Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 468: Shut It Down

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Episode 468: Shut It Down · Words & Numbers

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Today on words and numbers. Hoarding perceptions in polling
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football stadia. And the government shutdown.
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All this and more coming up next on Words and Numbers, a Civil
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original production. Check us out at civil.com.
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That's civl.com. Hi, I'm James.
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And I'm Anthony. And this is words and numbers.
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It's new and exciting in your world this weekend.
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Come on, tell us something interesting.
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Tell us something interesting. Man, I'm so bored today.
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Come on, I love it when I enter in argument with somebody and
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they end up being the evidence that I was arguing.
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And have you been on Twitter again?
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I have been, I've been on Twitter, these things pop up.
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They just ask to be slapped down, right?
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So this person posts a meme in it.
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The caption here is people no longer believe working hard will
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lead to a better life. I saw that one.
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And I said, Or perhaps we get so used to our better lives that we
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no longer recognize them for what they are.
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And then I give some evidence. Even after adjusting for
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inflation, today's middle class have better standards of living
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than did the top 1% of Americans a century ago.
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Pretty. Straightforward.
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Straightforward now, I was prepared for the guy to come
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back and say we'll show me evidence, blah blah blah.
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Oh no, no, no, here comes slam dunk he says.
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He says, haha, I see you had to go back 100 years.
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Now try it at the 20 tens. Actually, I said you're proving
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my point. I just said that over the course
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of 100 years the middle class achieved lives better than top
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1% and you complained that it didn't take 10 years, making
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evidence of my point that perhaps we get so used to our
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better lives we no longer recognize them for what they
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are. Yeah, I'm, I'm consistently
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amazed that people whine, and I mean whine like little tiny
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school children about the evils of capitalism, which
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incidentally, I'm going to talk about in a second too on.
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Their iPhones, right? Yeah, yeah.
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Probably sipping Starbucks or Yeah. 0 self-awareness.
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I mean just. I, I think there's AI think
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there's a good middle ground here.
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And that is to admit, look, your capitalism has flaws.
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Any system's going to have flaws because it's rife with humans
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and humans have flaws. But the question isn't whether
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capitalism has flaws, it's whether it has more or less
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flaws than the alternative you're suggesting.
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And if the alternative you're suggesting is socialism, there's
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centuries of evidence that capitalism has less flaws.
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Yeah, I I saw two things this week which really pissed me off.
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I know I'm done. Oh well, by all means.
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Because I said. I I thought you had tied it up
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in a neat little bow. There.
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Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I said.
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I'm going to talk about perceptions and polling.
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That was the perceptions part. Here's the polling thing.
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This is a poll by Gallup, who I absolutely love.
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Gallup and Pew. They're just wonderful.
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They hang out there and they do their thing and they're, I mean,
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you could argue, I guess that they're partisan, but I've never
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seen such an argument. They tell.
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They're just they're actually tell things like they see them.
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They're actually pretty good. Nate Silver also pretty good.
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Rasmussen. That's where you start to go
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down a partisan drain. Yeah, but this was a poll that
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came out October 21st, 2025. And the the question it's
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getting at is are you concerned about federal power?
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They ask this question. Do you think the federal
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government today has about the right amount of power or has too
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little power or too much power? And here we have the response to
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too much power. 62% of Americans say the federal government has
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too much power. Now.
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Now, you could say, all right, 62% of this being driven by the
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Democrats who are losing their minds over Trump.
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And indeed, if you break this down by party, the Democrats are
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losing their minds over Trump. They don't equal 62% of the
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population. In Biden's last term or in the
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last year of his last term, this question does the federal
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government have too much power? Democrats, 25% of them said yes,
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federal government has too much power.
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So 75% were saying no, it doesn't have too much.
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Today, 66% it, it's a record high. 66% of Democrats say the
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federal government has too much power.
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Republicans 58%. Well over half of Republicans
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say the federal government has too much power.
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And who's controlling right now? The entire federal government?
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Republicans. That that is interesting.
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I wonder what to make of that. And I, and you know, you've
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don't forget, you still have a pretty solid contingent of
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Republicans who were of the drain the swamp flavor.
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Right. Yeah.
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Right. And those people did believe the
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federal government in the form of bureaucracies had too much
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power. Now to to my eyesight, they've
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been disappearing. So I I don't I'm not exactly
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sure how I would even start to unpack this number without doing
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further research. I spoke to to 1 today, a friend
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of mine who is I, I don't know if he's Republican, be certainly
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Republican leaning who who I'm, I'm pretty sure voted for Trump.
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But at the very least I know was happy that Trump won and said to
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me recently that he's he's disillusioned that if he if he
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had no, that if he had known all of the stuff that was coming
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down was going to come down, he would not have have been as
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happy with Trump winning. Now he didn't go the next step
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and say, well, I would would have voted for the other guy,
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which look, you, you can be, you can, you can be upset with and
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against the things that President Trump is doing without
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saying I would have preferred Harris.
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Right. Well, I mean, The funny thing
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about Trump and his loyalists will never admit this, but
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domestically he governs the way Bernie Sanders would have.
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Say more about that. Well, I mean, he's taking shares
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of companies, public companies, wrapping them into the
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government. He's got a draconian trade
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policy that seeks to isolate us from the world.
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These are Bernie things. But then he's projecting, or at
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least he thinks he's projecting American power outward in
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foreign policy in a way that Sanders never would have.
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And so domestically you're getting one weird thing, and
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internationally you're getting another weird thing, and they
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don't really match up into a coherent whole, right?
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There's no governing ideology that you can unpack and
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understand, right? With no Reagan or with even
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Jimmy Carter, right, it was easy to understand how those guys
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would react to certain stimuli. But with Trump, you never really
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know, and everybody's always on edge because of it.
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And This is why we have a lot of trouble in the economic realm,
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because people who are worried about economic things require
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certainty. They want to know what the
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markets are going to look like in three months, six months, a
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year, 2 years and five years so they can make their plans
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accordingly and move about their business.
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And they can't do that right now.
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And look, I was, I'm a staunch free trader, you know that?
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Yeah, me too. And me too.
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And when he started, you know, talking about tariffs early on,
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I said to people, look, speaking as an economist from an economic
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perspective, this is bad news. Here's why.
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But I defended him. I said, look, it's entirely
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possible that what he's doing has nothing to do with
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economics, but rather it's strategic.
