Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: On this episode, we will react to some recent comments by JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon about the looming national debt crisis and whether the rich need to pay more taxes.
And later on, we're going to weigh in on what some have said is a recent uptick in people in right wing circles trying to mainstream race pseudoscience.
Hello.
Welcome to the call I see it podcast. I'm James Keys, and the man you see pulling up here with me is someone who rejects your assumptions because he refuses to let you make a you know what out of you know who. Toonde ogun lana Toonde. Are you ready to hit him over the head with some facts today?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah, you made me think a lot there in that intro, so I figured it out. I won't say it.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: A lot of moving parts, man. A lot of moving parts.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I had my coffee this morning, so we're ready.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: There you go. There you go. All right. Now we're recording this on August 27, 2024. And a few weeks back, we took note of some comments by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon about the unsustainable nature of government spending in the US right now and the need, the increasing need to address this. Now, when talking about debt, many contend that the raw number is less important than the ratio of debt to GDP. But as diamond noted, that ratio is going out of whack too. And Jamie Dimon is a serious guy. When he talks economic stuff, he'll pay attention. And he asserts, to address this, we're not even going to need to look at strategies to continue to increase growth, but also look to raise taxes to increase the revenue coming into the government that it's going to spend. And, but before we get into kind of the tax part, we do want to discuss the debt itself because just looking at the numbers, it is staggered. So tunde to get us started, what are your thoughts on diamond raising the alarm on the national debt? And, you know, really, this explosion we've seen over the past couple of decades where we've gone from like less than a trillion in national debt in 1980 to a little under 6 trillion in 2000 to over 35 trillion today.
Yeah.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: No, it's a great lead up to this conversation, the way you opened up, because I think it says something when Jamie Dimon, someone like him at his stature within the financial industry, both banking and Wall street, just makes a statement and kind of puts his thumb on the scale in terms of the conversation about where we are, in terms of the kind of the debt and the deficit, but also how to deal with it, because the idea of the concept of supply side economics is very unfriendly to the idea of trying to raise government revenue through the tax code. And so I think for our lifetime, the better part of our lifetime, since 1980, there's been a culture in, especially the financial industry and the financial world, to shy away from ever talking about things like raising taxes. And I think the fact that rover.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Norquists of the world and so forth, where it's like, that's completely off the table from. Jump.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah, there's, there's entire economic ecosystems of think tanks and others that have developed over the last 40 years basically to hold that dam so it doesn't break of people that just are antithetical to any type of increase in taxes. And so the reason why.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: I was real quick on that. I'm sorry, what? That always raises the question to me on whether or not the idea of supply side economics was actually a coherent theory or the rationalization that was came up that they came up with in order to. It's a part of the idea of holding the dam on not ever raising taxes, but not. Go ahead.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: No, I think that's a good point, which I think we definitely should come back to. I just, I'll finish this. And I actually want to come back to that is the reason why Jamie Dimon's important is because he is the only CEO of a major bank that is still in his role since the 2008 financial crisis. And he was seen as one of the best people in the banking sector who, let me say, one of the people who best navigated that very difficult time for our economy and the financial system. So he's got a lot of respect.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: He was best prepared beforehand and navigated it well. Also, you know, both, like, he wasn't overextended like so many others were, and so forth. But not yet.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And also done a great job with managing JP Morgan ever since. So that's what I mean. When someone like him speaks, it's like, wow, okay, if he's saying that we must be in an interesting place, let's put it that way. And I think going back to the point you made, which I wanted to come back to, is, yeah, it's interesting because in preparing for today, I did a lot of reading about reaganomics and kind of that era. And what I think, in fairness to people coming up with those ideas, because I think you're right, I think there was a lot of, a lot of it was window dressing. And I think there were some people that knew that and I think there are some people, like anything else, that genuinely believe that this could have been something to bring the country into a better place. Because if you think about the seventies, you did have a genuine recession. You had the oil crisis, you had high unemployment, high inflation going into the late seventies. So by 1980 through 81, 82, one could appreciate that there would be arguments about, hey, let's do something different. And I think where I'm at now is like, okay, so we tried reaganomics and we see that there's a lot of problems that, that created, maybe intentionally, maybe unintentionally. Right? But we're here now 45 years later or so, two generations later, and we can see issues with the national debt, with outsourcing of jobs overseas, deregulation of the financial industry for 24 years straight, or 28 years. I was thinking between 2000 and 2008, Reagan, Bush one, Clinton, Bush two, all had the same kind of mindset of just total deregulatory for the financial system and has left us where we are in certain respects.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: So we had a big cry, a big crisis as well with the financial crisis.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: And so I just think, yeah, it's, it's, um.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Well, let me jump in because I wanted to get some initial thoughts in before we get too far down the road.
No, I mean like the, I think diamond raising it as you, you know, I would piggyback on what you said as far as, like, he's, this is a serious guy when he speaks, he knows his voice carries a lot of weight as well. And so for him to do this, what it means is that we need to start having this conversation. Because again, like, you see the numbers and they're like video game numbers in the sense of how can you go from less than a trillion, you know, in debt? And that, you know, that was that way for a long time. And then you go from that in 1980 to 30, over 35 trillion, you know, 45 years later, 44 years later, that means something's wrong. I mean, like that. That is. And again, you, you, oh, yes, the GDP has gone up, so the ratio, you know, and all that kind of stuff. But no, I mean that, that's, we're doing something wrong structurally. You know, systemically, we're doing something wrong. In order for our economy to function and our government to function under the current kind of thought process, we need to borrow that much money. Like that. Just, there needs to be some kind of reimagining. And yeah, I mean, you talked about how with the kind of the supply side approach, I would say that many people knew in advance that it was, that this would not work out because the idea of the reaganomics was that and the supply side, so to speak, to try to put it in economic terms, I'll put it in terms more, what I think are more apt, actually, quoting Reagan's vice president, George HW Bush. Voodoo economics. But basically you cut taxes on the wealthy and then that creates so much growth that actually you will increase tax receipts because there's so much more economic activity because of these cut taxes that you'll, you'll actually, the government will pull in more money from taxes even though it cut the rate. It never, never worked. And it never has worked. It was just one of those kind of those things somebody dreamed up and, you know, was able to sell it, you know, and then obviously it's not a hard sell and you're cutting taxes, so to speak. But ultimately it's not something that has proven to be sustainable absent the borrowing money. And it wasn't right away. I mean, Ronald Reagan borrowed more money than any president before him, you know, outside of wartime. Basically, you look at Woodrow Wilson, World War one, FDR, World War two, and then you got in Reagan, you know, and it's like, well, hold up, man. We weren't in a world war. How are you borrowing all this money? You know, and so it ends up in the situation where, okay, we started down this track.
