Latest / The Bill Handel Show / $140,000, a Poverty Income | Australia’s Social Media Ban for Kids
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: You're listenings k I AM six forty the bill handles
- 0:04Speaker 1: show on demand on the iHeartRadio f KFI AM six
- 0:13Speaker 1: forty bill handle Here it is Aday, Wednesday, December tenth,
- 0:20Speaker 1: and a segment I want to do and this is
- 0:24Speaker 1: something that I'm really interested in. That is the economy,
- 0:28Speaker 1: our financial situation, both micro us macro, the country, the markets.
- 0:35Speaker 1: And actually I use Amy as almost a poster child
- 0:41Speaker 1: for this segment because one of the big big issues,
- 0:46Speaker 1: and we're talking about defining poverty. That's what this is about,
- 0:50Speaker 1: defining poverty and defining how people live. The general consensus
- 0:58Speaker 1: is you spend about a third of your income on housing.
- 1:05Speaker 2: Amy, I wish.
- 1:07Speaker 1: Yeah, Amy spends fifty percent of her income on housing,
- 1:12Speaker 1: which is not unusual. And considering that Amy needs to
- 1:17Speaker 1: quadruple her salary in order to comfortably afford that, it's tough.
- 1:23Speaker 1: And Amy's not alone, by the way, and by the way,
- 1:25Speaker 1: obviously she has enough to you know, comfortably live.
- 1:28Speaker 2: Maybe not.
- 1:30Speaker 1: But this is all to do with a poverty line. Now,
- 1:32Speaker 1: the government's original poverty line, you know, start in nineteen
- 1:35Speaker 1: sixty three when they came up with this poverty line
- 1:40Speaker 1: basis at that time in nineteen sixty three, it was
- 1:42Speaker 1: thirty one hundred dollars a year, and that sounds very low,
- 1:46Speaker 1: but if you look at today's dollars, it's about thirty
- 1:48Speaker 1: two thousand dollars a year, which strangely enough, is almost
- 1:52Speaker 1: to the dollar. What the government today says is the
- 1:55Speaker 1: poverty line. It has never changed. The problem is that
- 2:01Speaker 1: look at what people are paying with the cost of housing,
- 2:05Speaker 1: and now we're starting this is where Amy comes in.
- 2:09Speaker 1: Rent is insane, Buying a home is insane, and unless
- 2:14Speaker 1: you're actually into a home and you're moving up, it's difficult,
- 2:21Speaker 1: very very difficult. And then there are things that you
- 2:23Speaker 1: pay for that you never did before. First of all,
- 2:26Speaker 1: medical insurance is crazy, as you know, but there's cell phones,
- 2:29Speaker 1: there's computers, there's internet bills.
- 2:33Speaker 2: I mean, it goes on and on.
- 2:35Speaker 1: So there was an article that came out as a
- 2:38Speaker 1: post by a wealth manager, Michael Green, and he argued
- 2:43Speaker 1: that one hundred and forty dollars thousand dollars is the
- 2:46Speaker 1: new poverty level for a family of four, where the
- 2:49Speaker 1: official poverty line is thirty two thousand dollars, And of
- 2:53Speaker 1: course that went viral and people argued both sides of
- 2:56Speaker 1: that coin. Now, how is it that one hundred and
- 2:59Speaker 1: forty thousand dollars you can be defined as poor? Well,
- 3:04Speaker 1: here we go that we have all had our definitions
- 3:07Speaker 1: here over the years of what is poor and what
- 3:11Speaker 1: is rich, and we all basically came this same conclusion.
- 3:15Speaker 1: Rich is being able to stop working today or at
- 3:19Speaker 1: the end of your career and living in the same
- 3:21Speaker 1: lifestyle that you had.
- 3:22Speaker 2: That's rich.
