Latest / Bourbon & Rum / A Balanced Scorecard for the Nation (from the Archives)

Transcript

A Balanced Scorecard for the Nation (from the Archives) · Bourbon & Rum

0:00
Hi, folks. This is Kent popping in to tell
0:02
you that this is going to be a little different.
0:04
So a few weeks ago we got a question from a listener and it
0:08
was one of those questions that seems simple until you actually
0:14
try to answer it. They asked how do you actually
0:18
measure whether a presidency is successful?
0:22
Well, we look at a lot of things.
0:23
We look at GDP, we look at the Dow, but arguing those numbers,
0:29
it's a little like looking at a map of the ocean when you're
0:31
trying to find a person in a lifeboat.
0:34
They tell you the scale, but they don't tell you the
0:38
condition. We're actually in the middle of
0:41
a big project right now, an episode we're calling The 5th
0:44
Floor, where Kyle pulls off a really special kind of
0:47
experiment, a social experiment. And that story is coming next
0:52
week. But we're taking time to get it
0:54
right because we think it's really going to be interesting.
0:58
So by popular demand, we're revisiting our balanced
1:02
scorecard for the nation. From the price of bourbon to the
1:06
health of our schools, this is how we're keeping score.
1:09
So be sure to turn in next week for the 5th Floor episode and
1:13
watch a future episode where we'll revisit this scorecard and
1:18
see how we've done. Welcome to another episode of
1:30
Bourbon and Rum. This is a podcast of two
1:33
brothers from opposite ends of the spectrum.
1:40
My name is Kent, I'm a rum drinker, and I'm from the left
1:42
side of the aisle. And I'm Kyle, I like bourbon,
1:45
tend to be a little more conservative.
1:50
Join us as we explore this experiment.
1:53
Can two brothers from different sides of the political spectrum
1:56
have a civil conversation and celebrate our differences?
2:11
What are you drinking? Well, I I'm drinking a bourbon
2:16
that I don't know, it's one of my favorite bourbons of all
2:19
time, I think. And I think I drank it at one of
2:22
our episodes, but I don't know if we really introduced or not
2:25
because I I had recharged during an episode and I started
2:29
drinking it. But I'm drinking Elmer T Lee.
2:32
It's a Buffalo Trace bourbon, and Elmer T Lee was a master
2:37
distiller at Buffalo Trace and he pioneered the idea of single
2:42
barrel bourbons back in the early 1980s.
2:45
And his first single barrel bourbon was Blanton's.
2:47
And so he came up with the whole Blanton's thing and in his
2:53
honor, they made another single barrel bourbon in his name.
2:57
And I guess he actually, up until he died in 2013, he would
3:01
actually select the barrels for it.
3:03
But they have different match bills at Buffalo Trace.
3:08
And this is Bat Mash bill #2 it's the same mash bill they use
3:11
for Blanton's and Rock Hill Farms and some other ones.
3:15
It's a really kind of sweet, you know, it's kind of a vanilla
3:19
Carmelie taste to it, but really smooth, really hard to find.
3:25
And my crazy neighborhood got me a bottle of it.
3:28
We exchanged bottles of bourbon for for Christmas and he went
3:33
off the deep end on this one. So that's what I'm drinking
3:36
stuff. Down.
3:37
Really cool. Yeah.
3:38
What are you drinking? Well, I am drinking a gift from
3:44
one of our faithful listeners. Also.
3:47
Happens to be my sister-in-law, but she got me a bottle of Dos
3:54
Maderas triple aged rum. All right, so this stuff is made
4:01
in Barbados. It's then aged for a while in
4:05
Barbados before it's before it's put up.
4:07
Then the barrels are shipped to Guyana and they're aged for five
4:12
years in Guyana. Then the barrels are shipped to
4:16
Jerez, Spain, and they are aged another five years in Sherry
4:21
barrels and then it's bottled, so it's triple age.
4:26
Wow. It's really good.
4:28
I expected that it would be more molasses, see, because made in
4:32
Barbados, you know, I'm thinking like a English speaking.
4:36
Kind of. And it's so dark.
4:38
I mean it. It's crazy how dark that is.
4:40
But it's clean. It doesn't have much of A it's
4:44
got a very fine flavor, like a a fine refined Spanish, Spanish
4:51
speaking rum. It's it's ridiculously good.
4:53
Really good, very sweet. Well, it sounds very sweet.
4:57
It sounds expensive. Yeah, sounds pretty expensive if
5:00
it's moved around that much. I don't know what she paid, but
5:05
it was worth every penny. I'll pay you.
5:10
Tomorrow's a big day. Yeah.
5:12
Martin Luther King Junior Day. And then there's some other
5:15
sideshow things happening during the day, like Trump's
5:18
inauguration. So, but, you know, I, I thought
5:24
it would be interesting as we stand kind of at the hinge
5:27
between two administrations. I'm as guilty as anybody.
5:32
I, I throw things out all the time that I think or that I, I
5:36
think people should know or that.
5:38
But, you know, it's kind of an interesting moment and I'm going
5:42
to suggest that we discuss, you know, what are the metrics that
5:48
I'm on record saying that I hope Trump succeeds.
5:52
How are we going to know what what constitutes a successful
5:54
presidency? And what I think would be cool
5:57
is if we could agree on a number of measures that we think are
6:01
important and meaningful. And there's some great data
6:06
sources out there. And maybe we'll keep a scorecard
6:10
going and we can publish that on the podcast website and just
6:13
see, you know, where are we? Because there's a lot of
6:18
folklore. But, you know, and, and truth to
6:22
tell, it's a little hard to pick, you know, what is
6:24
important for you at what stage of life.
6:26
But maybe we can spell out a few things that we agree that we
6:31
think would be important to track.
6:32
That was my idea. Well, and for for historical
6:35
context, we could take him back in administration or two as well
6:39
because anything we pull we can probably get something that is
6:42
historical data to that might get some good context.
6:45
Yeah, I took a swing at that a while ago.
6:49
I picked the Kennedy administration and moving
6:53
forward as kind of recent and maybe that I don't know if
6:56
that's a good a good measure, but that's, you know, a little
7:00
over 60 years. Yeah.
7:03
Kennedy, Kennedy administration feels closer to modern era than
7:08
than Eisenhower. You know what I mean?
