 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Monday Labor Day. We had hour. I don't know. We usually have Iran Book Show, but I figured a couple of things. One is it's Labor Day. I don't know. You're probably all barbecuing in the backyard, probably not available to listen to the show, but since I was talking about the Brits, maybe we'd get a bunch of Europeans. Maybe we'd get a bunch of Brits on the show listening instead. I figured the Americans were lost today anyway. Too busy with the barbecues. But anyway, happy Labor Day to the Americans among you. Hopefully we do have a few Brits in the audience, and breaking news, of course, as Liz Truss was just elected to head the Conservative Party in the UK, and therefore she will become Prime Minister of the UK, I think, tomorrow. So we'll comment a little bit about that. And then we're going to talk about some challenges to my positive view of the state of the American worker, I guess, or the state of. The none, the world is ending position about the US economy that I guess has labeled me an optimist about the US economy. I'm not, but we'll cover some of the criticisms of some of the stuff I said yesterday about the US economy. We'll take them one at a time. Ron Gavrielli wrote a tweet, like 10, I think nine points. We'll take every one of the nine points and I'll comment on it. So you'll get my response to that. So those are basically the two topics today. The rest will be determined by you through the Super Chat feature. You can use the Super Chat to ask questions and support the show. And so the length of the show, the content, ultimately, beyond those two topics is up to you. So before we get to Liz Trouse and the US economy, there's breaking news out of Chile, which I think is really good and really positive. And I thought I'd share that with you before we turn to this. And so just to put you in a good mood, I guess, but there was really, I don't know, I should have put it in the title. Maybe we would have got some Chileans watching the show today. But you know, Chile, what was it about a year ago, two years ago, had this big referendum vote in which they decided to replace the Constitution that was passed under, oh God, Pinochet, of course. Under Pinochet, a Constitution that, while I don't know the intricacies of it, has been pretty good for the Chileans. They've had a thriving economy. They've gone from the poorest country in Latin America on a per capita GDP basis to being the richest country in Latin America on a per capita GDP basis. But there was upheaval. There was a demand to change the Constitution. There was a demand to move away from free market that manifested itself in a vote to rewrite the Constitution. And of course, the second part of the manifestation of this anti-free market, anti-market's attitude to Chile was the fact that they elected a quite a far leftist for president. I think it was earlier this year or late last year. So the country saw this massive shift to the left. Anyway, today Chileans got to vote on the new Constitution, on a Constitution that was significantly to the left of the existing Constitution. A Constitution that would have moved the Chilean economy dramatically to the left. And let me just see where is that. And it was rejected. The new Constitution was voted down. It had promised over 100 new rights, 100 new rights. And the Constitution was rejected. And that is reason to celebrate. So this is a Constitution basically backed by the current leftist president. It's backed by the leftist who wanted to rewrite the Constitution, who got that passed whenever that resolution, whenever that went up for vote. And it flopped. So Chileans didn't like markets. They wanted the alternative left. But once they got it, they're starting to regret. And maybe they're starting to regret because Chile is experiencing, really for the first time since Pinochet left office, Chile is starting to experience real economic trouble. It started with stagflation. Inflation of skyrocketed to 13%. Retail sales in Santiago have tumbled 18% in July. The peso is one of the worst performance in the region in the past year. It's lost about 12%, I guess, compared to the dollar. And now the consensus is that the economy will slide into a session in the second half of the year after expanding 11.7%. 11.7% in 2021. So Chile's economy is in deep trouble. I wonder if that's related to the fact that they went left. The current president is Gabriel Boric. He is the most leftist president since Salvador Allende in the early 1970s. And we know Salvador Allende didn't survive for very long. Pinochet kicked him out of office. But it is shocking. One of the great, I think, shocks and surprises for all of us is that the Chilean economy was doing so well. It was truly a model of liberalization. A model of going from a controlled economy, a socialist economy, a state-owned and run economy to a relatively top-10 economic freedom in the world economy. And the result, shockingly, surprisingly, unexpectedly, they got rich. And what happens when countries get rich? They decide it's time to stop doing all the things that got you rich and to shoot yourself in the head or something, to commit suicide. And that's what's going on in Chile. But today is a good day because today the Chileans took a stand against going further to the left. They took a stand against a hundred different so-called rights. You know, I think this new constitution would have been unbelievably destructive if it had passed. So good for the Chileans for not having passed a little bit of sanity in a crazy world. You know, it would have been really, really, really sad to see Chile fall into the trap of a hundred different rights. Let's see. Anyway, good. Chile is at least seemingly turning on the right path. Or at least not, I wouldn't say that. That's too strong. It's rejecting the completely nutty, crazy path. So we will, and it's going into a session while the president is a leftist. It's always better that you head into a session with a leftist president because then the left gets blamed for the recession. Whether they cause it or not, it doesn't really matter. They get blamed for it just like if the right is in power, the right gets blamed for it. The right here loosely associated with more free markets. So in this case it's good. All right. So that is the good news. That's very good news. So we want to talk today about, oh first, let's see. Ragnar of the desert says working because I won today. I like that. So instead of Labor Day, working because I won today. That's pretty cool. Thank you, Ragnar. A hundred bucks. Really appreciate the support. And then Alexis with 44, 45 British pounds used to be worth a lot of money. 45 British pounds. But that pound still is just collapsed together with the euro. The dollar is like Superman these days. And so it's not worth much more than 45 pounds. A little bit. It's worth 50, 52 dollars. Not after YouTube uses it. I think YouTube is converting pounds at one to one to dollars. God, I get such an awful exchange rate through YouTube. Anyway, Alexis says all I read about the UK these days is gloom and doom. Even relatively to Europe or the US, do you share that pessimism? All right, so let's talk about the UK. And then in that context, that's a good time to talk about Liz Truss. I probably share that pessimism about the UK relative to the United States. I do think of all the countries out there, the United States is actually going to do better than most of these other countries. Now it depends if Liz is better than I expect, right? If Liz is going to be on the, there's a spectrum of how good she could be. If she's better than expected, better than I expect at least, then the UK could do better than the US. Because one thing we know, the US is going to respond terribly to the coming economic recession, to the coming economic slowdown. The UK might respond more sanely to it. So I think there's a lot of upside in the UK, given some of Liz's rhetoric, given that she's new. She's new to jobs, she's coming in an emergency situation. She could do good things. But I think the UK is better positioned than Europe in the sense that generally it has a more flexible economy. It has a more flexible labor force. It has better labor laws than does most of Europe. And again, Liz has the opportunity here. I'm calling her Liz now. Liz has an opportunity now to really make a big difference in the UK. You know, the left under Obama, there used to be the saying, right? This is saying it goes back a long, long time ago before Obama. But in Obama's presidency, they used the idea of never let a good crisis go to waste. Well, that Liz's trust should embrace that. Never let a good crisis Liz go to waste. So yes, go in there and start deregulating what she has promised to do. One of the things, one of the better things about Liz's trust is she has gone in and said, I am going to do away with all the European Union regulations that hold back the British economy. Now that we're not part of the European Union, I can do that. I can do away with all those regulations. And this is the great advantage of Brexit. Now, the UK is independent. You can't decide to get rid of those. And one of my biggest criticisms of Johnson, and my biggest criticism of Johnson in the context of Brexit was, he kept all the regulations, all points of leaving the European Union. The whole point of leaving the European Union was to be able to get rid of the statism of the Europeans. And Johnson embraced it. Now, including all the environmentalist regulations, all the labour regulations, all the other regulations on business that trust has said whether she will do it or not is a different question. But she has said that she will start getting rid of those regulations, regulations that come from Europe that are, now all the regulations are necessary, but a reduction in regulation will help the UK economy dramatically and significantly. She's also talked about cutting taxes. Now, I'm