Latest / First Thing Today with Joe Thomas / FTTxJT 062326 CATO Adam Michel on "AI Scare"
Transcript
- 0:10Speaker 1: On a need to know basis, because you need to
- 0:13Speaker 1: know the first thing.
- 0:15Speaker 2: Today celebrating Pride months, everybody called me boo, I got
- 0:21Speaker 2: no money for the wholemorrow.
- 0:23Speaker 3: Some say I'm he goes no good time.
- 0:26Speaker 2: Well, you know, and the keyboard warriors got to be
- 0:29Speaker 2: the keyboard warriors there four three, four eight eight two
- 0:33Speaker 2: four two one seven kareem rights and happy tenth anniversary
- 0:39Speaker 2: of Brexit. I was reading a piece was The Times
- 0:44Speaker 2: complaining about well, what has Brexit done for us? And
- 0:49Speaker 2: we can pick apart that if it's it's of your mind.
- 0:51Speaker 2: But AI became such a big part of our budget
- 0:56Speaker 2: discussions and it still is. Adam Michelle from the Cato
- 1:00Speaker 2: Institute had a great piece just the other day on
- 1:03Speaker 2: artificial intelligence in the Brew. Haha, Adam, thank you for
- 1:06Speaker 2: joining us and keeping our hands out of our pockets.
- 1:10Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on. I'm doing well.
- 1:12Speaker 4: Indeed, I wish the government had fewer hands in our pockets.
- 1:18Speaker 2: So here in Virginia, we just watched a dog and
- 1:22Speaker 2: pony show culminate this week in a budget vote that
- 1:25Speaker 2: you know, perfunctory passed a two hundred and twelve billion
- 1:28Speaker 2: dollar taxing plan and oh sure, they also have a
- 1:32Speaker 2: list of the things they're going to spend on it,
- 1:34Speaker 2: but we're going to have to cough up that money somewhere,
- 1:37Speaker 2: and within it was the demagoguery of data centers, which
- 1:42Speaker 2: is the source of AI and their business. Virginia has
- 1:46Speaker 2: seventy percent of the world's Internet traffic passed through her
- 1:50Speaker 2: at some point or another because of our two trunk
- 1:54Speaker 2: lines coming into Virginia. But in it I found a
- 1:58Speaker 2: report from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission that
- 2:03Speaker 2: said that for every dollar of tax breaks that Virginia's
- 2:06Speaker 2: government gives the data centers, which we give them sales
- 2:11Speaker 2: and usage and ownership tax break on the computer technology
- 2:16Speaker 2: that they use quite a bit of there, that six
- 2:19Speaker 2: dollars and ten cents of economic growth was created. That
- 2:26Speaker 2: for every dollar not collected in taxes, six dollars and
- 2:31Speaker 2: ten cents of revenue was realized by Virginia citizens. I
- 2:35Speaker 2: thought that was stunning, though not surprising, because, as Ben
- 2:38Speaker 2: Franklin once said, if you want less of something, tax
- 2:42Speaker 2: it is this just Virginia's particular example of bad You know,
- 2:48Speaker 2: the idea of eliminating these tax breaks would be just
- 2:51Speaker 2: more bad policy. Being driven by data center demagoguery and
- 2:57Speaker 2: AI panic.
- 3:00Speaker 4: Yeah, I think this is a really great place to
- 3:02Speaker 4: start the conversation. In the case of Virginia, my understanding
- 3:06Speaker 4: is that this tax break that they're getting is really
- 3:09Speaker 4: just saying that we're not going to levy sales.
- 3:11Speaker 3: Tax on business inputs.
- 3:12Speaker 4: Which I'm not in favor of specific industry carve outs
- 3:18Speaker 4: and any type, but this is an example of a
- 3:21Speaker 4: carve out that should be expanded to all industries. Sales
- 3:24Speaker 4: taxes are supposed to fall on the end consumption, and
- 3:27Speaker 4: when you levy it on business inputs, it creates this cascade,
- 3:31Speaker 4: this pyramid effect, where just depending on how many inputs
- 3:35Speaker 4: you have into the business, you could be paying much
- 3:37Speaker 4: higher effective tax rates.
