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
10:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Because, well, we've reduced it just down to knobs now, I guess.
10:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
10:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, in Phoenix, that number is now about 30,000 to 70,000 door knobs.
10:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's single family rentals that are owned by institutional investors.
10:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
10:48
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's talk about the policies that got us here because look, I argue that we got here through bad policy.
10:54
[SPEAKER_04]: We can get out of it through better policy.
10:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I say, you know, I go back to my grandparents era.
10:59
[SPEAKER_04]: They had reasonably good policy coming out of the new deal that built the most prosperous working
11:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And from then forward we've undone all of that so we can probably make good policy that would help working people because And let me be clear.
11:14
[SPEAKER_04]: The policy is working exactly as it's supposed to which is to make the rich richer in the rest of us.
11:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, not so walk me through some of those choices that were made for us
11:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you've got it.
11:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So, um, before I get to the case of single family rentals specifically there is a background about why we're building, you know, our construction rate is 20% lower now than it was in the 1990s, so just on an absolute basis we are building less than we used to and you're totally right to point to the new deal era as a period of time.
11:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, since the 40s, 50s onwards when we were building a lot of housing, and that's because we had specific federal policies that were designed to incentivize local home building.
11:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So there were very specific financial institutions called savings and loan, which you might know about through hearing the savings.
12:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the same is a long crisis of the 1980s is how many people have heard about them if they heard about them at all.
12:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But for many decades before that, there were 6,000 of these institutions across the country, that number held steady, pretty steady throughout the New Deal era.
12:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were designed so that they would keep money local to support local home building and make it possible, not just in terms of
12:29
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, mortgages for, you know, local individuals, but also that money went out as loans toward, you know, local home builders, so they didn't have to go to Wall Street in order to get money.
12:40
[SPEAKER_01]: They had local banks in order to get money, you know, at favorable rates.
12:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it was very much a federal framework that was designed, you know, from from the ground up to be keep money local and ensure that there was local home building and the oversight of these institutions was also people who were in the local real estate industry, people from the local area who had a stake in making sure that there was enough housing being built.
13:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we've we've globalized this almost.
13:06
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think back to again, my grandparents is kind of what I look at.
13:10
[SPEAKER_04]: When my grandfather came home from the war, they got a VA loan to be able to buy a home in this little, you know, Brooklyn, Ohio, like Levitt town, New York, a planned community.
13:20
[SPEAKER_04]: They're all cookie cutter houses, there are three designs and they just churned them out and it was a lot of federal money that went into those.
13:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
13:27
[SPEAKER_04]: and, you know, they got a federal loan for it.
13:29
[SPEAKER_04]: There's all kinds of stuff that really helped push them as a young family into being able to afford, you know, a decent house.
13:37
[SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't great day when we're talking big mansions, but we're talking a solidly built, you know, family family friendly structure that they spent their entire lives and died in, but they paid 16 grand for it back in the 60s.
13:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's like 150,000 now, which, you know, I don't know, that seems, seems different.
14:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so basically we have a lot of federal changes in policy, you know, particularly from the 70s onward that there's totally dismantled that previous system that we had for home building and ultimately made it much harder for smaller home builders and they could even be quite large regional home builders, but just weren't able to get the type of financing that they used to be able to get so that was partly response to the the high inflation in the 70s, the Fed made a choice to
14:28
[SPEAKER_01]: hike and dress rates across the board, you know, not kind of, you know, limiting the rate hikes to the most speculative, you know, business industries that, you know, cause some of most of the problems.
14:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but extend it all of the, um, high interest rates to, uh, these savings alone institutions and, you know, cross all the sectors and that just made it financially harder for them.
14:49
[SPEAKER_01]: in response to that Congress deregulated the entire industry and so said no longer you know you're no longer just these kind of locally oriented institutions you can take money from anywhere you don't have to be focused on home building anymore so they got into really speculative investments during a lot of you know strangers looking for easy money in the industry and ultimately you know like.
15:10
[SPEAKER_01]: half of them collapsed in the 1980s.
15:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And Phoenix was no exception to that, right?
15:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So there were a number of savings and loan institutions in Phoenix that collapsed in addition, you know, Phoenix was somewhat unique in that it was a little bit less reliant on savings and loan because commercial banks
15:30
[SPEAKER_01]: did have more freedom in that area to invest in real estate, but they also, you know, went through some financial crisis and then in the 1990s because we weren't really enforcing the anti-trust law as a lot of the banks started merging and ultimately you didn't have any more local banks in the area and there are a lot of studies showing that.
15:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, kind of the bigger the bank, the less interested they are in loaning to smaller businesses that that presumably includes smaller builders.
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So that just made it, you know, harder and harder and then by the time the great financial crisis came, they were so.
16:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it was just really hard for builders to get the capital of a needed in order to survive.
16:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, I think that there were two dozen firms that went out of business and Phoenix after the great financial, you know, two dozen home builders that went out of business after the great financial crisis, you know, in the Phoenix area and then.
16:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, after previous, you know, periods of time during the New Deal when there were some, you know, downturns in the economy, you would see a really sharp rebound in the amount of construction that would be really fast, but you didn't see that after the great financial crisis, as I said, you saw like a very sluggish return of home building and why is that.
16:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So basically that they didn't have the same, you know, sources of finance to turn to, of course, there were a number of banks that also, you know, failed after the great financial crisis.
16:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was harder and harder for the smaller firms to get the funding that they needed and meanwhile, starting the 1990s.
17:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And after the SNL crisis, there were a number of firms that just said, look the only way we can survive is to go to Wall Street.
17:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And so a number of them, you know, had a bunch of IPOs.
17:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And then through the 1990s, the stock market was kind of, you know, becoming beholden to this ideology of shareholder primacy, so they were doing a lot of, you know, things to expand and take on debt and they ultimately.
17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, have responded to sort of Wall Street's expectations by not focusing on starter homes as much they're focusing on more profitable larger homes and sometimes they even pace production so President Trump actually called builders out for, you know, hoarding 2 million lots like basically a lot of these big home builders that are publicly traded will work with land beggars to have the option to buy land.
17:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's very common.
18:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I think DR Horton as of 2025 had, you know, 600,000 lots or something, you know, but it was like, it was like five to seven years worth of lots that like nobody else could touch.
18:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And so how do you actually keeping the prices high?
18:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Artificially choosing to create a shortage because they're buying up all the inventory.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it meant it gave them the flexibility to pace production, so they didn't necessarily have to brush out and build as much, especially if you have lots and like a, you know, a large enough area than that kind of gives you some a little bit of market power in that area because, you know,
18:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And when I also found out recently as you know, I had bought a, we bought a house for my daughter to live in, um, you know, when she was started.
18:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Congratulations.
18:58
[SPEAKER_04]: And, um, you know, she moved to California so we sold the house.
19:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't want, I didn't want to hold on to it because I didn't want to rent it out and we put it on the market and the only people we got were institutional investors.
19:10
[SPEAKER_04]: they were all people who were looking just for rental properties and the weird thing is is you know there I I asked the realtor to find me somebody and it was it was all most and I don't know if it's I there was literally nobody who came to look at the house that was an investor of some sort and and it was one of these things were you they they held the price down for sellers by not by not competing against each other
19:38
[SPEAKER_04]: So I got what I asked for it, and the next four or five people who looked at it said, oh, someone else is going to get it, never mind, we're good.
19:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Because it's almost like now like the honor amongst thieves.
19:51
[SPEAKER_04]: And the weird thing is, they got the money from a, you know, some hedge fund somewhere in Wyoming somewhere.
19:58
[SPEAKER_04]: this is what they do.
19:59
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's this whole infrastructure, the shady stuff that I don't think the average person understands just how lucrative and just how interconnected all this is for the for the rich of this country to take away what what was a modest home that a young family should have been able to buy and start their lives and build some wealth with.
20:19
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just not going to happen.
20:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and we don't, we don't have a lot of insight into the corporate structure of these entities and how they're connected.
20:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, you can have a lot of entities with different names, but they may have common owners, right, and that would be one reason they wouldn't be bidding against each other.
20:34
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there are some academics who in certain areas, I think like Atlanta and some other places have have done, you know, painstaking research in order to untangle some of this in order to show just how pervasive some of this ownership is, but there's
20:47
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot that's still just opaque that we so we don't know the full extent of how this is impacting markets.
20:53
[SPEAKER_04]: So look, let me ask you then, how do we fix this?
20:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Because look, every president of my lifetime has got up on stage and said, your home ownership is at an all-time high.
21:01
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, as obviously as population grows, as more people are buying homes because they're more people.
21:06
[SPEAKER_04]: They get to say that.
21:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there a point in the near future where the president can't say, gee, we got more people home in homes now.
21:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that coming?
21:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, well, I think the road to housing act was a good first step.
21:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was a bipartisan collection of a lot of different bills that that should, you know, help to some extent with the increasing supply and lowering certain barriers.
21:28
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also notable provision in there that stops.
21:31
[SPEAKER_01]: large institutional investors that already have at least like 300 homes from buying more, it does not require them to sell off their existing inventory and it also has a loophole for something called build to rent where your, you know, land is, again, is such a key here where you're buying lots of land that is, you know, from the beginning designed to only be rentals, you know, and there are some unique issues, you know, around build to rent in, in Phoenix in particular,
21:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, it's an area where there's certain rules around water supply, right?
22:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they want anyone who builds in that area to have a hundred years worth of water supply in certain parts.
22:12
[SPEAKER_01]: uh, uh, the outskirts of a phoenix and build to rent has just, you know, these developers have discovered a loophole where those restrictions only apply if you have six or more units and they say, oh, well, all of these dozens of houses are on one plot.
22:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So that counts as one unit.
22:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So we don't have to comply with this quiet requirement, which gives them an unfair advantage over, you know, people who are just building individual single family homes to rent for one thing.
22:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of a unique dynamic that we know that's going on in Phoenix, but, you know, I think in general in terms of our solutions, like we do think that there should be revolving loan funds to help smaller builders get the financing that they need in order to stable build, you know, especially starter homes, but homes generally.
23:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, maybe also some taxes to cut down on the land hoarding disincentivized building up all of this inventory that you're that is not being actually built on, but then for single family rentals specifically, uh, you know, I think that, you know, there are ways of selling off, uh, requiring to sell off existing inventory without flooding the market if you do it in a phased manner over time.
23:20
[SPEAKER_01]: That's something.
23:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and then I think a really common sense one is just to strip out some of the tax breaks.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: that make that incentivize, building, buying up single family rentals or even build to rent, right?
23:32
[SPEAKER_01]: That seems like that should be a common buy purchase and thing.
23:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It is, let's just take away the tax breaks that incentivize this kind of behavior.
23:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I see, my thought is always better.
23:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And we should do what I've suggested we do on stock speculators.
23:46
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're buying stocks and you're a high-biamed trader, we should tax the you know what are you.
23:51
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you're really investing in your holding on to an investment for a period of time, okay, you're in it for to invest, which is kind of what it's supposed to be.
24:01
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm of the mindset, if you're someone who, you know, a homeowner, you're someone who lives there.
24:09
[SPEAKER_04]: You actually physically live in the structure for five years.
24:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Now we cut your break on the tax, but if you're renting it out, we're going to hammer you.
24:19
[SPEAKER_04]: right.
24:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's a that's a place to go because I don't know that you're going to be able to claw them back.
24:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the genies out of the bottle or in my wrong is there is there a way to undo the damage that's been done already.
24:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in terms of single-family, if you do require, again, real estate is so local, I do think it makes a difference if you were to require them to sell off existing inventory and on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis that would make some difference.
24:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But the new frontier here is really built to rent that is where Wall Street's energy is going.
24:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So, single-family rentals, as I talked about, like the first secure
25:00
[SPEAKER_01]: more recent.
25:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was just in 2025 that they had the first securitization product that was backed exclusively by built torrent communities.
25:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So the money that is pouring in there, you know, is very new.
25:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there was, you know, since 2019, like 130 something percent increase in the amount of build torrent.
25:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So like that's really where Wall Street sees, you know, the the future and the the most profit in terms of corporate housing.
25:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And
25:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something that kind of directly, you know, it's different than just departments, which tend to be, you know, have a smaller footprint in like a dense urban area and these built rent developments are really more in the suburbs in the area where you would traditionally see people buying starter homes, right, because it's located near the desirable jobs and the schools and, you know, all of that kind of things so that so, you know, again, it just comes down to.
25:50
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, land that, you know, otherwise, you know, might have been parceled out as individual homes is now being sold as, you know, it's these communities of, you know, 100 to 300 houses that from the beginning are destined to never be sold.
26:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And here I thought HOAs were bad, and we didn't even get into the Airbnb investors who were buying houses just to be, you know, yeah, sure.
26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: There are definitely multiple factors going on in the market.
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Phoenix also had this weird unique history of being a testing ground for Zillow, which had like kind of a failed house living program.
26:25
[SPEAKER_01]: They wanted to use algorithms to find the perfect, you know, arbitrage opportunity to fix up and flip houses.
26:31
[SPEAKER_01]: That didn't end up working out for Zillow,
26:34
[SPEAKER_01]: what happened at the end of that was that they didn't sell those homes to ordinary families, they sold those homes off to the big single family rental landlords like invitation homes and pretty hard partners and some of the other ones.
26:45
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the last question I've got.
26:46
[SPEAKER_04]: What do we do about this?
26:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there an act?
26:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there an action?
26:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there something we should be advocating for?
26:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there somebody doing something we can go ahead?
26:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Keep doing it?
26:54
[SPEAKER_04]: What do we do?
26:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so there are definitely some members of Congress who have some energy for road housing to point out.
27:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what that's going to look like, but I do think that there is some bipartisan momentum in appetite, and that's maybe something that your member of Congress can shape.
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And then specifically in Arizona, there are bills that go further than what road to housing acted in terms of
27:18
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... limiting the amount of housing that uh... single family homes that individual you know that institutional investors can't own there you go laurel i appreciate taking time for us great work i look forward to talking again real soon thanks for you so much local car uh... policy and also there at the american lebert economic liberties project economic liberties dot u.s. the website if you want to check out the phoenix case study one of your thoughts they in your neighborhood they infested your backyard yet
27:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Tell me about it, Rick at theRicksmithshow.com, right back.
28:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History in 2.
28:03
[SPEAKER_04]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1949.
28:07
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the day Americans awoke to fears the nationwide steel strike would spread rapidly to include key fabrication plans.
28:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Half a million steel workers had joined 400,000 coal miners on strike the morning before.
28:22
[SPEAKER_04]: The miners resolved to defend their $100 a month pension, instituting what John L. Lewis called the No Day Work Week, emboldened the steel workers to walk out of the mills.
28:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Within 24 hours, 96% of all steel production in the country was completely shut down.
28:39
[SPEAKER_04]: United Steelworker contracts were due to expire on the 15th, but the writing was on the wall.
28:44
[SPEAKER_04]: The mill owners decried anything close to mind pensions as nothing short of socialistic and refused to budge in negotiations.
28:54
[SPEAKER_04]: United Steelworkers president Phil Murray thundered that those companies that
28:58
[SPEAKER_04]: failed to agree to demands for non-contributory pensions and insurance would be shut down, but militants warned that President Truman's fact-finding board had already watered down strike demands.
29:11
[SPEAKER_04]: The President's board had been established to put off two previous strike deadlines.
29:15
[SPEAKER_04]: The guidelines it issued only encouraged steel magnets to stand tough against United Steelworker demands.