- 3:24Speaker 1: Can you do that just walking out the door? Social
- 3:26Speaker 1: security and pensions? You've got to save your whole life
- 3:29Speaker 1: in order to do that. That's when you're rich. And
- 3:32Speaker 1: there are too many people that are rich, because let's
- 3:35Speaker 1: look at one hundred and forty thousand dollars, I mean,
- 3:37Speaker 1: how can you be poor or only middle class at
- 3:41Speaker 1: one hundred and forty thousand dollars. Well, if you know
- 3:44Speaker 1: anybody that makes one hundred and forty thousand dollars, which
- 3:47Speaker 1: of course is no one here at iHeart, then what
- 3:51Speaker 1: lifestyle do you have at one hundred and forty thousand dollars?
- 3:55Speaker 2: Big time vacations, two.
- 3:57Speaker 1: Cars usually the luxury cars, private school for kids. It
- 4:04Speaker 1: goes on and on, because you're living that kind of
- 4:06Speaker 1: a lifestyle. Well, the argument is, is you're still living
- 4:11Speaker 1: paycheck to paycheck, And of course the answer is, it
- 4:15Speaker 1: doesn't matter what you make unless you're at the poverty line,
- 4:19Speaker 1: unless you literally are at risk, at food, at risk,
- 4:24Speaker 1: having a hard time making the rent. And I always
- 4:27Speaker 1: joke about amy and if you're living, if other than
- 4:31Speaker 1: a hard time making it happen day to day, if
- 4:34Speaker 1: you have any money leftover, you don't do the vacations,
- 4:39Speaker 1: you don't buy the next car, the fancier car. You
- 4:44Speaker 1: live a life under your means. And that's how you
- 4:48Speaker 1: become rich. In America, the vast number of millionaires have
- 4:52Speaker 1: saved their way into being millionaires.
- 4:56Speaker 2: So where is poverty?
- 5:00Speaker 1: I think poverty is when you draw a line family
- 5:04Speaker 1: of four, poverty is it moves all over the place.
- 5:09Speaker 2: Now we have to have a poverty line. And why
- 5:11Speaker 2: is that?
- 5:12Speaker 1: Because below a certain level you are eligible for governmental
- 5:17Speaker 1: programs I mean other than Medicare, which goes to everybody
- 5:21Speaker 1: at sixty five. All of the other programs, for the
- 5:24Speaker 1: most part, food stamps, etc. All deal with how much
- 5:26Speaker 1: income you make if you're above or below the poverty line.
- 5:30Speaker 1: And by the way, the poverty line at thirty three
- 5:32Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Programs aren't predicated on thirty three thousand dollars.
- 5:38Speaker 1: It's one hundred and thirty percent of the poverty line
- 5:42Speaker 1: or one.
- 5:42Speaker 2: Hundred and eighty percent.
- 5:44Speaker 1: So numbers aren't as ridiculous as they are in terms
- 5:48Speaker 1: of poverty.
- 5:49Speaker 2: But this was a fascinating article.
- 5:52Speaker 1: Where this economist wealth manager actually argued and some are saying, legitimately,
- 6:00Speaker 1: one hundred and forty thousand dollars a year is the
- 6:02Speaker 1: new poverty level for a family of four?
- 6:06Speaker 2: No, it's crazy.
- 6:07Speaker 1: Well, let me ask, I don't know where Neil is,
- 6:10Speaker 1: but Amy, where do you think the poverty line is
- 6:13Speaker 1: where you're having.
- 6:14Speaker 2: A very hard time making it? Give me real run number?
- 6:17Speaker 2: In La? Yeah, in La, I would say it's probably
- 6:24Speaker 2: like sixty thousand.
- 6:26Speaker 1: Well, the average income, by the way, the average income
- 6:30Speaker 1: in La County is eighty six thousand dollars a year,
- 6:33Speaker 1: and people still can't afford it to live here. We
- 6:35Speaker 1: talk about that, and so ann what is the poverty
- 6:40Speaker 1: line for you?
- 6:42Speaker 2: Where do you think that line is for a family
- 6:45Speaker 2: of four? Yeah, for a family of four dual income,
- 6:48Speaker 2: I would say probably around I'd say it like seventy Okay, Well,
- 6:54Speaker 2: I mean, that's close to the average.