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Because if you look at the numbers, our trade, although
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tariffs were pretty low across the boards, our trading partners
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were imposing tariffs that were higher on us than we were
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imposing on them. So you could make the argument
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that it was strategic is going to, he was going to bring him to
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the table and get rid of the tariffs entirely in, in terms of
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of a strategy, I thought, OK, maybe so except if you're going
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to play a strategy like that, it's got to be very clear to the
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trading partner. You either do X or else this
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other thing is going to happen to you.
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And the closer you come to doing what you're supposed to do, the
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better we'll be treating you. And you don't see that.
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Instead you see randomness of we're going to impose 130%
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tariff and then 12 hours later, well it's going to be 70% and
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then later on something else. Really, 30 and, and look, the
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president, and we've said this before, he doesn't have the
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constitutional authority to behave this way, although
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Congress does not hold him to account.
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So, you know, we are where we are.
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I, I got hate mail on that very point.
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I get hate mail on that very point.
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I I don't. I saw that.
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I responded to it. Actually, I usually don't
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respond to your hate mail. I just laugh.
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I mean, I'm laughing at you. Nothing, but nothing new there.
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But this guy, it's, let me 'cause I want to defend you
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here, this, this gentleman wrote.
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And I'm I'm sensitive to the Trump Derangement syndrome.
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I don't it bothers me when people perceive that that were
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when I say were usually Jew are displaying that.
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But here we had a listener write in and say that James is
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misrepresenting Trump's response to Ontario's commercial of
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inaccurate portrayal of Ontario's commercial about
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Reagan. And so I went and I looked.
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I saw the ad that Ontario put out.
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I saw the White House response to the ad.
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I read commentary from PBSBBC, Wall Street Journal, all of
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that. Everything I saw was entirely
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consistent with what you said, so I have no, unless I'm missing
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something, I have no idea where this claim of Trump Trump
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Derangement Syndrome is coming from, other than the only thing
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I can point to is that you said something that somebody doesn't
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like. Right.
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And, and, you know, we've gotten to the point now where Trump
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Derangement Syndrome isn't Rosie O'Donnell jumping up and down
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and losing her mind on TV. It's anybody offering a
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criticism of any kind. Yeah, that.
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And that's, that's not healthy. It's not healthy.
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Well, and look, by that standard, I had Biden
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Derangement Syndrome and Obama Derangement Syndrome because all
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I do is criticize people in power.
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And if you think I'm criticizing Trump too much, just wait until
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there's a Democrat in the White House and you're going to love
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it, because I'm going to do exactly the same thing.
11:52
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12:42
There are a couple of things that really pissed me off in the
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last two days, as I started to say before not realizing that
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you had lost. Sorry, sorry, but I had no idea.
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And one is from the the ass clown existential comments on on
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Twitter. And I'm still going to call it
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Twitter. And I'm still going to say that
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this is a tweet. Right, it doesn't work.
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X is just silly and if you say it's a post, everybody thinks
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you're on Facebook. So Existential Comics tweeted.
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Why are ethics questions always like, is it ethical to steal
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bread to feed your starving family and not Is it ethical to
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hoard bread when families are starving?
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You want to take a crack at that one.
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Well, I mean, they're both ethical questions, right?
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Well, I think you went right to the wrong level on this.
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You can't hoard bread because it spoils.
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There's this thing called mold that you, you can't hoard it, it
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molds and, and this is exactly the point, right?
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You've got to, you've got to move product and then money
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offers a store of value. This is exactly the problem that
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John Locke talked about in the second Treatise.
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When you grow apples and you put them all in baskets and you eat
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lots of apples, all your other apples rot because you can't do
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anything with apples. And then if we barter, well, you
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can only barter with somebody who's got something you want.
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But if we, oh, I don't know, have money that solves all these
14:25
problems. But in solving these problems,
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you've guaranteed that some people are going to be very,
14:32
very, very good at buying and selling things, and those people
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are going to get wealthier than other people.
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But The upshot is, is that we all have bread, apples, and
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every other damn thing, right? We're all better off for it
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because we have food to eat and houses to live in and cars,
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etcetera, etcetera. And, and let me let me add here,
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because this argument about hoarding and it's always applied
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somehow to people who have lots of money, step back and think
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about this. So you and I are are here and
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you offer me something that I want.
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Go back to the apples and we have money.
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And so I give you money and you give me apples, and I have
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something you want. I have your own pears, and you
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give me money and I give you pears.
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And that's the way it works. Now suppose over time you keep
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giving me more and more apples. I give you money, you give me
15:33
apples, but you're not asking for my pears in return.
15:37
And so not only do I have lots of apples, but I've got all the
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lots of pears because James hasn't asked for them.
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And you're sitting on a pile of dollars.
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How are we pointing to you and saying you're hoarding?
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I'm the one who got all the goods.
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Here's where it gets interesting, because I thought I
15:55
had finally come across an example of actual hoarding by an
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actual billionaire. And I thought, oh boy.
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And I thought, oh boy, I finally found the great counterexample
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to the things we talk about. And you and I love
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counterexamples, right? We love to say, look, in
16:15
general, this is stupid. But here's an here's an instance
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where it really happened. And people were claiming all
16:23
over Twitter and Facebook that when Henry Ford died, his family
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went in and opened the safe and found $700 million in cash.
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Now. Actual cash.
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Yeah, yeah. And then those are $1947.
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The AI I looked into tells me that Henry Ford's net worth at
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the time was $200 million complete net worth, so 700
16:58
million in his personal safe. No, pumpkin, that did not
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happen. Now 2. 100 million that, that's
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quite a lot. That's 188 to 199 billion in
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today's dollars. So OK, he died with quite a lot.
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Where did this idiotic story come from?
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Well, it turns out Henry Ford had an aversion to using banks.
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He just didn't like banking. And he always kept lots of cash
17:29
on hand at the Ford Motor Company.
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So when they had to do something, they could pay for it
17:34
in cash and not take out a loan. That was a business practice.
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Upon his death, the most of his wealth went to the Ford
17:46
Foundation. So there's your whole story,
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right? 700 million, he was hoarding
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money. Well, he didn't even have 700
17:57
million. He didn't even have 1/3 of 700
18:00
million. And welcome to find out.
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None of it's true. He just tried to avoid banking
18:09
on the business side of his life, which I think is kind of
18:14
silly. But if you want to avoid that
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expense and you you've got the wherewithal to do it, but go
18:19
ahead, right? It's a business decision.