- 3:39Speaker 3: The impetus for pulling back.
- 3:43Speaker 4: These sort of quote unquote subsidies comes from a place
- 3:47Speaker 4: of just core misunderstanding, and that's this AI panic, this
- 3:51Speaker 4: idea that a fear of AI changing labor markets or
- 3:57Speaker 4: taking jobs, or changing the sort of economics of labor
- 4:01Speaker 4: markets right should lead us to then levy higher taxes
- 4:06Speaker 4: in any number of ways on these on the inputs
- 4:10Speaker 4: to AI, on data centers, on token usage, on new
- 4:15Speaker 4: ship production, and all of that is is it just
- 4:19Speaker 4: founded on both the basic misunderstanding of how new technological
- 4:23Speaker 4: developments have played out throughout history, and also is founded
- 4:28Speaker 4: on a misunderstanding or a lot of misinformation about the
- 4:32Speaker 4: fact that capital is taxed at a lower rate rate
- 4:36Speaker 4: than labor, which is also simply not the case.
- 4:39Speaker 2: Well, isn't you know? In some of this they talked
- 4:42Speaker 2: about I think Rogue Kana was on one of the
- 4:46Speaker 2: it was actually a podcast I'm now reminded over the
- 4:48Speaker 2: weekend saying if you just taxed Elon Musk five percent
- 4:53Speaker 2: all of his trillions of dollars and and aside from
- 4:56Speaker 2: the ridiculous things he said, you could do with it,
- 5:00Speaker 2: that's what you talk about, is capital investment. And then
- 5:03Speaker 2: people look at the value, the unrealized value of that.
- 5:08Speaker 2: We're really debating discussing unmade money. We're taxing imaginary funds.
- 5:16Speaker 2: We're saying, well, this could be worth this if you
- 5:20Speaker 2: sold it all, but you haven't sold it all, so
- 5:22Speaker 2: we don't know what it's worth. So we're going to
- 5:24Speaker 2: try to tax the imaginary worth of that. I don't
- 5:28Speaker 2: know who invented this idea, but man, there's a bust
- 5:31Speaker 2: of them somewhere in the high tax shelters of Washington, DC.
- 5:38Speaker 4: Yeah, this is the idea of taxing wealth instead of income.
- 5:41Speaker 4: And one of the main problems with taxing wealth is
- 5:45Speaker 4: that it's a stock. It's often investments in companies and
- 5:50Speaker 4: in physical things that may or may not be throwing
- 5:55Speaker 4: a source of income.
- 5:57Speaker 3: And so when you're taxing.
- 5:58Speaker 4: That stock that you are, you create a large distortion
- 6:04Speaker 4: in comparison the taxing the income or the consumption of
- 6:08Speaker 4: flow that happens every year. And so Rokane uses the
- 6:13Speaker 4: statistic where all you need to do is tax a
- 6:16Speaker 4: low two percent five percent, whatever the number is. What
- 6:19Speaker 4: he doesn't tell you that is that five percent figure.
- 6:22Speaker 4: If that underlying stock of wealth earns anything less than
- 6:26Speaker 4: a five percent return, you are taxing at equivalent of
- 6:30Speaker 4: one hundred.
- 6:31Speaker 3: Percent income tax rates.
- 6:33Speaker 4: And so they are intentionally using misleadingly small numbers to
- 6:39Speaker 4: make people think that they are not talking about levels
- 6:42Speaker 4: of taxation that is confiscatory and will not fix our
- 6:46Speaker 4: fiscal problems.
- 6:47Speaker 3: Even if you were to confiscate all of the wealth.
- 6:50Speaker 4: Of the Forbes four hundred lists, you could fund the
- 6:52Speaker 4: federal government for something like nine months.