- 6:56Speaker 1: Can you imagine now, this is close to the average
- 6:59Speaker 1: income the power line is that close? What does that
- 7:02Speaker 1: tell you? And I want to visit DOGE again. DOZE
- 7:07Speaker 1: remember the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk's organization. And
- 7:13Speaker 1: two facts that I want to put in front of
- 7:16Speaker 1: you as I go through this story. Number one, Elon
- 7:19Speaker 1: Musk was insanely close to President Trump for a while.
- 7:24Speaker 1: You know, he put two hundred and fifty million dollars
- 7:27Speaker 1: of his own money. So this two hundred and fifty
- 7:30Speaker 1: million dollars that he put into Trump's campaign, Okay, fair enough? Well,
- 7:36Speaker 1: I don't know it's fair. And do you remember he
- 7:39Speaker 1: was only co director of DOGE. Does anybody remember Vivik
- 7:44Speaker 1: Ramaswami who was also named as a co director of
- 7:47Speaker 1: DOZE And that lasted twenty three seconds. So he was
- 7:52Speaker 1: on a pad podcast, the Katie Miller podcast, and he
- 7:58Speaker 1: said the Department of Government Offficiency, which he ran, had
- 8:02Speaker 1: only been a little bit successful in its goal to
- 8:07Speaker 1: save taxpayers money and reduce regulations and spending. Now, this
- 8:13Speaker 1: organization was a brainchild of Musk, and it laid off
- 8:16Speaker 1: thousands of government workers, were obviously not very happy, but
- 8:19Speaker 1: failed to deliver on the promises to cut the federal budget.
- 8:22Speaker 2: It did not cut the federal budget.
- 8:24Speaker 1: He did say, we stopped a lot of funding that
- 8:26Speaker 1: made no sense, was entirely wasteful. For example, there was
- 8:31Speaker 1: one hundred maybe two hundred billion dollars worth of zombie
- 8:34Speaker 1: payments every year, and simply by enforcing the payment code
- 8:40Speaker 1: and making the recipients have them explain what the payment
- 8:48Speaker 1: was for, the payment would not go out.
- 8:52Speaker 2: So asked, would you do it again?
- 8:54Speaker 1: So I don't think so, I should be, should be
- 8:58Speaker 1: and I am now focused on other inures, his other
- 9:00Speaker 1: two major ventures, which is SpaceX and Tesla. And he
- 9:04Speaker 1: said if he had gone to Tesla earl earlier, they
- 9:08Speaker 1: wouldn't have been burning the cars. Remember the backlash against
- 9:12Speaker 1: Musk still there, but not as much. Tesla dealerships, individual
- 9:16Speaker 1: vehicles were vandalized, Protests erupted across the country. There were
- 9:22Speaker 1: bumper sixers said I bought this before Musk started going crazy,
- 9:27Speaker 1: don't blame me. And then everybody was trying to sell
- 9:30Speaker 1: their Tesla's and you could buy one for a nickel
- 9:33Speaker 1: because no one wanted a Tesla, and for the most
- 9:36Speaker 1: part it was.
- 9:36Speaker 2: Because of Musk.
- 9:40Speaker 1: Now, the name Musk or the name Dodge, must said
- 9:43Speaker 1: was a made up name. We aren't they always all
- 9:46Speaker 1: of them, And it was based on internet suggestion. So
- 9:49Speaker 1: here was the claim, and this was with the president's support.
- 9:53Speaker 1: Those would reduce government spending. The first announcement was by
- 9:57Speaker 1: two trillion dollars, which is a huge percent of the
- 10:02Speaker 1: entire budget of the United States. That was the first year,
- 10:05Speaker 1: and then it was revised to one trillion dollars. And
- 10:09Speaker 1: in April he lowered that again at a cabinet meeting
- 10:13Speaker 1: and he said, okay, it's one hundred and fifty billion dollars.