What is doing this track, though, it's really hard to get off of because all the, when you come into leadership, it's basically the promise of free money. The free money that your kids are gonna have to pay for, your grandkids are gonna have to pay for, but you don't have to pay for it. You don't have to raise taxes in order to spend for this and spend for that. And it's gotten to the point where both parties are all in on increasing the debt for different reasons. And I'm gonna kick it back to you right here. But, you know, whereas, like, Donald Trump, you know, raised the debt more than anybody had in four years, you know, in a four year span. Like, maybe somebody had borrowed more over eight years, but over four years, nobody borrowed more than Donald Trump. He didn't. He had some spending, but a lot of that was due to the tax cuts. So we're already running a deficit. And he gets in and said, hey, let's cut some taxes some more. So there's Iris, and then, you know, like when Obama comes in. Now, granted, Obama comes in and there's a crisis, but he has to see spending to get us out of a crisis or the COVID crisis and things like that. So we end up in a situation where both parties, both of our, you know, our two major parties, neither one, you know, they may talk about it, but neither one is really saying, hey, we got to get this, this under control. Which I think, again, bringing it back, that's the key point on why someone serious from the, from Wall street, from banking is like, hey guys, we need to be looking at this. We need serious people to look at this. Now that's question, another question, whether we have serious people that, you know, that are enough serious people in power.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Yeah, well that's, that's a whole different conversation. Yeah, that's a conversation about politics, of economics. Yeah, but, but no, but I want to just follow up before we move to, you know, kind of other discussions in this economic stuff. But really on the debt, because you're right, I think the debt is something that us as Americans, you know, we don't, it's complex and it's something that's not easily understood. I mean, it's easy to understand. Okay, you owe money, right. And the debt kind of at a.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Yemenite top level, borrowing money to pay your bills.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: So yeah, that's, that's easy. But, but to kind of like you're saying about going in the nuances, where's the money being spent? What is the purpose of the borrowing, so on and so forth, gets a little more nuanced. And then you've got two big. If you figure, if you can say that definite deficit spending in general is the big trunk of a tree. And then the first two major branches to go in different directions, one would be the budget deficit based on revenue and expenses on an annual basis of the us government and the treasury versus, let's say, the fiscal deficit, meaning all the money you owe to creditors over the long run. And that's, that's.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: I don't think we should overcomplicate it, though. I mean, we can stick.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Here's why.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: That's the deficit.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Well, here's why. I just want to, want to cover it because, just to explain what you mentioned of the 33 to 35 trillion that we currently owe out there, because I'm going to go back to 1980, which was the election year when Ronald Reagan won. Going into 81, the national debt at that time was 738 billion. Like you said, it was under a trillion dollars. By the time he left office in 1988, going into 89, it was 2.1 trillion. So it had almost tripled it. Yeah. And so then it became kind of runaway because that's when it becomes, okay. Do you raise taxes at that point to try and stem the blow? And of course, George Hw Bush did raise taxes and was punished for that. And then Clinton came in and continued more of the kind of corporate supply side style of things. But what he did do was compromise with the Republican led Congress in the late nineties to balance the budget by doing things like making changes to welfare and other social programs. So.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Well, he also did raise taxes towards the beginning and then he cut back on revenue like Clinton balanced the budget. But go ahead.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Yeah, no, but it did. So I just want to get to the end of his term where he had a $200 billion budget surplus. And I remember this because this is when I was getting old enough in my early twenties to be watching politics and all that. In the year 2000 election when Bush and Gore, there was a fight, right? Gore was saying, you know, we need to continue to reinvest that money into the us government and blah, blah, blah and to our country. And Bush said, no, we need to do a tax cut because this is your money. We got to give it back to the american people. So this is where, as you're saying, going into the early two thousands, Bush came in and cut taxes further and then did other things that I think escape our memory as a society because we get so much coming at us like Medicare part d in 2003, which put other trillions of dollars on debt.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: On the books because that plus the war on terror.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: I'm sorry. Yeah, that was the future is six or $7 trillion in total spend.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Your point being that he, he did these big spins while cutting taxes. And so it was like, hey, let's lean into debt. You know, essentially kind of a, you know, it was kind of a mindset that.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: Sorry. No, I was just saying to your point, at the end of his term, we have a huge financial crisis. No, eight. Oh, you know that. And by early, oh, nine, the other guy comes in, the next guy, he's got to spend another trillion and a half, 2 trillion just to plug that hole. So you're right. It's, even with our quick rundown here, it's not difficult to see how the deficit was run up so high.
