Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption Now, I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to take a look at the stimulus bill that was just passed by the US Government and consider what we can expect from it. And also if there's anything we can learn about our government from the way it was passed.
And later on, we're going to wade into the timeless debate over daylight savings time and whether we still need to be out here saving daylight.
Joining me today is a man who whenever he sees Wall street losing dough on every share, he blames it on longer hair.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Tunde.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Ogunlana Tunde. With all this stimulus money flying around, do you think we can still say that people make the world go around?
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out how to come back since I'm bald from that comment.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: It fits.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: So, and then, and then I was going to say something about saving the daylight, but, you know, thinking about saving the turtles. But, you know, all my jokes are all swimming together now in my head. You screwed me up. So let's just go.
Let's give the audience a good show.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Now we're recording this on March 15, 2021, and last week we saw President Biden sign a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill into law.
Now, this is the third stimulus that the US Government has done in the last year to try to combat the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. And recent polling suggests that these types of stimulus efforts have remained popular, very popular amongst Americans.
There are concerns about what types of effects these efforts will have over the long term, but most seem to understand that we have to survive through the short term to even have the opportunity to deal with the long term.
So, Tunde, what are your general thoughts on this third stimulus bill?
What do you think as far as what it's aimed at accomplishing, and do you think it'll work?
[00:02:17] Speaker B: I do think so. Let's back it up here on a very simple way to look at it. Do I think it's going to work? I think the answer is yes, in general.
And the idea of will it work? I think is broad because people can have a different opinion on the pieces of the stimulus. I know that everyone's got an opinion about where money is being spent and how, but I think like we saw last year with the CARES act and the stimulus, then on going back all the way to the stimulus and after the great financial crisis, first with the TARP in 08 and then the additional stimulus when Obama took office in early 09. I think the idea is that, remember, these type of economic shocks thankfully don't happen that often.
So we only have a few examples in history where the economy really either was stopped or shut down or whatever, where business and capital really came to a halt.
And I'd say, you know, we can count them on five times and, you know, count them on one hand the amount of times this has happened, under five times in the last hundred years. So the glaring example, most people know, is the Great Depression from 1929 to the late 30s. And what the Federal Reserve did back then was tighten the money supply so they did not print money like we see them doing in the last decade or so. And we know that the Great Depression was very painful for our society, our country.
It reverberated around the world and it gave us the conditions that led to authoritarian regimes in Europe that gave us the Second World War. So I think a lot of reasons culminate to why the powers that be in our societies in modern day have opted for printing money.
And I think a lot of the downside, negative effects that a lot of people have been scared of in terms of just runaway inflation, all that, I'm not saying that they can't happen. I'm just saying to this point over the last 12 years, it has not played out in that negative way. So do I think this will work in terms of stimulating the economy and plugging some holes that still exist from the pandemic in terms of economic employment, all that? Yes. Will there be unintended consequences? I'm open to that discussion. And I'm not here to say no, there won't be.
I'm just answering the question directly that due to the pandemic a year ago, will this help continue to grease the wheels of the economy? I think it's pretty obvious the answer is yes.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I look at it the same way. Like we throw a bunch of money at it, and that definitely just the way our economy works. I mean, that's the. It's literally the currency of what makes things go. And so by boosting that, as you pointed out, the opposite lesson was learned from the Depression. And so almost anytime these issues come up now, we do the opposite of what happened then to prevent that type of outcome. And yes, there could be other consequences of this, unintended consequences or things that we can reasonably foresee. But the immediate crisis requires some action, is what the people who study this all the time say, like the economists and so forth are looking at this and saying, hey, you got to do something. I think that this one also does a lot for. From a people standpoint as well. The focus of some of the earlier stimulus, a lot of times seem to be on direct support to business, which is good. You know, like, I'm not here to, to, to really try to meet out every little thing, every little thing that was done. I think that by and large you need to try to make something happen in this type of situation. And fortunately our government is in position to try to make. So to make something happen in that sense. But this seems to be there, there seems to be a lot of emphasis getting money to people.
And that's. I mean, we've talked about that before. That's the easiest way to stimulate the economy is like give everybody 50 bucks or not 50 bucks. But I think when George W. Bush was in office, they gave everybody 600 bucks and they wanted to stimulate and that everybody goes and spends that money. And so here there's larger checks. There was some fighting over how much money you should be able to make in order to get that.
But ultimately they're sending money directly to people. They're making sure that.
To try to keep things in place from a eviction standpoint standpoint or the unemployment standpoint. So it all seems like the, like, if you're checking a bunch of boxes that the economists say that we need to be looking at, it seems like they're checking all those boxes.