- 6:55Speaker 3: And that's a one time confiscation.
- 6:58Speaker 4: It's just there's simply not enough wealth at the top
- 7:01Speaker 4: of the income distribution to fix Washington's massive, massive fiscal problems.
- 7:07Speaker 2: I brought this up a couple of weeks ago on
- 7:10Speaker 2: my syndicated radio program in the Mornings, and I said,
- 7:14Speaker 2: and that's just if we don't all lose our jobs,
- 7:17Speaker 2: because that's the other shoe that's in that if we
- 7:19Speaker 2: went after all the money in all of Forbes five hundred,
- 7:23Speaker 2: we would all probably become unemployed by the end of
- 7:26Speaker 2: the month because all of the companies that those that
- 7:29Speaker 2: that wealth is supporting and investing in are going to
- 7:32Speaker 2: close up, aren't they.
- 7:33Speaker 3: Adam, Yeah, that's exactly right.
- 7:36Speaker 4: There's this People often mischaracterize wealth as as like gold
- 7:43Speaker 4: bars in the back of someone's and that's that's almost
- 7:47Speaker 4: it is almost never that in that form. It is
- 7:51Speaker 4: almost entirely in uh in closely held businesses, in stocks
- 7:57Speaker 4: of companies that that is, the founders that the founder
- 8:01Speaker 4: started at that those stocks have grown because the founder
- 8:05Speaker 4: has invested so much of their personal time and resources
- 8:10Speaker 4: into those firms. And so when you talk about taking
- 8:14Speaker 4: x percent of Musk or or Bezos or you.
- 8:19Speaker 3: Named the rich boogeyman.
- 8:21Speaker 4: You're really saying the government is going to confiscate parts
- 8:25Speaker 4: of their business. That if you if you if Bernie
- 8:28Speaker 4: Sanders wants to take half of what Bezos half of
- 8:32Speaker 4: Bezos as well, you're really saying you're going to take
- 8:34Speaker 4: half of Amazon and put the government in charge of
- 8:37Speaker 4: it or and or sell it off. And that is
- 8:40Speaker 4: I think if you can go look at how the
- 8:41Speaker 4: post offices run, we most certainly wanted the government in
- 8:44Speaker 4: charge of Amazon.
- 8:46Speaker 2: Adam Michelle is on with us from a few years ago.
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- 9:58Speaker 1: We've cut the cost of listening. By hell, it didn't
- 10:02Speaker 1: cost anything in the first place. So let's say one
- 10:05Speaker 1: million dollars. First thing today by Joe Thomas on the
- 10:12Speaker 1: Talk Media Network.
- 10:13Speaker 2: He the sun.
- 10:16Speaker 7: Through all the double winds, the old hand.
- 10:23Speaker 1: Then smile a button.
- 10:28Speaker 2: Bye, and't it the truth? Celebrating Pride Month all this month,
- 10:33Speaker 2: and I hope you're enjoying it and finding it illuminative,
- 10:37Speaker 2: because really, what's the point in one of these commemorative
- 10:40Speaker 2: months if it doesn't bring illumination. Hey, I was thinking
- 10:45Speaker 2: about Freedom Fest. We were just talking about getting ready
- 10:47Speaker 2: to go out there July eighth, kicking off the next
- 10:50Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty years, and hoping it is dedicated
- 10:53Speaker 2: to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as well
- 10:57Speaker 2: all that brought to you by the Heritage Historic Sites program,
- 11:01Speaker 2: and one of the ones. I was thinking about this
- 11:04Speaker 2: while talking to the tea party on Saturday, and they
- 11:09Speaker 2: had some folks there from Saint John's Church where Patrick
- 11:12Speaker 2: Henry gave his give me Liberty or give me Death speech,
- 11:15Speaker 2: still functioning as an Episcopal church, by the way, it
- 11:18Speaker 2: still you know, And I thought of all the cool places.
