 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Wednesday, 15th of June. God, I can't believe it's already 15th of June. Six months already over almost. In 2022, time just flies when it's not a COVID year, when you're not locked up at home. Time just flies. All right. Ocon. Ocon is in two weeks. I hope some of you are coming. Looking forward to meeting some of you in person. You all should come. It's in Washington, DC. Over the 4th of July, we'll see fireworks. It'll be a blast. So, yes, join us in Washington, DC in two weeks for Ocon Objectivist conferences. I'm speaking there. I think I'm the last speaker on the last day. Yeah, there's a poker tournament. There is a poker tournament at Ocon. Scott Hood, I'm a good player. You know, poker is a funny game. When you get good cards, you're a good player. And I suck at poker when I get bad cards. I'm good at poker when I get good cards. Because one thing's about poker is that I don't like to fold. Like, folding is boring. Folding is boring. So if I have good cards and I don't fold, I win. And if I have bad cards and I don't fold, I lose. And that's as simple as that. And I'm telling you this because I'm tying to fake you out. So those of you who play poker with me think that I'm never full. Anyway, poker is a fun game. I almost won last time. But a couple of family members ganged up on me and beat me at the end of the poker game. So that's too bad. All right, we are going to talk about gas prices today. We're going to talk about refineries. We're going to talk about the Biden administration's panic. We're going to talk about windfall taxes. We're talking government policy around oil today. Oil, gasoline, God, in some places, premium gas is $7 a barrel, $6.99, $7 a barrel. I don't know what it is in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is funny because Puerto Rico, like, they started going metric, but they didn't finish it. So some things are metric and some things are not. And really, maybe the only thing that really is metric is gas prices. So gases are quoted in not in gallons, but in liters. So the price is per liter. But everything's in miles. Everything else is in gallons. The car is in gallons. So you have to do the calculation. So I don't know what the price is in Puerto Rico because I haven't done the math. So anyway, gas prices through the roof, $6 to $7 for premium gasoline. That is amazing. That is stunning. Inflation, generally, as we've talked about on the show before, has been through the roof. And it seems to keep surprising the Biden administration. They keep being like, oh my god, what's happening? It was supposed to be transitory. Inflation is supposed to be over. What's going on? And they have no idea what's going on. And they really are panicking. And they're struggling to figure it out. And they don't know what to do. The better economists on the left are telling them, well, it's all an issue of the Fed. You can't do anything. And the worst economists, which are the most of them, on the left are telling them complete nonsense. So it really is. I mean, I can understand the Biden administration. I mean, that's good. They're going to have the worst economy since the 1970s. They're going to have inflation. They're likely to have stagflation. We might get a deep recession. They've got a midterms coming up where they're going to be wiped out because Americans are not going to vote for Democrats given the circumstances. I mean, it's enough that you got TRT and you got all the other stuff going on. But then on top of that, you've got a floundering economy. You've got inflation. The cost of living is going up. Gasoline at $7. Nobody can win under those circumstances. So they're losing. And it's just spiraling out of control with poor Democrats not knowing what to do. And they're just frantic. So Biden, when the initially inflation started, the story out of the administration of Janet Yellen and Biden. Janet Yellen is a decent economist. I mean, she knows better, but I don't think she has any real control there. Janet Yellen and Biden was like, oh, it's transitory. It's just supply chains. They'll get fixed. No problem. Once the supply chains get going again, and any day now that's going to happen, we know that. And there's nothing we can do about it, the government. But supply chains are going to get going. We just need to spend more money. If we spend more money, supply chains get going. Inflation will go away. And then they went, whoops, inflation didn't go away. Oh, but it's the Russians. It's that war in Ukraine. It's the evil Putin years. But Putin's responsible for American inflation. That's the problem. It's Putin. If only we can defeat Putin quickly, inflation will go away. Well, we're not going to defeat Putin quickly. And inflation is not going away, and inflation has nothing to do with Russia. It's interesting that they haven't really blamed China yet. I think that it's because China is like Trump's gig. Like Trump blamed China for everything. It's like the Democrats are like, if we blame China, we sound like Trump. We can't do that. So they're not blaming China. They're blaming everybody else, but not China. So they blamed Russia. They blamed, they said it's transitory, just supply chain stuff that is going to get fixed like that, because it's easy to fix supply chain stuff. And none of that has worked. American people are now buying it. And people are struggling. People are clamoring for the government to do something, because we've trained the American people that whenever you have a problem, the solution is government. And the Biden administration doesn't know what to do. So they've picked up lately the Elizabeth Warren line. Inflation is not supply chains. It's not Russia. It's not China, the lockdowns in China reducing supply. And it's certainly definitely unequivocally not the stimulus, the gazillions of dollars that the federal government and the Fed poured into the economy during COVID. It can't be that, right? Because that's good, because that's government spending. That's MMT. That's always a positive. Then what could it be? Well, this is obvious. They should have thought of this in the beginning. It's greed. It's always greed. It's always the greed of corporations responsible for all the evils in the world. I mean, COVID is only because the greed of the pharmaceutical companies, or at least certainly because COVID made the pharmaceutical companies a lot of money. So it's always greed. And the financial crisis was caused by greed on Wall Street. And so it's greed. Companies are raising prices for no reason. How dare they? They're raising prices for no reason. And not only are they raising prices, but they're not producing enough product for people so their shortages of prices go up even more. And they're doing it on purpose. So this is where the Democrats almost always go. This goes back to the 70s. And to be fair, this is what Republicans do as well. When a Republican administration is in charge in times like this, like the Nixon administration, which basically puts price controls on the economy because of those greedy corporations daring to raise prices and making money. So they're blaming business. They're blaming corporations. Today, Biden sent a letter to executives at Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy, and ExxonMobil. The letter was also sent to Phillips, Chevron, British Petroleum, or they don't call themselves British Petroleum. That's not politically correct. BP and Shell. And in the letter, the White House Biden, President Biden sent a letter to all these other company executives saying, how dare you? Why aren't you producing more gasoline? Why are gas prices so high in America? You've got to produce more gasoline. Do you understand me? You've got to produce more gasoline. And how dare you make so much money? Profits in all these companies is way up. How dare you make so much money? You've got to produce more gasoline. You've got to increase the funding capacity immediately. Now, I want more refineries working now, today, and more gasoline will reduce prices. And maybe I've got a chance in 2022. The problem Biden is going to face is that there is no more refining capacity. You know, refineries are working day and night. Now, you know, they're all kind of problems with refining like the fact that in the summer, California switched an ethanol gasoline oil blend, which requires particular refining processes and capabilities. And when they do that, for a while, things slow down, and there are refineries. And then when they pick up, but the gasoline produced by refineries that are producing gasoline for California is legally cannot be sold in any other state because other states have different blends. They don't have the California blend. And you can go on and on and on with the stupidity of regulations and controls that exist out there that make it more difficult for a finest increase capacity. But the fact there's capacity right now in the United States is over 90%, 94% last I looked. So maybe there's a 6% increase. They can maybe squeeze out somehow. But you have to shut down certain plans for maintenance sometimes. And the fact is we're running at full capacity. This is it. What's Biden going to do next? And he knows this. It's not like the Biden administration doesn't know that refineries are running at full capacity. And it's not just that they're running at full capacity. Capacity has shrunk. Why? Why has capacity shrunk? Why are refineries in the United States and really all over the world producing less gasoline have the capacity to produce less gasoline today than they could three years ago? Why over COVID, over the last three years, have overfinies reduced capacity to produce? Why would they do that? Well, let's think about that. Over the last three years, and certainly during the Biden administration and during the Biden campaign, and Biden was running for president, I actually have a quote on this. Where's my quote? See if I can find my quote. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a quote here. This is Biden during one of the presidential debates in 2020 in a primary debate. He was outraged by the suggestion his climate plan wasn't ambitious enough. So he said, quote, number one, no more subsidies for our fuel industry. No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill. Period. Ends. Number one. All right. Well, if the Biden administration is going to come in and stop drilling and prevent people from drilling and generally shift, you know, heavily subsidize other forms of energy, then why would any rational oil company, why would any rational refiner expand refining capabilities? If the Biden administration was doing everything in its power to reduce and to eviscerate the internal combustion engine in favor of electric cars, why, why? And this is true globally, not just in the United States. If Europe was going to now shift everything to electric cars and disincentivize the internal combustion engine, why would it increase refining capacity? I would shut down. I would start shrinking my refining capacity to just a new world in which people didn't want gasoline, didn't want oil. What oil was the enemy? So here we are in a situation where the left and the left globally, so this includes Europe, has basically declared war on oil. The right is quiet and impotent, as Cook says in the chat. They're too busy going after Disney. They're too busy arguing about what a woman is. They're too busy in the cultural wars. They're too busy with that. You know, where's time for refiners and oil and economics and inflation? That's boring stuff American people don't care. And then the right, American people don't care. What American people care about is CRT and transgender stuff, and that's what seems to consume the entire energy of everybody. It's the cultural wars. It's the cultural wars. Yes, abortion. We got to get rid of abortion. Who has time? Who has time for economics and economic policy? So there's no opposition, but the world basically has declared war on oil, on oil refining, on oil discovery, on oil drilling. So guess what happens? Capital flows away from the industry. Less money gets invested in new drilling. Less money gets invested in new refining capacity. More money goes to alternative energy. More money goes to where the government is subsidizing, where the government is promoting, I don't know, anything that's, quote, alternative. And then you get a crisis. And suddenly people discover, ooh, but we still drive cars. Ooh, but we still need oil and gasoline, and we still need these things. And it's too late. It's too late because to build a refinery, God, if you had the environmental permissions to build, it's the 10-year process. And it's probably 10 years to get the environmental permission. It's anyway from five to 20 years to build a new refining refining. You can expand an existing one, but again, expand it to where? What about the worms that are going to die when you build a refinery on the little land there that they have? What about the pollution? What about this? What about that? And you could have built a pipeline, but no, no pipeline, not a lot of pipe, not a lot of big pipelines. So not allowed to expand. And the left has been at the forefront of stomping any kind of expansion, any building of pipelines, any drilling, any new refiners. They don't want refining. They want to shut down fossil fuels. Now, I don't think Biden wants to shut it down. He's just playing to his constituency, but his constituency is what matters. So now we're in a position where it's too late, guys. It's just too late. $7, $8 a gallon. Who knows where it'll end. It's a large extent depends on opaque and what the Saudis decide to do. Because here in America, we basically crippled ourselves. We crippled our own ability to produce, our own ability to ramp up production. Banks won't lend. Why? Because then our ESG rating will plummet. BlackRock won't invest in them. And Republicans, no way it's received. Oh, Republicans did get involved in a new piece of legislation. A new piece of legislation. I don't remember the name of it, something shipping, something supply chains make the world a better place. So it's a bipartisan bill that has been approved by both the House and the Senate. It's going to be signed by Biden, I think tomorrow. It is, it's supposed to save supply chains. It's supposed to make supply chains more efficient. Ooh, Iran, how are they going to do that? What do you think? For example, maybe the bill will eliminate the Jones Act. Do you know that California imports oil, light oil, for, it's some fuel blend from Asia? Because it can't get it from Texas and other places because of the Jones Act. You know, I've already told you that a place in Massachusetts and other places in the past have imported natural gas from Russia when they could import it from Pennsylvania. But they can't because of the Jones Act. So you think if you were going to improve supply chains in America, you do it with the Jones Act? Oh, no. That's not included in the bill. All right, so maybe you're going to deregulate shipping. Maybe you're going to deregulate the harbors. Oh, no. No, no. Can't do that. Can't deregulate. Here is a bill that's supposed to improve supply chains, supposed to improve shipping. And the bill is basically more regulation, more control. Whatever the, I had this, but I don't have it with me, whatever the regulatory agency that controls shipping and harbors and all of that is gaining more power, new power, they're going to make it less effective. They claim that this will improve exports. But if you want to reduce inflation, what you want to improve is imports. No, it's going to make imports more cumbersome, more bureaucratic. So the one thing that can be done at the federal level, at the federal government level, non-fed level, to deal with inflation, which is deregulate, increase trade, eliminate tariffs, do away with the Jones Act. These are just a few things that, like that, would lower prices in the United States. No, can't do that. Can't do that. Don't trust markets. Gotta give more power to the central planners. Gotta, you know, I think the next step is to have Elizabeth Warren set gasoline prices. I think that's her next job. She's going to be in charge of setting the price of oil globally. Central planners, that's what the Democrats have. That's the tool that they have. They have nothing else. So we go after the refiners. So how does refining cost in the US get set? What goes into the cost of gasoline that you get? Well, 60% of gasoline prices, 60%, is crude oil. Crude oil. So who determines crude oil prices? Well, it's the market, remember? It's supply and demand. And yeah, Russia, the fact that Russia, Iran, Venezuela, you know, are crippled to some extent or another, reduces the supply from them. Yeah, that reduces the price. But generally, why is crude oil so expensive? It's expensive because there's no new drilling in the United States. It's expensive because OPEC, who Donald Trump lavished praise on, was schmoozed with, danced with the princess, sucked up to, has enormous power. And as a consequence of all the sucking up is not afraid of the United States. It's funny because Biden tried to be tough with Saudi Arabia at the beginning. And now, now he's regretting it. So now, he's going to fly to Saudi Arabia and he's going to do a Trump. He's going to dance with the princess. And who knows what else he does with the princess. But he's going to dance with the princess and get them to like America again. Instead of fearing America. But anyway, that's another story. So OPEC, OPEC has basically said, we love high prices. We are not going to increase production. Not interested. And of course, Russia, not completely coming offline because they're still selling to India and other places. But at a much higher price. Because at a much higher cost, put it that way. Because the shipping problems, so the quantity coming out of Russia has gone down significantly. But the other flip side of this is, of course, economies have exploded after COVID. Economies have grown after COVID. Maybe you don't see it in GDP. But people are starting driving again. So people have shifted. During COVID, we still bought stuff. But we bought stuff off of Amazon. We bought stuff at the grocery store. We bought physical stuff. But now, people are driving. They're flying. They're moving. They're expending accidentally. The world is going back to normal. And supply just can't keep up. Supply of oil can't keep up. So crude prices have gone up through the roof. 17% of the price of gasoline is refining costs and profits. So that's where you can go after the refiners. But of course, gasoline prices are up more than double. Maybe triple in some places. That's not from refining costs and profits. That's almost all crude oil. 11% is distribution and marketing. Again, distribution is very expensive. Because of regulations, gas stations, getting into gas stations, all kind of environmental regulations around that. And finally, 12%, more than distribution and marketing, so 12% of the cost of gasoline is federal and state taxes. So we could do a permanent tax holiday for federal and state gasoline taxes. That'd be cool. That'd be cool. That would reduce prices of the pump. But even there, not that much. When crude oil prices have gone up three times, then gasoline prices are going to go up three times. Now, are refiners making a lot of money? Are oil companies making a lot of money? Because note, the costs to drill the oil, to bring it to the surface have not gone up. Maybe gone up a little bit because labor costs have gone up. But the price has gone up. They're making a fortune right now. All these companies are making a fortune. That's evil. That's evil. Now, imagine Exxon decided tomorrow to become a nonprofit, zero profits. It's going to take profits to zero. Would that change the price of oil on the markets? No. Exxon maybe has 2% to 3% of the oil market, global oil market. Exxon taking zero profits would not change the price of oil. Maybe it would change the price of gasoline a little bit because it probably has some impact on the oil that could give away to the refiners in the United States. But it would be trivial. It would be trivial. And it would be violating its fiduciary duty. It's legal obligation to its shareholders. The way the system works, whether Elizabeth Wan and Joe Biden like it or not, is that companies are supposed to maximize their profits long term for the sake of their shareholders. So you want to penalize companies for making money? Remember that during COVID, I think if Exxon Mobile lost something like $22 billion, did the government subsidize them then? I mean, they could have bailed out some companies, but about 100 oil companies went bankrupt during COVID. Did anybody? Clammer, was there clammer among Elizabeth Wan's pals to bail out those 100 oil companies? Of course not. There was celebration on the left. CSO companies are making a lot of money today, good for them. And are they reinvesting that money into increased capacity? Not as much. Why? Because oil and gas