Ultimately, the fact that we're on our third one makes me wonder, are we going to see a fourth or are we going to see a fifth? Not something like it's a these. I look at these as more of necessity than like, these aren't luxury. So, you know, it's not commenting on whether there should or shouldn't be, but at a certain point, I always like to look at things from a sustainability standpoint. And this isn't necessarily a sustainable way to run an economy. So at some point, I hope we have a plan to transition back to not requiring government stimulus, which I don't know that we were really there before the pandemic hit. You know, we were borrowing trillions of dollars every year before the pandemic hit. So I hope there's some thought going right now we shouldn't wait for that to happen in order to try to figure out how to stimulate, how to transition out of this. But ultimately, yeah, I think it's going to work for its intended purpose. And as with anything, doing nothing would have created unintended consequences and consequences that are foreseeable. This will create consequences that are foreseeable and unintended consequences. And we'll deal with those then. I mean, that's why the government doesn't just do this and just say, okay, we're done and you know, we'll see you in four years. You know, they got, it's an ongoing obligation to see what's going on and to be able to react to it.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and you make a good point about the pre pandemic economic and financial, I guess, ecosystem that we have wound our way into as a nation and I think as a globe, because no one ever thought they would ever see negative interest rates. Almost like what does that mean the bank is paying you to hold the money or something.
But we've had for years, since the middle of the last decade, negative interest rates in Europe, for many countries and so in the European Union. So it's not just us that are printing money and that have kind of gone to this. What has been touted as quantitative easing in the economic circles since the great financial crisis. Seems like most major economies in the world have done that. Asian economies, European economies, and the American economies.
So that's one thing that you're absolutely right on. And that's where stimulus is also kind of fudged over a bit. Because as a society, you know, we're unfortunately driven by the media in our country.
And I say that as a broad term, including Internet and all that. And so we always hear about these stimulative plans when they're like being legislated on. Like the one time, like you said about, you know, we've had three or so maybe since the pandemic, there'll probably be another one at some point this year.
But what we don't hear about are the regular ongoing stimulative effects that have been going on since the great financial crisis. So for example, quantitative easing, the Federal Reserve never stopped that before the pandemic. They were still buying $85 billion worth of debt, basically stimulating the economy, so to speak to the tune of about 85 billion a month.
So that's still about a trillion dollars a year prior to the pandemic that was getting pumped economy by the Federal Reserve as a way to keep everything stimulative. So I do think you're right that the train has left the station in terms of proper Keynesian economics being followed.
If we can say that we live in a Keynesian philosophy style system over the last hundred years, that's a whole different conversation than I think we prepared to get into today, which I think would be fun for us to game out in the future.
But I would say going back to this particular stimulus, what I find interesting now, and I know we're going to get into this shortly, is really what these two, the CARES act from last year and now this one under Biden represents also the philosophy of both parties in the United States, Republicans and Democrats. I would say from the 30,000 foot level of each party. I know that there's individuals within these parties who may think a little bit different or see the need to see the other side's point a little bit more than others. But what I think lends back to what you just alluded to about money going to the people. Because I think that what happened is last year with the PPP loans and the ETA loans and all that type of stimulus, a lot of people felt that businesses got bailed out. But kind of the little guy on the street, you know, the Main street person didn't get bailed out or just
[00:11:09] Speaker A: didn't get as much, I think because there was like $1,200 checks. But there was a lot of that went into the business.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that's why I said it really comes down to the ideology and philosophy of both parties. So you know, traditionally in the modern era, I would say our lifetimes. Right. The last 40 plus years, the Republican Party has been a party that feels that, you know, goes back from Reaganomics and trickle down economics. Right. That if you promote businesses, you know, the whole idea that they will stimulate the economy, cutting taxes stimulates the economy, all that kind of stuff and that'll find its way down. That's why the term is trickle down economics. To the guy on Main street, at
[00:11:50] Speaker A: some point Democrats, somebody has to build those yachts, right?
[00:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's why to me, I'm just going on philosophy and I'm not
[00:11:57] Speaker A: trying to argue
[00:12:01] Speaker B: because it's. No, I know you couldn't. That's why I'm keeping us focused now. Because the thing is, I think people need to understand where the philosophies come from.
And this is why it's a perpetual argument, because it's really just a belief system. Right. You either believe that you believe that businesses, you know, will do, will help the economy if you give them the money, or you believe the other way, which is more the democratic way to think is no, let's bypass the businesses and give the money directly to the people because they need it, number one. And number two, they'll spend the money, which will then go to the businesses through consumption.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: It's like a trickle up. It's kind of.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: And you're right.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: I do want to ask you because you brought the politics angle into this and I think there's an interesting angle there. We saw a lot of polls that indicated like around 2/3 of Americans, some showed a little over that in the 70% or some in the 60% range that supported the stimulus. And at the same time, we know that zero Republicans in Congress voted for it. Now, obviously, popularity does not necessarily correlate to virtue when it comes to these things, but the stimulus also appeared to be broadly supported by economists, particularly ones that tried to not be partisan about things like this. So are the Republicans here seeing something that everyone else is missing? Because just on the, in contrast with the CARES act, yes, there was a lot of debate about it, a lot of talk about it, a lot of people objecting to this and that. But you did have lots of Democrats that actually ended up voting for it. And so zero is really the, if it was 10, you know, 10% of Republicans or something, that's like, okay, yeah, they by and large disagree. But, you know, zero is, that's a lot of solidarity standing against this, you know, so are they seeing something that everybody's missing? Or, you know, was that, is that like a political move? Is that political advantage they're shooting for by everyone in solidarity voting against something like this?