not a huge fan of cutting taxes unless you also cut spending. So we will see if she is serious about cutting taxes and willing to cut spending and willing to deregulate if she does. Yeah, Alexis, I think the UK economy is going to do better than the US economy. I'll add to that that the UK is facing right now a major energy crisis. And the Johnson administration, which by the way, this trust was a part of and a big supporter of, so that's why one has to be a little skeptical about her, maybe a lot skeptical about her. But the Johnson administration became a super green administration. By the way, the Johnson administration raised taxes. They had the highest, right now the UK has the highest taxes in UK history under a conservative government that controls the House of Commons, it controls Parliament, and yet they raised taxes. So Liz wants to reduce taxes, that's good. And she actually said something really, really good and she was pushed, I think it was the BBC or one of these TV shows, and she's pushed and like, you want to redistribute wealth from the poor people to rich people, and she said, and she said, which is actually quite good, she said, we need to stop talking about redistribution of wealth. I am not going to be focused on who gets what and redistributing what. I'm focused on growth. I'm focused on growing the economy. And if we grow the economy, everybody will benefit, which is absolutely right now. She could have said a lot more. She could have made a more argument. You can't really expect that from politicians today. But anyway, she said that and I thought that was quite impressive that she stood up. The TV host thought she had a nail to the big shot of and Liz stuck to I'm going to lower taxes, particularly on the wealthy and well, not wealthy people making more than 50,000 pounds a year. So the focus was on economic growth, which is good better than the alternatives. We have a president committed to negative economic growth and we, you know, and we've had almost no economic growth for a long, long time. So if Liz trust turns out to be the better version of herself, if she challenges, if she channels channels her hero, she says Margaret Thatcher is a hero. If she channels Margaret Thatcher, the UK is going to do better than the US because the US does not have a Ronald Reagan right now. And she could use this crisis to really turn things around. Other things that Liz trust has talked about doing again, taking advantage of the current crisis is expanding drilling in the North Sea. Now that won't change that won't change prices anytime soon, but I put the UK on much better grounding and it will bring about a significant optimist about future prices of oil, which I think will really help energy markets in the UK. She's talked about, she's talked about approving fracking. Oh my God, fracking in the UK because it turns out, shockingly, is there's a bunch of natural gas in the UK and it's Johnson who stopped the fracking. It's Johnson who prevented fracking. If they had started fracking two, three years ago, there would be no energy problem in the UK right now. So if Liz can start fracking, fracking, fracking, yes. If Liz can start drilling in the North Sea, now she's declared herself to be and she will continue to declare herself to be an environmentalist. Everybody believes that environmentalism is sacred and good and all of that. But if she, in spite of that, actually has the courage to allow for fracking in the UK and to drill in the North Sea and to expand oil and gas production, she has a chance to really make a real difference. And if British people start seeing energy prices maybe go down just as prices in the rest of Europe are going up, if the UK starts seeing a path towards not energy independence but a little IANCE see on other countries, I mean one of the problems the UK has is that France, which gets almost all its energy from nuclear and there was talk about France exporting energy to the UK. Well, France has a problem of maintenance of their nuclear power plants. They're under invested in the nuclear power plants. So France is facing an energy crisis in spite of the fact that if all of their nuclear power plants were functioning, they would be flush with energy. Over half of them are down for maintenance, shocking. They've just under invested so that if all of the nuclear power plants were functioning, they would be actually exporting energy to the UK. The UK is not going to get that so they better provide their own. Now, again, this is an instant but markets build in price and expectations and if she creates an expectation in the UK that yes, there will be oil, yes, we'll pro-energy. Yes, oh, the other thing she's pro, at least she says she's pro. Again, we'll see the actions. She's pro-nuclear. She's talked about micro-nuclear power plants but also big nuclear power plants. She's pro-both, which is also terrific. So she seems to be a very pro-energy Prime Minister in a way that I don't think the other candidate was. She seems to be pro-markets generally. She seems to be pro-cutting taxes, which I think and hope will also mean cutting spending. And she seems to be, the other thing she's pro, although we'll see if she actually manifests, is pro-trade. She was the Minister for Trade for a while. She's got to deal with Japan. She's got deals with other countries. Hopefully, she will go out there and really accelerate the idea of the UK being a trading nation and a trading island and this free trade bastion. And if she can do that, the UK will recover a lot faster than the US. Because the US, one thing we know about the US is that both political parties are anti-trade. Both political parties are anti-free markets. Both political parties are anti... I mean, the Republicans are much better on energy. But on every other thing, Republicans are pretty pathetic. I've said this before, actually think the conservative party in the UK is better than the Republican party in the US to a large extent because they don't have religion. She claims to be religious, but she doesn't go to church. It's just not that important to anybody. And also because just listen to British politicians and listen to American politicians. The Brits are so much more intellectual. They're so much more thoughtful. They yell at each other in Parliament and they get it out of their system. And then the rest of the time, they're actually engaged with issues and talking about it. And you might hate them. You might disagree with them. But they're talking about issues and they're talking about ideas and they're talking about what they want to do. And they're not just dealing in, I don't know, slamming the other side, conspiracies and just political nonsense. At least that's my impression. So Liz Truss educated in Oxford, very well spoken. Yeah, I agree with Taze. She sounds like a robot. She's kind of dull. I mean, I had my preferred candidate, but she lost in the previous rounds of the presidency. She would be terrific. She was an immigrant from, well, she was actually, I think she was born in the UK, but went and was raised in Nigeria and came back to Nigerian parents. Kemi was terrific. I like Kemi a lot. I hope that Liz Truss will give Kemi a significant position in the UK government. I think it would be terrific to have a voice. You know, Kemi is unabashedly pro-capitalism in a way that not a single American politician that I know of is. So, yeah, and none of the religion, right? So completely pro-markets, none of the religious baggage. And she's from Nigeria. And that combination is just, Kemi Badenok is very, very good. So I'm hoping that she gets a senior position in the cabinet. I've not seen yet, I think there were some stories, maybe in the telegraph of what the cabinet would look like, but it's behind a paywall, so I couldn't get to see it. So anyway, I'm positive. You know, as I said, Kemi is, sorry, Liz is declared environmentalist. She was a big pro-Johnson. So I don't know how much of that was politics and how much of that was sucking up to the boss. I don't know, Johnson was one of the worst prime ministers in British history and certainly one of the worst conservative prime ministers in British history, so he was terrible. So I'm hopeful she will be better. I'm hopeful that she will take real strides towards liberating the UK economy. Given they've done Brexit, there's real opportunity to lower tariffs, lower trade barriers. Given that they've done Brexit, there are real opportunities to reduce regulations and reduce taxes. Given that they've done Brexit, UK can really set an example for the rest of the world on how to liberalize an economy and get richer. So at a time when the world is heading towards a recession, at a time when we're facing stagnation, significant inflation and stagnation, I think that somebody like, it reminds me a little bit about the same time as Thatcher came into office. Thatcher became prime minister at a time when the UK economy was in the pits, when inflation was on the rise, when the economy was not growing and hadn't grown for a long time. There was real pessimism in the air, people were depressed, and Thatcher turned the UK around completely and thoroughly. And Liz Truss has an opportunity here, a real opportunity to make a big difference. So I'm excited by it. I hope she lives up to my excitement. She probably won't, she's a politician after all, but let's hope she does. And if that will be the case, we'll have a country, one country in the world, heading in the right direction as everybody else is not. So Alexis, I think there's reason to be demiglument of inflation and recession, but the things that can be done to prevent that or to reduce the impact of that, I think you've got a prime minister that is at least willing to talk about doing those things. We don't have that in the US. So, you know, you're in somewhat, you can be a little optimistic. I am. I'll take her for now at her word. All right, we got $250 questions. This is