has been demonized. There's no future in oil and gas. So what are they doing with the profits? Well, they're giving them to their owners. Who are the owners? Shareholders. So they've been demonized now for doing stock buybacks. But stock buybacks is giving the money to the stockholders. That's the owners of the business. It's their money. How can you demonize giving the money to the people whose money it is? And by the way, who are the stockholders of Exxon Mobile? It's California's pension plan. It's all of the California pension plans. It's the Georgia pension plan. It's pension plans. It's Americans. It's our pensions, all of our pensions. It's 401Ks. It's mutual funds. So it's returning the money to us as shareholders. But no. Oh, no. Elizabeth Warren now wants them to invest in more drilling. Really? So that tomorrow she can shut them down because she doesn't like drilling for oil and she wants to subsidize alternatives? So the left demonizes an industry where wouldn't they really, really need them? They're going to force them to produce? Well, force doesn't work. We still live in a semi-free country and you can't force these companies. Now, I'm sure that some of the money is going into investment. I'm sure it's a smart investment into investment in areas and in all products where they think they can make a profit in the future. But if they don't think these investments are going to be smart investments, if they don't think these investments can produce a good return for their investors, they should make them. They should just give the money back to investors. That's what stock buybacks are. I love stock buybacks. I think stock buybacks are amazing. All right. So what's the next step for the Democrats to take in this panicked state of trying, trying to bring down inflation, which they caused, well, them and Trump caused? What are they going to do? How are they going to do it? Well, the latest proposals is to have a windfall profit tax, a tax on the excess profits above the quote normal profits company set. Now, of course, a government bureaucrat is going to define what normal is. I think you define what excess is. And then you get a tax, the excess profit. And I think they want to do this across the entire economy. But for now, they're going to do it. They want to do it on oil. I don't think they can get it past the Senate. But they'd like to. We had an excess profits tax on oil from 1980 to 1988. Funnily enough, Ronald Reagan never repealed it. Or if he did, he repealed it right at the end of his administration. What were the consequences? The consequences was less drilling in the United States, a decrease in oil production in the US, and an increase in imports. It's funny because when you tax something like oil, the price doesn't go down. Why would it go down? But what happens is all companies start being very creative in spending the money, expensing it so that it turns out as an expense and shrinks their profits. So what it encourages all companies to do is waste the money, throw it away, invest in things they wouldn't invest otherwise. Do things that they wouldn't otherwise do all in order to shrink their tax bill. It's just a way of manipulating behavior. But again, economists understand incentives. At least, good economists understand incentives. And what windfall profits tax does not provide incentives to oil producers to reduce prices, increase production, or any of those things. She basically got a situation in which we're in today where inflation is increasing. And I expect it to increase even more through the summer. Prices are going up. The Fed is trying desperately to raise interest rates. Thus, suck money and not, and to try to suck money out of the economy by shrinking its balance sheet. But that is slow and weak. I mean, think about it. They raised interest rates by 75 basis points today. So 0.75%. Inflation is at 8.6% annualized over the last 12 months. But 12 months looking forward, it's higher than that. It's higher than that. If the monthly numbers come in at the rate that they'd be coming in, we're looking at double-digit inflation. And the Fed is putzing around with a 3.0% of a percent. Now, they promised to raise another 3.0% next month and another 3.0% in September, maybe, if things look bad, maybe. And the Fed is taking out about $30 billion of 30 or 3.0%. Anyway, some significant amount of money out of the economy through shrinking its balance sheet. OK. It's a little slow. It's a little weak. And it's very late. It's very late. Yeah, Rob, the Fed rate is 1.75% with inflation at 8.75%, pretty much. So the real rate is negative 7%. That's inflationary. A negative 7% real short-term interest rate is inflationary. I'll just note that this Fed chairman was appointed by Trump. I don't know. Just thought that might be useful information to have. Powell is, he strikes me as a nothing. And that's why Trump appointed him. Trump appointed him because he's a nothing. And because he's a nothing, Trump thought he could control him. And he did. He basically had him under his thumb. The alternative at the time they were discussing was to appoint John Taylor, the economist from Stanford University, who's a decent free market economist. And Trump didn't appoint John Taylor because he knew John Taylor couldn't be put under the thumb. And of course, Biden reappointed Powell because he knew Powell could be put under the thumb. So much for Fed independence. So we have a situation where inflation is high. It's probably not going to go down significantly soon. Although next month's number will be down because it's 12 months looking backwards. But that just means that they're taking the current inflation monthly and they're dropping last June's number, right? They'll add July's number and they'll add June's number and they'll drop last June's number. Last June number was very high. They'll drop a high number. They'll add a number that's not as high. And inflation will go down next month. But it's meaningless because forward-looking inflation, inflation for the rest of the year is clearly up, clearly an uptick. So inflation's rising. The Fed's doing its slow methodological no risk taking. Don't want to spook the markets. Don't want to create a possibility of a massive recession. So we're going to take it very, very easily. The Biden administration is freaking out because Democrats are going to lose massively in the midterm election. And Biden is going to get blamed for this rotten economy. He is already super unpopular in the polls because of it. And they're freaking out. They're looking for things to do. The only things that would actually have an impact on inflation are things like eliminating tariffs, deregulating. That's it, deregulation and eliminating tariffs. So there are two big things that would have an impact on inflation. Neither one of those are going to happen. Oh, the other one would be shrinking government spending. Would have a make a dent in inflation. Those three things not going to happen. The only hope that we have is Republicans win the House and Senate and then negotiate something with Biden that results in maybe because Biden doesn't necessarily believe in anything. Results in maybe some deregulation, some elimination of tariffs, and some reduction of spending. But that assumes that Republicans care. It assumes the Republicans have solutions. It assumes the Republicans want to deregulate, want to eliminate tariffs. After all, these are tariffs that Trump put on. Why would you want to get rid of them? It's assumes the Republicans care about this stuff. They don't show any indication that they care about it. Any indication in it. So in the meantime, the government is floundering. The Fed, I think, is floundering. Although with less panic, the Fed is floundering with a cool scientific demeanor to them. But that's not floundering. The federal government with Biden is panicked. And we, the people, are screwed. I think that's a technical term. We're screwed. Higher prices, lower standard of living, low quality of life. Soon, you're going to see unemployment start ticking upwards. Fewer jobs, a floating economy. I think we're going to get stagflation. I've been predicting stagflation forever. And yeah, I was predicting stagflation during COVID. Because I said, all this money coming in has to have a negative impact. A negative impact is going to be stagflation and slow economic growth. So stag nation and inflation, not a good combination. Not a good combination. And where is Ronald Reagan or anything approaching of Ronald Reagan? I don't know. I don't know. Rob says, when is the Fed not floundering? You know, it's not floundering when it's doing things that cause long-term economic damage, but short-term seem fine. Like most of the time, other than in crises. Even, oh wait, they ultimately got away with it, it seems. Because the damage was underneath. The damage was what we don't observe. The damage is the standard of living we could have had. The problem now is that the damage is imminent, immediate, and observable. It's inflation. Everybody sees it. It's going to be recession, which everybody sees. So the Fed can't hide it. They have to live with it. And they have to coexist with it. They have to. So all price is going to be high. It's nothing really to be done other than dramatically reduce regulations, get out of the business of, get the government out of the business, and out of the business of business as much as you can. And ultimately, the Fed's going to have to raise interest rates dramatically, or allow interest rates to rise dramatically. Get out, I mean, the Fed should get out of the business of setting interest rates. But that's very hard for them to do. And we're going to have to suffer one of these recessions that recalibrates the whole economy, kind of resets everything so we can start afresh. But we can only do that. We can only do that. We can only do that if we first free up the economy, at least to some extent. If we do some deregulation, some freeing up of the economy, again, lowering tariffs to zero, all of these things, that will create a new baseline so that we can have a recession, get a bunch of companies go bankrupt, the desert go bankrupt, and then we can start going up. And as we deregulate more, these things, this bankruptcy increase will happen on a smaller scale, in particular industries. But overall, there'll be this trend towards economic growth and greater, greater wealth creation and greater standard of living. All right. That's all I have to say for now on this. I'm sure I'll have more to say on