7:09
Like that seems like a kind of a pivot, you know, it's arbitrary,
7:13
I guess. But you know, seems like that
7:15
would be a good way and we can look at some data and we can
7:17
pull some graphs. When you think about the economy
7:22
being good, not only just economy, I think we should look
7:24
at measures other than economics.
7:25
But what you know what? What matters to you?
7:29
What do you? What do you want to see?
7:30
That you know well, that alone, you know, it's funny when you
7:34
talk about, you know, what statistics are important, Well
7:38
is everything is political, that's political too.
7:40
I mean, what you know, what statistics matter to you
7:45
probably depend on what the priorities were that your party
7:49
supported. So, for instance, border
7:52
crossings are probably not a metric, you know, illegal border
7:56
crossings are probably not a metric to that the that was high
8:00
on the DN CS list of metrics to track.
8:02
But it's certainly a a metric that those that voted for Trump
8:05
are looking to track, you know, so that, you know, there
8:07
probably are some things like that that are like, you know,
8:11
sure, depending on your perspective.
8:13
Well, I wrote that down, and what I'll do is after this, I'm
8:18
going to do some research and I'm going to look for good data,
8:20
data feeds that we can track this stuff on.
8:23
But I think that's fair. If this is, that's something
8:25
that's really important to you and you want to see how that
8:29
changes over time. I don't know how far back we can
8:32
go. We'll do the best that we can.
8:34
But yeah, let's lay it out there and see what that looks like.
8:37
Yeah. What are other things that you
8:40
would put on your Christmas list?
8:42
I think inflation is one that sticks out.
8:46
And you know, that's the thing that I don't know, we, you know,
8:50
we talked a little bit about it and we talked about like what's
8:53
your hopes, fears or, you know, at the beginning of the year?
8:58
And I think that's one that I don't know.
9:01
I just feel like some of these economic metrics you can use and
9:08
spin in a way depending on what you're trying to spin them to.
9:12
Like, they're not necessarily, you know, it's like some of the
9:15
stuff crosses administrations and it's like, you know, if your
9:20
thing was, hey, it's not Biden's fault that the economy went bad,
9:24
Well, you'd probably say, well, maybe some of those things he
9:28
inherited from the last guy. But then if you say, you know,
9:32
OK, if Trump's going to turn the economy around, but then you
9:38
say, well, the inflation it inherited from the last guy,
9:43
it's like, I don't know. You know it.
9:47
Just looking at it objectively, Like, how do you say what is
9:52
truly one guy's fault or another guy's accomplishment?
9:57
You know that because it's not like these things happen
10:01
instantaneously and it just seems like people will spin them
10:06
to wherever they need them to look like, you know?
10:09
Sure. Well, and I think that's I think
10:12
that's why it would be important for us to come up with a
10:15
balanced scorecard with a number of measures, any particular
10:19
measure. I, I think, and you know, I know
10:21
we have some listeners that we get feedback from time to time
10:24
that like they're learning things on the podcast.
10:27
I don't want to talk down to people, but maybe to, to do a
10:30
couple steps back on what some of these things mean as we're
10:32
talking about them might be useful.
10:34
So inflation is is broadly defined as kind of increasing
10:42
prices over time. Right.
10:45
And so. Yeah, yeah.
10:46
So a really good, a good one is the consumer price index.
10:51
And what that does, they actually do what's called a
10:53
Market Basket. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
10:56
has essentially like a grocery list that they go shop every
11:00
week. And what happened to that
11:02
shopping list? Did that, did that price go up?
11:05
But one of the things that you'll find if you watch these
11:08
numbers often, you'll hear people referring to inflation
11:12
this and inflation that. But the truth is that it's like
11:16
a layer cake or a sandwich of a variety of things that are
11:19
moving Food prices is one that tends to move kind of together.
11:23
And we've had a lot of inflation in food prices lately.
11:26
You know, eggs, we have a couple of rounds of bird flu and eggs
11:29
are really hard to find. But like oil prices and gasoline
11:34
and home heating, those vary a lot, but they're not necessarily
11:39
very correlated to movement in food.
11:42
So we have things that we call core inflation that are normal
11:46
things that people have to buy. And then you have energy as a
11:50
separate track and that can, you know, that's what we had in the
11:53
1970s. You didn't have a ton of
11:54
inflation and things except oil prices went up by 1010 times and
11:58
that really put people in a hurt.
12:00
You also have inflation in things like durable goods or
12:03
stuff that you're going to buy it for a long time, your washing
12:06
machines and dryers and cars, right?
12:09
What happens with that? And so none of those prices like
12:13
when you hear that inflation was, you know, annualized to 4%
12:18
last year or whatever it is, probably no one of those items
12:23
is moving up 4%. But the average the whole basket
12:26
together, you look at your bill at the beginning of the month
12:29
and the bill at the end of the month and it and it has gone up
12:31
and we and then you annualize that.
12:33
So you've got something to compare.
12:34
So I think that's a really good thing.
12:36
But to your point, the things that government has as a lever
12:41
to control inflation often have kind of a delayed effect.
12:46
So Biden took a big hit. You, you know, agree with this.
12:50
But I'll tell you my perspective on this.
12:52
Biden took a big hit for just skyrocketing inflation early in
12:55
his term, first half of his term in particular.
12:58
The number one thing that drives inflation up is government
13:02
spending. And we spent a lot of government
13:05
money in in the pandemic. Not sure I'm saying that that
13:08
was even a bad idea. But you can't put, you know,
13:12
trillions of dollars in the PPP. Right.
13:15
Into the economy and think that it's not going to have
13:18
inflationary pressure later. So, you know, I'm not trying to
13:21
say, oh, it was all Trump's fault and Biden knows.
13:23
Bears responsibility but the bulk of the spending happened on
13:27
Biden's watch. 20 and 21 were the biggest increases and it was
13:31
like a multi trillion dollar jump and I think that's the
13:36
argument. Now you can say the argument is
13:38
he had to and that makes sense but.
13:40
Yeah, or that the decision, you know, I think it was, I mean, I
13:42
think it was kind of bipartisan. But you know, you can't blame
13:45
Biden for anything that happened in 20 because he didn't get to
13:48
the office till 21. Yeah, well, I have to.
13:52
I looked at it and it was, it was after he took office, the
13:56
two years after he took office. I may have my dates wrong, but
13:59
those were the biggest bumps. And you know, I get, like I
14:04
said, it was an extraordinary period of time.
14:07
I think everybody agrees with that for sure.
14:10
I guess my point is that these these measures you, you do have
14:13
to be a little bit informed at what you're looking at.