great. Thank you guys. Get us rolling with $50. So I'll take the $50 questions and, you know, it's a third $50 question and then we had $100 questions. This is great. Given the time of day, I'm not expecting a lot of people to be on live, but maybe we'll pick people up as we go. So we'll do Michael and then we'll do Michael and Hopper. We'll do the $250 questions and of course any $20 questions that come in while I answer these questions, I'll take them as well. And then we'll turn to a challenge that I received on Twitter to my comments about the relative status of the US economy and particularly the US worker. And we'll talk about that. There's a lot of, I think, valuable economical lessons to be learned in the challenge. And I'm hoping we have some Brits and some Europeans given the early time that I did the show, maybe some Israelis. It would be nice if you guys were on right now. Anyway, here we go. Michael asks, you notice some people are completely honest, rational, and truth-seeking in one area of their lives, yet somehow think that that area is where truth and reason actually matter. Outside of that realm, they have no problem lying if they're eating and so on. Yeah. And look, that's what they've been told, right? They've been told, look, there's a mind-body split in certain realms of life, the material realm of life. Yeah, you have to use reason and you have to get stuff done and you have to be good at your work and you have to do all those things. But in the spiritual realm, you have to be altruistic. You can't pursue these self-interested goals. You can't do this kind of stuff. They don't want to be altruistic. They don't know how to do it. It's uncomfortable. It's unpleasant. So what they do is they reject morality completely. They become pragmatists. So they lie and they cheat. Or more commonly, they just evade and they become blah in the rest of their lives. They might be good at work and rational at work and truthful at work. And then when they get home, they know that goodness means altruism, but they don't want that. They can't be the way they are at work because that would be self-interested. And that is not right. That is not moral or just. They just reject morality altogether or they reject life altogether. People need morality and when you reject morality, bad stuff, bad stuff happens to you spiritually and ultimately materially as well. So they compartmentalize their life into the realms in which it's kind of okay to be self-interested and rational. We've been taught and in parts of their life where they're supposed to be more moral and more concerned about others. And they don't care about morality because morality means suffering to them because that's what the cultures taught them. Morality is sacrifice and suffering and not getting what you wanted. And they don't want that. So they're stuck because they have no moral guidance. No moral guidance. Oh, God, I'm competing against Harry Binswanger TV and he's covering Frederick Baskiat. That's a tough one to compete against. All right. Thank you, Michael, for the support and for the question. Let's see. Harper Campbell also $50. Thank you. Very generous. I get some of you think America is too loose with its gun laws. Are gun rights the most questionable extension of property rights? How much dollar for you to bring Harry Binswanger on to discuss your disagreement on guns and immigration? I mean, I don't think we disagree much with regard to immigration. I don't think the disagreement is that essential or fundamental. Actually, I'm probably more pro-immigration in terms of today. I think he's actually taking a stand that's a little too constraining in terms of the kind of immigration we would have today. And in terms of a completely free society, we're almost there. We're almost in agreement. In terms of guns, there's a slight disagreement. Yeah, I mean, I would do that. I think it would be an interesting conversation to have. As I said, I don't think, as I've said many times, I don't think the issue of guns is a property rights issue. It is a world of government issue. So it's a force issue. So that's why I think guns are different. That's why I think guns are not property in the same sense as everything else is because their function is violence. And I think the state has a role in, if you will, regulating violence. That's its job. It's a monopoly over the use of retaliatory force. So it's its job. So I think guns are different. Yeah, we could sometime, you know, I'd have to dig into Harry's argument. I don't think I've ever debated how he, how he's not easy to debate, but that would be fun. Maybe we'll do that sometime. It's not, you know, guns are not, I don't think of that important an issue. That's the other thing. And I keep saying this. You guys have, I know people sticking to conservatives, a lot of people generally around the world think around America, sorry. Think guns are the most important issues. This is it, Second Amendment, everything depends on it. I don't, I don't think it's important one way or the other, or that important that way, one way or the other. Of all the rights out there, of all the issues regarding the Bill of Rights, I think it's one of the least important. I don't believe that, you know, Americans having guns is going to protect us from authoritarianism. I don't believe that if Americans didn't have guns or didn't have guns, that is the factor that will determine the ultimate fate of this country. Because I think it's going to be the people with the guns who ultimately embrace authoritarianism. So I just don't think it's that important is the bottom line for me. It's why there's no urgency in my mind. Stephen asks, why do so many people around the world dislike Israel? Well, it's simple. I've often given, asked this question and it's pretty straightforward. Because Israel is strong, because Israel is assertive, because Israel is civilized, because Israel is successful, because Israel is rich. You know, Israel used to be loved. All those European countries, all those European leftists, but Europeans generally used to love Israel. When did they love Israel? They loved Israel before 1967. They loved Israel when Israel was weak, pathetic. When it was a bunch of pathetic, poor, weak Jews trying to cultivate the desert, having no real success, and people loved them then. And it was also after the Holocaust, they felt a little sorry for them. Maybe some Europeans felt a little guilty. But generally, generally, they loved Israel. And then, and by the way, most people don't know this, so it's an interesting fact. Between 1948, when Israel was established, and 1967, when the Six Day War happened, the United States embargoed Israel, would not sell it weapons. There was a weapons embargo. The U.S. refused to sell any weapons to Israel. And Israel basically got all its weapons from Europe. Israel had British tanks. I was in a British tank. They had their own submachine gun. They developed their own, the Uzi. They had German equipment. They had French planes, French submarines, French boats, the French, the Germans. The Brits were the ones that sold Israel weapons, not the Americans. And then, and that's a period in which Europeans loved Israel. And then, 1967 happened. And I don't know how much you know about the war in 1967, but the war in 1967, basically, was a war in which Israel was attacked on three fronts. Three. Three fronts. South from the Suez, and the north in the Golan Heights, and in the east from Jordan. Actually, Israel preempted, but it was about to be attacked. But in the Sinai, it was preempted. They were about to be attacked on three fronts. By seven Arab armies, the combined forces of seven Arab armies, the Egyptians, the Iraqis, the, you know, I'm not trying to know all seven, but at least four, I can tell you, the Egyptians, the Iraqis, the Jordanians, and Syrians. This is not the Yom Kippur War. This is the 1967 war. And everybody thought these poor, pathetic Jews were going to be finished. They're going to be wiped out. They're going to be, it's going to be a disaster. It's going to be an apocalypse. And Israel whipped, whipped the combined forces of seven different countries in seven, in six days. So six days in June of 1967, whipped them. It took the Sinai from them. It took the West Bank from Jordan. It recaptured Jerusalem. It captured Jerusalem, not recaptured, captured Jerusalem and the whole West Bank. And it took the Golan Heights. It's a six day war, six day war, not seven day war. In six days, six days, they completely eviscerated much, much, much larger, supposedly better equipped armies. I mean, in the Sinai Desert, during the six day war, what you saw was long trails of boots all through the desert. This is not making up the pictures of this. Long trails for miles and miles and miles and miles, boots. Because the Egyptians took off the boots to run faster, get out of there faster. The Israelis whipped them. What did they prove? That these Jews were strong, powerful, confident, successful, not to be masked with, not the underdogs, not the miserable, not pathetic, not suffering. And immediately on a dime, European sentiment changed. We can't support successful people. We can't support the winners. We can't support the strong and the rich. Altruism does not allow that. Altruism demands that we look for the primitive. We look for the suffering. We look for those who have nothing. Can't be Israel. Oh, wait a minute. There's Palestinians. Oh, okay. Let's do the Palestinians. And from 1967 on, and of course, the ranks of Palestinian refugees increased because Israel took the West Bank and a lot of the Palestinians were living in the West Bank. They escaped and they went to Jordan and ultimately Lebanon. But the whole attitude flipped all because of altruism. You can't support success. You hate success. You despise success. And you feel guilty about your own success, about Western success. So if you find a country in the Middle East that looks like