- 11:23Speaker 2: We broadcasted this show live from right Tavern in Conquered
- 11:27Speaker 2: Massachusetts last year for the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
- 11:31Speaker 2: of that battle and the beginnings of the American Revolution.
- 11:37Speaker 2: And one of the places I do want to visit
- 11:41Speaker 2: is that meeting hall in Annapolis where the Continental Congress
- 11:48Speaker 2: met General Washington and he turned in his commission. Is
- 11:53Speaker 2: perhaps one of the most important sites in the history
- 11:56Speaker 2: of mankind, because this was a room full of men
- 12:00Speaker 2: who are ready to put a crown on Washington's head,
- 12:03Speaker 2: and he turned it into his commission and went home.
- 12:07Speaker 2: Such an important point in American history, and it's one
- 12:11Speaker 2: of those places nobody thinks of it. It was like, Oh,
- 12:13Speaker 2: I want to Independence Hall, and so on and so forth,
- 12:17Speaker 2: that one spot they're ready to put a crown on
- 12:20Speaker 2: George Washington's head, and he said, that's not what we
- 12:23Speaker 2: fought for. Here's my commission, have a nice day. The
- 12:26Speaker 2: portrait hangs in the Capitol rotunda still to this day.
- 12:30Speaker 1: I believe it's an.
- 12:31Speaker 2: Important say Adam Michelle visiting with us from the Cato Institute,
- 12:35Speaker 2: director of their Tax Policy Initiative and one of the
- 12:39Speaker 2: great free market groups out there. You were talking with
- 12:44Speaker 2: us earlier about AI, and you have a new column
- 12:49Speaker 2: about the AI foolishness and a lot of the you know,
- 12:52Speaker 2: a lot of the gray matter that's being splattered around
- 12:55Speaker 2: over AI so to dissuade people. We've learned now a
- 13:00Speaker 2: lot of the AI arguments are being paid for by
- 13:03Speaker 2: the CHI comms. But you talk about the idea of
- 13:07Speaker 2: government bailouts and government incursions into AI and perhaps even
- 13:12Speaker 2: getting involved the argument I hear as well, everyone else
- 13:15Speaker 2: does it. We're trying to compete on a global market
- 13:18Speaker 2: with the state sponsors of these different things. Should we
- 13:22Speaker 2: be pointing out that we're more prosperous than they are
- 13:26Speaker 2: and that's why our companies generally have more money.
- 13:29Speaker 4: Yeahs, you lose to There's a there's multiple ways that
- 13:33Speaker 4: this argument falls apart. You look at your sort of
- 13:36Speaker 4: average European country, and people in the United States consume
- 13:41Speaker 4: about seventy percent.
- 13:42Speaker 3: More than those Europeans.
- 13:44Speaker 4: And that's one measure of us just being vastly more
- 13:48Speaker 4: wealthy at the average level in America than in a
- 13:53Speaker 4: lot of places across Europe.
- 13:54Speaker 3: Wow, the same thing. You look at look at China.
- 14:00Speaker 4: They are not They are not the model that we
- 14:02Speaker 4: want to be emulating. The way that the United States
- 14:06Speaker 4: beat the Soviet Union has stayed at the forefront of
- 14:09Speaker 4: global innovation is not by putting the government in control
- 14:13Speaker 4: of firms or taking equity stakes and firms.
- 14:17Speaker 3: It is. It is by letting.
- 14:19Speaker 4: Entrepreneurs and individuals drive innovation. And that has been the
- 14:25Speaker 4: way that we've succeeded historically. And and we we are
- 14:29Speaker 4: certainly not going to beat China or anyone else at
- 14:32Speaker 4: the game of putting the government.
- 14:33Speaker 3: In charge of private industry. That is a recipe for failure.