14:16
And anybody who whips one number out of their backpack and says,
14:18
see, that guy's an idiot. You're probably oversimplifying
14:23
well. Biggest thing I blame Biden for
14:26
coming out of the pandemic is the price of bourbon.
14:29
You know, everybody was drinking more bourbon during the pandemic
14:32
and he's done nothing Kent to control the price of bourbon.
14:35
It has gone crazy. You know that's a.
14:38
Hardship on the American family. It is, though, I'm looking at
14:43
the commodities that make up the the CPI.
14:47
So it's food and beverages, which consists of food at home
14:51
and food away from home. And part of food away from home
14:54
is alcoholic beverages. So they're in there housing,
14:58
apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education and
15:04
communication and other goods and services.
15:07
And then they're weighted says housing typically makes up the
15:10
largest portion. And then food, beverages and
15:12
transportation are big ads. So maybe that's that's something
15:16
we could change is to up the bourbon percentage in the CPI
15:21
calculation. That sounds like a platform on
15:24
which to run honestly. Now can't.
15:27
That I know this sounds like BS, but if we're making inflation,
15:33
like we can come up with these broad averages, but what about
15:37
that? Like, what if we made our own?
15:40
Like, pick a you one of your everyday rums and I'll pick an
15:44
everyday bourbon and let's do a strike of the price at a liquor
15:48
store tomorrow. I like that.
15:51
I mean, because that's close to home, you know?
15:54
I love that. Yeah.
15:56
Well, you. You pick a rum and I'll pick a
15:58
bourbon and I'll pick a rum and we'll put that on our our
16:03
dashboard of how the. Country is going.
16:06
Well, the. One I always used to gauge the
16:09
prices between liquor stores is a handle of Woodford.
16:12
So I'll do a handle handle of Woodford at, you know, one of
16:16
the big stores like Specs or Total Wine.
16:18
OK, I'll, I'll have to think about what I'm going to do.
16:21
I yeah, let me give that some thought.
16:25
But again, for our viewers maybe who are not as geeked about some
16:28
of this stuff as we are, one of the weird things about inflation
16:32
and again, why just splitting a number at somebody does not tell
16:36
the whole story. You mentioned housing as a key
16:39
part of CPI. And if you're a renter, seeing
16:45
heavy inflation in the price of housing is really daunting to
16:49
you. If you're a homeowner who's
16:51
sitting on a 30 year mortgage at 2%, listen, housing prices can
16:55
go up all they want, all that means is appreciation on my
16:58
investment. And so you do have things that
17:01
don't, that don't hit the population universally.
17:05
And so that's part of the context you have to know if
17:07
you're going to talk about economic indicators.
17:10
Well, and. I think about gas.
17:12
I mean, everybody goes off about gas prices, but OK,
17:16
historically, I mean, you know, a dollar of a gallon gas at 1980
17:21
and now it's $2.00 and something.
17:23
I mean, it's pretty inexpensive overall.
17:26
I mean, nobody wants to hear that, but it's like you, you're
17:28
not going to keep it at a dollar forever.
17:30
Well. Right.
17:31
And when you think about what that is, you know, of course
17:33
you're in Texas, you're closer to production, but you know how
17:36
they get that gallon of gas, they pump it out of the ground
17:40
and run it through a refinery and then a pipeline to a truck
17:44
to get it. Your, I mean, I don't know.
17:47
And you know that Fiji water as actually the gasoline, if you
17:53
get the the quart size, you know, like it, it's kind of
17:56
insane. OK, so.
17:57
In 85, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in
18:01
the US was approximately 112. What adjusted for inflation.
18:06
Well, in 2022 dollars, that's $3 a gallon.
18:09
So that's about. Right about right out of the
18:11
money. Again for our listeners, when we
18:13
say inflation adjusted or in certain today's dollars, for
18:19
example, what we're saying is we add up with that inflation has
18:22
been over those years and we say what would, what would the
18:25
apples to apples price be of things.
18:28
I'm going to throw a measure out there, an area or a topic of
18:32
measurement I think is important and I'm going to put it under 2
18:36
buckets. First, I'm going to say the
18:37
unemployment rate, I think that's a really critical measure
18:40
for our country. Your thoughts on that?
18:43
Yeah. I think that's a good one.
18:46
One thing that that that we need to track with this is not just
18:51
the employment rate, but we need to look at the labor
18:53
participation rate. And this is can, can be a
18:56
really. So I'll get the definition, not
18:59
100% right, but the unemployment rate is defined as, I think it's
19:07
the number of people who are not employed but are looking for
19:11
work divided by the number of people that are employed.
19:15
And the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks this.
19:17
But a key to that is that the denominator is or the numerator
19:24
is those that are currently looking for work.
19:28
What happens is there are people that literally drop out of the
19:32
workforce. They're not, they're not
19:34
employed, they're not looking for a job, they're not doing
19:38
something productive for money in their life.
19:42
And if they're not actively looking for a job, they don't
19:45
count in the unemployment rate. And so this is an important
19:48
thing to watch. And we need to track those two
19:50
metrics together because you can have a really low unemployment
19:54
rate, but a sizable portion of the population has just checked
19:59
out and they're not looking for work, they're not involved.
20:03
And one of the things we've we've been through a period
20:05
lately, the last. 10 or 15 years of historically low unemployment
20:11
rates. Like really low historically.
20:14
When I was studying economics as an undergraduate, you figured 4
20:17
or 5% unemployment was normal. But that's what it, that's what
20:22
a healthy economy has, and we've been way lower than that for
20:26
many years. It's not maybe as good a story
20:29
as it looks though, because contained within that are people
20:33
that have just checked out and they're not looking anymore and
20:36
you got to. Look at those two rates.
20:37
Together, I mean. Pre pandemic I'm looking 2018 so
20:43
right now labor force participation rate is 62 1/2
20:47
percent. Unemployment at 4 point between
20:50
4.1 and 4.2. Pre pandemic labor
20:54
participation, easy for me to say participation rate 62.9, so
21:00
half a percent higher and the unemployment rate was 3.93 point
21:07
7 to 3.9. Yeah.
21:09
I mean, I would have expected that to be a lot different
21:12
because, you know, after after COVID, you had these people,
21:15
well, anecdotally, but you know, you had these people that I
21:18
don't want to go back to work. You know, it's like, well,
21:21
right? Well, and that's one that maybe
21:23
isn't as meaningful on a month over month basis, but I think we
21:27
should look at the trends as far as no, it's good.