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question. I'd say I'll start with the second question as my first answer, which is yes, I think there's a huge amount of politics involved.
And I think that goes back to then the first question. Are they seeing something? I mean, I can't answer that directly because I'm not in Congress or Senate, you know, making these decisions, but conceivably
[00:14:11] Speaker A: they could be seeing something political also.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: That's what I was going to say. I think they.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Sorry for stealing your thunder.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: Stole the thunder. Let me go now. But I think that they are seeing the 2022 midterms, the 2024 general election for the next president. And I think they're making, you know, a political calculation that has been successful for them for some time now, for the last couple decades, and especially over the last 12 years is, is that if they obstruct and they, they, they get, because the way that the ecosystem of our media is now, they understand that their base will not really get information directly from Democrats. They're not going to, you know, Democrats aren't Getting asked to be do extensive interviews on Fox News or I know, unfortunately, you know, for, for a lot of conservatives, Rush Limbaugh just passed. So whoever the equivalent of the talk radio folks and all that, they're not inviting Democrats to hear their side and their opinion. So I think the Republicans have made the accurate political calculation, if I can say it that way, that by posturing as obstructing a lot, what happens is their constituent and their voters will then like believe that there is something wrong with what the Democrats are offering. And that's actually more of a psychological play because it's not about is there something wrong or not with what the Democrats are offering? Because I'm sure that's, you know, one can make a fair argument on both ways on that.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Well, you could probably say there's some good and there's some bad. I mean, regardless of, I think your point, though, I'll let you jump back in. Your point would actually explain how you get 100% solidarity. Like, that's the thing that really stands out. There is like zero really like. And that would lend to the idea of, yeah, we all have to be against this because then that fits this narrative that we're going to tell unrefuted in our media ecosystem.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: And it works. That's why it is effective. That's why I said it's an effective political strategy, whether it's a nice one, whether it's one that helps democracy out.
That's what I mean. Whether it is a productive one for a democracy to always be obstructionist. I'm not here to judge that. I'm just saying. But it works.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Not in this show.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: They obviously maintain their position. So my point is that, and I think it also speaks to the psychology again of Democrats don't seem to fall in line the same way that Republicans do. And that's not a political statement.
There's a lot of reasons.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Howard Dean used to say it's like herding cats.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Yeah. But here's the other thing too, because I could see, imagine if the Democrats en masse held up the stimulus last year, March of 2020, which from a
[00:17:05] Speaker A: political standpoint, by the way, like, that was an election year.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: You know, like that would have been a significant thing. And there were people talking about that. I remember hearing like, oh, well, should we even be supporting this?
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Because it's just a different makeup of psychology of their two constituencies in today's modern world. And that's why I'm not bringing up Democrats from the 1918 50s or Republicans from the 1800. I'm just saying that in politics today, in the 21st century right now, so far, had Democrats 0 come out for the stimulus data suffered worse. Right. Because there's a lot of Democrats that supported the stimulus and would have got upset at their own party and then Republicans would have hated them anyway no matter what they do. Whereas with the Republicans they have a much, they have a much better way of bringing their electorate and their base over to the politicians views. Because this is what we're seeing now.
Two weeks ago, 60% of Republicans polled supported the stimulus. That number's already cut in half. Yeah, because of the ecosystem. Because the political class, through corporate media and the Internet as well, has done a great job of convincing their voters that this isn't good anymore because it was offered by a Democrat even though it has a lot of goodies that would help people. Not me and you, we're not getting a stimulus because we make too much income, but it would help a lot of constituents in red states. I read in preparation for today's show, seven out of the eight poorest states in the United States are Republican controlled states. They have Republican governors and senators and this and that and state legislatures dominated by Republicans. So their own constituents would benefit from a lot of the stuff in the stimulus. But they've been convinced not to, you know, not to believe it's a bad thing, that it's a bad thing. And also I think it goes back to something our good friend and partner on the other platform, Rob, once said, Rob Richardson, that they've been conditions not to trust the messenger.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: You know, I think that when you look at this, I do believe it was a political calculation first and foremost. And I did compare this to during an election year in 2020, the Democrats did vote for the CARES Act. And you know, it wasn't just we have to oppose this because we can't let Donald Trump or this, you know, Republican controlled Senate take credit for doing something good for people.