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Probably not the smartest one, but probably not the dumbest one
18:25
either, given that they had they had just, you know, when he died
18:28
in 47, you know, stock market had crashed in 29 and we had to
18:32
protract depression, right? That's going to impact his
18:35
thinking on on these matters. So, you know, my, my own
18:40
grandparents didn't trust Banks ever having lived through that
18:45
period. So there you go.
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Hoarding, right? Everybody talks about it.
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Nobody actually does it. Yeah.
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Well, I I would imagine it, it does happen, but it happens
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oddly. The people who are doing it are
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the preppers. Yeah, that's right.
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But they're not. They're not hoarding enough to
19:03
have any major impact on anybody.
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No palpable effect on the economy.
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You know that. You know that it may have a
19:11
palpable effect on the economy if the preppers are correct.
19:16
Right. Yeah.
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But that will only come later anyway.
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We we move on from that was, incidentally, the foolishness of
19:24
the week. Oh, no, no, it wasn't.
19:27
See how stupid it was? It should have been the
19:29
foolishness of the week. But we've got something even
19:32
Dumber. And, and it comes from our
19:35
friend W Westmoreland, who sent it to me just a couple of days
19:38
ago. And I thought, what stupid
19:41
things are they doing in North Carolina that Wes is telling me
19:45
about today? But no, Wes wants me to know
19:47
about the stupid thing they're doing in Tolleson, AZ.
19:51
Here we go. The voters in Tolleson, AZ,
19:57
approved a $125 million school bond last November.
20:05
And I just want to say that every, and I mean this literally
20:10
every single time I am presented with the option to vote yes or
20:17
no on a bond issue, I vote no. I don't care what it's for.
20:22
I don't care how much people say they need it.
20:25
I I don't care about anything. One, you've got one no vote
20:29
baked right in that you have to overcome.
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And I encourage every single person I know to do the same
20:36
thing because bond issues are almost always a bunch of
20:42
nonsense. And the good people of Tolleson,
20:46
thinking as good people would that the schools need the money,
20:51
voted yes on this. And then the Tolleson Union High
20:57
School District decided to move ahead with an $80 million new
21:05
domed football stadium for their high school football team.
21:09
Oh wow. There are teams in the NFL that
21:12
don't have Dome. Stadiums A Dome stadium for a
21:15
high. School for a high school $80
21:19
million of the 125 million that the good people of Tolleson
21:24
decided functionally to tax themselves.
21:28
A bond is a tax on yourself. James, do you know where
21:35
Tolleson is in Arizona? No.
21:39
If I'm looking at the right one, I just asked population Tolleson
21:42
AZ. It can't be right.
21:45
It says 9300 people. No, that can be right.
21:50
That can be right. There are there are little towns
21:52
all over the place here and some of them cluster together to make
21:56
larger metropolitan areas. I can give you a little more
21:58
information on Tolleson. 22% of the district students are
22:02
proficient in math and 22% and 26 proficient in English.
22:09
You you would think. You, you, yeah, you would think
22:12
that, well, I'm sure the voters thought we're going to, we're
22:14
going to borrow $125 million to get those those numbers up.
22:19
Then maybe our children won't be so damn stupid.
22:21
OK, so I'm, I'm just looking at it now.
22:24
Yeah, you're correct. There's a greater area there the
22:27
the high school district has 225,000 students.
22:33
I don't know students, people. The high school district area is
22:37
225,000. How?
22:39
Far away are they from me. I do not know.
22:42
But you got the map open. I don't have a map, I'm talking
22:45
to AI. Yeah, why?
22:49
Why, Why do we even ask anymore? You.
22:52
Have an on. You have an ongoing relationship
22:54
with AI that surpasses every human relationship you have ever
22:58
had. But there's this We keep saying
23:01
over and over. I say we Americans keep saying
23:04
over and over that we aren't spending enough on schools.
23:07
In fact, I know it was the case, at least as of five years ago,
23:11
that Arizona teachers were the lowest paid school teachers in
23:16
the country. Yep.
23:18
And I don't mean by a small amount if the time I was.
23:21
Looking you back then you could you could you a starting salary
23:25
was I think $29,000. Yeah, at the time I was looking
23:28
which was about five years ago or so, the the typical salary
23:33
for public school teacher in Arizona was round about 20 to
23:37
30,000 in that range versus in Pennsylvania it was 60 to
23:41
80,000. Now Pennsylvania I think is the
23:43
third highest paid but but nonetheless.
23:47
This is a rough state to be a teacher in, but I've I've known
23:51
I've known a number of very good teachers here, but.
23:55
Oh yeah, and I yeah, I have as well.
23:57
I don't know why they. Do it in a state like that.
24:00
You put a referendum for a bond in front of the voters and of
24:05
course they're going to assume that you're, at the least you're
24:08
going to raise the teacher salaries and preferably more
24:12
educational things to get those numbers up.
24:15
I'm sure it never occurred to anybody, save for the people who
24:18
wrote the question, will you give us $125 million that they
24:22
were going to build a domed stadium?
24:25
Nope, 80 of 20 of 125, almost 2/3 were immediately set aside
24:30
to build a stadium. And I can almost guarantee you,
24:34
aunt, that there will be a budget shortfall in the building
24:38
of the stadium and they will go back to the voters for more
24:42
because that's what they, that's what they do.
24:44
And This is why I, I, I've just gotten a, a bond issue
24:48
referendum in the mail for me to vote on.
24:51
And I will be voting no. I don't even look to see what
24:55
it's for because it doesn't matter.
24:59
A, a bond issue is a government saying we don't have enough of
25:03
your money to do what we want to do.
25:07
Figure it out. Just go figure it out.
25:09
You get my taxes, go figure it out.
25:12
You can't have any more. And I think a lot of people see
25:16
bonds like this and they might start thinking kind of like I
25:21
do. But anyway, we switch now Ant to
25:24
the government shutdown, something that you and I really
25:27
haven't talked about at all. I guess we've become so blase
25:31
about government shutdowns that we, we just don't, we don't even
25:36
bother. And I can tell you that my, my
25:40
wife and son went to a park recently on a, on a road trip
25:48
and they were not allowed in a variation of the Washington
25:51
Monument strategy. Right when everything just gets
25:54
closed down with police tape. And, and, and they texted me,
25:59
they said, oh, there's police tape across the, the entryway.
26:02
And I said, can't you just get under it?
26:05
Probably not keeping you out. And she said, well, there's a a
26:09
Park Rangers truck just past the tape.
26:13
Oh right, they're paying the Park Rangers.