21:29
To Yeah, it's definitely good. That would be an interesting one
21:32
to see. Do you think that's 62 per, Oh,
21:35
it's 16 or older. So that's pretty low when you
21:39
think about it, like 16 or older, only 62% are wanting to
21:44
work. Yeah.
21:46
I mean, look, we should acknowledge that that includes
21:49
people that are long term permanently disabled.
21:53
And I mean, there are, there are things that control that, but
21:57
when you think about what that means for our society, that
22:00
means that roughly 2/3 of the people over 16 are generating
22:05
income. And what are the others living
22:08
on Social Security, Social Security disability?
22:11
Who pays for those? The people that are working.
22:14
I mean, you can see the the complexity of that.
22:16
If that goes down, every time that goes down, that's a hit for
22:20
our sustainability in the, well, the top.
22:24
The country with the highest, this is interesting.
22:26
The country with the highest labor force participation rate
22:30
is Qatar with 88%. Of course, that means a lot of
22:35
those Middle Eastern countries, it's because only like 8% of the
22:39
population is actually local. Most of the people are there to
22:43
work, you know. So most of the Middle Eastern
22:45
countries have really high, but like, that's interesting.
22:48
Switzerland is 84%, you know. Wow.
22:52
But I guess. I mean a European country, I
22:55
mean you got this really high minimum wage and every works at
22:59
35 hour a week. Well, who wouldn't want to work
23:01
with those kind of parameters, right?
23:03
Well. But I mean, I you're, you're
23:07
joking, but I mean, think about that.
23:09
So I don't want to speak out of turn.
23:12
I want to pull the numbers and we can look at it over time.
23:14
But I know that it's been expressed as a concern of
23:16
economists that our participation rate has gone
23:19
down. And I don't know when we got to
23:21
the mid 60s. I don't know if it was 70% in
23:24
the 90s or whatever, right. But as that's gone down, I mean,
23:27
that is a serious concern for economists.
23:29
And, and you wonder would we be better off?
23:32
I'm not making this pitch yet, but I'm going to tease this as a
23:34
possibility. Would we be better off as a
23:37
country to say we're going to have a 35 hour work week with a
23:41
robust minimum wage and we're going to put 75% of our people
23:45
to to work because they're going to see that it is economically
23:48
valuable to them? I don't know.
23:51
If you keep minimum wage too low, you do risk the stand the
23:56
risk of people like what? Like what have I got to gain by
23:59
by doing that? And and would we be better off
24:02
by bringing people back into the economy?
24:04
Yeah. That it would also be fun to
24:06
overlay a statistic of what are your tax, what's your tax rate
24:11
like and how does that compare? You know, it's like, which
24:16
honestly is interesting though. Like, you know, if you're in
24:20
Denmark and you got a 65% tax rate, you might think, well, why
24:25
bother work? You know that that's a thing to
24:27
think about is why is it maybe you're on to something.
24:31
I mean, I'm not advocating for a 65% tax rate, don't get me
24:36
wrong, but one. Would think.
24:39
If you got all these social programs and everybody's taken
24:44
care of and if you do work, 65% of your salary is going away,
24:49
wouldn't you want to? Wouldn't you want to?
24:50
Wouldn't you have less motivation to work yet you know,
24:53
what's the labor force participation And then, well, I
24:57
think it. Points out that there's a
24:58
there's the the real potential risk there, right?
25:01
If you raise tax rates repeatedly, repeatedly, it is a
25:06
declining or, you know, a decreasing 70. 4.6% they're they
25:14
beat us in Denmark. Yeah, I, I, I put tax rates on
25:19
the list and you know, the, the comparison of tax rates to other
25:21
countries, I got to say that masks a lot because when you
25:27
think about, yeah, you have huge tax rates in those countries
25:31
with really strong safety Nets, but your neighbors all pay the
25:34
same taxes, right, Right. Like what?
25:37
Like in some ways, like your salary and your tax rate, it's
25:43
kind of an arbitrary concept. What matters is what you take
25:46
home is their gross wages higher and their tax rates higher.
25:52
And then at some point does it even matter?
25:54
You know, the, the umbrage that people think about those high
25:56
tax rates. But if you're if, if, if your
26:00
standard of living is comparable to your neighbors and it's
26:02
comparable to your status in life and your education level,
26:07
you know, the, the fact that the, that the frontline tax rate
26:11
is really high doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad
26:15
deal to be there. Yeah, I mean.
26:17
Now, that's the nice thing about communism.
26:19
I mean, if everybody's got the same stuff, it's all good.
26:22
Yeah, well. We don't act like it's an either
26:25
or though, you know, I mean we've got, we've got some of
26:28
those those challenges here. I'm interested in your thoughts
26:31
on this. I want to track markets broadly.
26:38
And so I would say stocks, and I think we should probably look at
26:41
Dow, S&P 500 and NASDAQ independently and see how those
26:47
do. Do you agree that that's a
26:49
worthy measure? Yeah.
26:50
That would make sense. Part of what ticked.
26:52
This off is that I sent an article that said that on
26:58
average, stock indexes are up 55% since Biden took over an
27:04
administration, which is great. It's not unprecedented, but it's
27:09
it's great. You know, you add that up over 4
27:11
years, that's a a pretty good run.
27:13
Yeah, I think. CPI we talked about
27:16
unemployment, GD. PGD.
27:20
P Consumer spending, consumer confidence.
27:24
Oh, let me get those PPI. Would be good.
27:26
Also you mentioned. PPI.
27:28
That's the producer price index I think.
27:31
Manufacturing job statistics would be good also.
27:35
Tell me. More I I this OK, we might be on
27:39
to something. We might have our thing that we
27:42
can argue and I can throw things at the computer about why, why,
27:46
why manufacturing jobs. Well, I mean.
27:49
I think it's, you know, it kind of goes back to you, what are
27:53
people outsourcing? What why is it more appealing to
27:58
do business elsewhere? OK.
28:00
OK, So you're looking at that as a proxy.
28:02
I guess the part of the reason I bristle here a little bit is
28:06
that I hear this stuff like we've got to bring manufacturing
28:10
back to this country. And I don't know, I think when
28:14
people say that, I think they're they're talking about steel and
28:17
automobiles. But I look at the crap that I
28:20
buy from Amazon that comes in on a shipping container from China,
28:24
and I don't know that my hope is that my relatives and neighbors
28:30
are going to work in plants stamping out plastic crap that
28:34
we can just bring in from China. I I'm not convinced that a
28:38
manufacturing economy is as important or foundational as
28:43
it's sometimes portrayed to be, I think.