- 14:38Speaker 2: Now, one of the things that I've noticed in my
- 14:41Speaker 2: years of doing this broadcasting and talking with listeners something
- 14:46Speaker 2: it has been an anecdotal observation that our industries are
- 14:50Speaker 2: becoming more and more centralized, more more mergers fewer choices
- 14:55Speaker 2: in places to work, whether it's banking, airlining. We become
- 15:02Speaker 2: more centralized, and at first you feel like, oh, is
- 15:06Speaker 2: that like a Bernie Sanders in me coming out? But
- 15:09Speaker 2: one of those things is because this is a tax
- 15:12Speaker 2: policy issue, these companies merge often just to keep up
- 15:17Speaker 2: with the regulatory and burden some tax regulations that the
- 15:21Speaker 2: federal and state governments put on them. It's been my argument,
- 15:25Speaker 2: I want to hear your thought on it, and please,
- 15:28Speaker 2: by all means, don't be polite to the host the listeners.
- 15:31Speaker 2: Aren't call me as crazy as a bag of hair
- 15:34Speaker 2: if you want. But it's been my thought that if
- 15:37Speaker 2: we were to go through the tax and regulatory code
- 15:41Speaker 2: with a scythe and really get off the backs, we
- 15:44Speaker 2: would watch a conflagration of new and smaller businesses starting
- 15:50Speaker 2: with more people given more opportunities to choose who they
- 15:54Speaker 2: work for, and we'd see that American exceptionalist economy come back.
- 15:58Speaker 2: Am I crazy?
- 16:01Speaker 4: So you're you're right, but I think you also overstate
- 16:05Speaker 4: the problem. I think that this idea of increasing concentration
- 16:10Speaker 4: and monopoly power is almost always overstated, and Americans currently
- 16:15Speaker 4: have sort of vast choices in in in most markets,
- 16:20Speaker 4: the places where you see businesses getting sort of bigger
- 16:24Speaker 4: and bigger and not having easy competitors, maybe in banking,
- 16:29Speaker 4: maybe in healthcare, often an education, these are all places
- 16:34Speaker 4: where the government is heavily, heavily involved. And these are
- 16:39Speaker 4: the places where you see problem, where you see the
- 16:42Speaker 4: market not not delivering what American consumers want. And so
- 16:46Speaker 4: so you're right to the extent that there's that there's
- 16:48Speaker 4: inefficient markets. The problem is too much regulatory too much
- 16:53Speaker 4: regulatory burden, too many government subsidies and uh. And the
- 16:58Speaker 4: problem with high taxes or or a lot of regulatory
- 17:01Speaker 4: burden is that it's the only the big guys that
- 17:05Speaker 4: can comply with that that you have to jump through
- 17:07Speaker 4: one hundred huw hoops to get off the ground. Of course,
- 17:11Speaker 4: that's going to keep an upstart competitor from entering the market,
- 17:14Speaker 4: and it means that the big guys just get bigger.
- 17:17Speaker 4: So yes, to the extent that there that there is
- 17:19Speaker 4: a problem is sort of with competitive markets. The answer
- 17:24Speaker 4: is always first get the government out of the way,
- 17:26Speaker 4: and you're almost always going to fix the problem.
- 17:28Speaker 2: So let me circle back to your wonderful piece that
- 17:32Speaker 2: you can read. You listening, can read atoms written, probably
- 17:36Speaker 2: read it a dozen times before it published. It's called
- 17:39Speaker 2: AI panic producing terrible tax ideas at kto dot org.
- 17:45Speaker 2: So the suggestion, as artificial intelligence becomes the boogeyman under
- 17:50Speaker 2: everyone's bed, is that the government needs to own and
- 17:55Speaker 2: get in bed with, whether it's Anthropic or Amazon, you know,
- 18:02Speaker 2: whoever it is that they want to get in bed
- 18:04Speaker 2: with or all of the above to to regulate AI.
- 18:09Speaker 2: It sounds like you're of the mind that that's the
- 18:12Speaker 2: wrong answer to take.