But I also think interestingly enough that the different parties, their voters have different expectations of their leadership. And I do agree with the Democrats would have paid if they wouldn't have supported that. And the reason being is that by and large now this is an overgeneralization. But there's truth in it that I think helps explain a lot of these things.
Democratic voters expect their leadership to make, to do things to make their lives better. Whereas Republican voters a lot of times, not all the times, but a lot of times look to their leadership to own the libs or to prevent the libs from making, doing things that they're not going to like and so forth. And so as long as the Republicans are blocking the Democrats from doing things that Republicans, quote, unquote, don't like, then they're satisfied with their leadership. They're saying, okay, that's what we have you guys there for, is to make sure that the libs don't do things, whereas the Democrats, they don't put their voters in there to necessarily stop the Republicans, stop them from this, stop them from that. It's like, hey, we want minimum wage increase. We want this and that. And so for real things and things that I would think would make people's lives better. But so if you're coming from a place of, hey, what I'm in office for is to own the libs, to make sure that they don't force this down my throat or do all this deficit spending, even though I'm okay with you doing deficit spending. If you're doing it, you the Republican, but we just have to stop the Democrats from doing it, then I just don't think that the expectation is there to where they would be disappointed that it's not going to be. I put you in office. How come you didn't make it easier for me to deal with this pandemic? Because that's not what they're there for in the first place.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I think it's also, you're right about all that. That's why I'll say and, and not a. But it's, it's, it's also like, like I said, it's ideology. I don't even want to say it's conditioning because, you know, people do believe this stuff. Whether it is good for them directly or not might be a whole different argument. But I'll give you a quote, because ted Cruz on February 26 was, you know, talking to his supporters and all that, and I'm going to quote what he said. He said the GOP is the party of steel workers and construction workers and pipeline workers and taxicab drivers and cops and firefighters and waiters and waitresses and the men and women with calluses on their hands who are working for this country now. He's not wrong. There's a lot of people that fit those job descriptions and have calluses on their hand that vote Republican.
But then he voted no on the stimulus, which would give them the extra money. Stimulus money immediately. That helps with unemployment benefits. When a lot of these people, steel workers, construction workers, pipeline workers, taxicab drivers, cops, firefighters, they're all on the front line. Waiters, waitresses, they're the ones. Waiters, waitresses, ones without jobs for a while.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: And also they're not the ones that benefited from the huge tax cuts they went through in 2017 or the PPP
[00:22:20] Speaker B: loans because they're usually not the owners of the business. So my point is, is that that's where I think Democrats also don't like. They get frustrated when they see this kind of behavior by someone like Ted Cruz because they look at it that Ted Cruz is just being sinister, that he's a typical. Like it's funny that everybody hates politicians, so the right hates liberal politicians. But then this is where the left looks at someone like Cruz and say you're hypocritical cuz your wife works at Goldman Sachs, you're Princeton and Yale educated, you know, and then you're acting like you know that, that, that you want to help these people but you're voting against their interests. But that's what I mean. Ted Cruz might have an honest ideology where he just feels that if you take care of the upper class in the business community that it will trickle down magically to these workers or I
[00:23:06] Speaker A: mean I've also seen the mindset of if you do too much good stuff for people, you make them soft and unable to do.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Yeah, like McConnell's argument was with this stimulus was if we give them $1,400, they won't go to work.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Now I know you know, one and
[00:23:21] Speaker A: that by the way is by and large ideology as well.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Correct, that's my point. That's pure ideology because we could sit here and game out the numbers that. Okay, hold on. Someone making, you know, let's say I think it's married couples making under six 160 get 1400 dollars.
So if you're making 160 or 100,000 or 90,000, you know, chances are your expenses are going to be somewhat around that 1400 isn't going to have. I don't think we need to go
[00:23:49] Speaker A: into the numbers though. But I mean what more so.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Because that's my point about proving its ideology.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Right, but no, but, but that's been studied. Like I would say the anecdotal recitation of it is much less persuasive. There's studies you can go look at out there and show that certain amount of. There is a threshold, you know, like if you give everybody $100,000 a year, then yeah, people just like if you
[00:24:08] Speaker B: tax everyone at 95%, you know, then nobody Works.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: So there's a. So I get it.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Below a certain threshold, then actually you create more entrepreneurship. You create more because people are less worried about not being able to eat if they take a slight risk. But it doesn't cut, it doesn't cut motivation of otherwise motivated people.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: That's why I was going to say, I think that it doesn't work this time because of everything we're talking about. Because I also think, remember, things are novel at one, at some point and then it works. And after a while, you know, the public gets hip to it. So.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: But I mean, as long as they can control the message to their base, then you have to wonder. I mean, and as, like I said, I think the points you're making are actually conflicting because somebody's got to tell the people that, hey, it's not playing out the way that you thought. Like, even trickle down is a good example from an economic numbers standpoint. Nobody has ever been able to show that it worked. No, ever. Like anytime you have economists run the numbers, they cannot show that it worked. It looks like it doesn't work from a pure numbers standpoint. You end up having to borrow. You have to borrow. So Reagan borrows, George W. Bush borrows, Trump borrows. All of them end up borrowing money. Bush comes in with a budget surplus, leaves, forget the financial crisis, but turns that into a deficit before the financial crisis.