26:16
I said Are you sure? Because I don't think those guys
26:19
are getting paid. And she said it might be a
26:22
cardboard cut out as I look at it.
26:25
And I said so why aren't you in the park?
26:29
And, and of course, the wife is not a law breaker and I
26:33
routinely AM. So she did not do what I just
26:37
would have naturally done and she called it a day.
26:43
You know, that's the outward manifestation of the shutdown.
26:48
And I, I can say that I don't feel the effects of a shutdown
26:52
right now. You, I'm pretty sure you don't
26:56
either. Although living in DC you may
26:58
see the effects more than I do. Yeah, I don't, I don't feel them
27:03
because I'm not involved with government or, or anything that
27:06
is involved with government. But this is the first time I've
27:09
been in the environs of DC when there's been a shutdown.
27:15
And boy, are the people around here feeling you could see it in
27:19
in really, it's not just a shutdown.
27:21
It's a shutdown coming after all the Doge cuts.
27:25
The real estate market is all in tatters.
27:29
People are. I have a friend who works for
27:32
the federal government and so I was asking him about this and he
27:37
said he has not been furloughed. In fact, he won't be furloughed.
27:41
So he still has to go into work. However, he's not being paid.
27:44
So, yeah, so. And we're going to He gets worst
27:47
of both worlds. Yeah, worst of both worlds.
27:49
And I want to get to that in a very specific context in a
27:52
couple of minutes, but I want to start with this other thing that
28:02
has both terrified one group of people and enraged another group
28:08
of people. And that's the announcement that
28:12
SNAP, or what we euphemistically call food stamp payments, will
28:17
not, will not go out November 1st.
28:21
We're all done. Is that true?
28:23
Yeah. No more.
28:24
No more money in that pot and 42,000,000 human beings in the
28:31
United States get food stamps. That's a mandatory spending
28:37
item. Trump has The administration has
28:40
announced that no federal food aid will go out N1 so let's.
28:44
Just I wonder. Let's work with that assumption
28:47
at least. OK.
28:48
But I'm, I'm wondering technically if, if it's not a
28:51
matter that the money's not there, but rather he's not
28:55
paying the people who would be moving that money out.
28:59
Yeah. And in effect, so same same end
29:03
result. The money's not going out.
29:04
Yeah, I, I don't know what the technicalities are, but I do
29:08
know a couple of things that I want to talk about.
29:11
The first is that, geez, aunt, we've got 42 million people on
29:17
food aid. We only have 330 million people.
29:22
That's how many now? One in eight.
29:24
One in eight Americans. Are on food assistance that is
29:32
unsustainable. I I can tell you that there are
29:38
always going to be people who need food assistance.
29:42
It will never be 1/8 of the population.
29:45
Yeah. So there's something going on
29:47
here, and it's going to have to be addressed, right?
29:51
And there was a time you remember it, and I remember it
29:55
when people talked about the deserving and the undeserving
29:58
poor. And we washed that out of our
30:02
vernacular because it made the undeserving poor feel really bad
30:06
about themselves. And I, I think I'm ready to
30:11
start saying things like, do you deserve this?
30:17
Are you able to work? This gets to the second point
30:20
that I want to talk about in this very context because in the
30:25
last, well, in the Trump years, we have normalized cruelty.
30:33
People are being quite rotten to each other.
30:37
And you see all over social media, well, there shouldn't be
30:41
food stamps anyway. To hell with you.
30:45
Well, really, Because when you find out that considerably
30:50
better than half the people on food assistance are in fact
30:54
working, they're trying, right? They're doing what they can.
30:59
It's just not working out. That's what we would call the
31:03
deserving poor, right? People who are in the mix, given
31:07
it all they've got, right? They're just on hard times,
31:11
right? Right.
31:12
And they might be on food stamps for a while and then not and
31:16
then back and then not. But hopefully the trajectory is
31:19
upward to the point where they can become perfectly
31:22
self-sustaining and maybe in their hearts, thankful to the
31:27
rest of us for the help we extended.
31:30
I have no beef with people like that, none whatsoever.
31:34
I do have a beef with people who want more and more and more and
31:38
refuse to do anything to get it. And I I think we're going to
31:43
have to start differentiating. If we're at one in eight, we're
31:47
going to have to start differentiating.
31:49
Well, let me maybe put some context to that one in eight
31:54
number because I don't know how they're counting this.
31:57
If you say if they're counting people, not households, which I
32:01
they're. Counting people would.
32:02
Think they are 42,000,000. Figure a decent chunk of those
32:07
are going to be children, right? I don't know how many like
32:12
children and also the elderly. So let's say just for the sake
32:15
of argument, half of the people of those 42,000,000 other
32:19
children are elderly. Well, now you're down to to 6%
32:24
because the children relatively I wouldn't they're relying on
32:26
somebody else who who hasn't stepped up or circumstances what
32:30
have you. Yeah.
32:31
So I would say really the number you're talking about is not one
32:34
in eight, but one in 16. Well, and we're going to have to
32:38
figure it all out. It's going to take more work
32:40
than we just did. You know, I, I've worked for
32:44
many years, still do with, with my parish and the many things
32:49
that we do. And one of them is helping the
32:51
poor. And this, this came up was 1
32:56
Christmas some years ago when, you know, we're giving out
32:58
things and somebody said, well, you know, there are people here
33:01
who are coming for presents or food or what have you.
33:04
And clearly they don't need it. And, and an older woman said you
33:09
have to go through the greedy to get to the needy.
33:12
I thought, wow, that's a great way to look at it.
33:15
OK, fine, you're greedy. You don't need this, but we'll
33:18
give it to you go and that that's now you're out of the
33:21
way. I can get to the needy people I
33:23
need to get to. And I have no problem with a
33:26
private charity doing that. I have a lot of problem with
33:29
federal government doing that. Yeah, and people will say, you
33:34
know well, but private charities don't do enough.
33:37
But I think part of the problem is we turn to government 1st and
33:42
government crowds out to, we can argue to what degree, but it
33:46
does crowd out private charity. We should be doing the other
33:48
way. Turn to private charity 1st and
33:50
then let the government pick up pick up the pieces that are
33:52
left. Yeah, look, I, I think some form
33:55
of work fair is in order. I, I really do.
33:58
If you're going to, if you're going to get a handout from the
34:00
government, here's your crappy, crappy job we're going to expect
34:03
you to go do, even if it's cleaning the highways or
34:06
something, something, right? Just just something.
34:11
But, but anyway, there's more to the story than just this.
34:15
Although this is going to be a problem, right?