- 10:16Speaker 1: We don't actually know because the numbers aren't that given
- 10:19Speaker 1: to us, and there is no real accounting. Outside financial
- 10:24Speaker 1: experts can't even verify that figure because the agency, which
- 10:29Speaker 1: is disappearing, if it is still around, has not provided
- 10:33Speaker 1: access to its accounting. And do you remember the trauma
- 10:38Speaker 1: elon must rise and fall? He counted, He touted constantly,
- 10:45Speaker 1: repeatedly about his agency's work on X and it went
- 10:49Speaker 1: one point he had this change saw remember that video,
- 10:54Speaker 1: this chain saw and I think it was at a
- 10:57Speaker 1: cabinet meeting or was in the Oval Office, and no,
- 11:02Speaker 1: it was at the Conservative Political Action Conference SEAPAC in
- 11:06Speaker 1: Maryland in February. The initiative DOGE very short lived. After
- 11:12Speaker 1: four months as a special government employee, Musk announced, Okay,
- 11:16Speaker 1: I'm leaving. I'm leaving the Trump administration. And in November,
- 11:22Speaker 1: the director of the Office of Personal Management the director
- 11:25Speaker 1: of DOGE. It's an organization, I guess is still in existence,
- 11:30Speaker 1: and no one knows what it does at this point.
- 11:32Speaker 1: A guy named Scott Cooper is the director of DOGE.
- 11:37Speaker 1: He said in a social media post. DOGE does not
- 11:40Speaker 1: have any centralized leadership. Okay, And by the way, just
- 11:47Speaker 1: to let you know, Tesla's are a basic piece of crap.
- 11:50Speaker 1: I bought a Tesla and I lasted two weeks. And
- 11:53Speaker 1: this has had nothing to do with politics or Musk
- 11:55Speaker 1: or anything. I just thought it was a terrible car,
- 11:59Speaker 1: and so I bought it. And a week later Trump
- 12:03Speaker 1: produced I mean, the must reduce the price of the
- 12:06Speaker 1: car twenty percent. I lost twenty percent in a week
- 12:12Speaker 1: just because of the arbitrary lowering of the price, and
- 12:17Speaker 1: no one knew it was coming either. It was on
- 12:20Speaker 1: a Thursday, had no idea on a Friday, the cars
- 12:23Speaker 1: reduced twenty percent. Okay, Australia has done something that many
- 12:27Speaker 1: countries in the world are looking at. Many states are
- 12:30Speaker 1: looking at banning social media for people under sixteen.
- 12:35Speaker 2: And it's a new law. We talked about it with
- 12:37Speaker 2: Rich Murley yesterday.
- 12:38Speaker 1: Anyone younger sixteen will not have social media accounts and
- 12:42Speaker 1: that goes into effect two day. And it's about sheltering children,
- 12:47Speaker 1: of course, from the efforts of social media. And you know,
- 12:50Speaker 1: the problem is the Internet has done some extraordinary things
- 12:53Speaker 1: positively and at the same time has done some extraordinary
- 12:57Speaker 1: things negatively in terms of the negative aspects of social media.
- 13:04Speaker 1: On the political side, it has turned around what's reality.
- 13:08Speaker 2: I mean, that's just done.
- 13:11Speaker 1: But on the social side, kids are particularly susceptible because
- 13:18Speaker 1: the shaming that goes on the stories of there been
- 13:21Speaker 1: some teens who have committed suicide because of the influence
- 13:26Speaker 1: of social media from people they knew, and then the shaming,
- 13:32Speaker 1: the fat shaming. Neil, I can use the radio to
- 13:37Speaker 1: do that, so I don't need the Internet to do that.
- 13:40Speaker 2: I'll take it. Okay, yes you will.