But that's not common knowledge amongst people that are Democrats or Republicans, that it's always shown to not work every time that somebody's tried to do it. So who controls the message matters. And then I'd say if you want to look broader, looking at the big picture, over the past few years, we've seen the Republican Party routinely take positions that are opposed to meaningful majorities of Americans, including like basic gun control, repealing Obamacare, you know, corporate tax cuts, privatizing Social Security and so forth. Like they, they constantly take these positions that the majority of Americans don't like. And we've seen them directly work or, excuse me, a part of that, which could be related or could be a result of or something. But I think it's worth mentioning for the purposes of this conversation, we see them engage in a lot of work and activity that works to change laws to make it harder to vote, or they engaging in voter suppression, gerrymandering districts so that majorities of voters aren't needed for legislative majorities. Like what happens in Wisconsin is amazing. Like 50% of the voters will not get you half of the legislative of control of the legislature. Because it's just the way the districts are set up. You know, it's amazing how, how, if you want to put it this way, how well done, the gerrymandering was done there.
And you know, so like, are we missing the bigger picture here? Has there been either strategic or because of built in factors like the Senate and the electoral college, or both, some fundamental change of the necessity for popular support, you know, for wielding power, for obtaining power?
[00:26:59] Speaker B: It's a good question because I think that it's all part of that smoke and mirrors part of life, you know, like, it's kind of like as I'm getting older, I'm realizing like my health. Right. Yeah, I.
I unfortunately lost a close friend of mine a few months ago to a massive heart attack. Died on the spot.
But you realize that doesn't just start, like he didn't just start having, let's say, deposits on his artery the night before. Yeah, this was a long time, probably, unfortunately, years of buildup inside his body. And then at some point it just was too much and it ended his life. And I think that's the way we look at it. Right. Are we missing the bigger picture?
I think as a society, probably, yes.
But what I mean is everybody likes the idea of acting like we're, you know, not we personally as Americans, but this idea that any society that we're in is somewhat free and that we have a democracy and all that. And it goes back to even like this, this idea of socialism, like somehow, you know, that we're gonna have socialism in the United States and people don't realize. Before the Affordable Care Act, 46 cents out of every dollar spent on healthcare in the United States was spent by the federal government in some capacity. Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits. Yep, that made up 46%. And then, and then subsidies when, you know, hospital districts were failing or something like that, the government still steps in, pays.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: So subsidies oftentimes are done at the least efficient time.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was. You say the most amount of money
[00:28:25] Speaker A: for the least amount of services, but.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Go ahead. But we put up with these inefficiencies because it makes us feel good because we don't have to feel like we're a socialist country or something even though we halfway on.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: I think you're onto something from a feel standpoint. Like we want to feel like our democracy functions in a certain way, that our republic, as far as majority rules within the constraints of the Constitution, but we want to feel like all that stuff is really operational, but it does Seem like that our system, so to speak, has been hacked and not hacked. I say that not in a malicious way. I say that in a way of optimization, basically, that it's been optimized in terms of an approach way where the aim doesn't even have to be to say more people agree with me than agree with you. I can wield power. I can gather and wield power in ways that don't require me to have the will of the people, so to speak, behind me. I don't have to have 51% or 55%. I can have 40% of the people backing me. But because I know how to play the rules of the game well. Or to the other point, if I manipulate the rules in a certain way, then I can ultimately have the end game being power. You know, the end game power. And it seems like we're kind of not seeing that this is happening right now, you know, because like I said, I'm looking at it just from the standpoint, like, wow, I'm surprised that a major political party, one of two major political parties, is routinely taking these positions that it's like, well, man, I would think that if you routinely took positions that 40, only 40% of the people liked, that ultimately you would pay the price. But maybe they've. Maybe they're looking at this in a galaxy brain way that we aren't seeing yet. Like, well, that's why.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: I think that's why we have so many culture wars. That's why we got to hear about Dr. Seuss and about other things that distract most of the public from looking at these kind of things. Right. And then it becomes an emotional thing.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: Let me just say this. You say distraction, distract, assumes that most of a public wants to look at this type of stuff.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's where I'm saying it gets into the reality of human beings are emotional. And you're right.
We got 300 million people in this country. There's all kind of different mindsets and brain chemistries and all that.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: How many people want to talk about tax code or how many people really want to talk about the way things should be governed?