28:46
It's more about independence to a degree.
28:49
Economic independence and capability, if everything that
28:54
we need, including ownership of our debt is dependent on China,
29:02
you know, I think to some extent it's the national security issue
29:05
as well. I mean, if, if we are beholden
29:08
to China for everything, it's great if the spicket's flowing,
29:12
but what happens when the spicket stops flowing?
29:15
No, that's. Fair.
29:16
I just, I wish we would be more strategic when we talk about
29:19
that, about manufacturing. There's so much stuff that we
29:22
use and consume that I cannot imagine making in this country
29:27
in an economic way. Well, but it's also.
29:31
You know, there are things that we could make in this country
29:35
that have gone away. You know, there's, there's
29:38
probably some things that are just inherently not something
29:41
we're going to be competitive at, but there could be things we
29:45
could be competitive at if there wasn't barriers to entry.
29:49
You know, if you know, you don't want to create a situation where
29:52
you have to do it something here and prop it up.
29:56
But there are things that possibly could be done here, but
30:00
we can't get out of our own way. No, I think that's a real, a
30:04
real concern. Don't, don't.
30:05
And I think there's. AI do think there is a a GDP
30:09
contribution that takes place with manufacturing more so than
30:15
I don't know like service. Industry stuff, right, right.
30:19
Well, you get to count it multiple times as you, you know,
30:22
you bring in the raw materials and you refine the raw materials
30:27
and you make the sub assemblies and you roll that all up.
30:31
Yeah. For what it's worth, I think
30:33
especially things like heavy industry, I think it's good for
30:36
us to have a foothold on that. But I don't, I don't get nervous
30:41
when I, you know, showing my bias here.
30:44
But people like, well, we're moving these jobs to China.
30:47
Well, you know, I think we ought to still build aircraft carriers
30:51
here. I think we ought to build about
30:53
2/3 of the number of aircraft carriers we're planning to
30:56
build. But yeah, you know, and aviation
31:01
and, you know, heavy stuff like I can see the national security
31:05
angle to that. I just.
31:08
Well. So here's an example for you
31:10
that I think is I, I thought it was fascinating.
31:13
There's a, a company that I went to in California that makes
31:17
aircraft batteries. And a lot of, you know, aircraft
31:19
batteries are some are, some of the newer ones are lithium ion.
31:23
There's Nicad is Nicad and lithium ion are pretty
31:26
expensive. Probably the most economical for
31:28
small airplanes is a lead acid battery.
31:31
Well, there's a manufacturer for instance, in California that
31:33
makes lead acid batteries and they've had a lot of supply
31:38
problems over the years. They make a pretty good battery,
31:41
but they can't supply the industry enough because it
31:47
literally so like they've got a plant and the, and to make the
31:50
lead acid batteries, you have to melt lead.
31:52
Well, when you melt lead, it lets off an emission.
31:56
Well, California has a cap on their output of how much lead
32:02
you know, you could, you know how much of this stuff you can
32:04
melt. And so they're at capacity and
32:08
they've got demand for additional batteries, but can't,
32:10
they can't make any more batteries because they can't
32:12
melt any more lead. It's like a pure capacity
32:15
constraint. And it's like, it's interesting
32:18
that, you know, and I, I just may not be the best example, but
32:20
it's like, oh, well, we can't make it here.
32:23
Well, let's outsource that to China.
32:25
Well, OK, send it to China. Are they melting less lead in
32:31
China? You know, like like, is there
32:33
less emissions in China? No, it's just it's OK to do
32:37
that, you know? So I don't know, it's funny,
32:40
these, I don't know, that's probably not a brilliant
32:43
example, but it's just I found that really interesting talking
32:46
to these guys. Like, yeah, I mean, you know, we
32:50
can Add all the jobs we want. We can do all the stuff we want,
32:53
but you can only melt so much lead.
32:55
Right. I mean, and you're right, like
32:59
there's no, there's no way to get more lead acid batteries
33:02
without melted lead, Although, you know, this is actually a
33:06
fairly interesting discussion because everybody bags on
33:08
California because all of their legislation and their
33:11
regulations. But it's not crazy on its face
33:14
to say we want less lead melted in one of the most densely
33:17
populated states in the country. I mean, it's it's a bad thing.
33:21
And you know, to your point, it's bad wherever it goes.
33:25
But you know, some of that is people don't want the lead
33:28
melter next to their kids school.
33:29
Well, and I and. And that, to me is kind of like
33:33
a microcosm of the whole EV culture, like, oh, these things
33:38
are great. Yeah.
33:38
We'll explain that to the poor bastard in Africa that has to
33:41
mine cobalt, you know? You know, it's not this clean,
33:46
wonderful solution. You know it is for you if you're
33:49
driving your EV in a fluid area. Well, I think.
33:54
That underscores, I think the reason that we've got to look at
33:57
all these measures and look at it in a comprehensive way is
33:59
because there are trade-offs there.
34:01
You know what? You, you said something that
34:03
made me just think of, you know, part of the immigration thing.
34:08
I, I always laugh like, and I know everybody's got different
34:13
makes sense. But for man, it seemed like it
34:16
seemed like for the longest time, like the most common thing
34:20
you heard from any politician, right or left, was we need
34:23
comprehensive immigration reform.
34:25
Like, no, I I'm for comprehensive.
34:29
Like, OK, what the hell does that mean?
34:32
You know? Right.
34:34
And why doesn't anybody ever do it?
34:36
You know? Yeah.
34:38
Well, because stuff's hard. And if the comprehensive in that
34:41
case is the operative word, it's the hard word, right?
34:45
And you know, you can do one thing.
34:47
You can, you can, you can make one intervention.
34:50
But all of this stuff is a web, you know, you pull on one thing
34:54
and you you get, you get unpredictable results down the
34:56
road. Yeah.
34:58
I think, hey, another metric, and I don't know how to measure
35:03
it, but how did we measure international conflict
35:07
reduction? What's a?
35:08
Tough one, because you could. Do like U.S. troops deployed,
35:12
but I don't know that that, you know, we don't have troops in
35:15
Ukraine or Gaza. So, you know, I don't know
35:18
those. Really.