And then you can see something else. I bring up Medicare part d because right now it's taken 20 years, but we're at a point where the government can now negotiate again for the lowest prices with drug companies. So I think part of this is we as voters have elected people into office over the last two generations that have looked at the United States treasury as a pinata for corporations in certain respects, and then also who have not worked on doing what Jamie Dimon's talking about is let's get creative and create a new way to raise revenue. Because the way we're doing, it's great.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: In a new way, though, it's not like innovative. You know, it's things that have been done. And that's kind of the, like, if you go back prior to that, you look at the keynesian approach where you have government spending and possibly even government, you use government spending when the private sector spending isn't sufficient to really continue growth. So if you're in any recession, that's when you, how you get out of the Great Depression, use government spending and so forth. But the point of that, or, you know, the key part about that will be once the private sector is rolling again, the government should pull back on that and raise the taxes again, you know, so that can kind of reload, you know, and so forth. And what's happened, basically, is that that mindset which took us, did very well for us, getting us out of the depression, taking us all the way to 1980, it did very well. But then that was kind of abandoned. At least the part of government pulled back and increased the taxes to kind of reload the gun. What they realized is that, hey, we'll just keep borrowing and instead of reloading the gun, the debt will be the gun. And so the question is, why does this matter? You know, debt service becomes a part of the budget. So a big part of this other than obviously, you would like your economic numbers to not appear as a third world country, which can affect you as far as your credit rating, which can affect you as far as just standing internationally as the debt, $35 trillion you're paying interest on that each year, debt service, that's going to become an increasingly large part of the budget every year. So, and actually, I mean, and this is something people do understand with credit card bills and everything like that. If your, if your debt load is so high that your interest payments start just ballooning out of control, then it actually becomes something where you, it becomes very difficult for you to actually ever get out of the hole because you're just in there just paying off the interest. At that point, you can't even get to the principle. And so, yes, the point you made about where the direction it was taken versus Gore versus Bush, you know, it's one of those things. It's a seminal moment because it was like, okay, are we going to take this surplus that we have and reload the gun, you know, invest in infrastructure to try to increase growth and, you know, also pay down the debt sum or are we going to take the surplus that we have and, you know, blow it basically and then a couple of years later actually starts spending more money. I mean, Bush took the deficit, you know, excuse me, the debt from around 5 trillion where it was, you know, in 2000 to around ten. You know, he doubled it, you know, in zero eight. So, you know, like it's, it's, it's kind of one of these things. It appears the way it looks when you look at how, you know, and we'll have some stuff in the show notes on this. It appears like the debt is almost like a drug to the politicians, though, I mean, because it's like they really don't seem to be able to, like it allows you to avoid making hard decisions or telling people to, you know, to, for delay to try to sell delayed gratification. Like, hey, let's, let's tighten our belts a little bit now and we'll have a better future. You don't have to say any of that kind of stuff. It's like you can have your cake, you can eat it too, everything like that. And so it kind of puts us in a bind, particularly when our politics are so defined by immediate gratification and the person who promises you delayed gratification is not going to win the election. So it creates this difficult situation where how can you even get to someone with a mandate to get something under control that will hurt us in the future? Because it's like, well, the future, you know, who cares about that a lot of times with our politics. So I want to ask you though, you know, like, well, let me jump.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: On something you said real quick. I think this is important. This is where the public gets frustrated over what you just said, which is that because it seems simple to us that how can you spend more money than you make, right? And then because we're all dealing as individuals and you've got this big system with all these moving parts. And I think that's where the frustration becomes on that. We have on our politicians. And the politicians are sitting in office knowing they can kick the can down the road because they'll be out of office like Bush.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Not just kick the can down the road, you can just blame the other side. It becomes something you play politics with and you don't have to take it.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: Seriously because you just killed, like we're in a stalemate. That's all I wanted to. Yeah, it's an interesting.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, and that's the reason, the big reason why we're in a stalemate with this is because part of the solution, most serious people would say, is the government has to increase revenue. And another word for that is increased taxes on people or on corporations or whatever, but increase taxes. And there aren't many people who are get excited about that kind of message or somebody selling that are really trying to buy it. But diamond does, you know, he very specifically has said, you know, over the course of time, he said that part of this needs to be, you know, like, the wealthy need to pay more taxes. And he's even invoking, like, the so called Buffett rule, where, you know, like, people who make over a million dollars shouldn't pay less as a percentage of their income than middle class people, which is very common under our current tax code, with the way that you can kind of rig the system, so to speak, to your favor, you know, like, not even illegally, but even legal, there are mechanisms where people who are millionaires pay less percentage tax than people who, you know, are just, you know, earning, you know, work, work people, you know, working people. So what was your, you know, what do you make a diamond, you know, even in going this direction as him, you know, one of the wealthier people, you know, out there, but saying, hey, you know, the wealthy, you got to kick in more here.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I should say, yeah, yeah, I'm open to good, creative ideas. I don't. I mean, because I can see looking deeply into any of these, and there's going to be some nuance. Right. If you. Okay, well, anyone making over a million dollars, I mean, there could be special circumstances. Someone make a large investment into businesses and hired a lot of people, maybe they deserve to get some sort of relief from the tax code versus someone who just earned $5 million on a w two. And so, but people that earn money on w two generally don't get the benefit of loopholes and things like that. So, you know, they have choices.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: They don't earn it on the w two, but, yeah, exactly.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: But, but that's what I mean. Like, so, but some people don't have a choice, right. If you're an executive at large corporation or the Gm of a professional sports team, you're earning a w two, period. So it's, it's. And I know that those are very small percentage of our.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: I think we should talk about the bigger point. More than the rule, more than the exceptions.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: But, but I think, yes, the idea of not only just looking into new ideas, but I think just enforcing the existing, like the tax code itself at the 30,000 foot level progressive tax system, until somebody figures out something better, has shown to be one of the more fair ways to deal with it. Because there's been other ideas like the fair tax, which is a federal sales tax. There's the idea of, you know, right now I think one of the ideas that is coming out of one of the campaigns is to abolish the IR's and just do it all with tariffs. You know, raise revenue for the government like that. There's other ideas, but they don't, they seem kind of bulky and clunky and that they may not be as smooth as something like a progressive tax system.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Or I think enforcement of. Well, with the tariff system. The bigger problem with that, because diamond talks about two things. You need to uni policies that continue to promote growth and you'll need policies that will enhance the tax collection. You know, how much is being collected, the tariff. The problem with the tariffs is that that doesn't promote growth. You know, like, so you're, you end up in a situation.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, but, but go ahead. I just wanted to add.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: Promotes hostility. But, but think about it, because you make a good point that this is all done. You can't have this conversation in a vacuum from the reality of politics because we're in a democracy. So the idea is that, I think I saw stats that if the IR's was allowed to be funded the way that the Biden administration recently, in the last two years wanted to, with the $80 billion and all that, they could have raised approximately an additional 400 billion a year, which is 4 trillion over ten years.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Just enforcing the rules that are in.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Just enforcing existing rules. That's it. So some of this, I think, is not about trying to invent new things. I think we got pretty good things on the books already. It's about now funding the IR's to the point where it can function properly and that we're not on hold for an hour every time we call. Also, maybe looking at some of the things that were created in the last 20 years, like carried interest for private equity funds, things like that, and maybe poking some holes in those.