[00:30:47] Speaker B: But the unique thing we have here. So I was going to say it's a manipulation of things that are already here than a manipulation of, I guess.
Well, let me restate that.
Like you said about the word hack, this isn't like something that just happened five years ago or 10 years ago, and all of a sudden one party just decided, hey, let's just figure this out and do it. And what we're saying. What I'm saying is things that have already been in place, like the Electoral College, for example, like congressional districts and the ability to redraw the maps every 10 years with the census.
Those are things that have been in this country since its founding.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: Yeah. They're not.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: They're not necessarily bad things on their own, but what happens is they get manipulated into gerrymander districts or into, like we've been talking about. Right. You've got now 50 senators on either. This is why it's a very interesting time to have this conversation.
Because of the population makeup and where people are located. We have 50 Republican senators who represent around 140 million Americans, and 50 Democratic senators which represent around 185 million Americans. Yeah. So you have an equal division of power that is shared in the government, you know, the equal branch of power with the executive right now, but yet you've got 40 million more Americans that actually supported one ideology on one side than another. And I think.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: And that actually is the design of the Senate.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, like, it was set up
[00:32:12] Speaker A: like that to do that.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: In a way. I appreciate that, because I think that it forces any large society to have to deal with a minority, which is good, no matter who they are, that they should be respected and have their voices heard. But I think what we've seen in the.
In the last probably 20 years because of the parlor tricks and the chess games, you know, by the politicians, it's unfortunately also caused us to really gum up the works.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: Well, it's intended to provide balance between urban and rural.
Like, that's. And that goes back, you know, to the beginning. Now, there was also the. The factor of slavery there.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's messy right now. If.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: But no, I'm just. I just.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: We don't even go there. It's.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: But no, I just wanted to. You said minority, but really it's urban and rural balance is what the sentence is supposed to. Senate is supposed to provide. And then same thing with the Electoral College. And yes, there. There is a virtue in that. And the fact that it has, like, kind of. You see how that can be weaponized in ways where, hey, we don't have to convince people anymore. We can just kind of tailor these things. If you look at that. If you look at the. The redistricting process, those are all things that are in place. If you. Now, when you go to voter suppression and things like that, that's kind of a little more sinister and more direct opposition to kind of the creed of the country. But it's also stuff that's existed, you know, for a long time.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: Here's the thing, what's interesting about today's world, everybody likes the idea of being in a democracy, but we have a certain group of Americans now that if it's, if it's not exactly how they think it should be, and the people that they think should be in power, they're okay giving up the ability to have their fellow citizens vote freely. And that's what I mean, that until 2020, we never saw it so glaring and so obvious. And I think it culminated with the insurrection. Right, like this. Many people felt that strongly that this election was stolen.
And we could sit here and blame the politicians that kept playing this game after the election and all that, but in reality, each of these people that believes this has a responsibility themselves. And that goes back to your point, right? All the evidence out there still doesn't convince them. And forget the media, just the fact that courts that had judges appointed by Donald Trump and then the Supreme Court, which is now as tilted as it's ever been conservative in our lifetime, they all shut down these election fraud claims as well. You've got the president, the former president on tape trying to be like a mafia don, trying to strong arm, you know, the state people in Georgia and all that, to find votes.
None of that matters. That's what I'm saying. That part of it is the politician and part of it is this many American, our fellow Americans actually are okay with giving up democracy if it doesn't look like how they want it to look. And that's something that I didn't realize prior to this era, this last few years, that given the opportunity, and these are things we would hear like in history class, right? Oh, democracies aren't easy to keep going and all that. I never really understood that until now.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: No, I mean, it's definitely. We see this and I think a lot of times when you're so close to things, it's hard to take a step back and look at kind of from a big picture trajectory standpoint, what exactly is happening. And so I thought it was worthwhile to take a look at that in this instance because it does seem to be common where. And it's one thing to take unpopular positions from the standpoint of individual liberty, like, hey, let's not have slaves anymore, you know, as far as, you know, the inalienable rights, you know, of human beings and so forth. But it's another thing to take unpopular positions as far as just matters of just mere governance. You know, like the. Whether or not you should have to have a background check for a firearm is not something of someone's humanity. You know, that's just a question of. For a society to figure out and what do people. What are the. What are the members of society think about that? And if, you know, however that comes out, that's a lot of times how that society should play that out. Again, it's not talking about taking all firearms away from people, but just how we want to administrate things versus how we're actually going to treat people as human beings. So I'm glad that we took a second to kind of just try to take a step back and look at this from a big picture. One other thing that we wanted to look at, and again, it's a little bit of a big picture thing, but it's something we do kind of every year, at least in large part in this country, and that's Daylight savings time. But there's rarely an evaluation of what are we doing here like, or why are we doing this, or does this actually even accomplish the goals that it set out to accomplish and so forth. Could we do things any better? Because it's a disruption in everybody's lives. And we just had it here.