34:18
Because you're going to have, regardless of how many people
34:22
might not deserve this, you're going to have a bunch of hungry
34:26
people as of November 1st. And hungry people do desperate
34:31
things. They do.
34:34
And I, I can guarantee you that the one of the first things
34:38
that's going to ripple through the news is people stealing from
34:42
grocery stores. And then the second thing that's
34:45
going to ripple through the news, once people realize that
34:48
that's not as easy as it seems, they're just going to start
34:51
taking shopping carts from people as they go from the door
34:54
of the store to their car because those are the obvious
34:59
victims. These things are going to happen
35:02
if people get hungry enough. So you've got that coming N1 and
35:07
then you've got Ant flight delays because 13,000 air
35:14
traffic controllers and 50,000 Transportation Security
35:18
Administration officers must work without pay.
35:23
So all the air traffic controllers and the TSA guys,
35:28
now I'm going to make the argument that we could probably
35:30
live without the TSA guys. But the air traffic control
35:34
system, that's where. We need those guys.
35:36
That is one of the very few things I point to and say.
35:39
This is why you want a federal government right here.
35:43
They're being asked to work without pay.
35:44
And you know what happens when people are asked to work without
35:47
pay? They don't show up for work as
35:49
much. Right.
35:51
They take days off, they get sick and don't go.
35:55
And I don't blame them. I wouldn't either.
35:57
I don't go to work if somebody's not paying me.
36:01
That's video game time, right? That's that's music time.
36:05
I'm going to do something I truly enjoy if I'm not, if I
36:08
don't have the opportunity to make a living.
36:11
And so we've got think about this and, and look, even right
36:15
now we have kind of like rolling groundings in Houston, in
36:20
Dallas, a couple other airports right now.
36:23
I think 8000 flights were delayed yesterday.
36:27
Holy crap. Do you know what happens on
36:30
November 27th, 3 weeks after the food runs out and three weeks
36:34
after 13,000 air traffic controllers don't get paid?
36:40
Isn't that the heaviest travel day of the year?
36:43
Indeed it is, and the biggest eating day of the year.
36:47
Right. Thanksgiving.
36:50
What are all these poor people without food and all these air
36:53
traffic controllers without pay? What's that going to yield
36:59
around Thanksgiving Chaos? Certainly it's not going to
37:03
chaos, it's not going to go on that long, do you think?
37:05
Well, and that's why I think it's not going to go that long.
37:09
I think there is an obvious day that this nonsense needs to be
37:14
squared away and it's Thanksgiving.
37:19
I think it can go until maybe a week or five days before
37:22
Thanksgiving, but it can't go past that.
37:26
I'd really be. Surprised to see it go that far.
37:30
I would like, and I'm going to, I'm going to temper my language
37:34
here because I don't want people to suffer.
37:39
I want to make that perfectly clear, but I would like to see
37:42
the backlash of a ruined Thanksgiving.
37:45
I think that might teach politicians a lesson that they
37:48
they wouldn't otherwise learn when they take away things that
37:52
are important to people on a deep personal level.
37:56
And you know, we've said this before, at least I have.
37:59
Thanksgiving is likely my favorite day of the year.
38:03
It's, it's a fantastic day. It has everything that I love
38:09
wrapped up until one day. Probably not this year as my, my
38:13
2 beautiful daughters have moved out of the house and are very
38:17
unlikely to make it back right. So the gathering of family,
38:21
probably not going to happen, but a fantastic dinner.
38:26
No expectations on the other people in your family, right?
38:29
It's not a gift giving opportunity.
38:31
Slash mess football on my TV. Temperate weather outside my
38:39
door. This is a wonderful American
38:43
holiday, and if government ruins it even once, people may never
38:48
trust government again. And where you started?
38:53
They're already thinking that government is the federal
38:55
government is too powerful. Well, part of being too powerful
39:01
is not doing the things that need to be done and being able
39:06
to get away with it. That's probably the most
39:08
pernicious form of power that you can do the things that
39:13
you're situated to do, and you just simply refuse because who's
39:18
going to hold you accountable? And to people who will say,
39:21
well, these guys are constantly talking about the government
39:24
being too big, and now they're complaining about the shutdown,
39:28
let me remind you that government shutdowns actually
39:31
cost more money than keeping the government open.
39:35
So this is achieving nothing on the economic side.
39:38
And why don't we put a graph up right here?
39:41
This is an easy one because we see it every single time the
39:45
government shuts down, spending flat lines.
39:48
And then the minute the shutdown is over, it increases well past
39:56
the point that it would have been otherwise.
39:59
And then we wait for the next shutdown and it flatlines and
40:02
then it goes right back up again.
40:03
And why does it go right back up again?
40:05
Because everybody and every contractor gets back paid.
40:09
It's not like the people who worked or who lost out on
40:14
contracts during this period have to eat that loss.
40:18
We as taxpayers have to eat that loss.
40:22
Why we just pay for it later? So what you're looking at is,
40:26
and this comes from my beloved Fred, this is the Federal
40:29
Reserve Economic Database. What you're seeing is the
40:33
federal debt going back to roughly 2010, right?
40:37
So this is straight up the federal debt in dollars.
40:39
That's what you think. And of course, the thing goes up
40:41
as you go along. But if as you look at this
40:43
graph, as you move from left to right, notice there are several
40:46
places where it's flat and then it jumps, and then it's flat and
40:51
then it jumps. And there's a very big one there
40:54
at 2020, but I believe that was due to COVID.
40:57
But you can see one later on in 2021, it's flat and then it
41:01
jumps. Now what's going on here?
41:03
The flat is the federal government hitting its debt
41:07
ceiling. So of course, it hits a debt
41:08
ceiling so it can't borrow any more money.
41:10
And you get an effect not dissimilar from the shutdown.
41:14
They don't necessarily always shut down, but you've got the
41:16
same thing of all of a sudden we're in stasis because we can't
41:19
spend any more money and the thing gets resolved.
41:23
And when it gets resolved, the spending resumes.
41:26
And you would think, OK, we'll spending resumes, but we saved
41:29
money because we were shut down for those days or we weren't
41:33
spending or whatever it is. No, no, no, all that spending
41:35
gets pushed off to the end. So once the debt ceiling is
41:39
raised or once the government is now turned back on, all of that
41:44
spending that should have happened and didn't all happens
41:47
at once. All at once, so.
41:49
You know, you talk about the the federal workers getting their
41:52
back pay. Yeah, they get their, they get
41:54
their back pay. So yes, they're not getting paid
41:56
now, but they are going to get that in the future.