this. As time passes, as time passes, all right, let's see. All right, super chat. The way to support the show is, one way to support the show is by super chat, you can ask questions. You can ask questions, attach to them dollars. The more dollars you attach to them, the faster I answer the question, the more time I spend on answering the questions. We've probably got questions here about what I just talked about. We've got questions about all kinds of other stuff. But it is the way to support the show. Right here with the super chat, you can support the show. And other than supporting the show, you can ask questions. You cannot support the show by going to runbookshow.com slash support, Patreon or Subscribestar. That's the way to support the show long term, create monthly payments, monthly contributions. That way I get some visibility into the future. We have a goal for the monthly support. And we need to grow that by about 30%. But that's going to take some time. And that's not one I can easily motivate you to do. And that's primarily for those of you who have listened to podcasts, don't listen live. The easiest way for you then is to set up a PayPal account that just sends you runbookshow $5, $10, $50, $100, $500, whatever you want on kind of a monthly basis. And that if we get enough people doing that, then we can grow this thing. And we can really, really expand and do a lot of exciting things. So I'm hopeful that we'll increase that. Those of you who don't watch live, that's the main way to support the show. The super chat is we have a goal, $650 a show. It used to be $600, but inflation. I have to pay gas taxes as well, even though it isn't leaders. And with $650, we're a little behind today. Like we've only raised $185 today. But I'm sure we can fix that in the next hour or so so that we don't miss a goal of $650. All right, so I'm going to answer questions. Also, before you leave the show today, if you liked the show, if you liked anything about the show, please give it a thumbs up. Liking the show on YouTube really, really helps with the algorithm and gets the show promoted and gets the show in front of people. So it gives it more visibility. All right, let's look quickly with the $20 questions if there's anything around oil. No, nothing. Let's look at the non-$20 questions. You know, Hopper Campbell says, it drives me insane how the statism that has hamstrung America so long has lowered expectation of progress. People laugh when you say just 9% GDP growth, 10-hour work weeks, and flying cars. I know, I know. And they think that 2% GDP growth and the old shitty cars we've always had is good enough. And it's not. We want flying cars. I want GDP growth of 9%. I want to be much richer, much richer. But it is what it is. All right, Ed says, in January, a federal judge revoked oil leases in more than 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico, ruling the Biden administration did not consider climate change enough. Man, when the Biden administration is not far enough left on oil, you know, we're in trouble. We're in trouble when the courts force the issue, force us further to the left. Because the courts deem it necessary for us to take into account climate change, deep trouble. Action Jackson said, should we start stocking gas, toilet paper, and food? For whom? You don't have to stock pilot. You can just put it in boxes or containers and ship it to me. I'm happy to keep it for you in the Puerto Rico. No, I don't think so. Toilet paper, food? No, the market's working. Toilet paper's still on the shelves. Food is still on the shelves. Supply chains, particularly supply chains that don't require movement to Asia or across the oceans are working OK. I'm not stockpiling anything. And where would you put all the gasoline? Could we see some legislative deregulation if things got really bad when Americans see gasoline or bread lines? I think we might see gasoline lines. I don't think we'll see bread lines. Are we going to see deregulation if things got really bad? I don't think by the Democrats. I don't think we have a Jimmy Carter anymore. And Jimmy Carter was just going, he basically preserved some of the economic team from the Ford administration, which was putting together all this legislation around deregulation. And then Democrats in Congress voted for this. I think given how much of the Democratic Party and much has moved, I can't see the Democrats supporting deregulation, legislative deregulation. You'd have to get 60 votes in the Senate. You'd have to get a number of Democrats voting for it. And then Democratic president to sign it, which would be suicide given where the Democratic Party is right now. I don't think this round. I think maybe after 2024, maybe after 2028, I think maybe then you could see Democrats voting for deregulation if the pendulum swings all the way back there, but not in the current, not the way the world is structured right now. Giancarlo, thank you. Thank you for the $20. No question associated with it, just $20. I really appreciate it. Thank you. So we're at about a third of what we need to do for today. So we're just over $200. There's still $450 to go. So we're going to need a lot more $20 questions. No $5 and $10 questions. And we're going to need some $50, $100. Like $199 is just not going to get us to where we need to go. Not going to get us to where we need to go. Let's see. Funny question. All right, but we haven't got there yet. So looking, looking, looking, all right. Free trade says all the palm market gains since the pandemic are fake based on money, printing money, printing helicopter money changed my mind. I don't think it's purely that. Certainly some of it is that. But certainly there being some significant technological developments that have justified increases in market gains. I don't know how much market gains they have been now that we've seen this massive correction. But Apple was making real profits. So with Zoom and Zoom improved its technology dramatically from the start of the pandemic until today, they've been a bunch of other technologies invented, commercialized during the pandemic that have driven prices up. So I don't think it's true that all the market gains since the pandemic are fake. And certainly I don't think that's true, given the fact that it's not like right now the government is not, in a sense, creating huge amounts of money and pouring it into the economy. And yet everything is collapsing. Everything is going down. Not because everybody discovered, oh, all those gains we had those years were fake. No, it's because of inflation. So something objectively has changed. Now you could argue that that could have been predictable. But it's very hard because we had a great financial crisis and a lot of money seemingly was poured into the economy. And there was no inflation. So why is there inflation this time? But things have changed to justify the collapse in the market and the destruction of the market value that is created. I don't think it's just everything post-COVID is playing money. Some of it is. Some of it isn't. And you can't figure out what's what. Tessa, thank you for the $20 support. Really appreciate it. No question associated with that. All right, let's go over the $20 questions we have. One, two, three, four, five, six of them. Six of them. We need another, I don't know, we need another $20 questions. We need another $20 questions to get to our $650 goal. That's a lot of $20 questions, 20 of them. So I suggest that we have some $50 questions and some $100 questions. And that will get us there quicker. All right, Michael says, you say in American politics no one cares about the poor. The bulk of programs are for the middle class. Is that true in European politics as well? Are their poor worshiped as holy sacrificial animals? I think that the Europeans care more about the poor. Europeans devote more resources to the poor. Europeans also have a variety of reasons that have to do with where their economies and countries are structured. Have more efficient welfare systems so they take care of the poor more efficiently. But basically what European countries, if they found a formula to turn almost all the poor into lower middle class. But yes, I mean, at least politically, the programs in Europe are there to eradicate poverty versus in the United States. We throw a lot of money on poverty eradication that has almost no effect. But the real dollars, the real money we spend on middle class entitlements. And I think that's because Americans are just not as altruistic as the Europeans are. They're not really committed to the poor. They do it, in a sense, virtue signaling. You've heard of that term. And I often say, virtue signaling to themselves to make themselves feel better. Ooh, I'm doing the right thing. I voted for welfare. But what they really care about is buying votes. What they really care about is the middle class, where you can buy votes. Lori, thank you for the $20. So we only need 19 $20 contributions or $20 questions to get to our goal. So we need to raise another $380. So $19 $20 chunks. There are 124 people watching live now, 19 of you. I'm sure there are 19 watching live now that can do, can come onto the Super Chat and just do $20 and get us to where we need to get. Where's Catherine? Catherine's supposed to be doing this work to encourage people. I mean, Catherine's supposed to do that. Give them ideas. All right, Charles Butt says, would Biden like to enact Directive 10, 289 to fix the economy? Who wouldn't? I mean, Directive 10, 289 is Directive from Atlas Shrugged, which basically fundamentally gives the government a lot more control than the economy. But who wouldn't? Trump would have passed Directive 10, 289, like that if he had the power. Democrats would do it like that if they had the power. Some Republicans, like Trump, would do it like that. So yes. All right, Joe, thank you. Really appreciate the supports. Another $20, so we're now down to 18 people who can contribute $20 to get us to our goal each. That doodle bunny asked, my last semblance of optimism is that I don't think populations who have tasted a little freedom can ever revert 100% back to primitive savagery. They'll always want their Starbucks and iPhone, even in the cesspool like Russia. You'd think. Look at, I know why I'm taking the pessimistic side, but look at Iran. Look at Russia. Look at Rome. Now Rome, granted, didn't have Starbucks and iPhones, but they gave it all up. They had running water. They had taps. They had multi-story buildings. They had technology that 400 years later