- 18:15Speaker 4: Yes, as soon as the government gets involved, they are
- 18:19Speaker 4: going to make this technology less efficient and worse for
- 18:23Speaker 4: workers to the extent that So you look throughout history,
- 18:27Speaker 4: there's always been anxiety around large new technological advances, and
- 18:32Speaker 4: this time is clearly clear, clearly no different what we've
- 18:36Speaker 4: seen every other time throughout history. Is that new technologies
- 18:39Speaker 4: ultimately help workers. It helps raise wages, It makes us
- 18:44Speaker 4: more productive and opens many, many more jobs than that
- 18:49Speaker 4: than it displaces, and and and getting getting preempting that
- 18:55Speaker 4: cycle and getting the government involved before you can see
- 18:58Speaker 4: the benefits of the new technology most certainly means we
- 19:01Speaker 4: will never see those benefits, and we may just see
- 19:04Speaker 4: the downside.
- 19:05Speaker 2: All right, Well, I appreciate that. Hang on more to
- 19:07Speaker 2: come on this, but I wanted to get that thought.
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- 20:19Speaker 1: Quit curse thing today by Joe Thomas on the Talk
- 20:24Speaker 1: Media Network, all naturally and free of artificial intelligence all the.
- 20:30Speaker 3: Time, time.
- 20:41Speaker 2: Through the celebrating Pride month.
- 20:46Speaker 1: Through smile RTI.
- 20:48Speaker 9: So we do for you.
- 20:51Speaker 4: Love.
- 20:53Speaker 2: I mean not in one of those creepy stalker report
- 20:57Speaker 2: me to human resources kind of way. It's just in
- 20:59Speaker 2: that mutual respect and concern Colorado Springs fighting over AI now,
- 21:06Speaker 2: and keep in mind New York Posts Political Daily Caller
- 21:11Speaker 2: all of the reports about how the chicoms are funding
- 21:13Speaker 2: all the opposition to artificial intelligence development because they wanted
- 21:18Speaker 2: in China. And Adam is on from Cato Institute. So
- 21:26Speaker 2: what is the future. What should government be doing?
- 21:32Speaker 4: My call is to to is for government to take
- 21:37Speaker 4: their hands off of this new innovation. They didn't stop
- 21:40Speaker 4: the advent of the Internet, and it would have been
- 21:42Speaker 4: terrible if they did. There's no reason we should approach
- 21:46Speaker 4: this any differently.
- 21:47Speaker 2: Well, heck al Gore told me he invented the internet. Adam,
- 21:51Speaker 2: I mean, my gosh. So then the question remains, you know,
- 21:57Speaker 2: as we're talking about this, and it's it's been my argument,
- 22:00Speaker 2: this is more, this is less tax policy and more,
- 22:05Speaker 2: who do you want governing AI and the data centers
- 22:10Speaker 2: that operate them. I want them in the United States,
- 22:14Speaker 2: where they're subject to the Bill of Rights, where they're
- 22:17Speaker 2: subject to American liberties and protections, rather than in China,
- 22:23Speaker 2: where you'll never know and it's you know, an authoritarian
- 22:27Speaker 2: regime anyway, which seems to be the two options I know.
- 22:30Speaker 2: Elon Musk talked about space based data centers even worse.
- 22:35Speaker 2: You go try to FOI a space based whose authority
- 22:38Speaker 2: are they under? But at least when these data centers
- 22:42Speaker 2: running the AI operations are in the United States, I
- 22:45Speaker 2: feel like there's recourse for people who want to protect
- 22:50Speaker 2: liberty in the face of this technology. Am I right.
- 22:56Speaker 3: In two different ways?
- 22:57Speaker 4: Yes, to an extent that you that politicians in the
- 23:01Speaker 4: United States tax AI or tax data centers out of
- 23:05Speaker 4: existance or keep them from getting built. They're just going
- 23:08Speaker 4: to be built elsewhere, and the people that live in
- 23:11Speaker 4: those places will be the ones that benefit most from
- 23:15Speaker 4: those new technological advancements. That's that new investment and the
- 23:20Speaker 4: growth that comes with it. But also in the United States,
- 23:23Speaker 4: to the extent the government stays out of the way.