41:58
Actually, there is there is a group who is going to get the
42:02
fuzzy end of the sucker here. And those are people who work
42:06
for the federal government on a contracting basis.
42:08
They. Aren't federal contracts don't
42:11
include this. Other contracts do, right?
42:15
And, and I was, I'd start off by talking about my friend who
42:18
works for the federal government and he's in a, he has not been
42:22
furloughed. He's required to go into work,
42:25
but he's not being paid. So yeah, I mean that we had a
42:30
name for that 150 years ago and we outlawed.
42:32
Yes we did. Yes we did.
42:34
Now. Now we just say it sucks to be
42:36
him. But it gets worse if you're a
42:38
furloughed worker, so you're not getting paid and you don't come
42:43
into work, you are forbidden from getting work on the side.
42:47
So you just have to sit there without a paycheck, not doing
42:49
anything with without a paycheck and not doing anything.
42:53
And coming around full circle, getting all the way back to the
42:56
food problem, a number of federal workers, lower level
43:02
federal workers and a number of contractors.
43:05
And all the workers who rely on the contractors, they're,
43:10
they're eviscerating the food banks in and around DC.
43:15
Yeah. And there's a massive shortage
43:19
there. Well, yeah.
43:21
I mean, you can see this is how a problem starts, and you're
43:26
seeing things starting to have a ripple effect, and it will get
43:32
worse. And because we've normalized
43:36
cruelty, people say things like, I don't care.
43:42
Well, OK, don't don't care. Sooner or later, violence will
43:50
show up at your door if you continue not to care.
43:53
So there's a perfectly self interested reason to care.
43:57
And aunt, you've heard me say this over and over and over lo,
44:03
these many years. I actually believe, and I want
44:07
people to hear the words that I'm saying, I actually believe
44:11
that welfare is the way we buy the cooperation of the poor.
44:17
You know. It keeps the poor from revolting
44:23
and if that makes me sound like an anti capitalist I don't care
44:28
it it makes me a realistic human being who can see what a
44:32
political system does to maintain order.
44:36
And when that breaks down, the order that it was keeping will
44:41
break down too. So be careful.
44:46
Be careful how cruel you want to be, and be careful what your
44:51
policy wishes are. Just be careful, because
44:55
terrible things could in fact happen.
44:59
James and I are delighted to be working with Civil.
45:01
For years we have been pushing people to think about how we can
45:04
make the world a better place. Civil's mission of upgrading
45:08
society fits exactly with what James and I have been talking
45:11
about for years. Civil helps us by allowing us to
45:14
do what we do best, which is researching topics that are
45:17
important and communicating these to our listeners in ways
45:21
we hope they find enjoyable. To see Civil's extensive list of
45:24
content, including our podcast Words and Numbers and our new
45:28
lecture series, Words and Numbers Live, visit civil.com.
45:31
That's civl.com. I'm going to go back to the
45:36
shutdown itself because, frankly, I've forgotten why it
45:40
shut down. What's the point here?
45:42
What? There's some impasse.
45:46
Yeah, Democrats want a bunch of a bunch of crap that the
45:49
Republicans don't want to give them.
45:52
Chief among them, it seems, if everybody's telling the truth,
45:56
is money to support the Affordable Care Act in ways into
46:03
the future that would otherwise disappear.
46:07
Subsidies for the ACA. And Republicans are saying, no,
46:11
we're not going to do that. And Democrats are saying, well,
46:15
people's, people's healthcare costs are skyrocketing to
46:21
exactly what Harrigan said they were back in 2017, right?
46:26
You might, you might recall. And when I said in 2017 that in
46:30
order to get healthcare for my family of five because I, I no
46:35
longer had a job after strata closed down and I and I was
46:39
mandated to buy healthcare, you might remember who had to.
46:44
Affordable Care Act required you to have healthcare.
46:46
Required you to have it and, and all I wanted was catastrophic
46:50
insurance. So if somebody fell down and
46:52
broke a leg, I'm covered. But if we have to go in for a
46:56
case of the flu, I, I'll pay for it.
47:00
But you couldn't have that, right?
47:02
That was no longer allowed. You had to have not insurance
47:05
but coverage, and between the premiums and the deductibles, I
47:12
was going to be $35,000 out of pocket before a single dime was
47:18
covered. So it was cheaper for me to say,
47:24
well no, we're not doing that, and to just pay the fine.
47:27
It was way cheaper. And this was after the
47:30
Affordable Care Act. Was passed.
47:32
This was a direct result of the Affordable Care Act.
47:36
And then they figured out a way to subsidize all the the Obama
47:40
fanboys called me a liar. There's no you're you're just
47:43
lying to make a point. I'm trust me, that was the best
47:47
you. Had Obama Derangement Syndrome.
47:50
I I. Did.
47:51
That was the best plan I could find.
47:53
There were far, far far worse ones, but that was the best.
47:56
And I've been seeing lately people presenting that very same
48:01
math that, you know, 32 to $35,000 between premiums and
48:07
deductibles right now. And, and the Democrats, you
48:11
know, knowing who their base kind of is, are looking at that
48:17
saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, we can't have that.
48:20
Now, oddly, we've had a bit of a reversion in terms of the
48:25
parties, right? The working class is becoming
48:29
ever more Republican in the upper class is becoming ever
48:32
more Democrat. So things are really changing
48:35
there. And I, I dare say when Trump
48:39
says no to that, a bunch of his people are going to be on the
48:43
ass end of that screw and they just haven't figured that out
48:46
yet. Kind of like the farmers ended
48:49
up paying for the tariffs in the form of the, you know, no
48:54
Chinese market anymore, right? And this sort of thing.
48:58
So he's, he's carving into his own base with, with some of this
49:01
behavior. And sooner or later it becomes
49:05
so obviously painful that you have to stop doing it as
49:08
politicians. OK, so, so that's my follow up
49:11
question. The average voter, and I, I
49:13
stress average, looking at this, sees the government shutdown,
49:18
not doing the things it's supposed to do and the
49:21
Republicans in control of Congress, in control of the
49:24
White House. Now, I know there's fine print
49:28
there about you need to get a bill through the Senate and you
49:32
need a super majority, which the Republicans don't have.
49:35
Therefore the Democrats can stop legislation even though they're
49:39
a minority. But that's not that's that's
49:42
splitting hairs for the average voter.
49:45
For the average voter, it absolutely is.