nobody could have imagined how it worked, had no clue. So yeah, it's, I hope you're right. I hope you're right, but the fact is that people have given up. My view is a little different than yours. My basis of optimism is that any particular people, country, let's say, might be willing to give up everything and to go back to the caves and to abandon their iPhones and their Starbucks and whatever. And for a while, any particular country could do that. But to imagine that that would be done on a global scale, that that would be done not just in Russia and Iran and North Korea and Venezuela and Cuba, but now in America. OK, America might, but even South America would be willing to give it all up and all these other countries. And nobody would be willing to stand up for an alternative. And nobody would be offering an alternative. And nobody would be fighting for freedom. And nobody of the 8 billion people. You see, when Rome was around, Rome was very, in many respects, isolated, and the power was very centralized. And information was very centralized. And civilization was very centralized. The world in which we live, information is not centralized. You literally have millions of engineers all over the world, including in Africa and India, all over Asia and South America and the United States, who have the knowledge of industrial civilization, math, science, and engineering. You'd have to get rid of all of them. They'd all have to disappear. See, civilization can just be wiped out today with the fall of one city, with the fall of one empire. You'd literally have to destroy everybody. You'd have to oppress everybody. And I just don't see that. I think globalization in this sense. Globalization, globalism. I love to use words that piss you off. Globalism is a godsend because what globalization has allowed is not just superior trade. But it's allowed the dissemination of knowledge, of information. And there's nothing that can help us preserve liberty and freedom and civilization and technology and science more right now, given the state of where we are, than dissemination of information to the widest possible number of people. We want people everywhere in the world to have access and to have been exposed to, I don't know, the Declaration of Independence, the works of John Locke, the works of Aristotle, the works of Hein Rand, but also to the knowledge of how to build, fill in the blank. And the latest science and all of this and the more of that is widespread, the less possibility there is that the entire world goes under versus a country, a sector, a area goes under. So I am, you won't find very many people who are more pro-globalization than I am. Globalist is an anti-concept. It's a package deal of people who believe in free flow of information, capital, people in trade with those who believe in one world government. I don't believe in one world government. Very few people who believe in freedom believe in one world government. I believe in globalization of everything that you can. And under those conditions, you know, and the wacky ideas that get globalized get defeated very quickly. I mean, look, Wilkism is being defeated right now in San Francisco. Wilkism is about to be defeated in Los Angeles where they're talking about recalling the DA in Los Angeles after the DA in San Francisco as we call it. Wilkism has been defeated in Philadelphia where the District Attorney in Philadelphia wasn't prosecuting crimes and now is going to be recalled. Wilkism is being defeated everywhere it touches. It doesn't have a very long half-life because it's so stupid. It's so ridiculous. The left, this is why the left cannot win because their ideas are so stupid and so ridiculous that they will be defeated. Of course, it's too early to declare victory but it's suddenly not too early to see the trend. The Democrats are gonna be eviscerated in 2022 because of Wilkism. CRT, look what happened to CRT in Virginia and the political consequences that led to in Virginia last November. Wilkism is not the threat to the United States. Wilkism is not the future and Wilkism is not rooted in the younger generation. It's not once they get out into the world, once they experience reality, they drop the bizarre crazy stupid notions that they have. Now, irrationality might be rooted. Subjectivism and emotionalism might be rooted but the particular application in Wilkism, yeah. I'm not diminishing its impact. Its impact is great today but it has no future. Not in America, not in Europe, certainly not in Europe. Europe doesn't tolerate Wilkism. Maybe the UK but even the UK very low tolerance this garbage. So, no, I mean, as I've told you from the beginning, the left, the wacky left cannot win. Not really because it's too disintegrated, it's too stupid, it's too wacky and it doesn't have anything that inspires. It doesn't have any project. It isn't motivated to achieve anything. It's just self-destructive, it's nihilism. And nihilism, as Dr. Pekoff talks about in the D.M. Hypothesis, is not a governing ideology. It can be very destructive in the meantime but it can't govern. Something has to replace it when it comes to governing. And that's why Wilkism keeps bombing. The question is, the real question is what's gonna replace Wilkism? That's what you should be afraid of. Liam says, thank you, Linda. That's another $20. All right, so where are we? So we're 320, so we're still $16, $20 questions to go. 16, come on people. We got 123 people watching right now, surely some 16 of you can come onto the Super Chat, come onto the chat, because you're listening live and make a $20 contribution to the show on the Super Chat. You can ask a question while you edit if you want. Liam says, it's sad that philosophers were so concerned with word games instead of dealing with the actual problem of living. Now, the few good people like us have to deal with being surrounded by vermin with no values to share. Absolutely, I mean, this is all philosophers' fault. It's the fact that philosophers did not, did not engage with, promote, expand, build on the Enlightenment. So philosophers in the late 18th century and early 19th century rejected the Enlightenment. And by rejecting the Enlightenment, they rejected civilization. By rejecting the Enlightenment, they rejected freedom and reason. By rejecting the Enlightenment, they rejected individualism. And then they rejected and ultimately by rejecting the Enlightenment, they rejected reality. And once they rejected reality, they stuck with what? With word games, irrelevant word games. And people don't believe in philosophy. They don't trust philosophy. They're not interested in philosophy. It's just gobbledygook. And it is non kind of post Enlightenment. And what we get is what we have today. We're no ideology, complete pragmatism, and people struggling to discover their values, struggling to fight for their values and surrounded by vermin. Yep. Tasey says, I just read a scene between Rourke and Keating. After Keating wins the Cosmo Slotnik, what great pages? Keating calls Rourke a damn fool and denusional and why don't you start working? The irony of what's really going on in Rourke's life. Absolutely, I mean, Fountainhead is a masterpiece. It's a masterpiece and it's characterization of Rourke and Keating in the way things like that, you damn fool. Keating, who's destroying his life, is telling Rourke, who's about to be super successful. Why don't you start working? Because Rourke will only work on great projects where his vision can be fulfilled and he won't do garbage time. So he's been condemned by Keating for that when it's exact opposite. The fact that he's insisting on perfection, the fact that he's insisting on doing it his way is what makes him work. It's what makes him happy. It's what makes him the kind of human being that we all admire. It's a truly magnificent book and magnificent pages that Tasey is referring to, absolutely. Adam says, I keep seeing more job apps than ever. Is this a local Southern California thing or do employers ignore inflation and aim to get production and sales back to pre-COVID levels? No, I mean, we're still at the phase where it hasn't hit. It hasn't, you know, inflation just raises prices and it raises wages and everything seems to be going smoothly and fine, but inflation is creating uncertainty. It will reduce investment. Companies can't borrow money to expand, but that's gonna hit them. It's just a matter of time before it hits them. And look, we had such a shortage of workers coming into this that it's gonna take a while before we see it in unemployment numbers, but I predict, and again, economics is a tough area to make predictions, but I predict that in the beginning of next year, you will see real unemployment. Unemployment will go up significantly and job openings will decline significantly. Also remember, Adam, the other thing is there's a huge mismatch between the people in the country and the jobs available for them. We don't have the people we need. This is a result of bad immigration policy. This is a result of constraining immigration and not allowing in the people we need to fill the jobs that we actually need. Instead, we have people who are untrained to do the jobs that we need and we don't have any jobs for them. So there's a huge mismatch. But I expect as interest rates go up, companies can't borrow money. Companies don't want to invest in the future because it's too uncertain. I expect it to be recession and I expect it to be job closings. Places like Southern California are always some of the last places that where you'll notice a recession. If you just look at Southern California, Southern California, particularly Orange County, then the world looks amazing. The weather's always great. People are employed. People are relatively rich. There are very few homeless people in, there are almost no homeless people in Orange County. Everything's fantastic. The restaurants are open. Everybody's dining out. Everybody's buying stuff. Wow. But if you travel inland, if you go to some of the inland counties in California, if you cross into other states, if you travel to other places, you see a different America. And so Southern California will be the last place you'll notice the recession because there's so much wealth in Southern California. Southern California is unbelievably wealthy and it's unbelievably prosperous. There is a wanting mess in California but you're not gonna feel it in Southern California for a while, for a while. All right. Thank you, Adam. Let's see. We're down to 14. Well, we need 14, $20 questions or $20 