- 13:43Speaker 1: And I think that a lot of people say it's
- 13:45Speaker 1: a legitimate threat. Now even those that advocate social media
- 13:49Speaker 1: and adicate First Amendment rights, and you can't have the
- 13:53Speaker 1: government stopping this will tell you that there is an
- 13:57Speaker 1: issue with kids being particularly sceptable and social media and
- 14:02Speaker 1: just the time they spend on social media. I mean,
- 14:06Speaker 1: you look at this, forget about everything else, just the
- 14:09Speaker 1: time which doesn't leave time for anything else. Social intercourse
- 14:12Speaker 1: basically disappears, Homework disappears. I mean family dinners. You ever
- 14:18Speaker 1: gone on to a restaurant and everybody is on the phone.
- 14:22Speaker 1: Whatever happened to people having conversations? I remember, and I've
- 14:27Speaker 1: told this story as many times. This was years ago.
- 14:30Speaker 1: My daughters were on either end of a couch and
- 14:35Speaker 1: they and I said, so, what's going on?
- 14:37Speaker 2: And they're texting?
- 14:38Speaker 1: And what are you doing? We're texting to each other.
- 14:42Speaker 1: You're six feet away from each other. You ever thought
- 14:45Speaker 1: of just turning your head left and talking social media?
- 14:51Speaker 1: So the Australians did this, and they couldn't actually make
- 14:57Speaker 1: it work because they're asking the your social media companies Facebook, Instagram, kick, Reddit, snapchat, TikTok,
- 15:06Speaker 1: twitch x YouTube to create algorithms, and without AI it's
- 15:12Speaker 1: almost impossible to do. And with algorithms, even if a
- 15:17Speaker 1: fourteen year old says I am seventeen, there's enough information.
- 15:21Speaker 2: Out there where they were.
- 15:23Speaker 1: The AI can establish what your age is, if not specifically,
- 15:28Speaker 1: a pretty good idea of who you are and what
- 15:31Speaker 1: age you are, based on your text, based on your
- 15:34Speaker 1: posts of photos, that sort of thing. If you look
- 15:38Speaker 1: at we post here on the show, and I post
- 15:42Speaker 1: photos of what's going on, and if I lived in Australia,
- 15:46Speaker 1: I'd be kicked off because I certainly come off like
- 15:49Speaker 1: a fifteen year old, and that's one of the problems.
- 15:53Speaker 2: Neil is nodding his head.
- 15:55Speaker 1: But in reality, we have to look at how kids
- 15:59Speaker 1: are affected. We've just started to understand this, and of
- 16:02Speaker 1: course science is diving into this. You know, whenever I
- 16:06Speaker 1: make these broad sweeping statements like kids are being affected,
- 16:11Speaker 1: a lot of that is anecdotal, and I tell you
- 16:12Speaker 1: it's anecdotal, but a lot of studies are being done.
- 16:16Speaker 1: Sociologists are jumping into this, Scientists are jumping into this,
- 16:22Speaker 1: and so we're going to find out is Australia right
- 16:25Speaker 1: I think they are. I think Australia is right on this. Now.
- 16:30Speaker 1: Can you imagine fifteen year olds not being able to
- 16:33Speaker 1: use social media. They're going to kill themselves. Oh, there's
- 16:36Speaker 1: an argument for social media. If you don't allow social media,
- 16:41Speaker 1: you're going to see suicides go up dramatically because kids
- 16:45Speaker 1: are going to be so upset they can't use social media. Okay,
- 16:48Speaker 1: that's a premise that probably is not going to be
- 16:51Speaker 1: used very much. Okay, Now a story and crazy. I
- 16:56Speaker 1: love this one. I really do love this story. Start
- 17:00Speaker 1: with the Biden administration, and this has to do with
- 17:04Speaker 1: the State Department. In twenty twenty three, Anthony Blinco and
- 17:07Speaker 1: the Secretary of State shifted the typeface on documents from
- 17:13Speaker 1: the State Department. And he basically did it on the
- 17:18Speaker 1: recommendation of the State Department's Office of Diversity and Inclusion,
- 17:22Speaker 1: which is now gone. And it had to do from
- 17:25Speaker 1: folks with disability that the typeface was going to be
- 17:28Speaker 1: easier to read people who had impaired vision, and it's
- 17:33Speaker 1: just okay, we're going to make it easier for those people. Well,
- 17:37Speaker 1: we've got the Secretary of State. Now we've got mister Rubio,
- 17:41Speaker 1: Marco Rubio, who is turning that around. Why is that
- 17:45Speaker 1: we do not want anything having to do with diversity
- 17:49Speaker 1: and helping people with disabilities. We're changing it around again,
- 17:55Speaker 1: and the State Department will not use the Anthony Blinken
- 18:00Speaker 1: Biden administration font. And he is there switching back to
- 18:05Speaker 1: the use of now times new Roman font. And that's
- 18:10Speaker 1: to restore the decorum and professionalism to the Department's written work,
- 18:16Speaker 1: much like what the President Trump is doing, where Baroque
- 18:22Speaker 1: architecture and the gold and the Guild is now the
- 18:26Speaker 1: new normal for the US government. Now we're going to
- 18:29Speaker 1: go on and go to the formal font for the
- 18:35Speaker 1: State Department. Now do you think this has to do
- 18:39Speaker 1: with the changing of the font under Biden?
