 The 70s was an abysmal decade for the economy and we saw a rebirth in the 80s. Do you see another rebirth or is there simply too much debt stupidity to recover from? It's going to be much more difficult this time around. The 70s was an abysmal decade for the economy, it was abysmal philosophically, it was abysmal politically, it saw Nixon and the corruption and Ford's impotence and Jimmy Carter's, you know, just nonsense, mainly impotence, and he did some good things, Jimmy Carter actually did a bunch of good things, but the 70s also had a number of giants that landed up having a huge impact on what happened in the 1980s. I'd name four giants who were alive in the 1970s, who I think had a profound impact on the rebirth in the 1980s. And those giants were Inrant, Von Mises, Hayek, and Milton Friedman, particularly Rand and Friedman during the 60s and 70s made capitalism a positive term. They defended capitalism. You know, you could argue about the quality of Friedman's defense, but from an economic perspective, he was really good. So you had thinkers defending the market system. You had thinkers fighting against what was going on. You had thinkers projecting a vision for what was possible. Atlas shrugged, free to choose, and of course Hayek in England influencing a young Margaret Thatcher before she was elected prime minister. And some of her advisors being influenced by Mises and by Rand, Reagan being influenced by Inrant, the 70s had the 80s because most of the politicians in the 70s were nothing more than incompetent. And there was a real ideological, you know, push by the advocates of freedom, by the advocates of capitalism. On the other hand today, we are much worse politically. You know, we have really nasty presidents like Obama and Trump. We have completely incompetent, half not their presidents like Biden. You have a political environment that's toxic in a way it wasn't in the 19th century. You know that under Jimmy Carter, there was massive deregulation, bipartisan deregulation of the economy. The Democrats controlled everything and they deregulated trucking, railroads, brokerage. In the 70s under Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, nobody is talking today about deregulation. I mean, we're talking about bills, passing Congress, doing away with whole way of regulations. Nobody's talking about that today. The Democrats are way to the left of where they used to be and the Republicans are way to the left of where they used to be. There is nobody advocating who is popular, who is having an impact on the culture, advocating for markets, for capitalism. You've got some good economists out there talking about these things, but how many people follow them? How many people read them? There's no Milton Friedman out there. There certainly is no Iron Rand. There certainly is no Hayek or Mises. So the view that culture has of capitalism is deteriorating. Jennifer says, there's no rush out there, right? Rushed the rock band of the 70s, right? It helped bring about the 80s or that culture. There's nothing like that today, except for the Iran book show, of course. But there just isn't a counter-cultural, counter-political ... It's not a movement really, but a voice, a force in the culture today, like there was in the 1970s. So the 1970s were worse than today. Inflation was worse. Crime was much worse. The infrastructure was worse. Everything was worse than today. Except the ideas were better. You could see the potential for upside. Our politicians were better. Our intellectuals were better. So where do we go from here? Where do we go from here? Who is the voice, let's say, who is the Ronald Reagan of the Republican Party? It's not Trump. It's not DeSantis. I don't know who it is. Who is going to go into government and say, government is not the solution. It is the problem. Now Reagan could say that and get away with it because the culture was ready for it. Is the culture ready for it today? No. The 1970s were much worse than today from existential sense. Ed reminds us interest rates were 18 to 21%. I said that earlier. I mean, it's horrible. You couldn't buy a house because your interest rate on the mortgage was unbelievable. Trump talked a little bit about deregulation. Never big issue for him. Never pushed it through Congress. Never tried to pass a bill. All he cared about was never deregulated even Obamacare, right? Never got rid of Obamacare. Never went to the House and Senate and tried to negotiate a deal and try to get something done. No. Yeah, the regulatory agencies lowered regulations a little bit and now they're all increasing them because now they bite in opportunities. That's not talking against regulation. That's not being serious about regulation and stop, stop, stop defending Trump. God. It's indefensible on the economic front. Yeah, he cut taxes. That's it. Economic front, that's it. So I don't see who can do it, you know, DeSantis, Paul can't win. Neither of them have a personality. They both have no charisma. Rand Paul, DeSantis, I'm willing to bet everything I have that DeSantis would never make Rand Paul his running mate. Rand Paul will never be vice president. He's never going to be president. So no, I think we're in much worse shape today than we were in the 70s in terms of future expectations unless we get a real surprise. Somebody would have to come out of the woodwork. Somebody would have to come from where we don't expect them. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com. That's last support. 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