We're both on the East Coast. We just sprung forward yesterday. And so I sent you something.
They're talking about the science behind daylight savings time and whether or not it's something we should be continuing to do, why we have it, and whether, you know, we should continue to do it. Was anything. Did anything stand out to you in that, as far as just what we're doing here? Saving daylight?
[00:37:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I know we'll be short here. Not really. I'm one of these people that agrees that it's probably time to just cancel it and have just one time set forever. The other thing I found, learning reading here, that I guess Arizona doesn't have any daylight savings time.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, several states. Florida was one of the states that's passed, like, trying to get rid of it, but they need federal approval. And so there's seems to be a big.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: But it's just. That's what I mean. Like, that's the word. It's just. I mean, how are we gonna have, like, let's say we're on the, you know, Georgia is the state that borders us.
I mean, imagine being close to that border and like, you got a job across the border or something. It's like a different time and, well,
[00:37:44] Speaker A: just too sloppy, like there's parts of Florida that are in central time, man. So you can't look at it solely like that. You know, Florida's in Eastern time, and then part of the panhandle's in central time as you get close to.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: Well, no, I thought it ends as you cross the border to Alabama. It goes to central time. But that's my point anyway. Right. It doesn't like whether it's in your home state of Ohio, I know, is central, and Pennsylvania is East Coast. So my point is, I think all
[00:38:08] Speaker A: that doesn't make sense is Eastern time as well.
[00:38:11] Speaker B: Okay, well, then the next day next to you. But that's my point. None of it makes sense. I think we just.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: It's arbitrary.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: It's arbitrary one time and let it alone. And then we know that the seasons give us a little bit more daylight or not, depending whether it's winter or summer anyway. So I don't think we need to supercharge it with setting the clock an hour back or forth.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: Hawaii doesn't have the daylight savings. Well, it doesn't have the time change because they're further south, their daylight, and they don't have as much variation in the seasons as far as. Because one of the things as far as just the Earth's tilt is that when you're close to closer to the equator, you have less variation in terms of day, day to day, sunrise and sunset across the seasons. Whereas the closer you are to the poles, the more variation you have. Which is why somewhere like in Alaska, you'll have so much variation that in the summertime you might have 23 hours of daylight, and in the wintertime you might have 23 hours of nighttime at various points. So trying to account for all that, I think that the daylight savings time change is something like. I think it's probably we're at a point now where we can just figure out, is there a good way to do it from an empirical standpoint and then just do that. I don't know that we need to hold onto this because it's already in place. If it's. One of the things that stood out to me in this was just that they asked the question, is daylight savings time dangerous? Meaning by adjusting the time of evening when it actually either going to it or coming out of it, adjusting the time of evening when it gets dark based on the time change, people find that driving becomes more dangerous when it becomes. If we adjust the time to make it darker in the evenings, People ask the question if there's more like robberies or Things like that, or just people walking around, you don't think about it from that standpoint, but conceivably, maybe we should just try to figure out, well, how can we have as much time in the evenings, in daylight, in each of the time zones and just set the time based on that? It would make sense. That said, I don't think that it's some grand crime against humanity that we do daylight savings time. It's a disruption. It affects you for a couple of times or a couple of days each year, meaning the day, the immediate day after, and maybe another day, and then you kind of. Your body adjusts. But either way, it's just one of. It's a really, like, so many things that we do every day that you never ask why we do them. And this is societal. And then, yeah, the other thing that stood out to me on this was that there's a bunch of states that are like, yo, we're trying to get rid of this. And the federal government's kind of like, dragging its feet. And I'm like, so I wonder, you know, like, is this a political issue? Are there, like. Are there, like, people that are like, yo, I'm not giving you any donations if you guys change daylight savings time for this reason, or are we going to end up with some villain of daylight savings time? Like, so do any of the other normal political stuff come in? Because it surprises me that, you know, all of the time stuff is relatively arbitrary when you get to the borders of, you know, here's this time zone, here's that time zone, or here's, you know, daylight savings time or not. So I don't know. Those are the things that kind of stood out to me and just questions that we don't ask. And, hey, I'm all in favor of the government trying to come up with wins that they can deliver on. And if this is one where you could just, hey, we're going to make everybody's life better, we're going to do this, then they should be doing it. Because there's a lot of hard questions. There are a lot of consequential things that we have to deal with. Maybe this is an easy one. Deal with it, make things better, and then we move on.
40% of the people are happy.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: Yeah. No, it's funny that. It's funny. Just to wrap it up, I felt the same thing reading it. This. It's funny. This is probably the lightest topic we've done in our whole career of our podcast together.