49:47
For the, the average voter will say, and I think reason
49:50
reasonably so you have the presidency, you have the House,
49:53
you have the Senate, just go do something and that perfectly
49:58
reasonable thing to say. I want to push back a little bit
50:01
on super majority. That's that's a term of there
50:05
are things that would be super majorities.
50:07
I think 2/3, three quarters, 66 or 75 in the Senate, but you
50:14
need 60, which means, you know, you got to you got to get your
50:18
own people on board uniformly and you got to peel off 6 or 7
50:24
Democrats. And if you can't do that, maybe
50:31
you don't deserve to cover. I mean, there's got to be
50:35
something you can offer to six or seven Democrats that would
50:39
peel them off. You've already got John
50:40
Fetterman right from Pennsylvania, a guy who I
50:44
actually quite enjoy watching. He's he's always a bit of a wild
50:49
card. Well they they may not have a
50:50
much longer. Isn't he switching parties?
50:54
You know, there's always scuttlebutt, but who knows?
50:56
Sooner or later he has to face the the voters in Pennsylvania.
50:59
And I don't know if they're going to like him enough to to
51:02
re elect him. We'll see.
51:04
But you know, 60 is not a super majority.
51:06
It's just more than it's a bit more than half.
51:10
And if, if you can't get it done, I mean, come on, you can't
51:13
get it done. And we're, we're approaching a
51:16
time here where something's going to give.
51:21
I, I can feel it happening. And Thanksgiving is a hard stop
51:25
on this. So who's going to give and what
51:29
are they going to give? And that's going to be real fun
51:32
to watch. I don't.
51:33
Know I can't. I can't imagine the Democrats
51:37
giving in if they do. Make Trump look stupid.
51:43
Well, it'll it'll send a signal that the Republicans can just
51:46
run all over them, that we're effectively one party, at least
51:49
until the midterms. And yet, if they if the
51:54
Democrats become perceived as the party that ended food
52:01
stamps. Right.
52:03
Yeah. Then again, we're one party,
52:05
right? Yeah, yeah.
52:06
The the the midterms aren't going to go well for them at
52:09
all. Yeah.
52:10
And, and trust me, everybody is thinking more about the midterms
52:17
than they're thinking about people who need food.
52:20
Yeah. They're they're a pack of
52:21
sociopaths. You don't get to where they all
52:25
are if you're not a sociopath. I think I looking at Congress
52:31
broadly, there may be a handful who aren't maybe and that's that
52:39
I don't, I'll just leave it at that.
52:41
This. These are the kind of people who
52:43
seek power, who's not seeking power?
52:45
Me and you. Good God, good God.
52:49
I actually was asked yesterday by someone who has the ability
52:54
to make good on this if I wanted my name floated for a job in the
52:59
administration. Really.
53:02
I can't imagine. Did you?
53:03
And you said no. I can't imagine I I don't.
53:07
In the end, I'm can can you say what kind of job?
53:10
No, in the end, I'm positive they wouldn't want me.
53:13
So there's that, right? They got to know me.
53:16
They wouldn't want me at all. But no, I can't do that.
53:21
I just can't. Yeah, you.
53:22
Can you say recall what you and I were together?
53:25
It was, I want to say 10 years ago, I was giving a talk
53:29
somewhere in Pittsburgh and at the end of the thing, my handler
53:34
said, oh, we got some people who want to meet you.
53:36
I said, fine, people like to, you know, talk after this thing.
53:40
So I go in and it's a room of of Republican donors and they want
53:46
to float my name to replace whatever Republican congressman
53:51
was from that area was resigning.
53:54
And I thought about it a bit and I said, and I said to the to the
53:57
people, I I can't, it will be too much like working for the
54:01
enemy. And they said, they said the
54:05
Republicans are the enemy. I said no, no, government is the
54:09
enemy. And I, I was a little
54:13
disappointed then because you and I had agreed that I would be
54:16
your chief of staff if you moved forward with it.
54:19
Right. Yeah, but then I'd just be a
54:20
puppet, right? That's right.
54:22
We both know how that goes. That, that's right, chief of
54:25
staff for a congressman is a job I could clearly do.
54:29
That's what I would want because we would have no other staff.
54:32
The entire budget would flow in in the form of my salary and
54:36
then we would sit in the office. And say no to everything.
54:39
And say no to everything. That's right.
54:41
It would be a very, very easy gig to have being congressman if
54:45
I were the other guy you, I don't think I could do it.
54:49
I, I joke about running for Congress every few years saying
54:53
that I will simply vote no for it's kind of like the bond issue
54:58
that we started with. I will simply vote no for
55:00
everything that adds a dime to the federal debt, which is
55:04
literally every spending bill. It's just, I'm an automatic no.
55:09
You have to overcome that. And if I can get 20 more people
55:13
into the House of Representatives who are
55:15
automatic no's, trust me, we control the House of
55:19
Representatives. Me. 20 people could control the
55:24
entire process if they had the the nerve to just put their
55:29
boots in the ground and say no all the time, without fail,
55:34
without question. If everybody knows that's going
55:38
to be your answer and all these other weirdos too, Now they have
55:42
no choice but to behave better. They have no choice because
55:46
people start saying, look, these 20 people said you couldn't do
55:50
it. You did it anyway.
55:51
The debt went up again. Now we're going to make it so
55:54
they're 30 people and then 40. And before you know it, right,
55:57
that that's how internal revolutions happen.
56:01
And we got, we got Ron Paul. He did that.
56:04
But he did that. And I haven't heard of any other
56:06
congressman. Justin Amash did it.
56:10
Sure. Yes, right.
56:11
Thomas Massey to some degree, to a lesser degree, but to a very
56:15
significant degree still does it.
56:18
Rand Paul in the Senate behaves this way some years, not other
56:25
years. So there are some.
56:29
But you know, in the end, I'm not getting elected saying that
56:34
because what I'm also saying is I'm not going to be bringing
56:37
pork back to the district, right?
56:40
You're not going to get all these subsidies and grants and
56:43
every other damn thing. And, you know, until you break
56:46
your addiction on these things, you're going to have problems
56:49
like we have right now. And those problems will get
56:52
worse as the debt escalates because the interest on the debt
56:56
escalates as well, which means we have to borrow even more to
57:00
pay for what we've already borrowed.
57:03
And well, I mean, there's, there's no happy end insight
57:06
here. So when you think about grounded
57:10
flights all over the country at Thanksgiving and people who are
57:13
literally hungry at the same time, many of them children who
57:19
have no say in the matter, that's what you get.