contributors to get to our goal today. Richard Cunningham asks, where do you think those unemployed by the great resignation get their money? Surely they COVID relief ran out by now. Any ideas? Well, I mean, there are not that many people who are unemployed from the great resignation. The great resignation was much more about changing jobs than about giving up on jobs. A lot of the people that gave up on jobs just retired and they must have savings. Remember, there's a massive, there's also a massive wealth shift from across generations. The baby boomers are dying and they're leaving their kids a lot of money, a lot of money. Again, we forget how much wealth there is in the U.S. economy and how much money there is. And think about how much money is in your house and how much money is in your stock portfolio. If you die tomorrow, their money goes to your ears and suddenly they're much better off and maybe they can afford to take some time off to find themselves or to not work for a little while. But the great resignation was primarily retirement and people switching jobs. It was less about people not going back to work. Now, women have not gone back to work completely post COVID. So two income families are down. But, and young people have not completed back and they live off their parents. Their parents pay for them. But in terms of number of people working, we're not quite back to before COVID but we've been adding jobs every month and yeah, there's still kids in their parents' basement. They were tirees that were tired earlier who were living on their money. Now they might regret that. They might want to go back to work because the inflation's eating them up, eating a lie. But the beneficiaries of inflation are savers because suddenly they'll get higher interest on their savings. The beneficiaries of inflation, the real beneficiaries of inflation are people who have fixed rate mortgages. A lot of people have fixed rate mortgages at very low interest rates and they're gonna benefit as interest rates go up from the fact that they have very cheap mortgages. So it's a tricky situation in terms of the benefits but where are those people? They're living off of somebody. Many of them are living off their parents. Others living off of savings. The great resignation also remember was not just people at Starbucks. It wasn't baristas primarily. It was a lot of tech people switching jobs. A lot of tech people maybe taking some time out. And they have savings. All right, colds. Thank you, colds. Thank you all you guys. These are all $20 questions that are slowly kind of just trickling in. We're down to only needing 13 to make our $600 goal. Of course somebody could come in and give us $200 and then we don't need three. $20 questions but it's kind of cold to see them slowly trickling in. It's good 13, $13.20 questions. Cold says my dad is one of the better conservatives but one issue where I get stumped with him is trade because he owns a small logging business and likes the Canadian lumber tariffs. I don't really have a response to this, your thoughts. Yeah, I mean he's just a central planner. He's a leftist who wants the industries that he happens to like to be protected in the industries that he happens not to like not to be protected. But he wants government protections. He wants, you know, what he's basically saying is I want the protections when it benefits me. I'm a free marketer otherwise. But what about all the people who use wood, who are paying higher prices because of the Canadian tariffs? And what about all the people who buy furniture from those people, who buy homes? Wood would be cheaper, there'd be more homes. Home prices would come down, you know, young, you knew your dad, he's had a career, he's probably put some money aside, he's probably done well. What about all the young couples that wanna buy a home and home prices are really expensive because of wood prices being high or the people who wanna buy furniture for the first time or on and on and on. Why is economic policy targeted in making his life better, okay? And economic policy targeted in making, I don't know, other people's life better, not okay. Why if we have tariffs on wood, wouldn't we have tariffs on a thousand different things? There's somebody in the United States who would benefit from the tariffs, even though most people would lose from them. And then of course, there's the principled argument, but given that he's a conservative, I don't think principles will work on him. And that is the issue of rights. By what right does the government tell me that I have to pay higher taxes because I'm buying my wood in Canada? It's not the job of the government. If you were truly free market, you'd understand that the government's job is not to decide who I buy stuff from. That is the epitome of central planning. Sorry Colbert, your dad is a central planner. He is, he's accepted central planner, he supports central planning. He's no different than Joe Biden. You tell him that, see what he says. Because he isn't. In principle, he isn't. Mika says, hey, Iran, any travel tips, museums, art galleries, et cetera, for Scotland and Ireland? Oh my God. No, not really. I haven't been to many museums in either one. I've usually, particularly Scotland, gone in, gone out. And I haven't really had time. Suddenly in Edinburgh, go see the statue of Adam Smith at the center of town. Go walk around Edinburgh University. It's a beautiful campus, old kind of buildings, beautiful. I haven't been to the art museum in Edinburgh, but I would certainly go. There's probably some beautiful 19th century paintings at the museum. Dublin, in Dublin in Ireland, I would definitely go and see the library at Trinity College. It's open to the public. The Trinity College Library. It's one of the oldest libraries. It's just gorgeous. It's just gorgeous. And it's so cool to see a library and an old library. And the respect they treat the books and the kind of books they have there. So Trinity College is beautiful. I would definitely go. I've spoken there. I've been to the library a couple of times and it's beautiful. But again, I haven't been to the museums in Ireland, in Dublin. I just haven't had the time when I've been there. So that would be my one recommendation I can remember right now. Sorry, wish I had more suggestions. All right, where are we? 11 and a half, $20 questions. I'd be happy with 11. 11, $20 questions. Somebody come in with 200 bucks and save us. Michael says, maybe this is just an economic hiccup and the freedom in the tech sector will have us back on track and growing smoothly again in the next few years. Well, if you're gonna say the next few years, well, how many years? One year, two year, five year, 10 years? I mean, it's certainly possible in the next few years, good things will happen. But something has to give, something has to give. And I'm not sure that there's the political will to do the things that are necessary to get us into that smooth space. It's certainly possible and it's not that much work. But remember, we haven't had inflation. Since the late 70s. And that, ultimately, we got the 80s, but to get to the 80s, we went through two presidents that deregulated and one president was actually pretty good. And that's Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan. And I just don't see it. I don't see the policies that would get us going. Now, it could be that the Fed brilliantly manages inflation and gets it down to 2% over the next year. We don't hit a recession and then we just smooth sailing after that. It's possible. It's just, I put pretty low probability on that, pretty low probability on it. Rational Yuan says, what steps could be taken to abolish the US renewable fuel standards program? Many drawbacks to ethanol mandates. Yeah, lots of drawbacks to ethanol mandates. Let the market decide if they want ethanol, not the government. Absolutely. So I agree completely. We need to get rid of that. We need to get rid of the ethanol mandates. To do all that, we need to promote, I'd say Alex Epstein's new book, Fossil Future. We need to fight the campaign against fossil fuels. We need to fight the campaign against the oil industry. We need to fight it intellectually. We need to fight it politically. We need to fight it with everything we have. Our lives depend on fossil fuels. Part of this is getting rid of the US Renewable Fuel Standards Program, which is one little piece but is a significant cost right now on refineries and on gasoline prices. But it can't be just we fight this one program. It has to be part of a broad program that promotes fossil fuels, that rejects the climate hysteria, and that promotes human progress, human flourishing and economic growth. And that's kind of the agenda of Alex Epstein. So in this field, it's Alex that we have to really push. All right, that's all the $20 questions we have. We're missing 11. Yeah, 11, $218, and we make our goal. Come on, Catherine, explain to them how this works. Explain to them how it can happen. You don't want to mess with Catherine. You don't want to upset her. Action Jackson asks a question that has no answer in modern America. What is a woman? A grown-up with female genitalia, I don't know. And female reproductive organs, that is what a woman is. But in today's world, you're not allowed to define a woman because a woman is about, not about biology, it's not about breasts. Apollo seems a little obsessed, Apollo is this. It's about feelings. A woman is whomever feels like a woman. Now, I'll do a show on this. Action Jackson has actually sent me a video of a Matt Walsh documentary. I don't particularly like Matt Walsh, but he's done this documentary about what is a woman, and he interviews this academic, and he tries to get him to define a woman, and it's pretty funny. It's pretty funny to watch. Key facts as true or false, inflation is always an everywhere monetary problem. False, I think that's false. It's not purely a monetary problem. It's, you know, again, price inflation. The systematic increase in prices across the economy is mostly a monetary problem, but there's no question that it can have both physical impacts that can determine inflation expectations, which is like running deficits, which can create expectations that the debt will never get paid, that the debt might not be inflated today or be inflated in the future. So it's price inflation in today in anticipation of the fact that they can inflate in the future. So that's an example where it's not a monetary problem right now. It's the anticipation of a monetary problem in