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just gonna say. But I think the idea of a progressive tax system, I mean, I was surprised to see from 1980 the top rate was brought down first from 70% to 50%, but by 86, the top rate was already down to 28%. I forgot about that. So now we're at 37%. So I'm thinking, okay, 37 to 40. I mean, you know, I don't, I don't want to kill people making a lot of money with that much more, because I just think if you enforce where we're at, you'll actually raise a lot more than we actually know, than we appreciate.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Well, you're talking conceptually, though, and so that the problem that you have. And so I would say, yeah, we probably don't need to invent new solutions because as we're talking about literally in this conversation, the tax code worked much better prior to 80. And I think Reagan's term is a seminal moment for this as well. As you just talked about the changes, some of the significant changes that were made during the Reagan administration, it's not a coincidence that the debt was something rather static for the 50 year or the 40 years leading up to, to, you know, 35 years leading up to Reagan's administration, and then it starts this upward, you know, mountain climb trajectory. And you talked about he's lowering these tax rates, he's cutting them in half. You know, like, he cuts the tax rates in half for, you know, the top earners. Then since then, what you've done is, is, and this is what you alluded to also, is in addition to the overall rate getting cut down now, all these loopholes have been put in, you know, to allow people to, to legally kind of, you know, put their money in places and have the money come in in ways that avoids the taxes. So it's one of those things where, yes, conceptually, the ideas are there. I do think we probably need to look back to the past in terms of how the tax code was, was implemented, how it was structured and how it was implemented, both how it was structured, how it was implemented, in terms of making sure that everybody pays their fair share. I mean, a progressive tax system is one that has been shown to work. And to me, that's the biggest thing that I think we have to lean in. And that's lean into. It's very difficult in this day and age because we live in a world now where people say things all the time and don't feel the need to back them up. You know, like, we're going to get into that in our next section where it's just, like, people just say things and the truth doesn't really matter. It's just, you'll just say it if you can't prove it. Oh, well, you'll just keep saying it over and over. Again. And that creates a difficulty because what I'm saying is that, hey, let's look at, actually, let's look at what really did work and then try to, try to lean into some of those lessons that were learned there and let's look at the things that didn't work in the last 45 years, and let's try to either use that as a lesson to what to avoid or use that to try to fill in gaps and what we did, you know, in the time prior to that. But if it's difficult to, if enough people aren't responsive to truth and to facts and to verifiable information, if you can just say, hey, hey, you know, I just like this, or this is just what it is, and you don't have to prove it for people to get on board, then it's difficult, actually to move our kind of, this, this big, you know, cruise ship or not. Yeah, yeah. This big cruise ship that we're trying to turn here and turn there. It's difficult to turn it or move it in any direction because people aren't all operating on the same idea of, hey, if something is true and verifiable, we can act on it. And if something isn't true and verifiable, we'll still, we still are going to argue about it. And it's like, well, geez, you know, if we tried to steer a cruise ship like that and say, hey, yeah, there's a storm over there, we can look and see it. And other people saying, no, there's no storm there. What you see there is just AI, then, yeah, it would be difficult to convince the captain to say, steer away from the store.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: But it's even deeper than that. It's the passengers on the ship debating whether there's a storm or not on the horizon, whether they can see it or not based on who's the captain of the ship. Because, you know, it's interesting in this last few years when we've had inflation really in America for the first time since, let's say, the seventies, because it's like, I remember because I'm old enough now to have watched this politics stuff for a couple decades. And do you remember during the Bush administration when they were starting to rack up these deficits? I remember the off the book spending. He would go down to the Capitol and ask Congress for $50 billion off the books. Remember that? And it just was adding up and racking up. And the excuse that I heard from people like Dick Cheney and others in that administration was, well, don't and people that sympathize with them was, well, don't worry, we'll inflate ourselves out of that debt. Remember that?
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: And I remember thinking when I got, then Obama got in and for eight years, all we heard about from that same crowd was, oh, deficit spending, deficit spending. Deficit spending, which partially was the politics of, they had a black guy in office and they want to tell certain people in this country that black people are bad with money. Right. I mean, it just comes down to those, those natural kind of fault lines that we have culturally in our country.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Well, it's not hard to, for some people, it's not hard to convince them of that in the same way that, you know, Donald Trump, you know, the borrowing is president over four years ever is seen as good on the economy and good. And it's like, and that's my point.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: So it's like we've definitely, we've lived now, just you and I being in our four, long enough to see the same actions by different captains of the ship be responded to differently over time. So, because I thought when we responded.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: To, though, it's a good point, not just responded to be actually viewed as some, like, when this person does, it's a good thing and when this person does it, it's a bad thing. Or when this does something worse, you know, it's, it's depending on who's doing it. That's where people line up. And that's definitely going to be, and.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: That'S where I, because that's what I wanted to bring it up is I remember when we started having high inflation in 20, 2022, 21 to 22. I mean, that was one of the first things that came to my mind. I was like, hold on, these same people on Fox and CNBC and Bloomberg that are all complaining about, about all the debt, they were saying the way out of its inflation. So isn't this shouldn't, is, shouldn't this be seen as part of a silver lining of inflation? I mean, I'm not trying to say inflation is great, but I'm just making the point that it's in a democracy. It does come back to us, the voters that we have people that want to keep following, like you said, politicians and leaders in our country that we have seen now in power, whether they're in the Senate or Congress, whatever, long enough to see them say different things when different people behave the exact same way. And so, and so, and I think that's why it was harder to land the deficit stuff on Biden when he got in, because you're right. After beating up Obama for eight years and then Trump ran up more debt in four years than the prior 45 presidents or 44 presidents prior to him combined, it was hard to go.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Year period. Yeah. In the four year period, he, you know, he blew everybody away.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Yeah, but he's, but he's better with the economy. Like you say that people just believe this stuff.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: Even though none of it out.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Part of the reason they think that is probably because he borrowed so much money.
Free money. Free money, everybody. So, and that's, again, that's the incentive structure that we have to be aware of and beware of because it's like we are incentivizing our politicians, ones that are, that will prioritize the short term. We're incentivizing them to try to make things as easy as possible in the short term and let everything else fall by the wayside. I mean, yeah, Dick Cheney said we can inflate our way away. He wasn't saying that he, it would happen while he was in power, while he was on his watch. He's saying you guys in the future can inflict your way out of it and you guys can feel the pain and you'll forget about the fact that, you know, that I was the one that set this up, you know, back then. So, but no, I mean, it's one of those situations, though, where I'm glad you brought it back there. It does come down to us, the voters. We need to, again, we need to pay attention what people say and pay attention, more importantly, what people do, because that is ultimately what we have to judge, be judge people on. And we cannot forget about the lessons of the past. And when serious people like Jamie Dimon speak up, we should pay attention. And we need to look at this and say, okay, how can we, how can we set up a system that's a little more sustainable? Because that's ultimately what diamond is talking about. And my point, and I know you, you've helped make the point as well. Like, the answers aren't, we don't have to invent something completely new. You know, like people before us had solutions for stuff like this, but they also had the discipline and the will to kind of put those in place. And so that's going to, you know.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: One last thing that I learned, which is I want to share. It's, it's kind of depressing in the 1980s under Reagan, and I like Reagan. I think he was great orator. You go back and look at his speeches about immigration, things like that. It's so eloquent. So it's not about bashing Reagan, but the facts are the facts. On the financial side, we went from the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation from 1981 to 1989.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: And I just think it's hard to imagine us as the largest creditor in the world today. Like, I just, it just, well, I.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Mean, I mean, you talked about, it was a seminal change. You know, you cut the top tax rate in half. You know, like, he doubled the social.