- 23:27Speaker 4: I want data centers in the hands of the private market,
- 23:30Speaker 4: so that there's competition between providers and the services and
- 23:35Speaker 4: what is being produced there.
- 23:37Speaker 3: Is disciplined by market competition.
- 23:40Speaker 4: The more the government gets involved, the less discipline there is,
- 23:44Speaker 4: and the more centralized the decision making becomes. And I
- 23:48Speaker 4: don't think anyone wants Donald Trump or whoever the next
- 23:51Speaker 4: president is being the sole decider of what happens in
- 23:56Speaker 4: data centers. We want less centralization and we want more
- 24:00Speaker 4: market discipline.
- 24:01Speaker 2: So so you talk about, you know, and you talk
- 24:04Speaker 2: about bad tax policy, because one of the things I
- 24:09Speaker 2: remember maybe twenty years ago, maybe maybe more. I've been
- 24:13Speaker 2: doing this a very long time, Adam. But and actually
- 24:16Speaker 2: there was a joke going around the internet that the
- 24:19Speaker 2: government should charge postage for email because the postal service
- 24:26Speaker 2: was struggling for money. And I actually recall a member
- 24:31Speaker 2: of the US House of Representatives giving up and getting
- 24:34Speaker 2: up and giving a floor speech because they believed, you know,
- 24:37Speaker 2: this is proto Babylon. Buh. But it was. And I said,
- 24:42Speaker 2: gosh that you know they would actually consider doing something
- 24:47Speaker 2: like that because you know their propriety, Oh, the US
- 24:50Speaker 2: Postal Service, whatever it is, you know they're going to
- 24:54Speaker 2: try to protect their territory. What things does my listener,
- 24:59Speaker 2: our listen or have to be aware of to be
- 25:02Speaker 2: watching for trigger phrases rhetoric that's coming from, regardless of
- 25:07Speaker 2: it being a Republican or a Democrat. On this AI issue,
- 25:12Speaker 2: not just in taxation but in regulation, I.
- 25:16Speaker 4: Think the biggest flag to look for is the capital
- 25:21Speaker 4: versus labor framing or the AI versus workers framing. That
- 25:27Speaker 4: for me makes my ears perk up and think that
- 25:30Speaker 4: a politician is trying to get me to crack down
- 25:34Speaker 4: on or tax the bad thing. But what we know
- 25:37Speaker 4: throughout history is economic pie is not about just.
- 25:40Speaker 3: Dividing it but also about growing it.
- 25:43Speaker 4: And as long as it's growing, workers and the owners
- 25:47Speaker 4: of the investment can both win at the same time.
- 25:51Speaker 4: And that's the story we've seen play out over and
- 25:54Speaker 4: over again. And as soon as you start talking about
- 25:56Speaker 4: it sort of us versus them, these two resources are
- 26:00Speaker 4: in competition. That that tells me that we're thinking about
- 26:05Speaker 4: it all wrong and we're in a sort of static
- 26:08Speaker 4: envy mindset rather than one of growth and an economic dynamism.
- 26:13Speaker 2: Well, and you talk about economic diamond dimmism. Easy for
- 26:18Speaker 2: me to say this was what made America's economy exceptional
- 26:23Speaker 2: atom in my viewpoint, was the fact that the American workforce,
- 26:28Speaker 2: most of us are not going to invent the better
- 26:30Speaker 2: mouse trap or even an artificial mouse trap, but we
- 26:33Speaker 2: can choose to go to work for somebody that we
- 26:36Speaker 2: believe in, and that therefore that makes us more diligent,
- 26:40Speaker 2: more uh invested in making sure the product that we
- 26:46Speaker 2: create is the best because we believe in it. And
- 26:49Speaker 2: and that's where I want a lot of competition in AI,
- 26:52Speaker 2: so that these you know, smart people coming out of
- 26:55Speaker 2: our colleges can go to work for different companies like
- 26:59Speaker 2: they could say, well, this guy really seems to protect
- 27:01Speaker 2: privacy and they really work to make sure you can
- 27:04Speaker 2: use you know, the artificial intelligence world while protecting your privacy,
- 27:08Speaker 2: or this group really is very interested in making sure
- 27:12Speaker 2: it's as user friendly. But the point being that the
- 27:15Speaker 2: more choice we have in AI, the better, and the
- 27:19Speaker 2: more government we have, it seems like always is the case,
- 27:21Speaker 2: we have less choice.