you, i.e. successful, you hate it. And what you love are the oppressed, the poor, the meek, the hungry, the unsuccessful, the losers. Well, that's the Palestinians. So that explains why people dislike Israel. I love being called insane on the chat. Ask me a question instead of calling me insane and claiming you know my position on something without actually knowing it. It pisses me off. People say, oh, but Iran believes this when I don't and I'm on record as not. But anyway, all right, let's see. We are going to shift to economic challenges. We still have about $340 left to get to our goal. So hopefully we'll get a few more $50 questions, $20 questions. So we can get to our goal of $650 raised during the super chat. All right, let's talk about economic challenges to my optimism. So yesterday, I did a show on Liberty and I talked about the fact that the American worker has done pretty well over the last few years, not as well as he could have done on the freedom, not as well as he could have done with more freedom, but pretty well. In other words, wages have risen on an inflation-adjusted basis. They've risen quite a lot since the 1970s, which the left loved so much. Quality of life, standard of living has gone up. People today, I don't know if I said this yesterday, but I'll say it now, people today live in bigger homes. People today have smaller households, so the money they make is split over fewer people. So they have some people today have more income to consume. People today, most Americans today, when I say people, I mean most Americans, most Americans today drive much, much nicer cars than they did in the 1970s or 80s or 90s. They travel a lot more. It's amazing how little Americans traveled 30, 40 years ago and how much Americans travel today. Not enough. They should travel a lot more, but how much they travel, particularly internationally. Americans, I mean by every dimension in my view, Americans today live better lives than they used to. The standard of living is significantly higher. Now, I'm not making a claim that it always will be. I'm just saying that it is right now. And that I do not see yet, although I could change my mind about this, I do not see the apocalypse. I do not see us going into Great Depression. I do not see the complete collapse of the U.S. economy. And indeed, I will also say that I've been hearing about the complete collapse of the U.S. economy for 40 years, at least maybe close to 50 by this point. I hear it all the time. And it doesn't happen. And not only am I hearing, I participate in those debates, and I've been participating in those debates since the 1990s as a finance professor, and then it's 2000s as the CEO of ALI and as a podcaster since the mid-20s or whatever. So, yeah, you know, I've sat next to Peter Schiff, as he's told the world, in 2008-9 is going to end, and it didn't. So, and I thought things would be a lot worse coming out of 89, although I got it right. I said the consequence of 2008-9 will not be hype inflation, would not be complete collapse of the U.S. economy, but would be what it turned out to be, which is slow economic growth, stagnation. And I was right back then, and hopefully I'll continue to be right. So let's take on some of the challenges that Ran has for me. He put them up on Twitter. And, you know, these are honest challenges, the real questions. And so it's good to get them out there, and I'm sure a lot of you have the same kind of issues. And I see Liam has some more issues, so we'll cover those as well. But let's start with some of Ran's issues about my presentation of the status quo, the world as it is today. So he says, is standard living really higher? If so, why does the U.S. trade deficit keep getting higher? I don't understand that. I mean, I'm an economist, and I don't understand the connection. I mean, quite the contrary. This is my prediction. The higher the American standard of living is, the more wealth Americans create, the bigger the U.S. trade deficit is going to be. The U.S. trade deficit, in my view, is inversely related with growth in living standards. Why? Because what makes it possible for us to buy goods overseas, goods that are good and cheap, and we're buying them overseas because they're better and cheaper than buying them here, which in and of itself raises my standard of living. Because instead of spending $2,000 on an iPhone, because I'm importing it, I can spend $1,000 on an iPhone. So it raises my standard of living because I have an iPhone and I have $1,000 in my pocket which I can spend on other things. So importation, importing things is one way in which our standard of living goes up. Indeed, the more trading partners we have, the more people we have to trade with, the higher our standard of living becomes because trade is not zero sum. It's win-win. And if I can trade with a billion people around the world, and the fact, and we'll talk about why they want my money, we'll get to that in a minute, but the fact that I'm trading with them increases my standard of living constantly. So running a trade deficit is many times evidence of a rising standard of living. So what are they getting? Why are they willing to trade with us? Well, they're getting dollars. And they wouldn't trade with us and they believed our dollars were worth something. Now, they don't want to buy a lot of stuff from us because the fact is what we're selling is not that interesting to them because we're selling ideas. We're selling design. We're selling innovation. We're selling the cutting-edge stuff which they can't afford. They can't really do anything with. So what do they want with our dollars? Why do they keep taking our dollars? Because they know that the best place in the world to invest, the safest place in the world to invest, and the best place in the world to invest if you want innovation, if you want progress, if you want to return on your money, is the United States. So what reason we have a trade deficit is because foreigners want our dollars. And why do they want our dollars? Because our dollars, they believe the most valuable currency looking into the future. And because they believe the U.S. economy is the economy most worth investing in of all the economies in the world. Now, that's the reality. Now, you can talk about the dollar, you can talk about incentives, you can talk about a million different things, you can talk about inflation and all the problems we have in the U.S. But markets, and I'm a, you know, I don't believe markets are always right, but markets are pretty good. They're better than most economists. Markets are telling us the opposite. Markets right now are telling us they could be wrong, Grant. Markets, the trade deficit is telling us that the rest of the world, smart people all over the world, won dollars, so they're selling us stuff like crazy. And they're investing it in the United States. Why? Because they believe in our economy more than we do. So, you know, we'll start with that. So trade deficits are a good thing, not a, I mean, they're a neutral thing. I mean, they're generally often a great positive. So I try to copper over something that's not working, that's not working, that's not working. All right, I'll get it. So it's, trade deficits, they're irrelevant to almost any economic calculation. And indeed, every dollar that goes out of the United States comes back to the United States. So, why do we care? I said this throughout Trump's presidency. And I said this way before Trump's presidency. And this is economics 101. This is Adam Smith. This is, trade deficits don't matter. And the fact that they want to invest in us, the fact that our dollars are worth so much, means we are producing something. You might not be able to see it exactly because a lot of what we produce is ideas, ideas of our production. But we're producing something unbelievably valuable to foreigners. And that's why they trade with us. That's why they trade with us. So trade deficits, an indication of a rising standard of living, you're not a declining one. You say imports up 250 billion in a month, in a month 2019 to 350 billion today, yes. And that's a sign of two things. One, the tariffs are stupid because tariffs were supposed to reduce imports and they don't. They just attacks on Americans. And the fact that people want our dollars and the fact that they're still producing stuff that we want. And there's actually nothing wrong with that going up. Now why is government debt ballooning to 30 trillion? Because our government is spending money like crazy. It's very simple why the debt is ballooning to 30 trillion. Because the four years of Trump were a fiscal disaster. But it has nothing to do with your trade deficit. Under Clinton, the last couple of years under Clinton, the U.S. ran a surplus and trade deficit was very high. We don't fund the trade deficit through government borrowing. We fund the trade, we fund government borrowing is a phenomenon of government spending. And government spending is out of control. It was out of control under Trump. And then it's out of control under Biden. It was out of control under Bush. It was out of control in the beginning of, you know, Obama's presidency is a little better towards the end. But the government is printing money and spending it like crazy. And yet in spite of all that, foreigners, smart foreigners, still want to hold dollars. Because in spite of that, the U.S. government is better, or put it this way, not the U.S. government. This economy is better than the alternatives. There is no such thing as somebody says Clinton ran a surplus after reading Social Security. Every government, every single government reads Social Security. Social Security is built as a way to read it. So Clinton didn't do anything that every other government has not done and didn't do in the past. It ran a surplus because the stock market went through the roof and they got massive tax revenue from capital gains. And because the 1994 Congress flipped to Republican, the