57:25
I'm not saying that we should just throw money at everything,
57:29
but I'm saying when you stop the flow there are repercussions and
57:35
they get worse and worse and worse over time.
57:38
It's not at all different than going cold Turkey after you've
57:42
been in a drug for a long time. Yeah, that's right.
57:45
That that. That's probably the absolute
57:49
best analogy. Yeah, you want to get off the
57:52
drug, Absolutely, but there are ways to do it.
57:55
Yeah, yeah. I I will cheerfully admit the
57:58
hardest thing I've ever done in my life is quit smoking.
58:02
By far. It's not even close.
58:06
It's that bad. People out there who used to
58:08
smoke know exactly what I'm talking about.
58:10
It's miserable. How do you get off the
58:15
government teat when it's so profoundly huge and covers so
58:21
many different things? I don't know the answer to that
58:25
question. I mean, I do, but I don't know
58:28
how to do it in anything approaching A painless fashion.
58:32
I guess I would encourage people to keep watching Argentina
58:37
because they seem to be moving in the right direction and
58:40
Javier Malay in an election I guess it was yesterday, was
58:44
hoping to get 30% of the vote and got 40.
58:48
Wow, wow. People are starting to give him
58:53
the benefit of the doubt. Is it deserved?
58:57
Hey, I don't know, I'm not in Argentina.
58:59
From a distance, sure looks that way.
59:03
I'd love to have him on but his English just isn't where it
59:07
would need to be. He doesn't do interviews in
59:09
English. We've got to get an interpreter,
59:13
we've got to get them on somehow.
59:16
I, I, I also, I guess we're actually done now, right,
59:20
talking about this. So let's just have a minute and
59:24
talk about who I've been inviting to come on the podcast
59:27
because I'm, I'm looking for, I'm looking for people who are
59:31
interesting, right? And who are legitimately famous.
59:36
And I asked Dee Snyder yesterday the the singer for the metal
59:41
band Twisted Sister, who said something, Yeah, who said some
59:46
said something on Twitter that I thought, hey, that's
59:49
interesting. And and I caught him there and I
59:52
thought, hey, wouldn't it be great if he could come on and
59:55
talk about the 1985 PMRC fiasco when he testified in Senate?
1:00:00
He was fantastic. So, so brilliant in front of a
1:00:05
crowd full of very hostile people.
1:00:08
He just walked in in a pair of jeans and and and a kind of a a
1:00:13
leather and chains look and laid it down for them in a way that
1:00:18
was so intelligent they all shut up.
1:00:21
It was the weirdest triumvirate I've you've.
1:00:23
Got to help me out here. What is the PMRC fiasco?
1:00:27
Parental Music Resource. Oh, OK.
1:00:31
And it was, it was John Denver, Frank Zappa and Dee Snyder,
1:00:35
three people who would never have been in the same room
1:00:38
otherwise, showed up and let those people have it.
1:00:43
And it was beautiful. And I would love Dee Snyder to
1:00:46
come on and talk about that. It actually comes up on, on our,
1:00:49
in our discussions often, right? We, you and I have mentioned
1:00:54
this in passing probably 50 times.
1:00:59
And then I I went and saw a guy, John Andrasik is his name and he
1:01:04
performs under the name 5 for Fighting, had a gigantic hit
1:01:09
called Superman. Another gigantic hit called 100
1:01:13
Years Superman became known as the 9/11 song.
1:01:17
He played it at the 9/11 concert and this sort of thing.
1:01:20
And he was in Tucson last week and I went and saw him and it
1:01:24
was just blown away by how great the show was.
1:01:26
So I sent him a tweet and I said, hey man, you should come
1:01:30
on my podcast. I want to talk about your
1:01:33
songwriting process, why you do what you are the economics of
1:01:38
touring. And what was the 3rd 10 being an
1:01:41
outsider in in in the culture 'cause he's he's a conservative
1:01:47
and and yet he makes his living as as a singer.
1:01:51
He performed here in Tucson with a string quartet and it was
1:01:54
stunning. It was just stunning.
1:01:57
Prior to the concert, I sent him a tweet inviting him and his
1:02:01
crew and the band over to my house for dinner, but I never
1:02:04
heard back. But when I pushed him a little
1:02:08
bit to come on the podcast, I got a thumbs up sign on on
1:02:14
Twitter. And I kind of take that as
1:02:16
meaning I could start harassing him about it.
1:02:18
Now, Snyder do no, no, no sign at all.
1:02:23
But you know, we're we're looking to have these
1:02:25
fascinating type of people on. So if you happen to know a
1:02:30
fascinating person and and hear me when I say this with a much
1:02:35
bigger reach than we already have, right?
1:02:39
We're looking to build an audience.
1:02:41
And the only way you build an audience is to go find different
1:02:44
people. So it's saying, oh, yeah, you
1:02:47
should have our friend Phil Magnus on again.
1:02:50
Well, we. Are going to have.
1:02:52
We are going to have Phil Magnus on again, but everybody who
1:02:55
knows Phil already knows us, and vice versa.
1:02:58
So who out there is fascinating? Who does not know us?
1:03:03
That's who we want to talk to. Trust us.
1:03:06
We'll find something interesting to get into if you know somebody
1:03:09
out there. Instead of hate mail, send this
1:03:13
kind of mail to wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com.
1:03:17
See, I even know the the address.
1:03:19
Well, I've been saying it for so many years.
1:03:21
And I have to unsubscribe from every mailing list that we get
1:03:25
put on by those by the weasels. Out there who?
1:03:30
Just can't stop subscribing us to all manner.
1:03:36
Of drivel. The Marxists of like Central
1:03:41
Cleveland or whatever it was that that was inspired.
1:03:45
Whoever did that, my metaphorical hat is off to you.
1:03:50
Until next time at take care of yourself, be well, be good, and
1:03:56
be nice to each other. See you next time.
1:03:58
See you next time, James. At Words and Numbers.
1:04:01
We spend a lot of time talking about what's going on in the
1:04:04
economy and the government, but fundamentally, all of this boils
1:04:07
down to one thing. The greatest threat facing
1:04:10
modern society is a lack of respect.
1:04:13
The people who disagree somehow find it difficult, if not
1:04:16
impossible, to discuss their differences in a civil manner.
1:04:19
We as civil are interested in upgrading civilization by
1:04:22
encouraging people to engage with new ideas and ultimately to
1:04:26
engage civilly with each other. If you share this idea, please
1:04:30
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