29:22
[SPEAKER_04]: These included a 30 cent raise plus increased company insurance and
29:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, it had become a defensive struggle, over whether steel workers would have to begin contributing to health and pension plans through wage cuts.
29:36
[SPEAKER_04]: By the time steel workers ended their strike 42 days later, they had won the $100 a month pension, minus what they would receive from social security, and they had to begin contributing to a health insurance plan with no wage increase at all.
29:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Still, workers celebrated that they had successfully defended the United Steel Workers against the all-out Union Busting Drive.
30:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the fall harvest season when many farm stands and homes decorate with pumpkins, cornstokes, and maybe even a straw man.
30:09
[SPEAKER_00]: How to make a straw man?
30:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Easy.
30:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Stuff a couple of burlette bags with hay and dress your man in an old flannel shirt over alls and straw hat.
30:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But today's billionaires corporate elites and other political mega donors have come up with their own version of this creature, stuff a couple of silk pillows with $1,000 bills, dressing in a fine tailored suit and voila, they turn a common straw man into a congressman.
30:36
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's how corporate powers create a government that routinely serves their average at the expense of the rest of us.
30:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, in this election season, they've already stuffed about $2 billion into Congress creatures who will support their AI data centers, tax breaks, and other boondoggles.
30:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Who are these money-stuffers?
30:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Ah, that's the secret to their corruption.
31:00
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2010, America's partisan corporatized Supreme Court handed a legalistic anti-democracy weapon called dark money to giant corporations.
31:10
[SPEAKER_00]: By judicial dictate, the courts were a public and majority rule that executives can give unlimited sums of corporate cash to superpacks to elect their straw man without telling us commoners who is buying which slowmakers and at what price.
31:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet, both parties are going along with this corruption, claiming to be powerless to overturn the court's edict.
31:37
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Jim Hyder saying powerless.
31:40
[SPEAKER_00]: What about asking the people to intervene and overwhelming majority of Americans of every political strike despise the dark money trick and will rally behind any serious effort to kill it?
31:51
[SPEAKER_00]: A bipartisan effort to do just that is now underway in Montana.
31:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Learn about it from transparentelection.org.
32:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back to the Rick Smith Show.
32:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, here is Rick Smith.
32:10
[SPEAKER_04]: So evidently all is quiet in Washington, D.C. as the Republicans adjourned, I guess, all gone.
32:18
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, our Republican-led government is just going home for the rest of the year.
32:23
[SPEAKER_04]: I know the elections are coming up, but it keep this, this affordability thing that they were supposed to have some thoughts on.
32:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Didn't do anything to pass the, you know, the $5,000 that Trump passed are a once.
32:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing on gas prices, nothing on grocery prices, nothing on rent, nothing on nothing.
32:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, maybe a post office, but I guess the good thing is if there's a good thing, they're not there to do horrible stuff.
32:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe maybe social security is safe for, well, another day.
32:53
[SPEAKER_04]: That's why I've asked my good friend Alex Lawson to come share some thoughts.
32:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Alex is the Executive Director of Social Security Works.
32:58
[SPEAKER_04]: You can check out their website, socialsecurityworks.org, Alex.
33:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for taking time for us.
33:04
[SPEAKER_02]: As always, Rick, my pleasure.
33:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I might run a kiss that's I want to tell you what my life is like in this period hit me So because I listen to your setup just just like and then we I'll let you ask your actual question but all week for for weeks actually it's just reporters like do you think do you think that they're going to pass
33:32
[SPEAKER_02]: this bill to make insulin affordable, and I'm like, no.
33:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're like, well, they're saying they will, and I'm like, yeah, are they're lying to you?
33:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, right, and they're like, another one, well, do you think they're gonna pass this, and I'm like, no, no, they're definitely not going to do that.
33:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, why would you look at this Congress and think that they're going to do something good?
33:55
[SPEAKER_02]: If the question was, do you think that they're gonna like give tax money to billionaires?
34:02
[SPEAKER_02]: But the whole thing, it's just this narrative myth making where the question become right.
34:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So they get good press because they pitch it, they pitch the question and then it's reported on the news like will they or won't they make insulin affordable?
34:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reporters don't like me because I'm just like, no, they won't.
34:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I will bet you money that they won't.
34:27
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, well, can't you entertain it?
34:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, I'll entertain it with a no, they won't.
34:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been working on this for 16 years.
34:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote the policy brief for the Alex Smith Emergency Insulin Access Bill.
34:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
34:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I know who these people are.
34:46
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a specific one because you get it.
34:48
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a Susan Collins beat sweetener.
34:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
34:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that whole narrative is for the senators like Susan Collins who are going to take that story and they're going to push it into their markets and they're going to get some juice out of it.
35:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Like people
35:04
[SPEAKER_02]: sort of, it's easy to be like, oh yeah, well, people won't fall for that, but people get little tiny bits and pieces of the story, right?
35:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So they know if they just like throw all this chum and chat, chave out in there that they'll distract from the fact that the only thing they're really good at doing right now is hiding billionaire pedophiles names, right, redacting literal
35:33
[SPEAKER_02]: protecting the president who's also in those files, and then secretly plotting to steal our social security.
35:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, I just, it is this madening moment.
35:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So yes, Rick, they're not going to pass anything bad on social security, but unfortunately,
35:52
[SPEAKER_02]: They're plotting full steam ahead for the lame duck, which is like, that's what's actually going on.
36:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So they're, you know, the media won't tell that story.
36:04
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, oh, yeah, but I'm more wondering if they're gonna pass this bill that the offices say they're gonna pass to make things more affordable and like the answer's no.
36:13
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they're not going to do that.
36:15
[SPEAKER_02]: But what they are going to do is try to get a commission to cut social security.
36:19
[SPEAKER_02]: They're working at that day and night tirelessly.
36:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, is it possible, maybe they're asking the questions, sarcastic.
36:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, do you really, really think maybe, you know, because there's got to be a point at which you wake up to the reality that they're never going to do anything to actually help we the people.
36:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I mean, there's got to be a point where you get so jaded or you go on.
36:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we know.
36:40
[SPEAKER_04]: They got to know.
36:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Come on.
36:42
[SPEAKER_02]: The reporters have, so, and I, I shouldn't paint with too broad a brush stroke on reporters because actually there's some amazing reporting going on, but generally reporting isn't even what we're talking about.
36:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the cable news, it's much more, you know, makeup and lighting than it is in the arm.
37:03
[SPEAKER_02]: It is.
37:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And those, folks, that,
37:06
[SPEAKER_02]: a ton of them are in on a wreck like if you do that circuit if you like go on TV that you'll oftentimes like I do right wing stuff because I'm like I got to go talk to everybody and you know I don't care that they're audience agrees with me on social security Medicare drug prices right?
37:27
[SPEAKER_02]: But hosts will oftentimes like try to be like, well, you know, I'm not actually they're like in before the hit, you know, they're basically saying this is just a character I play on TV and I'm like, I think that makes you worse.
37:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually think that makes you worse like at least Sean Hannity is dumb enough that he believes what he's saying, right?
37:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Like at least he's brain dead enough that he literally believes the stuff.
37:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just time for the midterms.
37:58
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a caravan.
37:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Just a caravan, Alex.
38:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It is, it is a thing though.
38:04
[SPEAKER_02]: That is, I don't know why I'm freewheeling here with you Rick.
38:07
[SPEAKER_02]: But it is just,
38:11
[SPEAKER_02]: when you're doing so when I'm doing my job and trying to get my message out, I have to sometimes play into the like, well, I don't even know like what?
38:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I want to get my message out about like the commission that they're putting together social security, cutting commission.
38:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So when the questions come in, you have to try to
38:33
[SPEAKER_02]: pivot over and it's all but that's everyone is playing these different games and they sort of know that these are the rules and the one of the rules to like get ink and press in Washington DC is you have to at least pretend that the dumbest storyline out there.
38:53
[SPEAKER_02]: could be true, like, maybe, maybe they'll do it this time.
38:58
[SPEAKER_02]: They're all going to get together and do it.
39:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're like, that guy's talking about suspending habeas corpus and putting the insurrection act in, like, are you kidding me?
39:11
[SPEAKER_04]: So I will just, no, and it's the reason that I don't get invited back very often.
39:17
[SPEAKER_04]: I used to do some Fox business show a few years ago and you know, I didn't know that I didn't know any better to play along.
39:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I just said what I was thinking and that was well.
39:33
[SPEAKER_04]: That didn't go well and look it's all political theater.
39:36
[SPEAKER_04]: The idea is is a you know They're they're part of the machine and that's why I I think the machine has to at some point Be exposed for what it does because look the consequences are really deadly this idea They you can dance around with maybe but they will maybe they won't kill social security That's gonna be millions of people who are gonna go into their golden years And what they're getting is not gonna be golden It'll be yellow all right, but it's not gonna be gold
40:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's not money that trickles down.
40:04
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I mean, that's the thing that is so maddening is.
40:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And to be really good at the game, you play just the game, right?
40:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that is divorced from the impact.
40:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
40:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So that like that's the problem.
40:23
[SPEAKER_02]: That's why I spend a lot of my time being like, this is people we're talking about human beings.
40:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I go out and I meet them.
40:32
[SPEAKER_02]: They cry when they tell me their stories of worry at losing their social security or not being able to get their disability or the nursing home nightmares.
40:43
[SPEAKER_02]: that people are put through in this country, right?
40:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's real people, real, but in DC, there's this theater, this game, and everyone, I don't know.
40:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I was one time, this is totally true, and I wish it was email.
41:01
[SPEAKER_02]: But I hired a PR person to help me get into right-wing media, and
41:08
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a right winger and I was booking on one American news a lot and I did that you can Google it I did really well.
41:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I would just talk about Social security my issues and they kind of come at me and I'd be like, you know, do my thing I got Told they weren't inviting me back because and this is it.
41:26
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what the PR guy told me He's like they said your talking points are true and So they don't want to have you and I was like, oh my god
41:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell me that again?
41:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's like, yeah, they said the thing is you're talking points are true and our audience agrees with you more than the hosts so they're not going to have you back on and I was like, amazing so what you're what he's telling is you can't out shine the host.
41:53
[SPEAKER_04]: So yes, we got a little Trumpians running around.
41:55
[SPEAKER_04]: They've got to be the kings of their cast.
41:57
[SPEAKER_04]: So I look at it.
41:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I get it.
41:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody likes to be wrong on their own show, even though they are on the wrong side of it.
42:02
[SPEAKER_04]: So look, the reason I wanted to talk to you is the secret, the secret, Kabbal meeting down in Dallas.
42:09
[SPEAKER_04]: That got a lot of attention, because I think a lot of people didn't realize it's still on the table to be attacked.
42:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And this meeting kind of, you know, that you exposed.
42:20
[SPEAKER_04]: kind of made people sit up and go, hey, wait, what, that's not gonna make life more affordable.
42:25
[SPEAKER_04]: That's gonna make it worse and why are they doing it at a billionaires house or his property?
42:31
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, what does a billionaires know about what the average citizen goes through with the grocery store at the pharmacy?
42:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I actually think that the setup talking about the media is so crucial for to understand this and why I get agitated because I had to fly to Dallas, they tried to sandbag us late notice it's in Dallas, I flew to Dallas because I knew.
42:57
[SPEAKER_02]: that if I didn't do that, no one would tell the story about a commission that is full steam ahead being set up to cut social security benefits.
43:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just invite your listeners to just Google, Jodi, Arlington, Alex Lawson.
43:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And you'll see, I've done this every time the commission comes up, this whole Congress, they've been working on it.
43:27
[SPEAKER_02]: in the budget committee for exposing this commission.
43:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And every time I expose it, there's a flurry and the response, you know this, Rick from the people, they're like, what?
43:39
[SPEAKER_02]: How come I didn't and it's just so much they want to know more.
43:43
[SPEAKER_02]: But then the media just goes,
43:45
[SPEAKER_02]: turn the volume down on that story.
43:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And it is madening for me because I'm like, if you were to take a story and say, what do people want to hear about?
43:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Like in their public interest, this would be top of the list.
44:01
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's why the corporate media, the billionaire owned media,
44:05
[SPEAKER_02]: turn the volume down on it.
44:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's only through like, you know, I'm sorry, but I know what I do.
44:11
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a gimmick.
44:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I went down there to get thrown out to make news so that people would pay attention to it.
44:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And I knew that like you Sam Cedar, you know, truth tellers who understand the issue would get it out there.
44:25
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's up against a
44:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It just incredibly powerful propaganda machine and so what I know it's like I can predict the future I know that when the lame duck comes so after the election this will be full steam ahead They'll try to ram it through in the lame duck and the media will be like this is out of the blue Where did this come from?
44:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Why did nobody when you're like I was yelling this into your face for two years man, but you wouldn't
44:56
[SPEAKER_04]: So not two years.
44:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Look, this has been the the Republican wet dream for a very long time and they've created this crisis.
45:04
[SPEAKER_04]: You look, there is a crisis in 20, 20, 32 I believe.
45:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
45:08
[SPEAKER_04]: There's going to be a reduction if they do nothing.
45:10
[SPEAKER_04]: That means current retirees because I've had a couple of people go, well, what do I care?
45:14
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm getting my check now.
45:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, in a couple of years, that may be reduced if they do nothing.
45:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Another people who believe it's not gonna happen because they'll find political courage when the people pitchforks come out.
45:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know
45:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So I will just clarify, I've been fighting this iteration of the Commission for two years.
45:34
[SPEAKER_02]: This Congress, Jodi Arrington's, I've been fighting commissions for 16 years.
45:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You can Google Alex Lawson Allen Simpson, and you can see in 2010 when I expose the Commission to cut Social Security then by doing like the same sort of gimmicky thing, the corporate media were ignoring it.
45:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got my phone 16 years ago and I live streamed the closed door and I catch them coming in or out.
46:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'd be like, are you talking about cutting social security in there?
46:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Paul Ryan would ignore me.
46:06
[SPEAKER_02]: He ran away from me down the hallway one time yelling, I was, you know, saying, I have to go to the bathroom.
46:12
[SPEAKER_02]: That's on camera too, but Alan Simpson gave me a seven minute interview where he's like, yeah, that's what we're doing.
46:18
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we're doing.
46:19
[SPEAKER_02]: We're in there plotting to cut your social security and we're doing it in secret because you're not man enough.
46:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not quoting him.
46:28
[SPEAKER_02]: This is all like paraphrase, but this is what he meant.
46:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not man enough to handle the truth.
46:41
[SPEAKER_02]: his side, right, that he's the brave one.
46:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, just keep talking, man, because the more you talk, the more than 90% of Americans who don't want you to touch a single penny of their earned benefits, are going to understand what's going on.
46:59
[SPEAKER_04]: There's given enough rope.
47:01
[SPEAKER_04]: But here's the thing, and this is where I guess I'm struggling.
47:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, it's not brave.
47:05
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not courageous to kick people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
47:10
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not brave.
47:11
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not courageous to steal from grandma.
47:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not brave or courageous to take what little bit.
47:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Some people have worked their whole lives or that's not brave and courageous.
47:20
[SPEAKER_04]: What would be brave and courageous would be go after the people that we've the billionaire class.
47:25
[SPEAKER_04]: We've created that would take some doing that might cost you an election.
47:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you're right there, Rick, like true bravery is standing up to the powerful who are praying on the working people in this country.