House of Representatives and the House of Representatives refused to approve spending bills. So they kind of deal with Clinton to really reduce spending. I mean, Clinton also passed welfare reform, which no Republican has done. So actually Republican Congress and Clinton actually pretty good, pretty good. All right, so that's one. Trade deficits don't matter. Government debt matters. It matters to the U.S. economy. The U.S. economy is in trouble long term because of the debt. The debt is partially responsible with inflation we have right now. The debt is also a drag on the economy. It's one of the reasons that wages are not even higher. It's one of the reasons we're not investing even more in increased productivity. It's one of the reasons that economic growth is not dramatically higher. Government debt is the albatross around our neck dragging the U.S. economy down. And one of the amazing things that one has to appreciate about the U.S. economy is in spite of this massive government debt, the economy is still doing okay, not doing great. It's done okay. All right, Ron says an unfunded liability is estimated anywhere between $150 to $300 trillion that government promised. Absolutely. Consumer debt will get to. So let's take the unfunded liabilities. Yes, the United States government has anywhere between probably $100 and $200 trillion of unfunded liability in terms of the $30 trillion that they have explicitly on the books. Yes. And the long-term prospects for the United States are inflation and very little growth and ultimately much higher taxes and maybe ultimately default. The U.S. government is going to go bankrupt at some point. I just don't think it's tomorrow. The U.S. economy is doomed ultimately unless something changes dramatically. It's just not going to be tomorrow. I don't think. And the fact that it's going to happen does not eliminate the fact that right now life is pretty good economically because it is. Consumer debt is at all times high. It's not not even close. It's actually in many respects at all time lows. So if you could look at consumer debt as a just a number, yeah, it's at all time highs. But if you look at consumer debt as a percentage of consumers income, then it's at all time lows, not all time lows. But it's in the last, I think since the graph I saw since 1980, it's lower than it's been since 1980. It's consumer debt is not the problem. Consumers are doing fine. So and corporate debt, yeah, but most of that corporate debt was issued at 0% interest rates. And corporations are also, I believe you can check this out, sitting on historical levels of cash. They've never been so cash rich. Certainly companies like Apple and they have Apple, for example, has a lot of debt and a lot of cash. If it had to, it could use the cash to pay off the debt. Corporate balance sheets. I mean, there are zombie corporations and I've talked about zombie corporations who are who are basically dead. But the good corporations, the successful corporations, the apples of the world and there are a lot of them in the United States actually have some of the healthiest balance sheets they've ever had. So there's a lot of rhetoric about consumer debt, not as a percentage of income. You can you can pull it up. I pulled it up this afternoon. I should have had it in front of me. Let's see. I can actually pull it up. Consumer debt percent of income. All right. Household debt service payments, which is how much do the households have to pay in order to service their debt? Like on a monthly basis. Let's show you this just because so you don't say I make stuff up on the run book show. Let's see. Not that. There we go. Okay. There we go. Okay. I have to shrink the graph a little bit to fit. We'll shrink it. We'll go there. Shrink it a little bit more. And we'll go there. There you go. See? This is 1980 approximately. Yeah, 1980. So you can see that consumer debt peaked. Again, this is household debt service payments. This is what matters. How much money do I have on a monthly basis? To spend on servicing my debt. Now, this is because of the low interest rate environment, which is very good for borrowers. And to the extent that they had fixed payments, they could service the debt mortgages. Fantastic. I have a mortgage at 3.78%. I know people who have mortgages at 2.5%. I mean, that's brilliant. And look, it peaked servicing cost peaked in 2006. 7. Right now, the close to their lows last year was the low. They're rising now because, and now rise more as interest rates increase. But my guess is a lot of consumers will pay off their debt. If I have a variable rate mortgage, I would pay it off or refinance it. But a lot of this is going to stay low because a lot of people took out mortgages that were fixed rate. 15-year, 30-year fixed rate mortgages. Under 3. Under 3. So what's the panic? So they have a large number. The number is big. But they can service us. They can pay it. This is a percentage of disposable personal income. Not even a percentage of income, disposable income. I think we're in great shape. I mean, I don't think we're in great shape because of the government debt number. I think the government debt number is the problem. But, you know, if we look at, let's see. I mean, corporate debt is high because they all took advantage of low interest rates. But I don't think there's any problem, right? There's any problem. But remember also, corporate debt, the interest payments are tax deductible. So you have a huge incentive to take on debt as a corporation, take out as much debt as you can. All right, let's go. Asset bubbles have created huge gaps between rich and the middle class. Yeah, I mean, to some extent that's true. But of course, the middle class has benefited enormously from asset bubbles. One of those asset bubbles arguably was a housing market. Almost all middle class Americans own their home. They made a lot of money. So you're having the baby boomer generation starting to die off. There's going to be this massive transfer of wealth from the baby boomers to the kids. A lot of that is going to be in the form of real estate that has been indeed inflated. How much will it go down? I don't think it's going to go down a lot because I think in addition to the monetary inflation, there's also a massive under supply of housing. So the housing prices will go down, but they're not going to go down a lot because there's a shortage of housing in the United States. I don't think the gap, I've talked about the gap many, many times. I don't think the gap is that big. Oh, the other way in which the middle class has benefited from asset bubbles is the middle class has its pension plans, has its savings in 401ks. They have it in the stock market. And they benefited as the stock market has gone up. Now the stock market is coming down now so everybody's wealth is taking a significant hit. But this gap between rich and poor and rich and middle class is nonsense. One of the most interesting statistics is the fact that the middle class is shrinking in the United States. Why? Because more and more of the middle class are becoming rich, not because they're getting poor. So the whole rhetoric about inequality and the rich getting richer at the back, it's just not true. I wrote a whole book about this. The average person can't buy a house without taking a mortgage. Yes, always. It's always been the case. We've always taken our mortgages to buy homes. At least since the 1940s and 50s. I mean, a mortgage is subsidized by the government. So there's a massive incentive to take it because it's really cheap. It's a way of consumption smoothing, which I am a huge fan of and I think most Americans embrace. Why not take a mortgage? It's not to use mortgages to buy a house. And if I could get a 50-year mortgage, I would get a 50-year mortgage tomorrow if the interest rate was right, right? I mean, the longer the mortgage, the better it is for the mortgage taker. The idea that mortgages are bad, that mortgage is a sign of poverty, is the exact opposite again. Mortgage is a sign of financial flexibility. Mortgages are a sign that I can take on the debt. Again, you saw the debt servicing ratio is, I mean, it's easy for me to service my debt. And if the mortgage was 50 years, then it would be even easier. But that's a massive benefit because we know, for example, particularly when asset prices are going up, if you can use cheap leverage to buy asset prices as they are going up, you make a fortune. You actually make a massive return on your capital. So middle-class Americans who bought their home using mortgages at low interest rates are making a killing. And how are they making a killing? I mean, it's exact opposite. Unfortunately, most of these things that we're talking about are exact opposite. All right, let's see. What else? Things that actually matter, like land housing, have gone up dramatically and that makes it hard for people to start a family on a broad scale. That is a frustration in the population. Yeah, I mean, costs have gone up. There's no question about that. It's not good. A lot of that is a consequence of regulation, of land regulation, of constraints and supply. A lot of it is regulation and employment. But at the end of the day, Americans, it seems like no matter what you do, about 60, 63% of Americans own their home. They own their home. 63% of Americans, the rest don't. And you can artificially try to get that up to 70% and then you get a housing crisis, which is what happened in 2008 because you artificially did something. But the equilibrium rate of home ownership in the United States is around 63%. By the way, in Canada, it's exactly the same. It's about 63%. It hasn't gone down from that. People are not losing their homes. People are not being, I mean, the problem today with housing is there are not a lot of enough houses. That's what's driven up the cost of housing. Nothing else. Cost of living is going up. Rent is through the roof right now. Again, not enough housing. So