[00:32:21] Speaker B: No, you're right.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: Largest middle class tax increase in history. You know, like, it was. He did a lot of things.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: I was sobering when I read that. I was like, dang, man.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: Yeah, like you do.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: But that's the thing on the legacy.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Well, I mean, I think that, you know, they, I wasn't as big of a fan of Reagan, but, I mean, I do think that what he did that was very good as far as was getting people to feel good about their country. I mean, I think that's important. Like, I think in a lot of times, some people don't recognize that. Like, there's the job of the day to day management, but there's also the job of the making people feel good about the thing that we're doing here, you know? And so I think he was, that's something that he was really good at, and I think is very important. And ideally, we get people that can do both, you know, like, they can manage it and keep us on a, on a good track, but then also make us feel good about the american experiment and not just feel good about isolated things or things that divide us, but make us think. Make us feel good about things that unite us, you know? So, but I think we could wrap this topic from here. We appreciate everybody, for joining us on topic one. Join us for topic two as well, and we'll see you then.
All right, part two of our show today we're going to discuss. There was a recent article in the Atlantic that talked about the rise in kind of race pseudoscience, discussions about race pseudoscience that are percolating in right wing circles and also trying to really poke into the push, be pushed into the mainstream. So I wanted to kind of react to that. We've done a show on, on a eugenics documentary you can find in our archives maybe a year or two ago, and this was, I think, the documentary that was on PBS and talking about eugenics, which was a lot about race science or talking about genetics and genetically predisposed and all that and the rise and fall of that. So it piqued our interest in light of the discussion we've already had on this, looking at the early 19 hundreds and so forth. So, tunde, what are your thoughts on this recent uptick in right wing circles of people trying to kind of mainstream race pseudoscience and present it as if it was, like, legitimate stuff?
[00:34:18] Speaker B: This is a good question, man. What do I think about it?
I find it interesting because it's another example of just kind of the cycle of certain patterns of societies. And I think it's a reflection of the insecurity of the majority group right now. And it just reminds me, like you said, of the.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: But you shouldn't say like that. It's not everybody in the majority group. Some people. Yeah, yeah, correct.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: I mean, if it was everybody, we'd obviously, the world will look out different. So thankfully, it's, it's, it's, I think it's a loud minority, let's put it that way. And today's America, maybe not, you know, 100 years ago, that would have been the case. But I think just like this show we did on eugenics, which was about the period, kind of the late 18 hundreds through the early 20th century, you know, like 1930s, 1920s, when it really gained prominence, was the idea of trying to create a scientific backing and some sort of scientific proof that there's a difference in humans in between what we.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: That's determined by race.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: Correct. That we consider as race and then.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Other things, but race being one of them.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Yeah, correct. And so, and so, you know, I was under the impression, as I was growing up and learning about things like the Holocaust and World War two and just in general, kind of where the world had gone in the 20th century, that those type of ideas would be left in the past. And clearly they haven't. And I would. And that's why I said, I think it reflects an insecurity by many, just like it did in the 1920s when you had a lot of immigration from eastern Europe. For example, today, the immigrations from other areas of the world. But, you know.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: Well, but remember, that was one of the things that stood out to us in that was the immigration from eastern Europe. They were considered a different race than kind of the western European, Anglo, you know, like that type of thing. And they were considered to be one of the most notable things that, you know, from a race standpoint. It was, you know, like you had these, the western Europeans, then you had the northern blacks, then you had, under the northern blacks were the eastern Europeans. Yeah. And then it was just like, it was all, it was very arbitrary from, you know, our point of view. But it was something like these guys were trying to make this stuff, like, actually trying to do this stuff scientifically.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: Yeah, hence the term pseudoscience. And I think that that's what reminds me so much of that era today, because these ideas, what happens is because they're not facts, fact and evidence based.
And the evidence they're based on is pseudo evidence. Like, okay, we live in America, so I see blacks and whites the way they are here, but they don't, you know, necessarily go around the world and see how that plays out. So the idea is that these ideas have always been there, but what happens is they gain traction like we're talking about in this article.
When they are, they meet money when they're well funded. And I think that's what reminds me of the 1920s and, and thirties is at that time you had wealthy people who are kind of eccentric in the culture and who are the first generations of their wealth making their money, like Henry Ford, who had an entire publication called the International Jew in the 1920s and into the thirties. And then you had people like Charles Lindbergh, who became the head of the America first movement and was a fascist and who was supportive of the Nazis. And remember, this is, again, why history is important, to learn about our own history in the United States. And fortunately for those guys in history, World War Two helped erase a lot of that domestically because once we got into the war against the Nazis and all that kind of became taboo to talk about who in America was supporting that stuff prior to 1940.