35:19
Yeah. That that would require, that
35:21
would be worthy of some additional research.
35:23
I would be willing to bet that somebody's got a, you know,
35:29
international conflict score for the year that you can kind of
35:33
measure. You know, it's sort of the same
35:35
way that they do human development index or something
35:38
like that. That averages up a bunch of
35:41
stuff. I'll take a look and see if we
35:42
can find something on that. It's a good call.
35:45
Here we go. Kent I mean, you called it the A
35:47
CLED is the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
35:54
There's an OOPSSALA Conflict Data Program, the UCDP, the
35:59
Global Peace Index, the Correlates of War Project, or
36:03
the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research,
36:07
the Conflict Barometer. So yeah, there's a lot.
36:10
What about health? I For a variety of reasons,
36:15
both, you know, kind of political interest and personal
36:19
experience with healthcare and health quality in this country,
36:24
I think. And again, I'm not trying to
36:26
make these into polemic points as we throw them out.
36:29
But, you know, one of the things I wanted to talk about at one
36:31
point was, you know, Obamacare, because I don't know, you know,
36:35
sometimes the Republicans are going to control the whole show
36:37
and like, are we going to just repeal Obamacare?
36:40
And I think we should look at health outcomes and health
36:43
spend. And I be willing to bet that
36:48
many of our listeners do not know how badly we score as a
36:54
nation on health outcomes compared to the rest of the
36:57
developed world. It's kind of shocking.
36:59
And you think, oh, we've got it so good in this country and
37:03
people hear that there are wait times in England and Canada for
37:06
care. Those are great anecdotes.
37:09
But look at the outcomes. I mean, have you looked into
37:11
that? Like where we stand on things
37:14
like? Mortality.
37:16
Yeah, like. Prenatal mortality, kind of
37:20
shocking. I think we have a we, we tend to
37:23
think that we've got it. Great.
37:24
Yeah. And I'm conflicted on this.
37:26
I will be the first to admit. Like, I'm walking my fine line.
37:31
The one thing that doesn't really worry me in this country
37:34
about healthcare, like if we're ever going to get hate mail like
37:37
this might be the statement that triggers it.
37:40
Drug prices, I think it's ridiculous what they charge for
37:44
some of these drugs, but I want them to keep doing it because
37:47
they keep coming up with drugs that like we are a the United
37:52
States in particular, and I think it's probably a function
37:56
of the inefficiency of our healthcare system.
37:57
We are a world leader in ginning up new medications and the fact
38:03
that if you come up with the right medication, you can get
38:05
rich on it big time in this country, that drives that.
38:09
And I get really nervous when people talking about limiting
38:14
health, pharmaceutical profit. Well, yeah, I.
38:17
Don't, I don't know about limiting the profits, but I do
38:20
think, you know, we talk about conspiracy theories and one of
38:25
the conspiracy theories that I think has some truth to it is
38:29
the Pharmaceutical industry. And what, you know, is their
38:33
goal improved health or is there a goal?
38:36
Is there a goal pharmaceutical profits?
38:38
And I'm a free market capitalist.
38:40
So I, you know, I'm OK with making profit, but at the same
38:44
time, part of a capitalist society is also making choices
38:48
based on who you want to buy crap from.
38:51
And I, I feel like there may be, there may be gaps there that we
38:57
don't, you know, we, we think everything is fine with these
39:00
medications, but some of these Medicaid, you know, it's kind of
39:02
like, it's kind of like that whole thing, like if there was a
39:05
drug that could cure cancer. OK, I'll, I'll, I was listening
39:10
to a podcast and you can call me a conspiratorial nut job, but
39:15
it's actually Joe Rogan. And he had a guest and he said,
39:18
hey, I know guys that had cancer again, you're going to laugh and
39:22
I'm OK with that. But they took ivermectin and
39:27
their cure to cancer. Now I'm not saying ivermectin
39:28
cures cancer, I'm not hanging my head on that.
39:31
But I guess what I am saying though is if something of no
39:38
cost and no profit potential cured something that generates a
39:44
shit load of profits for people with other drugs, would they
39:50
migrate to the thing that doesn't generate profits but
39:54
would help the people? That's the part that I think is
39:58
is that's the. Missing component in the system
40:01
to me is that the pure profit motivated approach And again I'm
40:08
a capitalist, but like how do you keep that in check, right?
40:13
Because that doesn't necessarily motivate the right behavior
40:17
well. I think actually the biggest
40:19
issue with that is that there's no profit for taking an existing
40:24
drug and uncovering a new use for it.
40:27
And so I was talking to a guy who does this philanthropically
40:31
on his own. You know, there are there are
40:34
drugs out there that have been found to have really broad,
40:38
unexpected positive impacts. And if you go out there and you
40:42
find that this drug is actually, you know, you take it for your
40:46
cholesterol, but it's actually protective against Alzheimer's,
40:49
the problem is that there's no bar, There's no profit to be
40:52
beat out of that. And you don't have to have,
40:54
unfortunately, you don't have to have an evil conspiracy.
40:58
You just have to have a thing where nobody's going to make any
41:01
profit on this thing. And the FDA has a steep bar that
41:06
you have to get over to prove that medication works.
41:10
And so who's going to pay for that?
41:12
Well, this guy I think actually was a really brilliant idea
41:17
taking philanthropic dollars to look for drugs that have
41:20
promised. And he said, I'll, I'll pay for
41:24
the testing if we think it's real.
41:26
And, and there are researchers who will tell you that there are
41:29
drugs that that we're using right now for say, whatever it
41:33
is, and there's a really good likelihood that it's valuable
41:37
protective against Alzheimer's or some kind of long term
41:41
chronic disease. Well, there's no, there's
41:44
nothing to pay for the testing. So if they philanthropically pay
41:47
for the test, they got nothing to gain from the end of it, but
41:50
they've done something good. One way you could address that
41:54
is by increasing funding through the NIH for orphan drug results.
42:02
You could use government dollars to pay for research to things.
42:06
And and the predicate of that is not just a giveaway like where
42:11
do. You think you?
42:12
Pay for the really expensive drug, the expensive diagnosis
42:16
late in life. Medicare you could you.
42:18
Could pay for gain of function research in Chinese
42:22
laboratories. Well, you, you, you never know
42:25
once in a while I think yeah, it it it's interesting because, you
42:31
know, government's got a big stake in that.