I'm not saying everything's rosy, quite the contrary. I'm a huge critic of it here, right? I wish we had a free market. I wish the government would stop spending like crazy. I wish they would cut our taxes. I wish they cut the regulations. I wish they would do away with licensing laws. You know, people would be richer and wealthier. But to think that the U.S. has gone backwards over the last 30 years in terms of economic prosperity is not true. And it's just wrong. It's just wrong. People are upgrading their homes. They're not downgrading their homes. Houses have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger every decade. People do the right thing and save instead of taking loans obliterated by government-created inflation. True. True. Inflation is really, really bad. And the problem, but the problem with savings, interestingly enough, is not the inflation. The problem with saving is that the government held interest rates at zero artificially. And therefore, you couldn't save. But if you put the money in the stock market, you benefited from that. So the government is manipulating. It's screwing around. It's doing bad things. But there's nothing wrong with taking on mortgages. There's nothing wrong with taking on debt. I mean, debt gets a bad rap. I'm a huge advocate for using debt smartly in your financial planning. Sure, health is much better because I became unbelievably expensive compared to the 1960s. Sure, but people have insurance. And insurance is expensive. But what is it? 92% of all Americans have health insurance. Only 8% are uninsured. Look at the price to stay at the hospitals. But nobody pays that price. Not a single American pays that price. And you're right. Healthcare system in the United States is horrible. It should be private. It was in many respects better as a system in the 1960s. But you're healthier. If you have insurance, you get the best treatment, the best healthcare treatment in the world. We still have insurance companies that are not very good because they're over-regulated, over-controlled, and they're too expensive because of regulations. But again, to blow that out of proportion, most people, 92% of all Americans have insurance. And if you have insurance, you're doing fine. You don't pay for that night in the hospital. The insurance company does. So we have more electronics, planes, and better safer computer, smartphone, et cetera. That's a big deal. It's a big, big deal. You guys don't remember life without computers and smartphones. I do. So for someone rich who got the basic cover by standard of living, it's up dramatically. You know, the entire middle class, the entire working class, standard of living is up. I showed you their incomes. In inflation, adjusted dollars are up. Their pensions are up because they're invested in the stock market. 401Ks. They have. I don't know anybody who doesn't have a smartphone. It's not just rich people who have smartphones. And the fact is computers make poor people more productive. And therefore they're one of the reasons why wages rose. Average person is not, is struggling. Sure, because of government policies and they shouldn't be struggling. I agree. But they were struggling in the 1970s. People forget what the 1970s were like. My argument is they're struggling less today. And their standard of living and quality of life is higher today than it was in the 1970s. They might still be, quote, struggling because they want all the goodies because they're consuming all the goodies. But they're not struggling more than they did in the 70s. Again, everybody forgets the 70s and how difficult things were in the 1970s where inflation was just as high and the economy was much, much, much worse than it is today. And they're not swimming in debt. It's just not true. Again, I showed you the graph. And we have to remember that all this is financed by cheap debt and by government inflating the currency supplies. Yes, government is screwing this up. And government is the problem and we will have to pay the price for what the government has done. Because the U.S. hold the world reserve currency. Why does it hold the world reserve currency? Why? Why does the world use the dollar as a reserve currency? Because it is still true that the world, at least, you might not, but the world thinks that the U.S. economy is in the best position long term to justify the value of its currency. It's the most stable and it's the one that is most likely, ultimately, to be able to pay its debt, if you will, to live up to the value of the dollar. Now, we can disagree with the world on that, but you're taking a risk when you're disagreeing with a lot of smart people out there. And I agree with you that in the end, the unfunded liabilities, the increasing government spending and all of that, dollar was gold a long time ago. It's not gold anymore. It hasn't been gold since 1971. Since 1971, the world has been stupid. Fifty years. Fifty years it's had an opportunity to shift to another currency. Fifty years it's had an opportunity to go on the gold standard. Fifty years it's had an opportunity to abandon the United States. But gold is losing purchasing power. Gold is not money in the world today. Nobody uses it as money. It's not even a hedge against inflation. It's not. It's what? It's 1700. It's down as inflation has taken off. It's just not what it used to be. The world has abandoned gold as a hedge against inflation as money. So the world still holds the dollar as its reserve currency and it values gold in terms of dollars. It trades gold in terms of dollars because they still believe. Now, I agree that ultimately that all has to end because ultimately the United States, if it continues on the path it's on, is going to go bankrupt. But it doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon or at least markets are telling us that it's unlikely to happen anytime soon. And you know, what else is there but markets? Central banks are not holding gold. If central banks were holding gold, then what you would have is a massive decline in the supply of gold and gold would go through the roof. The fact is that you have a very deep market in gold. There's a massive transactions going on in gold and the price is going down, not up. Holding leads to shortages, which leads to price increases. Yeah, I mean, I don't know why Germany asked for gold. Maybe they wanted to sell it. Maybe they maybe they wanted to sell it. Who knows? But yeah, the story is all the time of central banks buying gold, but there are no stories about central banks selling gold. But they are and have been. And the fact is the world is not on a gold standard. The euro is not on a gold standard. It's been printing like crazy. The yuan, the Chinese currency is not on a gold standard. They're printing it like crazy. Maybe they moved it from New York to Germany because they wanted to sell it. It was easier to sell out of Germany. They didn't want the U.S. tracking what they were doing with it. Who knows why the Germans wanted their gold back? They're still accepting dollars for BMWs. They're still accepting dollars from Mercedes-Benz. We're still importing a huge amount from Germany. Why do they take dollars? If they don't want, they could dump the dollar. Of course, most central banks sell gold secretly. They never sell it publicly. There's no incentive for them to sell publicly because of what people would interpret it meaning. That's fine. Maybe central banks are holding gold. So what? It doesn't make one eye out of a difference. Even if they were holding gold, you're suggesting to me that central banks really understand what's going on. But markets, investors don't. I don't buy that. I think central bankers and banks are the most ignorant in the world. So when you tell me that the wealthy in the world, the investors of the world, the hedge funds of the world, the smart money in the world is holding gold, that'll be interesting. But as far as I know, the smartest investors in the world have gold. Like most of us have a certain percentage of our portfolio in gold. But they're not particularly aggressively buying it. Again, if they were, gold prices would go up. I expect consumer inflation to increase, to stay at a high level over the next few years. I do not expect hyperinflation, but I expect consumer inflation to be high. I don't expect the Fed to be willing to do what's necessary. And it's quite possible that out of the current spiral, we will ultimately get a kind of US bankruptcy. But I don't think that's necessarily the case. And it's completely predictable. All right, guys, the Fed is screwed. And I expect many, many years, as I've expected before, I expect many years of economics stagnation. But I expect the rest of the world to do worse than the US, with the exception maybe of the UK. But I expect Europe and China and much of the rest of the world to do worse than the US. I think corporations are going to do fine. I don't think, I think the zombie companies, and there are a few out there, the zombie companies will fold and they'll go out of business. But most US businesses will do fine as interest rates go up, because I don't think most US businesses will rely on debt to run their businesses. And they can cope with higher interest rates. What they can't cope with is what the businesses that can't cope will go bankrupt. And you will see rising bankruptcies. And I think that's healthy and that's good. It's what should have happened during COVID. It's what should have happened in 0809. The Fed has constantly bailed out zombie companies. It's time zombie companies went out of business. But most US businesses are incredibly profitable and can handle significantly higher interest rates. But like always, like all of my predictions, I plan to be here in the next few years and run, you can come back and tell me I was full of it, or you can come back and tell me I was right. We will see. We will see. But I don't buy most of the economic arguments you made around this. I