[00:38:14] Speaker A: Well, to fill in the gap on that, the Nazis kind of took this stuff and made it their gospel, you know? And so, like, they was like, okay, the, the race science people here, you know, like, the people and the people that were the Nazis or became the Nazis supported the Nazis. Their leadership looked at that stuff and was like, hey, that's great idea. Let's, let's adopt that stuff. So it became by, by, because of the way the Nazis handled it, it became like, whoa, so that's the, the end game here of this kind of race science stuff. But the thing about it that stands out to me more than that is that they could, they couldn't actually prove the science. Like, yeah, it was all like, yes, there were terrible outcomes that came from the, this kind of race pseudoscience stuff that people were doing in that kind of, that 50 year period or whatever, late 18 hundreds through, you know, early to mid 19 hundreds. But they actually couldn't do the science either. The science didn't work. They had to cherry pick things. They had to look at things and say, oh, okay, yeah, well, we'll look at it like this, but not like that, you know, and so because of that, because the science could not be verified, peer review, all that kind of stuff, it became, that's why we call it a pseudoscience, you know, it's like, okay, yeah, we can't actually establish this stuff. What we're going to do is say things that may seem on a surface to have some kind of viability. We're going to say it. We're going to say it enough. We'll back it up with selectively plucked evidence and then we'll leave it at that. But again, if you ever subject that stuff to scrutiny, which the scientific method, that's the whole point is to come up with theories. Well, you know, come up with hypotheses, test them, then present a theory, and then the rest of the scientific community is supposed to try to test that stuff to see if you can knock it out, you know, and that's where progress happens. So when this stuff, when it gets to the people come up with these ideas, they put them out there, people test them and knock them all out and they're like, oh, we just believe it still anyway. And it's like, well, hold up, that's kind of not how, you know, by that logic. And this is, I think you made a great point offline. We were talking about this is like, it's kind of like the flat earther people, you know, like, it's like, yeah, people believe the earth was flat for a really long time. Then science came along and knocked that off, you know, like people proved that wrong with science and that kind of stuff, you know, is just kind of, okay, what's been proven wrong? But now we got people that are back and say, yeah, yeah, the earth is flat, you know, and it's like, well, hold up. And then if you take their, and actually, we've done a documentary on this as well in our archives. But if you, when they try to scientifically verify their stuff and it doesn't work, they don't reconsider the theory, they just try other ways to try to verify it. But again, it's one of those things that the way you actually produce progress in science isn't by trying to prove something true, it's whether you can prove it false. And so once you can prove it false, generally you move on. You don't sit there and try other ways to prove it true, because the way you just proved it false doesn't go away if you find another way where it actually does work out.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: Yeah, the, the, it's interesting you bring up the flat earth concept because it's true. That's a pseudoscience. And when we did the show on that documentary, that's what was happening. We could see it in real time with some of those people where they were doing their own experiments, when they.
[00:41:17] Speaker A: Were doing right, moving that the earth.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: Was round, and they were kind of, like, dumbfounded. They're like, well, hold on. This is.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: And their reaction was, okay, well, we got to do something else. We got to figure out another way to prove it.
Your premise wrong.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And so that's what I wanted to actually share here, because in preparing for today, it's interesting, you know, as being 46 years old now, I remember when I used to see things. I remember the book the Bell curve that came out in 1994, and I was in high school, and one of the authors, a guy named Charles Murray, who's still running around today trying to push this pseudoscience stuff about blacks having lower iq and more prone to violence and all this back then, when I was young, I used to get offended and I get emotional and, you know, you get all upset that somebody's trying to call your groups stupid and inferior. And it's funny, as an older person, adult now just, you know, this well educated and a man of the world, like, I really feel sorry for these people. Like, like, because you're right. Like, looking at this pseudoscience on race and this and this people now trying to find and create this faux scientific measurements to say how blacks are inferior, not Q. And even in the article, they say how. But Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews have a higher iq than white people. Like, this is like the most dumbest thing I've ever heard.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: And so going to China and.
China. Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: Like, like, how many people, I bet you in the average high school in China, guess what? Half the students are c or below. Half the students get a c or above. I mean, they're human beings like us. And then I love how they split the Jews. So the Ashkenazi Jews, which are the eastern Europeans, are the more intelligent ones. So that means the Sephardic, which are the more, you know, the ones that are more from the Moorish and North African and the Arab. What? They're not as intelligent. So it's just like, so now. And it goes back to, you're taking a religion, which is Judaism and calling it a race. So it's just like the Nazis. And so it just. That's what I'm saying. It more saddens me. I'm like, man, these guys are losers. Like, really, this guy's, 30 years ago, he wrote this book, and he's still on this stuff. He reminds me of the people we saw on flat earth, that there's no proof. It's like the big lie with the election. There's no proof, but yet people just gonna believe this stuff. And it's just. But that's where.
Let me hand it back to you.
[00:43:42] Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you this. I mean, yeah, it's one of those things as if you look at it with a certain level of content. It's like, of course, you know, like in the sense that some people, as you talked about, they feel a certain way because they feel like their station or their group station is threatened or something like that. We've talked before about people who put a lot of their own self worth into, not characteristics about themselves, not who they are, but what they are. I'm proud of myself because I'm a man, or I'm proud of myself because I'm, you know, my race and stuff like that. Versus, you know, that's, that's being proud of what you are, you know, and so, but if you're proud of who you are, you don't need this kind of stuff. But if you're proud of what you are and the what is you think is threatened, these are kind of defense mechanisms. And I look at it like, what it reminds me of. Nobody ever does this kind of race pseudoscience where whatever race they think they are or their, you know, gender or whatever it is, comes out in the bottom. Like, it reminds me, like, if you look at all ancient civilizations, when they drew maps, their civilization was always in the center of the map. It was like, hey, we're where everything is and all this other stuff or the, the remote stuff, the I, you know, the outposts and all that, but the center is us. And so, you know, of course, of course, you know, like, you see, like in an article we'll have in the show notes, you know, there's a guy talking about, oh, well, blacks tend to commit murders about ten times, often per capita as whites, and it's not all explained by poverty. Okay, we know we can question, you know, whether he has submitted that for peer review to see if anybody can with controls and stuff like that. Doesn't matter, though. He's going to present that as if it's some fact. But he's this guy. This same guy wouldn't come out with some kind of thing like, well, judging by american history, whites are, you know, x number of times more likely to commit lynchings than blacks. Like, he's not gonna. He's not gonna look back. Yeah, he's not gonna look at that. Like, that's not gonna be something that. Because he's gonna want to center it in a way that makes hit whatever group he feels he belongs to, but perceived. Well. So it's one of those things where you can see kind of how the self interest and that's that kind of, you know, the, that mentality is at work there and where the problem is, like, people are allowed to do that kind of stuff. Again, we. I subscribe to, you know, freedom of speech. The issue is more where it becomes being presented. Like, hey, this is science. This is something that we verified, which we've seen, like we talked about before a hundred years ago. That's. That it doesn't stand up to the test. And then since then, now that we got all this genetic stuff, now, you know, it's like, oh, well, actually, from a genetic standpoint, you can't really tell the difference between the races. You know, once you go inside and it's like, oh, well, so now it's. They could, they didn't even have that in the 9th, early 19 hundreds when they were disproving this stuff. Now they got that and it's just like, all right, so this is just emotional need.