the future that creates the inflationary pressures today. And supply chain issues can cause prices, particularly if there's supply chain issues across a variety of the entire economy, particularly when it affects things like oil, they can create shocks that in the short run create rises in prices. So if you think about the kind of inflation we're talking about, CPI, price inflation, then price inflation is a consequence of a mismatch between supply and demand. It's either when there's more demand, it's when there's more demand than supply, but that can occur because demand is up artificially and that can be caused, that's a monetary phenomenon, right? There's more money, the money chasing the same number of goods, or the number of goods are shrunk artificially. That's lockdowns, supply chain, that the demand is constant, but the number of goods are shrunk, then the lower number of goods would still increase. All right, Florida Nick, when you went to the basketball game, why didn't you glue yourself to the court to help the spread of objectivism? You missed the golden opportunity. I don't understand how gluing myself to the court would have helped spread objectivism. How does that happen? How does that work exactly? Is just my physical presence on the court, oh, the publicity I would have received? I don't get it. All right, Colt Savage asks $20, so we're chipping away, we're chipping away. Yep, only nine more $20 questions or really eight and a half. Colt says, I think you would like this. My dad once told me that, quote, you usually can't trust very publicly religious people because they're using it to cover something up or they genuinely believe what they're saying and they're crazy, good for your dad. Just on that, I like your dad. That's more important than tariffs. Just on that, I like your dad. But you need to teach your dad to be consistent. So if he believes in markets and he has to believe in the markets, even when believing in markets hurts his pocketbook. Otherwise, it's not good. All right, let's put the latest numbers up in the chat. Yeah, his dad fluctuates between cool and air. But then parents are like that, right? Liam says, any idea who the Democrats will run in 2024 is no way Biden will make it. I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't think it's Camilla. She's not popular even within the Democratic Party. She's not popular with the left wing and she's not popular with the moderate. She's not popular with anybody. Klobuchar, Klobuchar from Minnesota who's considered a moderate. She's active legislative-wise. I just don't know that she has the charisma that she has the appearance. Could the governor of California run? If California is doing well in 2024 and the rest of the economy's not, then maybe, maybe the governor of California makes a run at it. I don't know, are there any Democratic governors out there that have done a good job? A good job, not from my perspective, but a good job, perceived good job. It seems like they kept it together, right? They seemed like the state is doing pretty well, the economy's doing pretty well, but in 2024 all of that will change. Who knows? Who knows where we'll be in 2024? So, don't know, if the governor of California gets reelected and the California economy somehow outperforms the U.S. economy, he might make a run at. Michael, I'm really looking forward to your show analyzing crime, when will that be? Soon, soon. I almost did it today, but I still want to prep a little bit more on it and the oil thing, the stupid letter of the Biden road, the refineries broke today, so I thought I had a comment on that. But soon, maybe this weekend, I'm gonna do, hear the shows I'm planning for the near future. I'm gonna do a right to repair. The whole idea of you have a right to repair your own stuff, right? A show on the right to repair. There's a lot of legislation coming about on the right to repair. I'm gonna do a show on crime. I'm gonna do a Iran's rules for life show. So that's three. Anyway, I have a list somewhere and I forgot what the others are. But yeah, the crime one should be cool. James Taylor asks, are you careful about not making enemies or do you generally don't care about what other people think of you? Do you listen to the show, James? Isn't there a clear answer from the show about whether I care about making enemies? No, I tell it like it is. I don't care about enemies. Enemies come, enemies go. Most of my enemies are pretty lame and pretty impotent. I believe in doing the right thing. I believe in doing the right thing in saying, calling it like it is and if it pisses people off and it upsets people, so be it. But I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm not gonna tell you things I don't believe. And I'm not gonna say quiet when I think something is important that needs to be said. I'm gonna fight for it. And I'm gonna be wrong sometimes. I am wrong sometimes. I'm certainly, my formulations are often wrong sometimes. But so many people, not only don't I care about making enemies, there's a sense in which, action Jackson, close your ears. You know, I don't care about how many subscribers I have because the fact is that what motivated me was number of subscribers. I could have five times the number of subscribers I have if only I were pro-Trump. If only I was this, if only I was that. I know, like when I do an abortion show, I know I'm gonna lose subscribers that show. When I do a show attacking Trump, I know I'm gonna lose subscribers that show. So many of the shows I do, I go, oh my God, I'm gonna lose subscribers today. But I still do it, because I am here primarily to tell the truth, to tell you what I think. And luckily enough of you support the show that it's financially worthwhile for me to do it. Now, if I pissed you all off, then I'd lose income and I'd lose the show. Okay, I'll do something else. I'm not particularly worried about that happening, right? But I really don't care about, I mean, I don't wanna make enemies. I'm not looking to make enemies. But if you're gonna become my enemy, then you become my enemy. Now, I also don't think much about my enemies. I do try to take Roark's approach to this. I don't think about that. I don't think about all the people who've accused me of a million different things. I don't think about all the people who came on and said they knew, they knew in December that Donald Trump would still be president in February, that there was no question Donald Trump was still gonna be president. And I was just a fool for believing the mainstream media that Biden would ever be president. And any of those people come back and apologized, any of those people come back and said they were wrong, no, they never will, and I don't care. The many of those people hate me, yes, I don't care. So most of my enemies I don't really care about. People who've literally hurt me, people who've done me damage, I hate, and I care about them in a sense that I'll fight them. But people who consider themselves enemies of mine, who cares? Yeah, and many of them, some of them were trolls, but not all of them, some of them were people who'd listened to the show for years before that. Some of the most supporters of the show because people stopped supporting the show. People don't just not subscribe, they also stop supporting the show. All right, Ian says, in stagflation, ooh, $150 short of the goal. We've had lots of questions. Not a single person has gone over $20 today. That's really interesting. The whales are like sitting back and saying, huh, they did this last show too. I wonder if Iran can make it to 650 without us coming in. I wonder if we can do it just with $20 questions. Some of you are thinking that, right? Well, we'll see. In stagflation, what are the securities, commodities, et cetera, that survive the best in a financial sense at least? I mean, nothing does particularly well in stagnation. Bonds obviously don't do well, although you get a high interest rate. If you believe it, it's sustained and interest rates won't come down. Stocks do okay. They stay flat. They don't necessarily crash. They crash before. They crash for a recession. But if it's just stagnation, so from 1968 to 1982, basically, stocks went up, down, up, down, up, down and stayed flat. For what was that? 14 years. 14 years, if you'd gone into the market, you would have made zero. So it just stayed flat. Some stocks do better in stagflation. Commodities do well. Generally, commodities do well during inflation, but they don't do great because the stag, the stagnation part of the stagflation means there's not a lot of demand for commodities. Thank you, Mark. That's $21, so thank you. Really appreciate it. So it's very, very difficult. So again, you're gonna have to be very, very selective in terms of investing. How does real estate, home prices can do okay after they adjust? Commercial real estate could do okay, but again, the stagnation is a problem because there's no economic growth, but suddenly the, yeah, I mean, suddenly if you can pick the right stocks, maybe stocks that, miners that in commodities might do okay, maybe the things that the government is subsidizing during the stagnation, like electric cars or mining of what do you call, the material that goes into batteries, that's gonna do well. You wanna invest in something, invest in miners for, what is it, lithium? Lithium, because there's a massive shortage of lithium, given projections about, what do you call it, the stock prices, but just the index, if you just invest in the index, you know, from 1968 to 1972, you were basically flat for 14 years. And I'm not suggesting you be a stock picker because they're most stock pickers are pathetic and are awful. There's some good stock pickers and they're gonna be some stocks that are performed. Can you figure it out? I don't know. No, it's not Nicole. I think it's whatever they have one mine in Nevada, the only mine in the US is one mine in Nevada that produces the stuff. I think it's lithium, but Z-Racer says there's tons of lithium, maybe, you know. There's something that is, that Elon Musk has said that is so screwed up, he's gonna have to get into that business because he can't make electric vehicles without it. All right, free trade says, the plan is to destroy the energy system, blame the free market and nationalize energy. You know, yeah, the extreme left is, but does Biden want to nationalize energy? No, no. I mean, I even think Elizabeth Warren is afraid of nationalizing energy because the thing when you nationalize energy is, you don't have a scapegoat anymore. The