 Yeah, well, you know you're just inspiring me and switching up my question now at the last minute I was I was gonna ask you something stupid inside baseball gossipy about objectivism But I want to ask you something much more positive and inspired by what you just said and that is this notion of really wealth creation and I talked about this on the iron ran center UK Podcast a couple weeks ago that of course they didn't you know, they're from you know The Europe they didn't know what lifestyles of the rich and famous was but you know and you remember lifestyles of the rich and famous And in the 80s only very rich people had a Television in their bathtub. You remember that it was something that if you had a TV in your bathtub built in it was it was only the most extravagant and You know I the point I was making is now we all have that technology We have it even in a way as you see your own you couldn't imagine I mean, maybe you could imagine everyone having a TV but never having an iPhone with every video ever created every TV show ever created So in all this talk about wealth career and all this talk about income inequality and politics are owner How do you make the distinction between? Oh people aren't making money? Or they're not making any more money is against look at the wealth they now enjoy the wealth that you can't Quantify, I mean, you know, it's it's it's Every day it truly is I mean it's it's People look an economist in particular only look at the amount of money we have in a bank, right? And the assets we hold and they value those assets for the dollar amount you paid for them and yet The actual wealth that you possess far exceeds that because the value your iPhone Represents the value fiber into the home represents the value that technology represents It's not captured in the amount of money. I paid for it because the value is so much more than that so that We are so much richer and this includes the poor who tend to have smartphones who tend to have Automobiles who tend to have things like a conditioning and and just think about 50 years ago a conditioning was pretty rare Outside of a few places that were very very hot But yet all those things enhance human life enhance standard of living enhance quality of life dramatically But economists can't measure them. They can't capture the value of them. So they're never counted Even when you look when you look at the inequality numbers, which I think are all bogus and I don't even I Think the whole inequality debate is irrelevant to anything really but what's interesting is if you look at what people call consumption inequality consumption inequality That is the difference between what poor people spend on Consumption on stuff and what rich people spend on stuff that shrinks. It hasn't gone up Rich people might be worth more and maybe earn more, but they don't spend more because you know what? After that first private jet You would know Jonathan, you don't need to right my father used to say you can only wear one pair of pants in the morning Exactly, and I always say compare me to Bill Gates, right? Bill Gates is I don't know 10,000 times richer than me Oh, I don't know the exact number I Should I should make the calculation one day, but He he drives a car And I drive a car now is cuz probably nicer But mine has leather. It's not bad right and it gets me to where I need to go and In most places at about the same time that Bill Gates's car would get him there Because traffic and everything he's not driving faster than I am So he's at the very tiny little bit of margin a little bit more comfortable than me. I Have got a nice house He's got a nice house now. Here's his nicer bigger more electronically fancy But how much better is it in terms of utility to your life? It's not a lot It's not how much would I give to have Bill Gates's house? Not much And take somebody poor even somebody point America today typically as a house They're protected from the weather. They have heating. They typically have air conditioning You know they have a car so don't use me because I'm probably in the In the higher, you know upper middle class or my wife likes to call it lower rich. I don't know what category that is But if if you take somebody put they have all these things, right? They can get to work with the car. They can they live in a house. They have a television There's might be 55 inches Bill Gates's might have the 100 inch one that costs $80,000 But you know what both of their Netflix subscriptions cost exactly the same Exactly the same right So it's not so yes, this television is bigger sound system is better But they're watching the same movies same TV shows at the same cost and you go through all these things Yeah, Bill Gates eats at nicer restaurants more frequently. Maybe maybe who knows He's a you know, I probably eat at more fancy restaurants at Bill Gates. Just because it's my hobby and not his but but You know everybody in America, we've got an obesity crisis because everybody's eating Nobody starving in America. We're eating and then, you know Bill Gates flies on a private jet If he wants to go from if I'm Seattle to New York He gets on his private jet and goes and if I want to go from from Puerto Rico to New York I get on a private jet and fly there, you know, I happen to share my private jet with about 300 other people It's still a private jet. It still gets me to New York It's still incredibly convenient their regular flights and For the most part, it's affordable to almost everybody in the country that think about airplane travel Jonathan 40 50 years ago Sure, how many people could afford it now almost everybody try. I mean, we're not traveling right now But generally people are traveling all over the place. I mean if and complaining of course, but but fine Well, you know, I'll just quickly say I want to monopolize the time But you know, it's talking about inflation and being kind of a stealth tax. You don't really see it Strangely, it seems like often wealth creation is like that as well because we've become so accustomed to it that you know And I'll quickly tell an anecdote. I replaced a car like a Jeep jerky that we had about 11 years and that same level Jeep in 11 years is so much better There's all these systems now that 11 years ago backup systems and camera systems that it's the same model and that's wealth creation It's become so commonplace now. You have to stop and just marvel at it once in a while and it's not amazing It's not in and of itself. It's not more expensive. It's about the same cost. Yes As it was back then adjusted for inflation and and yeah, I mean another way to think about this as you brought up inflation is Think of how much deflation deflation in the sense of pricing going down, which is not prices if we had a rational You know free market monetary solution prices would be going down because quality If you control for quality, you know, you're buying the same car, but the cost so much better So it's really cheaper. If you buy a computer now and your computer 20 years ago Same cost but the computer so much better. So in a sense per unit of utility prices have gone down dramatically and indeed when you look at charts of costs of things over the last 20 30 years To a large extent because of technology and China and trade global trade Prices of almost every good have gone dramatically down except except the things that government touches Housing health care education And I'm not dramatically up Yeah, and arguably automobile prices should be going down to if it Regulated absolutely and and air travel would be cheaper and all these things would be would be cheaper and faster and more convenient and better So so but I like that stealth In a sense the increases in our standard of living of stealth We don't act we we don't actually and this is why and this is an important psychological point in my view It explains a lot of what's going on in America It's why people so easily buy into the rhetoric of inequality It's why people believe they're worse off So so, you know, everybody believes now that their wages are lower than they were 30 years ago They believe that the standard of living is lower than it was 30 years ago They believe that crime is higher than it was 30 years ago They believe generally life is much worse than every dimension that was 30 years ago and that none of that is true but if you say it to them often enough and Since the improvement are not easily monetized and their stealth as Jonathan mentioned their stealth improvements they it's easy to convince them and Trump did it in 2016 I think one and they left has been doing it for 12 years I mean one of the things that one of my big objections to Trump is that he's picked up on all the left's talking points, right? This talking point that the middle class and the working class are worse off than they used to be is a leftist talking point The Trump is picked up on but it's just not true But because of all these things are stealth, it's easy to convince the people that it's true because they don't Think that's the bottom line. They don't think and they don't think about it in those terms They don't think of how wonderful it is to have zoom Right and be able to communicate with people even during a pandemic They just take zoo for granted. They take the computer for granted. They take the Netflix for granted. They take all these things for granted Everyday I have more more respect and understanding why Rand felt it's so important to study history. Yep And why that was such a focus of hers and certainly thanks your own great response What we need today what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think Meaning any man or woman who knows that men's life must be guided by reason by the intellect Not by feelings wishes wins or mystic revelations Any man or woman who values his life and who does not get want to give in to today's cult of the spare cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist All right before we go on reminder, please like the show we've got a hundred and sixty three live listeners right now 30 likes That should be at least a hundred. I figure at least a hundred of you actually like the show Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it But but at least the people who like it, you know, I want to see I want to see a thumbs up There you go start liking it. 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