[00:46:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, because you bring up some great points. I mean, one of the things I thought of when I saw in the article about the blacks, you know, tend to commit murder at a rate ten times more than whites. You know, the first thought I had in my mind, well, you know, the only two world wars in the history of the world are started by Europeans. But then I thought, oh, but that guy's come back to me would be, oh, but blacks aren't smart enough to start big wars like that because they can't. I mean, it's stupid to have these.
[00:46:48] Speaker A: Yeah, correct. He wouldn't look at Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and the tens of millions of people that those people killed. And like, that would be something he would explain away, you know, like, it would be like, okay, but because again.
[00:46:59] Speaker B: Somehow be the black people's fault in the juice, you know, it would be because. Because they didn't have dei hires. That's why.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: Tell me this. Do you think that there's any significance or do you attach any significance to the idea that we see, like, we also see coming from the right wing, a lot of times an effort to, you know, to block the teaching of history. And then now we're seeing in these same, similar circles, overlapping circles, you know, a reviving of things that were disproven in the past, you know, so, like, you see any kind of. What. What tie do you see there? What do you see there that may tie that together?
[00:47:36] Speaker B: I think it's all related, um, because I think, look, we learned in the book sapiens, right, that human beings are very important for societies to have certain myths.
[00:47:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: Um, and the myths can be real or not. So, I mean, here we've got. We're talking about myths that have been, um, skewed out of reality. So one myth, I thought myths do.
[00:47:55] Speaker A: Your point? Just, just the book talks about how that cohesion amongst groups, and again, whether they're true or not, there's the myth of the US dollar, you know, allows us to create an economy, you know, where we can all, you know, you know, from a worldwide standpoint at this point. But a lot of these myths, the myths of. The myth of rule of law, so to speak, allows us to establish order in a way that is supposed to be, you know, not arbitrary, supposed to be predictive, but, you know, go ahead.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: That's a good point, because it was real and imagined orders. So those were the imagined orders. Real order being something like the sun coming up every day in gravity. So, so. And one of the imagined orders that we have is a caste system in human societies, which he started with Hammurabi's code 8500 years ago. The oldest written.
[00:48:38] Speaker A: Well, no, no, I was gonna say it may have started there, but that's just the first one they wrote down.
[00:48:43] Speaker B: That's what I said, that we found. But, yeah, so, so, so this all comes down to how we act as humans and stacking each other up in the hierarchical, you know, things. And you've said a good point, that if you've got ten guys in a basketball locker room, for example, over time they'll stack each other into a higher. There'll be an alpha male and there'll be the betas following and all that. So this is part of how we're wired. And I think, yeah, it's because a myth, one of the myths I was going to mention that I thought of was the lost cause, which, like you're saying, that was probably a necessary myth to keep the majority of the country cohesive early on, after the civil war and after Reconstruction and all that. Now, unfortunately, you know, if you want to look at it, certain Americans took that on the chin, which was black Americans in the south, once reconstruction was ended. But it held the country together. And so the thing about these myths, and that's why I say fast forward 100 years, going back to now, the eugenics of 100 years ago to now, why these arguments to me are a little bit murkier and harder to make, because as I'm reading about all this aggression against blacks in the way that these intelligence and all this, I started thinking, well, back in the twenties, you didn't have black migration to the United States because that wasn't allowed legally. You know, only whites were allowed to immigrate to the United States. But what have we had now? We've had about almost 60 years of open immigration. So if you look at statistically, the number one in terms of positive statistical measures of immigrant groups is Nigerians. Nigerians have the highest per capita income, highest on average, education, so on and so forth. What's interesting is one of the largest areas that slaves were taken and brought from Africa to the new world was the area that encompasses Nigeria. And the largest tribe in that area being the Yoruba tribe, which also goes into Ghana and Sierra Leone, just because the way the maps were drawn when they made those countries was the largest group of Africans to be sold to the new world. So that's, to me, what pokes a hole in all of this is you've got, from a genetic and ethnic standpoint, the same blacks that were brought as slaves are the same blacks that are immigrating to this country in the last 50 years. But the ones that have immigrated have higher statistical, positive kind of demographic, like I say, per capita income, education than white Americans statistically. So it can't be just racial stuff that separates all these numbers of things in America, like blacks and whites on the american side. And I think that answers the question of why they need to keep manipulating information about history. Because if you don't allow history to be taught, you can keep telling new generations all these blacks are stupid, they're just lazy.
[00:51:42] Speaker A: You can retell old lies if you don't learn that the old lies were refuted and shown to be not true in the past. And so, I mean, I think that's what ties it. And, I mean, yeah, like, your example is just one of many that can be cited if you want to.
[00:51:56] Speaker B: I've thought about Caribbeans, Haitians and Jamaicans that immigrate to America generally. Have you know, let me, let me.