buck stops with you. You're the one who's gotta live up to it. So I don't think governments want to nationalize anything. You know, generally, the last time a major Western government nationalized something major was France in the 1980s, they nationalized their banking system. It lasted two years and they privatized it immediately. It's just socialism of that form owning the means of production. Owning the means of production. It's just nobody believes in it anymore. Not really. Not when it comes down to practice. Not again, yes, the booty sanders, the wacky left, but the wacky left has no power. Not really. So what they want is fascism. What they want is to control. So I don't believe that the goal of the Democratic Party is to nationalize energy. They want to control energy, but they want to stay in private hands so they can always scapegoat the private owners. All right, people were down to $126. Should be doable. Michael says, if you had stayed in Israel, would you have been able to start a hedge fund and become a multimillionaire? Or would you have been a lot poorer? I don't know. I would have had a lot less fun. I was in the construction business when I left Israel. Like probably would have stayed in that business. I'm not sure what would have happened. Maybe I would have made more money than I made in America. I just don't know, but would have had less fun. It's so hard to tell what the parallel outcome would have been. And I wouldn't have gone into finance, I don't think. Wouldn't have started a hedge fund. If I'd stayed in Israel, it's no way I would have landed up in finance. It just wasn't on the radar. I would have done business in some capacity, but I was in construction. I was a construction manager. I was about to become a partner in a construction management firm. My boss was gonna make me a partner if I'd stayed in Israel. We could have grown that business a lot. We could have become real players in the construction business in Israel. But I would have never been doing this. Never been involved in an institute. Never got a finance degree, never had a hedge fund. So who knows? All right, Michael asks, is Christianity more sustainable than communism and fascism become communism and fascism? Promise utopia and don't deliver whereas Christianity promises you suffering and always delivers. Yeah, pretty much. And Christianity, the promises it can't keep, it's all in afterlife and prove that it doesn't happen, right? So, but that's good. I think that's right. Christianity delivers on its promises. It doesn't over promise, not in this life. As Luther says, this world is scum, it's awful, it's horrible. You suffer, you make money, you do horrible things. It doesn't matter because it's just this world. What matters is the next world and we know nothing about it. Michael asks, can we pay you to review individual songs or albums? Sure. All right. 100 bucks for a song. An album is hard. An album, I have to sit through the whole album. That's gonna be a $500 again. So a song is $100, an album is 500. I'm not sure what quality the review will be, by the way. Cook says, America has a fuel shortage due to all these politicians and their media cheerleaders gaslighting us. Yes, but it's also due to OPEC, right? Because imagine if the United States increased production dramatically tomorrow. And OPEC decides, okay, well, we want high prices. So we're gonna reduce production by the same amount that the United States increased it. You'd still have high prices. You'd still have a problem. But yeah, the U.S. would still increase production. Yeah, put that pressure on OPEC. Take market share away from them. Free trade, all the apparent market gains since the pandemic are fake, but oh, we did that. We did that. Justin asks, are you worried about the Celtics? I am. I'm worried about the Celtics because when they play well, they can easily beat Golden State. When Golden State plays its best and the Celtics play their best, clearly the Celtics can beat Golden State. The problem is that the Celtics are not playing their best consistently. They played in spruits. They played a quarter here, quarter there. The nice thing is that the one game I actually went to see live is the one game where they consistently played well. And they just haven't done that and the real indication of that. And I don't think it's because Golden State is playing defense so well. I think it's really, they're just screwing up and you can see that really on the turnovers. And the other thing that is mind-boggling is you can see it on, you can see it on their free throws. They can't make free throws. Yeah, I don't get it. So I'm worried. I still think they'll win, but I'm worried. I'm worried. All right, Shazbot has come in with $100 to get this over with and wants me to review the song, God. You come up with the wildest, I'm trying to look for the page where I write down the things I'm supposed to review. The wildest. Okay, so he wants me to review the song, your horoscope for today by weird Al Yankovic. So I will review it for a hundred bucks. I said I would review a song. And there we go. So please bring it on, all those of you who want me to review songs. I'm sure none of them will be as weird as that one. But thank you, Shazbot. Shazbot, huge support of the show by encouraging me to do reviews. All right, Catherine. Catherine's putting 20 bucks. Even Catherine's putting 20 bucks. So with six bucks and 73, six bucks, 73 short, even Richard could do six bucks, 73 if he wanted to support the Iran book show. Because where else is he gonna be able to spout his nonsense if not here? So you'd think he would support the show to keep it going. Catherine says, if money didn't exist, what career hobby would you do? If money didn't exist, I would be a subsistence farmer trying, struggling somehow to survive. You can't take money out of existence without making us all unbelievably poor. Taysie got us to a buck 73 short. Excellent, Taysie. She got us $5, so we're a little closer. So there is no money doesn't exist. Now, if I didn't need money, if I had all the money in the world that I needed, that's a better question. What career hobby would you do? I'd do this. I'd do this. I'd do exactly what I'm doing now. I wouldn't do anything different. I'd just worry less about money. I'd think less about money, which is a nice place to be. Z400, Racer 37, pump those superchats like dog, coinie. I don't know what that means. All right. Daniel says, where have the MMT folks gone? Well, they're hiding a little bit. A lot of them are saying, no, no, no, no. This is not what we meant. We, this isn't real MMT. This is pretend MMT. This is policy MMT. We meant economics MMT. But yeah, I mean, we got inflation. Not what they predicted. Roosevelt, for $20, thank you, Roosevelt. A federal court in Baltimore ruled that a Maryland law requiring book publishers to offer public libraries reasonable licenses to e-books and digital audio books unconstitutional. I'm glad the court got it right. Yeah, absolutely. That's a nice, that's a nice copyrights case. Very nice. Because that basically means you don't have to, public libraries, in other words, the common good, so-called common good associated with public libraries does not diminish your right to make a profit. You can choose not to make a profit. Doesn't diminish your right to make a profit. So they can't force you to offer a reasonable license. Good. I mean, I still think the courts are the healthiest part of the American government and we're still getting some good decisions by the courts. 0000NXC000. Did you do the Kiki Delivery Service Review? If so, when was it? I did, and it's, I'm pretty sure it's in the title. It was the day I did Top Gun, Kiki, and a Bonk's Tale. And they were all in the title, so it's just a few shows ago. So if you look at the latest shows, you'll find it. Frank asked, why did a young man take out his anger over his girlfriend on a few expensive classic Greek pieces in Dallas Art Museum? Are young people today nihilists? I mean, yes. But look, he was looking for something to take his anger on. The door happened to be kind of weakly closed. He slammed it in. He walked in and he destroyed some stuff. But people have been going into museums and destroying stuff forever for a long time. It's nothing new. I don't think there's any, there was also the attack on the Mona Lisa, but there'd be much worse cases of this kind of stuff. I, we can't generalize from that one particular act, even though it's a horrible act and clearly this guy was nihilistic. But, you know, there are other reasons to think that young people are nihilistic. I don't think this is the proof because vandalism towards great art has been a phenomena of Western civilization for about a hundred years. All right, Richard says, Richard, not Bicca. Yes, not the other Richard, the, the Richard. You should say the Richard, Cunningham. 10 dollars for the finish. Thank you, Richard. Really appreciate it. Wow, guys. We did $700, $678 with, Shah's about bringing in $100, but pretty much, but everything else being $20 or less. I think there's 121 dollars because of the Canadian exchange rate, which actually turns out to be less than 21 because YouTube gives me a lousy exchange rate on anything foreign. So the formal exchange rate is not real. So yeah, this has, this has been great. Thank you guys. Thank you for the support. Tomorrow there'll be a show. I'll do it a little earlier than usual so I can catch the Celtics game. It's a big game if they lose their out. So tomorrow's important game. So I will do it at seven o'clock PM, seven PM Eastern time tomorrow. I might do it on the right to repair, although we might lose some listeners on that. It is an important issue and it's an interesting issue. So I'm hoping you'll listen into it. I think you'll have fun. It is a sponsored show. Somebody paid me $1,000 to do the show on the right to repair. So it is a sponsored show and probably do that tomorrow. And then we'll do shows on the weekend, Saturday and Sunday. And I'll try to find some, one of those will be on crime. And then maybe we'll do a Iran's rules for life as well on the weekend. All right, everybody. Have a great rest of your week. Have a great Thursday and Friday. I am rooting for a variety of reasons. I'm rooting for markets to really crash the next two days and then recover next week. But that's just me. A 10% drop would be just perfect. But my wishes have no impact on the market. None. Surprising, isn't it? Primacy of existence. All right, I'll talk to you all tomorrow. Have a good night.