- 27:23Speaker 4: Right Yes, as soon as the government gets involved, everything
- 27:28Speaker 4: sort of falls to the lowest common denominator. And you've
- 27:30Speaker 4: seen that with sort of tech regulation across Europe, the
- 27:37Speaker 4: heavy handed state control that you see across European countries.
- 27:46Speaker 3: Is why that if.
- 27:46Speaker 4: You look at like pre COVID trends of GDP growth,
- 27:50Speaker 4: the United States is twenty percent above trend, in the
- 27:53Speaker 4: EU is twenty percent below trend.
- 27:55Speaker 3: And it's that that.
- 27:57Speaker 4: Entrepreneurial spirit is being damped and to buy high taxes,
- 28:02Speaker 4: UH transfer programs that keep people in poverty, and a
- 28:06Speaker 4: regulatory state that levy that passes laws.
- 28:10Speaker 3: Like at the four four.
- 28:12Speaker 4: Laws in your certain average across Europe compared to the
- 28:15Speaker 4: United States.
- 28:16Speaker 3: And it's it's all of.
- 28:17Speaker 4: These things combined that they that is the reason why
- 28:22Speaker 4: all of the biggest companies are started or found in
- 28:24Speaker 4: the United States, are grown in the United States, and
- 28:27Speaker 4: are funded in the United States.
- 28:29Speaker 3: And it would be a.
- 28:29Speaker 4: Shame if we if we undermined that that golden goose
- 28:35Speaker 4: then is that keeps us at the forefront of all
- 28:38Speaker 4: of these new technologies.
- 28:39Speaker 2: Well, and let's not forget it's China that would like
- 28:41Speaker 2: to serve us up some crispy fried golden goose as well. Adam,
- 28:47Speaker 2: thank you so much for your time on this again.
- 28:51Speaker 2: It is Adam Michelle at cato dot org for you
- 28:54Speaker 2: and me until tomorrow. I am Joe Thomas, So long
- 28:57Speaker 2: and thanks for all the fish.
- 29:03Speaker 9: Hi. I'm Mark Falter with the Financial Fitness Show. Have
- 29:06Speaker 9: you been keeping up on the Big Beautiful Bill. There's
- 29:11Speaker 9: a lot of information in this bill. It's eight hundred
- 29:14Speaker 9: and seventy seven pages long. And for that reason, we
- 29:17Speaker 9: are offering a free webinar free webinar July thirty first,
- 29:22Speaker 9: at six thirty pm Central where you can actually get
- 29:26Speaker 9: on and ask your questions. Come with your questions, come
- 29:28Speaker 9: with your scenario, and hopefully we'll have time to answer.
- 29:31Speaker 9: It's gonna be about thirty forty five minutes long, going
- 29:33Speaker 9: to be more interactive, and if you want to know how,
- 29:35Speaker 9: you can get on that webinar eight six six seven
- 29:37Speaker 9: sixty four two six three five Hugain eighty six six
- 29:40Speaker 9: seven sixty four two six three five July thirty first,
- 29:43Speaker 9: at six thirty pm Central, Free webinar eight six six
- 29:48Speaker 9: seven sixty four two six three five eight six six
- 29:51Speaker 9: seven sixty.
- 29:52Speaker 2: Four two six three five Hugain
- 29:53Speaker 9: Eight sixty six seven sixty four two six three five