47:41
[SPEAKER_02]: But this city, the Washington DC and that game I was talking about, part of what they do is to invert things to actually make
47:52
[SPEAKER_02]: uh, the worst arguments stronger and to pretend like it makes sense to pretend like it is brave for Republicans to literally take healthcare away from those who need it most from the poorest people in our country, from the oldest people in our country, from newborn babies, that's what they did.
48:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Those who need it most from people who lost their job because they got cancer and they're being treated for cancer But they lose their job so they lose their insurance so they can't get the treatment for cancer So they go on Medicaid.
48:24
[SPEAKER_02]: It's brave to steal their health care
48:28
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how D.C. looks at it and it's the same perverse thing that says it's brave to steal our earned social security benefits.
48:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So billionaires like Harlan Crowe, who hosted the plotting of this commission at his compound, a bunker that is a facsimile of the U.S. Capitol.
48:52
[SPEAKER_02]: He made a fake
48:54
[SPEAKER_02]: arm of government and then real members of Congress showed up at it.
48:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was, it was, it's got to be so real.
49:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It was very believable, though, right?
49:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Like after you get past all of it, you're like, no, actually, I mean, obviously, that's what they'll do.
49:09
[SPEAKER_02]: They bow and scrape to billionaires.
49:11
[SPEAKER_02]: They literally think that's brave, hurting the least among us to give tax handouts to the worst
49:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, obviously.
49:25
[SPEAKER_04]: So the last question I've got for you because I want you you hit on at a moment ago, Trump, I guess, waffle the bid on the insurrection act.
49:33
[SPEAKER_04]: If things go awry this midterm, which look, this issue alone should send people sprinting to the polls on election day to throw all these bums out and make sure they don't get a chance.
49:44
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... but uh... is that is that just bluster is that you think that's just hey let's throw some chum out so the media can can create something or do you think he's serious authoritarian is there always serious right that's the thing is just um... what
50:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Like when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, said the die has been cast, they, you know, there is a metaphor there.
50:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And they don't want to cross the Rubicon, because once it's known that they're trying to overthrow the government for sure for sure.
50:17
[SPEAKER_02]: in public, then no one can pretend anymore.
50:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Then that game that DC is playing, where it's just like who's ahead and who's up, who's down, it's like our lives and democracy are at stake.
50:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's playing footsie with it, but in playing footsie, they're seeing, they're testing the boundaries, they're seeing what response they'll get from the key people.
50:41
[SPEAKER_02]: They just fired or are firing 20% of the military brass.
50:46
[SPEAKER_02]: playing footsie with authoritarianism.
50:48
[SPEAKER_02]: But here's the truth.
50:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Where are they?
50:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, look, if there's anyone who should be the profiles and courage, it should be our top military brass standing up for not just themselves, but the people under them.
51:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that I'm not going to speak for them.
51:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's what I know.
51:05
[SPEAKER_02]: The only bravery that I've seen around the world that stops authoritarianism and it has always been.
51:12
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the people.
51:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So Bolsonaro tried to roll tanks in Brazil and the people stood up in such numbers and there were people in the military and Brazil was under a dictatorship within my lifetime.
51:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So like there are people in the military who were like, yeah, let's do this.
51:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But then you have millions of people being like, you're not going to be able to do this.
51:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And then right, same in South Korea, authoritarians are never joking.
51:41
[SPEAKER_02]: They're seeing what they can get away with.
51:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's up to the people to be brave and say, no.
51:46
[SPEAKER_04]: That's why I know November is so important.
51:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Alex, as always, great stuff.
51:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Appreciate the time.
51:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Keep being our social security Superman as one of my listeners pointed out.
51:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Ray.
51:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks so much.
51:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Our good friend, Alex, a lot of some.
51:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to hear your thoughts.
52:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you know there was a secret commission?
52:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you know it was at a billionaire's property?
52:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you know it looked like Congress?
52:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you hear that in the mainstream media?
52:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to hear your thoughts.
52:11
[SPEAKER_04]: We're at therixmithshow.com right back.
52:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History Inter.
52:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you enjoy a cup of coffee to start your day this morning?
52:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, on this day in Labor History, the year was 2007.
52:31
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the day that Starbucks agreed to post information about union rights on an employee bulletin board at its store in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
52:39
[SPEAKER_04]: The international workers of the world, or wobblees, were attempting to organize the baristas at that store.
52:45
[SPEAKER_04]: The IWW accused Starbucks of interfering with the right to form a union.
52:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Starbucks management consistently points to better than average benefits provided for their employees as a reason against unionization.
52:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Starbucks management decided to settle the grant rapid dispute by letting the union information to go up.
53:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Before the case went through the full Labor Review Board process, this was just one incidence of the IWW's attempt to organize Starbucks workers.
53:14
[SPEAKER_04]: The IWW began its outreach efforts at Starbucks in 2004, one of the most press
53:19
[SPEAKER_04]: missing issues facing the baristas was scheduling.
53:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Like many in the service industry, they are subject to so-called Flexible Scheduling.
53:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Computer software programs create scheduling aimed at reducing labor costs.
53:32
[SPEAKER_04]: The result of these programs is often inconsistent and unpredictable hours.
53:37
[SPEAKER_04]: This scheduling makes it difficult for workers to establish a budget or plan for childcare.
53:42
[SPEAKER_04]: In 2014, the New York Times published a story on this kind of scheduling.