- 18:44Speaker 2: And I, by the way, I don't know.
- 18:45Speaker 1: If it worked or not, but at least the reason
- 18:48Speaker 1: seemed to me to be legitimate. Helping people with disabilities
- 18:53Speaker 1: read the font easier. No idea if it actually worked. Okay,
- 18:57Speaker 1: that one. You know, I may say NAE in favor
- 19:00Speaker 1: of it, but there is a legitimacy to that. This
- 19:03Speaker 1: one is we do not have diversity or wokeness anymore.
- 19:08Speaker 1: And anything that reminds us of that, read the Biden
- 19:12Speaker 1: change of the font, we're gonna undo. There is no question.
- 19:17Speaker 1: If it is Biden, it is bad. It's not simple
- 19:21Speaker 1: it's not at all complicated. If the car, let's say,
- 19:26Speaker 1: a car that's assigned to Marco Rubio now or to to.
- 19:32Speaker 2: Blink and was afford.
- 19:33Speaker 1: You can't have a Ford because you've got Biden Ford
- 19:39Speaker 1: bad and so we need another car. By the way,
- 19:41Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true or not. I have
- 19:43Speaker 1: no idea if they've changed the kind of car. I'm
- 19:48Speaker 1: just hypothesizing here, but it has gotten so crazy that
- 19:54Speaker 1: I mean, come on, guys, really the font is it
- 19:58Speaker 1: so offensive that at least that are saying we did
- 20:04Speaker 1: this because of the Department of Disability and whatever the
- 20:10Speaker 1: hell they call it, you know, I mean, what kind
- 20:14Speaker 1: of damage is that? Well, if it's Biden, it's bad.
- 20:19Speaker 1: It's it's nuts. And the reason is, and maybe that's
- 20:25Speaker 1: a legitimate reason. Now his directive, Rubio's directive is to
- 20:31Speaker 1: diplomatic posts around the world, and he blamed radical diversity, equity, inclusion,
- 20:35Speaker 1: and accessibility programs for this misguided and ineffective switch from
- 20:41Speaker 1: one type face to the one we're now using. I
- 20:47Speaker 1: don't even know what's saying. So I'm going to be
- 20:50Speaker 1: doing this on a regular basis, and I know that
- 20:52Speaker 1: I attack Trump more than I don't, but keep in mind,
- 20:55Speaker 1: when Biden was president, I did my share of attacking Biden.
- 20:59Speaker 1: It's just the Trump is an office, and whoever is
- 21:02Speaker 1: in office, it's easier to attack. So don't don't judge
- 21:08Speaker 1: me that much, or go ahead and judge me because
- 21:11Speaker 1: you do anyway, bastards.
- 21:15Speaker 2: Kf I am sixty you've been listening to The Bill
- 21:19Speaker 2: Handle Show.
- 21:20Speaker 1: Catch my show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
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