42:33
The other thing, and I'm all right, this would be an
42:37
interesting research project, What percentage of the
42:40
population is covered by private health and what percentage of
42:44
the population is covered by the following health insurance
42:48
options, Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, the Veterans
42:54
Administration, You, you go through the list and like, Oh
42:58
yeah, we're, we're all free market except all of the old
43:02
people, all of the poor people, all the injured people.
43:06
Right, totally. Well, I was talking, it's funny,
43:09
I was at church this morning and I kids were talking and I was
43:12
talking to the dad and he works in compliance at a, at a
43:16
hospital system here in, in Fort Worth.
43:20
I, I brought up the whole thing like, OK, you know what?
43:23
I I was trying to understand from him, like what is the, what
43:26
is the dividing line between, you know, like these private ERS
43:31
that they can refuse service if you don't have insurance.
43:33
But the hospital, he said it's all about if you take any
43:36
government money, if you take Medicare, Medicaid, you have to
43:39
take in any indigent person that has a problem.
43:43
But he's, you know, and he brought up a good point.
43:44
He's like, yeah, I mean, if you come in and you got a life
43:47
threatening condition and you can't pay for it, we're going to
43:50
put, put them in a intensive care, we're going to take care
43:53
of them. But, you know, if they got
43:54
cancer, you know, we'll take care of whatever the urgent
43:57
thing is, and then we're going to let them go.
43:59
But it's not going to take care of their cancer.
44:00
You know, And it's a good point of, you know, like they're going
44:03
to provide acute care, but you're not to your point.
44:08
You're not really providing healthcare.
44:09
You're providing medical support.
44:12
But Healthcare is like, how do we get you healed of cancer or
44:15
whatever's wrong with you? But yeah, I mean, OK, here's a
44:20
government program I can get behind.
44:22
I think would make a massive value.
44:26
I think the government, and again I'm saying this is a, you
44:30
know, a small government kind of guy here, but I think you talk
44:36
about a huge dividend. Make Ozempic, Monjaro, Zepbound
44:41
free to anybody with ABMI over, you know, 25 in the US, get
44:48
everybody in a healthy BMI. How much money would that save?
44:53
And entitlement programs. Well, and in fact, I'll go even,
44:56
I'll go, I'm with you 100%. And I'll go deeper than that.
44:59
And I'll say this is one of those things where you look at
45:02
the landscape of our healthcare, right, people get fat and
45:07
unhealthy. Looking at my own image on the
45:10
screen, right, People get fat and unhealthy when they're in
45:14
their working years and they're stress eating and they're
45:17
hitting Dr. Thrus because they're working too hard, right?
45:20
So you get fat and it causes you problems when you're in your
45:25
late 50s, your joints hurt, like, right, like it causes
45:28
problems. But the real price of that is
45:32
paid when you get to Medicare and you've got type 2 diabetes
45:38
and you spend every other week in the hospital.
45:41
And so you incurred that. You would have incurred the cost
45:44
for the drug maintenance 30 years before.
45:48
How much? Of our Social Security
45:51
disability spend is on that is a ton, obesity a ton.
45:57
Of course. And this is like the most
45:59
horrible thing to say. But you know, we're talking
46:02
about data, not about human beings here, although we're
46:04
talking about human beings. If we do that, if we crack that
46:09
code, we give everybody the drugs, we lose the weight,
46:12
diabetes goes to nothing, life expectancy goes way up.
46:17
Oh, oops. Then we got to increase the
46:19
Social Security contribution rate because you got all these
46:21
people living a long time. I mean it.
46:23
Well, no, that's. When the Logan's Run law is
46:26
going to come into play. So as soon as you had 35, you're
46:30
getting zapped, you know? Sanctuary.
46:34
I looked at a clip of that just the other day.
46:37
We'll have to have the producer link that you talk about bad 70s
46:41
science fiction. It is rough, yeah, but it.
46:44
Was filmed, wasn't. Logan's Run?
46:45
Wasn't it filmed in Fort Worth? Yeah, the the end scene is in
46:50
the Water Gardens, Fort Worth Water Gardens.
46:52
But honestly, I think that was one of the 1st movies I remember
46:58
you getting on videotape and watching.
47:01
I remember you got it one time we were kids.
47:03
Like, man, this is a great movie.
47:04
I still watch that like AI don't know there's a a sentimental
47:09
quality. But now as I watched, I'm like,
47:11
man, this special effects aren't great.
47:14
Yeah, it's not. Good.
47:15
Well, I think this is exciting, Kyle.
47:17
I have identified from our conversation today 123456
47:25
78910111213141516 at least 17/18/19 possible data points
47:35
that we can track and we can roll those up into a scorecard
47:40
and a barometer. And then, you know the the great
47:42
thing to do would be that we would agree on what to wait to
47:46
what to come up with an algorithm.
47:48
But I think that becomes the hard part.
47:49
I think you and I both agree that this list of things is
47:52
probably the kinds of things that we ought to be watching.
47:55
What about crime? We didn't put crime.
47:58
How about a crime factor? Well.
48:00
Crime. I mean, yeah, yeah, we'll put,
48:06
we'll put crime on there. Yeah.
48:09
The. Now and then, then the other
48:11
thing, now, you know, I'm going to have to watch where you're
48:13
pulling your stats. I mean, if I see anywhere that
48:16
you're pulling stats from, you know, some Atlantic report or
48:20
NPR, you know, we'll have to. We'll have to.
48:23
I'll send you back a proposed set of sources that we can get
48:26
those data from. A lot of these are going to be,
48:29
you know, I, I assume that we can trust the Bureau of Labor
48:32
Statistics, or are they also. Yeah, I think I.
48:34
Think governmental agency for the most part.
48:38
What about are we going to track the number of times Trump
48:43
stumbles? Is there a stumble metric of
48:45
some kind, like trip walking up the stairs or you know, Gerald
48:49
Ford metric of some kind, you know?
48:51
It would be hard for that to be worse than what we've had for
48:54
the last four years. So, well, I think this is cool
48:59
and yeah, this is great. We'll put it.
49:01
Together as a scorecard and we can kind of watch the movement
49:05
over time. I think especially in so far as
49:07
we can find historical data on this, I think it'll be really
49:10
interesting to look at, you know, what the, the initial work
49:14
I did on this a little while ago, much smaller data set or,
49:17
you know, a, a shorter list of metrics.