agree with you about government debt. I agree with you about inflation. I agree with you about government debt. And I agree with you that we're heading towards a significant recession. We're heading towards a significant recession globally. I think China is already in a recession. I think Europe is already in a recession. I think we're about to be in a recession. And I think we are about to be in a recession. I just think the US will do better than the other countries at the end of it because I still think we have a more flexible economy than they do and we have an entrepreneurial spirit that they don't and we still have holding on, barely by fingernails, we have a better property rights regime than they do. But there's going to be a lot of upheaval in the US economy including a lot of zombie companies going bankrupt. But I'm all for it. I'm a big believer in bankruptcy. I think bankruptcy is very healthy to go through a deep recession, get rid of all the junk and be able to rise up from it. And I'm also hopeful that the United States will at least slow down the level of debt that it takes on. I'm hoping that Republicans actually win the House of Representatives. We'll see if that happens. But all of my predictions, you know, if Democrats win 52 senators and they win the House, all bets are off. All bets are off. Things could get much worse, much faster. All right, thanks Ron. I appreciate the questions. It got me thinking and it got me interested. Of course it's possible to reduce debt in the current system. It's not that hard to reduce debt in the current system. But that's for another day. Basically what you need is dramatic economic growth and you can attain that. But I'm not for the current system. I'd like to see the US go on a gold standard. I'd like to see it go on private banking with currency competition. But that's not happening. The current system, at least the current monetary system is sticking around for the next few decades unfortunately. And the only way to cope with that is to see dramatic economic growth in the United States. And to do that, all you really have to do is engage in massive, massive deregulation and cutting government spending. And it's not that hard. If I were, you know, a dictator, we could do it fairly easily. All right, while I was just rambling them, or really giving you hell or whatever you want to call it, we got some great super chats. Like Shazbot has asked me to review TrueGrit, the one starring Hailey Steinfeld from 2010. And that's 500 bucks. So thank you, Shazbot. That is fantastic. I will definitely do that. And I still owe you two Star Trek reviews. So I owe Shazbot a bunch of reviews and a lot of money. So TrueGrit. All right, I remember the TrueGrit with John Wayne. So I'm curious which TrueGrit is this. And I wonder if I've seen this TrueGrit. Anyway, looking forward to watching it and giving you my input on that. Ron, I'm glad you had fun and I'm glad you're taking it well. So thanks for the back and forth. And Liam came in with 100 bucks. He says, regarding challenging your optimism, it's difficult to gauge how malicious the enemies of freedom are. They have a greater respect for market activity today than in the 70s. Yes, they do. Is there more of a orientation towards not killing the Golden Goose than there was 50 years ago? Yes, I think there's much more of a realization of it. But there's also much less of a respect of it from the other side. The left knows they need to keep the market going at least to some extent. It's like the Germans finally decided what is it, two weeks ago, to keep the New Cup hot plants going. Not because they want to, not because they like it, but because they know their survival depends on it. And I think the same is true of, in a sense, economic progress. The left knows that to keep the economy going for them to milk it, continue milking it, they need some economic freedom. It's not willing to kill the Golden Goose completely. They're not willing to go all Bernie Sanders on us and even Bernie Sanders and even Elizabeth Warren call themselves capitalist and say they believe in markets. And there's a sense in which they do, but it's a very, very narrow sense, because they want to go all socialist on us because they know they're smart enough. They're knowledgeable enough to know. They're not quite ready to turn the United States into Venezuela. At least American people are not. And a lot of people out there are not. But they want to have their cake and eat it and we know that's impossible. We know that's impossible. So, you know, we're drifting. And then, of course, the differences in the right, there was a Ronald Reagan, there was a Milton Friedman, there was an Ayn Rand, there were prominent people on the right, perceived right, that stood for markets and individual rights and freedom, at least to some extent. Today, there's nobody on the right who stands for that. The right is completely statist. That's what scares me. And again, that's why I'm not optimistic fundamentally about the politics of the world. I'm more optimistic about economics than I am about the politics. So, what scares me is the fact that both the left and the right today are fundamentally statist and fundamentally authoritarian. And that's the difference between the 70s. The 70s, there was a glimmer of hope from the right. Today, that glimmer has been extinguished. It was extinguished by Bush a little bit and Trump basically blew it out completely, extinguished it completely. All right, Alexis, 50 bucks or 50 pounds, isn't the dollar in high demand because it is the globals of currency and the exchange currency for global commodities, trading, making it an essential component for global trade, a privilege that could be lost if abused. Yes, but you have to ask yourself, why? It's fairly easy to switch. It's not that hard. You know, there's plenty of big banks and big institutions that could shift to the euro. China could stop buying commodities. It's a huge commodity purchaser, right? It dominates many commodity markets. It could use the yuan and insist that people use the yuan rather than the dollar. There's a reason why it's so... It's not metaphysical that the dollar is the exchange currency. It's the exchange currency because global markets still believe that it is the most stable. It is the most... And it represents, behind it stands, still the most productive economy in the world. That's why the dollar is the exchange. And if the United States loses that, if we lose the sense of stability, if we lose the sense that we can overcome, economic crisis, if we lose the belief that our flexible markets will recover and that we will thrive even after the coming disaster, then it will start becoming the reserve currency. Then everything will be linked to gold or everything will be linked to some commodity or to be linked to a different currency. But the fact is that right now in the world, everybody believes that of the available currencies that exist, that the dollar is the best. Now they might be wrong. And they're predicting that it's going to stay the best for the next period of time. How long is hard to tell? Right. Thanks, Alexis. Colt. And my journey of spending the gospel of capitalism, people have... On my journey of spending the gospel of capitalism, people have been receptive to my message, but healthcare and education, especially in public schools in Medicare, Medicaid, any advice on how to better advocate for an alternative. I mean, you've got to present it as... You've got to present it as, why do you trust markets and all these other things? Or would an iPhone look like if it was produced by a government committee? Everybody gets that. Everybody understands. Why do you think healthcare is different? Why do you think education is different? Why is it that you spend a huge amount of time thinking about what shoes to buy? And you completely trust the shoe market. But you spend exactly zero time thinking about your child's education. And you completely trust the government to provide that education. Why is it that generally you're cynical about the government, but when it comes to education, or when it comes to healthcare, or when it comes to other things, you suddenly trust the post office? If you wanted a letter to the other side of the world and it had to get there and it was really super important that it got there, would you use the post office? Or would you use the market? UPS, FedEx, DHS? Everybody says FedEx, or DHS, or UPS. Then why when it comes to the brain of your child, why when it comes to the healthcare of your mother, do you want to trust the government? Everybody falls when it comes to that. They have no explanation. You know, if they're sophisticated, they give you some spiel about asymmetry of information. And then you tell them all markets have asymmetry of information. But in competitive markets, asymmetry of information goes away because of marketing and advertising and profit opportunities to rank and to rate and to provide information to consumers who are confused. So that's the approach I would take. Ali, it's been a while. I don't know. I think it's been a while. It's been a long time. You used to be kind of a regular super chat. I haven't seen you around here in a long time. Welcome back. Welcome back. Are you aware of the Adlerian psychology? A little bit, yes. I found really close to objectivism because it rejected the idea of deterministic life and case effect. Yes, I think it does. You know, if you go back, if you read Nathaniel Brandon, I think Nathaniel Brandon addresses Adlerian psychology in some of the old writings going back to the 60s and 70s. So I don't remember exactly, but there was maybe even a debate. I vaguely remember maybe between Adler and Nathaniel Brandon around an objectivist approach to psychology versus the Adlerian approach. There are commonalities in a sense of at least this free will. But there are also some things that are not the same, not similar, but