But it also made me just realize how like norms become in a society that we just, we've all just accepted this, we're born into this system of daylight savings. And, and I think to your point about why it doesn't get changed, I think it actually makes me think it's such a non big deal. I think to most of us that it just, it's like when you procrastinate, you know, doing your dishes or something, you know, it's just like, like I'm sure if we just as a nation decided to focus on this topic, we'd get it done in a couple months, Congress would legislate it out and everyone would agree that, you know, the majority of Americans would agree. Yeah, I'm okay not having this anymore.
[00:42:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: But I just think it's like you said, there's a lot of other issues we got to talk and negotiate and worry about.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: Hey, but if you can get some easy wins like in this, they laid out even with some graphs as far as. If they, if you actually took daylight savings time and made it all year round, like, so that would just be our, our time. Basically. We shift our time, the time zone, every, each time zone we shifted an hour and just keep it like that. You end up with every. Everywhere basically. In a continental United States, you know, most of the time you get daylight that extends past 5:00pm which you know, is deemed to be worthwhile as far as, you know, again, commuting and you know, like keeping it light longer.
[00:43:01] Speaker B: I get it. I'm just saying that it's just like, it's like one of those topics, I think that no one, like who's gonna be the one? Are me and you gonna be there? All right, let's create a pack. Let's go, you know, let's go hammer our congressman about this. You know, like, like everyone's got such bigger fish.
[00:43:15] Speaker A: It won't be me and you, man. Cuz Florida's already said they wanna do it. They already passed something with it.
[00:43:20] Speaker B: So now we got. No, but now we gotta hammer the federal government to let Florida do it. Yeah, but, but no, just the idea that, yeah, everyone else has a bigger issue when they get to, you know, when you get that, that moment in the sun to talk to a politician, it's probably not daylight savings that's on their mind. That's all I'm saying is that I
[00:43:36] Speaker A: just think, I guess nobody's gonna run in two years.
[00:43:39] Speaker B: That's what we were like.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: I was the one that got you guys daylight saving time.
[00:43:43] Speaker B: Like, yeah, I'm gonna run For Congress or send them. My platform is gonna be daylight savings, whatever other thing going on around the world.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: You know, it's funny.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: That'll be the guy that wins.
[00:43:51] Speaker A: Work better, though.
Nowadays people are running, saying, hey, I'm gonna protect you from your fellow Americans. That's probably a more negative approach than
[00:44:00] Speaker B: just saying, yeah, but the sad part is, it works. That's what tells you what people want to hear, too. They don't want to hear about daylight savings and stuff that everyone will agree on.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: Yeah, nobody take you seriously.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: I bet you 95% of people would agree, like, yeah, let's get rid of that. That sucks. But you're right. Like, nobody wants to. Everyone wants conflict, man. That's what sells. So, yeah, you know, things like daylight savings unfortunately get left to the sideline.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Well, at some point. But, like, at a certain point, Congress did weigh in on it and take their time to put it in place, you know, so to speak. So, yeah, I mean, it's definitely.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: You know what it'll be. I'm going to start a company.
I'm gonna be like Warren Buffett that I'm gonna now have. I'll have to live till I'm like 95, because I'm not worth a billion yet. So it's gonna take me a few decades to get there, you know, but I'm just gonna get to one of these wealthy, wealthy political donors, and I'm gonna just for shits and giggles, make that my issue.
[00:44:51] Speaker A: Make that your issue.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: And I'm gonna be like, look, it's gonna make business run smoother, all that. And then just start lobbying slowly. And then that'll be me. Like, my accomplishment as some old man.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: You wouldn't need a billion dollars because nobody would be opposing you, you know, or maybe they would. Maybe everybody would make you out to be an evil person because you. You want to extend daylight savings time or anything like that. But again, it just. It seems like sometimes the focus, it grinds to a halt a lot of times if your focus is always on trying to hit home runs about everything.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: And so there seem to be, when you look at this, it seems to be tangible benefits that could be obtained from trying to deal with this in a way. But that we deem it as. I mean, we're laughing about it. We deem it as too trivial for us to even consider. It just says something, you know, it just says something about. I mean, this is self governance, you know, like, and so maybe we should. Maybe we shouldn't care, you know, like. But ultimately everything that our government should do, if everything, we're only if the only thing we want them to do or deal with the most consequential issues of our time, then we are going to see more gridlock because there's so much rigidity in those, those consequential issues where some, these are issues where you might be able to establish some working relationships. You address something, it you see two years later it works. You know, productivity is up, you know, or something like that, or at car accidents are down or, you know, whatever. So I don't know, it's, it was worth taking a quick look at, you know, I don't want to belabor the point, you know, so I think we can wrap this up from here. We definitely appreciate everybody for joining us as we meandered through the stimulus and, and the, the just the big picture operations of our government with something like that and some other things and then also just, you know, just for a little bit of fun, the Daylight savings. So until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:46:37] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Romano.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: All right, subscribe Rate Review Tell us what you think and we'll talk to you next time.
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