[00:52:03] Speaker A: Let me, let me throw something at you, because I think that you brought out a good point, though, is, like, this is a fight, though, to establish the kind of myths that are going to be in place in a nation. You know, like, so if you want to. If you object to the idea that all men are created equal, setting aside the fact that that's part of kind of the, the founding ethos of the United States, but if you reject that and you wanted to establish a myth that all men aren't created equal, and there's a, there's a hierarchy that's based on genetics or race and so forth, this is the kind of stuff you do have to put forward. And, I mean, I think the team analogy is, is a great analogy. I talked about, if it's a basketball, if it, you know, you play basketball, I played, you know, when I was younger, played football, and those locker rooms there, a hierarchy would always emerge. You didn't have to have the coach come in and say, the coach come in and say, okay, this guy's gonna be the top. This yada yada, like. And in fact, if you did that, it wouldn't work. Hierarchies emerge in those type of situations. And what you have here, basically, is you have people who either can't or don't want to win alpha status in their group, whatever group. If this f group's gonna be United States or it's gonna be, you know, wherever, they can't win alpha status. They can't walk into the room and people be like, oh, yeah, that's the man. Which happens in sports locker rooms. You know, organically, it happens in any scenario, organically. Some people, it's like, oh, they. The way they carry themselves, the way they act, it's like, oh, yeah, that, that's, that's the guy that people follow or the girl or the woman that people follow, they don't, they can't or they won't win that themselves. So they're trying to build it into some kind of thing where they get it by default. Like, oh, well, all you guys got to look at me is the top dog because that's how we wrote it. And it's like, no, you know, like, if you are. If you are the man, if you're so this and that, then, then win that, because there are plenty of settings amongst humans, you know, that's how we organize ourselves in hierarchies automatically. And, you know, again, what you have people here is trying to sidestep that and say, okay, well, we're going to organize ourselves in hierarchies. Let's just build it in that I can be at the top of the hierarchy, and because, again, I can't. If we just let it all, you know, let people just interact and so forth, I won't be able to come out on top. So I gotta kind of rig it in my future myself, rig it for myself. And so it's unfortunate, but I think it's something that's predictable. And it's. It's one of those things that's always going to happen now. The idea of erasing history so that people can't learn from the past. Now, to some degree, there will always be people who look at whatever's happening now as the first time it happened or anything like that. So what it is more is about people who would push back against them, who would do the research, is to try to make the information inaccessible to them, you know, so that they can't find it and everything. Oh, man, these guys make a compelling case. So I think that it does go hand in hand. If you want to, to try to reestablish something that was overthrown in the past and that rigid hierarchy did exist and was overthrown, was found to be wanting for this and that and found to be inconsistent with american values, then you have to erase people. People, particularly the people who would push back against you. You have to erase that information so that the people that would inevitably push back against you again will have less ammo. You know, like. So I think it's hand in hand, and, you know, again, it. I think that it's important that people realize that this stuff is anti american at its core. You know, this is everything that America. At least what they wrote down. You know, the stuff that Americans wrote down, whether it be in the 1770s, 1780s, 1790s, or whether it be in the 1860s, the american side, the union, all that stuff is completely anti to this. This stuff tracks more of what, you know, what the Confederacy talked about and what the. The people in the Jim Crow south talked about in terms of the way that society. They wanted to organize the society. So, you know, it's one of those things. And they lost then. And, you know, like, if Americans who are pro America have to ensure that they lose now.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: Yeah, no, they'll lose again. But. But the thing is, is that I think you're right, and that's why back then, at least in the 18 hundreds, they didn't have all the scientific data and information now. And this is why. Because, like, you said, because I didn't say all white men are created equal, they said all men. That's why there's some people that still feel this need to try and scientifically prove that there's a difference between men, right? That there's a, so that, so that.
[00:56:08] Speaker A: And still playing about that just real quick. Like, there must have been an argument about that because I'm sure that they were pilling people in the room. They wanted to say all white men are created equal, but they decided not to put that in the, you know, when they wrote that. So, you know, like, take from that what you want. But it's not like there were any shortage of people in America at that time.
[00:56:28] Speaker B: And that's what I mean, like, but this, I just want to finish out here with how this affects us in real life because, I mean, you know, this in private, I've railed about this. There's my chance to get it out. You know, a show like ancient aliens that's really bothered me for 20 years because it comes on what I think used to be more of a reputable channel, something called the History Channel. And they have similar shows on other networks that used to be more reputable with information, like the Discovery Channel that actually used to show factual documentaries about things. And now they've gone the road with which most entertainment has, which is just to entertain. But my point about ancient aliens is ancient aliens is an example of pseudoscience because it's pseudo archaeology and pseudo history, because there's no evidence or facts that will allow anybody serious to believe that aliens came down from outer space and helped humans build these structures and then left and didn't leave any other evidence of their, of their, of their, of their being here. And I know this isn't a show about that, so I'm not going to spend so much time discussing it. But I've thought about it over the years too. Like, no one questions that. People built big cathedrals in England and Germany 500, a thousand years ago with, with, without the technology of today. People, human beings did that. And, you know, and that's what I mean. It's like when, when you have this idea that certain humans are really genetically inferior to others, that's what allows your mind to then bring in really bat crap crazy stuff like, oh, aliens came down from outer space and helped the Incas build their pyramids or help the Egyptians build their pyramid.
[00:58:09] Speaker A: Worse than that, it actually compels you to come up with that because those types of things built thousands of years before any of that stuff in Europe that you're talking about there. That's kind of the idea.
[00:58:19] Speaker B: But I think about a beautiful castle in Germany that the Disney castle is based off. Like, no one asks about, you know, tries to say, aliens built that. No one says that, you know, aliens built the Tower of London or the. Or the London bridge or the. Or the Eiffel Tower, right? And so. And I know the Eiffel Tower is a little more modern, but. But the others were built before we had electricity and gas powered backhoes and things like that. So that's just what I want to say. And the other is, we'll have it in the show notes, just a study that was done over years, but as recently as 2016 that says 40% of medical students believe that sentences like black people's nerve endings are less sensitive than white people's, black people's skin is thicker than whites. Black people's blood coagulates more quickly than whites. None of that's true. And that's pretty sobering to hear that. As recently as 2016, 40% of medical students believe that, which means they're practicing in the medical profession today. And that has real world consequences about for blacks not getting prescribed pain medicine as the same as whites for being treated differently when they're in pain. And so that's what I mean, that this pseudoscience stuff has real world implications because human beings carry them in their head into their.
[00:59:34] Speaker A: Even beyond that, you remember, you know, like, in the 1980s, the. The idea, the pseudoscience idea was that blacks were more prone to drug addiction. You know, when you had the cocaine, the crack cocaine epidemic, and then, you know, it's like, okay, yeah, you fast.
[00:59:48] Speaker B: Forward 30 different sensing outcomes.
[00:59:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Deference, different sentencing, criminal, you know, like. Like criminal statutes being put in a more punitive way because it's like, well, they're. Since they're more prone to this, we had to deal with it. One more force. If you contrast that to how the opioid epidemic, you know, was treated, you know, it wasn't that, hey, we gotta, you know, drop the hammer.
[01:00:07] Speaker B: We gotta punish these white people for doing opioids.
[01:00:10] Speaker A: Exactly. So, you know, all of this stuff matters, you know, like, it's not just, you know, some philosophical debate, you know, but that all that does, though, is it makes it. It illustrates why the need to push back when this stuff pops back up again and the need to preserve the ability to learn about history. Both of those hand in hand main is something that remains important. So. Yeah, so, yeah, but, I mean, I definitely think it's something like, we'll have some stuff in the show, notes on this, and it's something that people should familiarize themselves with because it definitely seems like this is something that people are trying to mainstream again. I guess enough time has passed that living memory is, you know, this changed enough that they're gonna try to mainstream it again. And then, you know, people who, you know, are care about facts and care about what can be proven true and so forth. I have to push back on it, so. But we appreciate, everybody, for joining us on this episode of Call. Like, I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it. Tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys.
[01:01:03] Speaker B: I'm Tundra Ogalana.
[01:01:04] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