I don't know enough to be able to talk about that. Thank you, Adlerian. Again, welcome back. All right, non-$20 questions. By the way, we've raised over $1,000 today, so thank you to everybody. Really appreciate it. We're going to run through these under-$20 super chats and call it a day unless we get more super chats. Let's see. James asked, which Western countries do you see with the most growth potential realizing their growth? Are there any Asian countries that will grow, realize it? I mean, there's a lot of potential in Asia. I think Korea has an opportunity. It has a president right now who claims to be pro-free markets, who claims to be pro-freedom. I will be in Korea in two weeks. I'll be able to tell you more about what's going on there and what the potential is. I think other Asian countries have that potential, although I don't know enough about their politics to be able to tell you whether their politicians will allow them to realize that potential. Vietnam is going to benefit from the decline of China and a lot of supply chains moving to Vietnam. India always has that potential but keeps screwing it up because if it's not socialist, then it votes in right-wing statists and blows it in terms of its possibilities. In terms of the West, I would say the countries that have the most potential, realistic potential, right? I mean, all countries have a high potential. I think the UK, for the reasons I said earlier, particularly because of if they do the right thing, I think generally the Scandinavian countries have high potential. They don't tend to vote in very left-wing governments. They tend to vote in right-of-center governments. They tend to have been on a path of deregulation and they seem to be fairly stable. They won't have super high growth, but they'll have reasonable growth. I think France is a basket case. Italy is a basket case. Southern Europe generally is a basket case. Some Eastern European countries, maybe Poland. Again, I don't know enough, but there's some potential for them to deregulate and they have been deregulating. There's hostility towards at least communism, but again, fear all these countries of right-wing populism. Let's see Israel. Israel, I think, has potential. It's another election now, but all these elections are good for Israel in the sense that the politicians don't do a lot of damage when they're constantly moving from election to election to election. When there's never stable government, you know, you basically... the markets are left alone for the most part, so that's a potential. I think those are the countries. Canada is a basket case. Latin America is a complete basket case. It's got every single Latin American country, except I think Ecuador has voted in a leftist... some kind of leftist regime, some kind of horrible leftist regime. So it's... yeah. Latin America is a complete basket case. All right, before I take the next question, just a note. If you're not a member, become a member. Click on the membership button down there. That's a good way to support the show. You can support a $5 a month, $10, $250. There's a bunch of different levels there. So what we'll be doing before I leave for Asia is a member's only chat show. So it'll be broadcast to everybody, but the chat will only be members. And I think it'll... it'll be available only for members longer term. So become a member. It's easy to do your live on right now, but even those who are not live can just click on the membership button below and become members of the show and benefit for that member's only show. But we're doing a survey right now about a topic. What topic do you want me to cover in the member's only show? And you can click on the link that's provided in the chat and go there and participate in the survey. All right. Let's do that doodle bunny. Did you see Joe Biden just had an aneurysm on stage? No. I mean, are you serious? So this is live? Are we now going to have a Kamala presidency? I mean, that's a little scary. I kind of... I think we're going to miss Joe Biden if that's the case. But... Did he literally have an aneurysm? Is this just a metaphor for his... you know, whatever. Anyway, I don't see the news where he had an aneurysm. So I'm assuming it's a kind of a joke. It's got to be some kind of a joke. That's fine. Yeah, nothing in Twitter either. Okay, thanks doodle bunny for confusing me there. James Taylor says, how would interplanetary property rights work if I violated a contract on Venus but I live on Mars? Well, I mean, there'd be extradition treaties between Vars and... just like if you violated a contract between the UK and the US, there'd be arrangements that two countries would have in terms of how settled disputes between two different geographic locations between people in different geographic locations. So you just like you do between two different countries today. Let's see, the scared order of the nightly valor. What did you think of Biden's speech? I thought it was mixed. I commented this the other night. Basically, he's right about Trump and I think he's... so I applaud him for having the guts to call it on Trump. I think he went a little overboard in terms of not being presidential in terms of a little bit panicky and a little bit emotionalistic. I think he went a little bit too far in terms of how he categorized some of the Trump voters. But I think generally, Biden is... the speech... I agree with him about Trump and about the fanatical Trump supporters who accept everything Trump says and who completely unequivocally embrace the rhetoric of a stolen election. So... that's my view. How about a silver standard? I mean, why? A gold standard would be better, and more historically consistent. I'm all for a gold standard, but we just need... I mean, if you're going to have a standard, I think a gold standard is easier. What I'd really like is true competition. Let different currencies compete. I think we'll get a gold standard that way. The market would determine it, but I... we're not going there. There's no energy around doing anything like that. Daniel asks, what are the sources? God, I mean, so many. I just consume a lot of news, and if I find a story interesting, what I try to do is try to cross-reference it from a variety of different news sources. So I use Google News, I use Apple News as my... as kind of consolidators of news, and then I click through. I scan the Atlantic, I scan the Wall Street Journal, I scan the New York Times, I pop up on my feeds. You know, as part of the feeds, I get Fox, I get CNN, I then will go diving into other websites from, I don't know, zero alpha, what's it called? Zero, whatever, alpha, something. Pretty much anywhere, it will take me, depending on the story, you know, if there are quotes from people, I try to verify that they actually said it by finding video or finding audio by saying it. It's a lot of work, and you constantly have to read, you constantly have to look, and you constantly have to search, and there's good sources in all kinds of places, but I often find sources that I didn't know existed before. Yeah, so that's those are the kind of that's the kind of work you have to do to figure out anything. So you might read something in New York Times, you have to kind of you have to figure it out, and it's sad. It would be easier if you didn't so that's the kind of work I do constantly. Alright, let's see. Colt says, something that I'm trying to contemplate is the midterms if the Democrats win Congress, there would be a huge blow to the new right, which could be good. Yes, but, wow, we would have to suffer so much. What I'm hoping for is that they win at least in the House, maybe by a small margin, and they lose the Senate, and that would be a huge blow to the new right, but it would also give us a little bit of protection from the Biden administration and the leftists just going all out nuts on us. So we need something to hold them back and if they win two seats in the Senate, we don't have mansion anymore to hold them back, so we need the House to hold them back. So I'm really, really hopeful that the Republicans can take the House even if by one or two votes that's enough. Colt Savage also asked, but at the same time, Republicans need to break the trifecta so that way we don't bankrupt our country in five seconds. I do plan on voting for the Republican nominee for Senate in North Carolina, but I'm torn. Yeah, I get that, but again, I think the more important vote is for the House because the House is where the Republicans have a good chance of taking it and where that would be enough to stop the Democrats from just doing anything they wanted to. All right. Thanks, everybody. We had a, you know, thank you for Shazabad because of him. We kind of blew through our target and didn't blow through the target enough. We need a little bit more to get to where we should be, but it all have to hold. We will have a show tomorrow and then we'll take two days off and then we'll be back on Friday, but we will be doing a show tomorrow. I'm trying to do as many shows as I can before I go to Asia and I'm hoping to know... I'm hoping you guys join me in these shows before I go to Asia at the... to join me live but also after the fact. All right. Thanks. Hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget that I like the show before you leave. 79 likes. We had well over 100 people watching. So just like the show before you leave. It helps with the algorithm. It helps with everything. So just press that like button. It doesn't cost that much. Assuming you like the show, of course. If you want to support the show, the best way to support the show is by coming a monthly contributor. One way to do that is just by becoming a member right now. It's fairly easy to do and fairly cheap. But you can also do it on Patreon and on uronbrookshow.com support. That's PayPal. And yeah. I'll see you guys all tomorrow. Bye, everybody. And I hope you enjoyed the different time zone. We did it differently today.