49:19
But, and, you know, admittedly it was me picking the metrics,
49:21
but I thought it was really interesting because some of the
49:24
classic metrics that you would say of a good economy, GDP,
49:29
inflation, unemployment, for example, those kind of core
49:31
measures, even among Democrats, there is a folklore in this
49:36
country that Republican presidents are better for the
49:40
economy. And I, I don't think that that's
49:43
true. I don't think that Democrats are
49:45
inherently better either. These measures move sometimes in
49:49
opposition to one another's and and you've got to take in as a
49:51
whole. But you know, by most measures
49:54
that you can imagine, the economy under Bill Clinton's
49:59
second term is hard to beat from any other administration in
50:05
either side. Oh, budget deficit.
50:07
That's what I was going to put on there.
50:08
Yeah, that's. What you say debt and deficit
50:10
are big ones also, yeah. But deficit and total debt, and
50:15
that's particularly interesting. Again, some of our viewers may
50:18
not catch that deficits, the difference between the annual
50:22
total of what the government receives in taxes and what they
50:27
spend. And that's since the Clinton
50:29
administration always been a negative number.
50:31
We always spend more than we bring in.
50:35
When you do that, you put that on the giant credit card in the
50:39
sky, and the accumulated debt that we have is the federal
50:43
debt. And a lot of people think it's
50:45
inherently bad for the government to have debt.
50:48
It's actually not. If our government didn't have
50:51
any national sovereign debt, our banking system wouldn't exist.
50:57
The predicate of a reliable government payment of bonds at
51:03
fixed interest rates is one of the things that underlies the
51:06
entire banking, finance and insurance industry.
51:10
And if the government weren't a player in that, you would have a
51:13
really hard time pricing things out.
51:15
So it's not necessarily bad, but we're also seeing historically
51:19
high budget deficits in a historically high U.S.
51:23
government debt as a percentage of our actual output of GDP.
51:28
Well. And then it's also, you know,
51:30
back to the back to the issue of how much of our, how much of
51:35
that debt is foreign owned and where is that foreign owned?
51:39
You know, China, China holdings represent 9 1/2% of all foreign
51:44
held U.S. Treasury securities.
51:46
You know, is that a good thing or bad thing?
51:49
It's not like. They own your mortgage.
51:50
Like they can't choose, you know, I mean, part of the way
51:54
government debt works, as they say, here's what we're going to
51:56
put out there, here's what we're going to pay, take it or leave
51:58
it. So China may have that debt, but
52:00
they don't really have the ability to, you know, if
52:03
anything, they're they're the authority that they wield in
52:06
that the power that they have is to quit buying our debt.
52:10
They can't really do anything about the debt that they already
52:12
own. You take well into.
52:14
To some extent, I mean, you know, you're thinking about
52:18
that. I mean, you know, first that's
52:20
bad that your potential enemies have a big, a big ownership
52:25
stake, but it could be good too. It's like, well, they're not
52:27
going to nuke us because there goes, you know, a trillion
52:30
dollars of their wealth. You know that that's. 100% true.
52:34
And ultimately, you know, that's the way sovereign debt works.
52:37
You know, if you make us really mad, we're just going to, we're
52:40
not going to pay your bonds. We'll pay the other bonds.
52:43
Good luck. Come get it.
52:45
Well, I think. You know, this goes back to
52:46
those where is the trying to evaluate the efficacy of a
52:52
presidential administration based on metrics like, OK, like
52:56
GDP growth. Well, some of the highest GDP
52:58
growth was like, well, FDR had huge GDP growth because we came
53:02
out of the recession. Well, I mean, is it because he's
53:05
a genius or is it because we came out of the recession?
53:07
I mean, you know what I mean? It's like, you know, whoever
53:12
came out of the recession was going to have killer stats.
53:14
You know, right now you could say, well, it's because of him,
53:18
we came other. OK, that's another story.
53:20
But I mean, it's like, I mean, I think that.
53:22
I think that's part of the what argues for a broad basket of
53:26
measures rather than just saying, you know, and, and
53:28
that's one of the things that that honestly bugs me.
53:32
And this goes back as far as Ronald Reagan.
53:36
Well, are you better off than you were four years ago?
53:38
There's a lot of factors. I mean, it's not an unfair
53:42
question, but there's a hell of a lot going on behind the scenes
53:46
rather than just who happens to be the president.
53:48
You know, my life was very different four years ago than it
53:52
was than it is now. And it it just to me, it points
53:56
up the the fallacy of you pick one measure and say, see,
54:00
everything is good. Yeah, I think that's really
54:02
true. I think what we're going to
54:04
find, and if we look back at this historically over
54:06
administration, you're going to find Republicans that did great
54:09
on GDP and Republicans that did terrible on GDP.
54:13
You're going to find Democrat administrations that did great
54:16
on the national debt and there's going to be those that have been
54:18
terrible. And really it's a multi
54:21
factorial thing. The risk is that there's so much
54:25
complexity there that it winds up being a mirror and you your
54:29
guy looks good to you. And I think the challenge is to
54:32
try to get past that a little bit and to be thoughtful about
54:35
do we need to measure. Here's a subjective 1, the
54:39
approval ratings. That's another one that you
54:41
could toss into the mix. I mean, it seems like every
54:44
president has a, you know, a downward trend.
54:48
You know, they like him at first, then they hate him by the
54:51
time it's over. You know, I think that's.
54:53
Just proof that they're never as good as you hope that they're
54:56
going to be. Right?
55:01
All right, well, I got some homework to do on this.
55:03
I think this is going to be a fun project and a nice adjunct.
55:06
We'll we'll have to, you know, we don't want to get too
55:08
granular because it'll lose something.
55:09
But maybe once a quarter we have the we have the presidential
55:14
midterm review, we'll have a conversation about whether we
55:16
think he's on target or not. And we'll.
55:18
Yeah, it sounds. Good.
55:19
All right. Well.
55:20
I think I'm going to let you go for now and call it, but it's
55:24
been a great time to talk to you, pal.
55:25
Thanks. Yeah.
55:26
Thank you. Thanks.
55:30
Hey, thanks for joining us on this episode of Bourbon and Rum
55:33
Podcast. We hope you enjoyed it.
55:35
Remember to subscribe on your favorite platform and leave us a
55:38
review. Your feedback helps us keep the
55:41
good spirits flowing and we invite.
55:43
You to join this conversation, follow us on our Facebook page.
55:46
Let us know what you think. Let us know what you want to
55:48
hear. And until next time, cheers.