53:47
[SPEAKER_04]: featuring the difficulties faced by one Starbucks worker.
53:50
[SPEAKER_04]: In a study published also in 2014, they showed that Starbucks stores had 14% less employees on average in 2011 through 13 than they did in 2005 through 2007.
54:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Starbucks is not alone in using computer scheduler, efforts to cut labor costs continue to have devastating impact on the day-to-day lives of workers in the service economy.
54:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Like what you hear, check out more at LaborHistoryInto.com.
54:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I got to tell you, I'm glad Alex Lawson's on our side on this.
54:35
[SPEAKER_04]: I love what John sent me.
54:38
[SPEAKER_04]: That he's our social security superman because he is like I mean the fact of the matter is is our mainstream corporate controlled media They're just laptops.
54:46
[SPEAKER_04]: They're just reporting what's been put in front of that the fact that that one guy You know uncovered this this secret cabal meeting down in Dallas.
54:57
[SPEAKER_04]: It's you almost can't write this stuff No one would believe it if you if you what the Netflix and said hey, I got a I got a story for you
55:07
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to have a bunch of politicos, you know, all the Republicans, a handful of corporate Democrats.
55:15
[SPEAKER_04]: They're all going to go down to a billionaires' lair that looks just like the congressional meeting area.
55:22
[SPEAKER_04]: And they're going to hold a secret meeting on how to screw over the entire working class.
55:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And one guy from one small advocacy group is going to be the only guy
55:35
[SPEAKER_04]: who exposes it.
55:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you could not, not even Netflix would buy that.
55:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And yet here we are, it's reality.
55:45
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, life is stranger than fiction, I guess.
55:47
[SPEAKER_04]: But this is one of those moments where it's election time.
55:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And they're still still, even though I don't care what party you are in this day and age, I have yet to see someone who goes, wow, we need
56:03
[SPEAKER_04]: people my age are not going boy I hope when I retire they cut my social security by I think it's like 23% I sure hope I lose almost a quarter of what I've I've worked my whole life to get to I sure hope they do that I sure hope they got medicare nobody nobody my age is is talking like that and yet the weird thing is is you know and I know a lot of people who look like me are who are not thrilled
56:31
[SPEAKER_04]: with this administration and it's one of those things where I'm often shocked that there are any working class Republicans that that people who work for a living would vote for them now you go democrats are on a lot better and they're not in some instances the fact of the matter is there were some democrats there some powerful democrats who you know we go we have to we we don't have a choice but to
57:00
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no profile encouraging going, gee, we're gonna screw the next generation.
57:04
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what the baby boomers did to us.
57:08
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're gonna do it to our grandkids.
57:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's downright ridiculous.
57:15
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's what they think we're going to do.
57:16
[SPEAKER_04]: It's what they think of us.
57:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And look, I don't know in 2032 if that cuts can happen.
57:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I know a lot of people who have emailed me and said, no, it's never going to happen.
57:27
[SPEAKER_04]: They wouldn't let it happen.
57:29
[SPEAKER_04]: It'd be political suicide, it'd be all.
57:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I thought giving massive tax breaks to billionaires at a time of economic level.
57:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I thought that was going to be the end.
57:39
[SPEAKER_04]: And look, it may be in November.
57:41
[SPEAKER_04]: There may be the blue wave that sweeps all of these bombs out.
57:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Might happen.
57:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you know, there's a possibility.
57:52
[SPEAKER_04]: The fact that the polls aren't, you know, 60, 40 in most, in most sanitorial and congressional districts is what bugs me.
58:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Because we're in a moment right now where Republicans have shown us who they are.
58:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Donald Trump has shown us the priorities and it's not you or me.
58:11
[SPEAKER_04]: It's it one is ego.
58:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, because ultimately, it really is all about him.
58:16
[SPEAKER_04]: He's got to have his arches, he's got to have his name on the Kennedy Center, which they're going to tear down.
58:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Everybody I know who lives in DC, the Skullbutt is, they're going to tear the Kennedy Center down and it's only because we wouldn't put Trump's name on the side of it.
58:33
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, does it need repair?
58:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Like any building, it needs a little bit of repair.
58:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Little tea, little tea, I'll see.
58:39
[SPEAKER_04]: But no, we're just going to tear it down, tear it down so that we could, we could, erect a shrine to our dear leader.
58:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I'm hoping people are paying attention and look, I love what Alex said.
58:54
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, and every one of those instances where the authoritarians thought that they were going to control everything, the people rose up.
59:04
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm hoping it's still in our DNA.
59:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm hoping it's still who we are.
59:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Even my red hat friends.
59:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I wanna hear your thoughts.
59:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it too late?
59:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Have we gone too far?
59:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Are we too far down the rabbit hole?
59:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Have we got orange all over us?
59:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Or can we fight back?
59:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Can we save social security?
59:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to hear your thoughts.
59:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Rick at therixmithshow.com.
59:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Miss any portion of the program?
59:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Make sure you grab the podcast wherever you get your favorite podcast.
59:32
[SPEAKER_04]: You'll find dollars.
59:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And as always, thanks so much for being here.
59:36
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you back here next time.
59:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Until next time, this has been The Rick Smith Show.
59:57
[SPEAKER_03]: We're working people coming to talk.