1 00:00:12,913 --> 00:00:16,315 Let me read you a paycheck. Amazon Warehouse Job, 2 00:00:16,315 --> 00:00:21,818 Illinois, 40 hours a week at $22 an hour. 3 00:00:21,818 --> 00:00:26,541 Seems like an amazing job, and it seems like the one that you might want 4 00:00:26,541 --> 00:00:30,803 for your kids or for your nephew who is complaining about the economy, 5 00:00:30,803 --> 00:00:37,467 complaining about the the person who's currently in the office of the president. 6 00:00:37,467 --> 00:00:38,467 But 7 00:00:38,986 --> 00:00:40,657 That's the real wage right now, 8 00:00:40,657 --> 00:00:44,387 twenty two dollars an hour. That is a job that you could actually get in Illinois. 9 00:00:44,387 --> 00:00:47,380 I checked the job listings. Forty hours. 10 00:00:47,380 --> 00:00:48,380 So 11 00:00:48,091 --> 00:00:52,603 that's eight hundred and eighty dollars before any money comes out of your paycheck, 12 00:00:52,603 --> 00:00:56,856 in a week. So eight hundred and eighty bucks for a week sounds pretty decent. 13 00:00:56,856 --> 00:01:02,789 Those numbers are built from the actual wage and the actual insurance costs that 14 00:01:02,789 --> 00:01:05,270 employers report. So you can you can check them. 15 00:01:05,270 --> 00:01:06,781 I'm I'm not making them up. I'm not 16 00:01:07,379 --> 00:01:10,722 like averaging across 10 years of of old information. 17 00:01:10,722 --> 00:01:13,984 This is what the number is right now. 18 00:01:13,984 --> 00:01:19,209 Let me break down the deductions because this is the whole conversation right here. 19 00:01:19,209 --> 00:01:22,151 Social Security taxes comes out of that. 20 00:01:22,151 --> 00:01:26,314 $54.80, that's six point two percent of the gross. 21 00:01:26,314 --> 00:01:29,978 Medicare comes out, that's twelve dollars and seventy six cents, 22 00:01:29,978 --> 00:01:31,739 that's one point four five percent. 23 00:01:32,671 --> 00:01:34,242 Federal income tax withholding, 24 00:01:34,242 --> 00:01:37,515 depending on their filing status and whether they have dependents, 25 00:01:37,515 --> 00:01:41,508 is roughly $100 per week. That 26 00:01:41,508 --> 00:01:47,133 is already $167.56 gone before they have health insurance, 27 00:01:47,133 --> 00:01:48,724 before they have anything else. 28 00:01:48,724 --> 00:01:53,588 Then the health insurance. The company typically contributes part of it, 29 00:01:53,588 --> 00:01:57,711 and the company calculates as part of your total compensation, 30 00:01:57,711 --> 00:02:00,794 but the employee share still comes from the paycheck. 31 00:02:01,374 --> 00:02:03,384 For basic coverage, not great coverage, 32 00:02:03,384 --> 00:02:10,376 just basic coverage, the American average of $1,886 as a deductible, 33 00:02:10,376 --> 00:02:16,238 not including the 20% coinsurance on anything that you need medical help with. 34 00:02:16,238 --> 00:02:21,079 That's about $60 per week out of the employees' take home. 35 00:02:21,079 --> 00:02:24,230 So out of $880 gross, 36 00:02:24,230 --> 00:02:28,891 we've taken out $227 in taxes and health insurance. 37 00:02:29,063 --> 00:02:34,477 That leaves about six hundred and fifty-two dollars and forty-four cents per week. 38 00:02:34,477 --> 00:02:39,351 That's a person working forty hours per week taking home six hundred 39 00:02:39,351 --> 00:02:43,124 and fifty-two dollars. We're gonna cut off the forty-four cents because let's 40 00:02:43,124 --> 00:02:45,636 be honest, we all learned the old way of doing math, 41 00:02:45,636 --> 00:02:49,339 and it's a lot easier to put numbers together when you cut out everything behind 42 00:02:49,339 --> 00:02:51,771 the decimal. And what can 44 cents buy you anyway? 43 00:02:51,771 --> 00:02:57,896 So that's $2,610 per month before rent. 44 00:02:58,175 --> 00:03:00,627 Before food, before a car payment, 45 00:03:00,627 --> 00:03:05,271 before anything. The national average rent for a one bedroom, 46 00:03:05,271 --> 00:03:08,814 one bathroom apartment in August 2026 47 00:03:09,034 --> 00:03:12,617 is about $1,663 per month, 48 00:03:12,617 --> 00:03:18,512 $1663. Now if you remove the ten largest US cities, 49 00:03:18,512 --> 00:03:22,235 which is what we've done, where rents are for similar units, 50 00:03:22,235 --> 00:03:25,837 one bedroom, one bath or often exceeding thirty five hundred dollars, 51 00:03:25,837 --> 00:03:26,837 they're what 52 00:03:26,676 --> 00:03:27,756 The cities that you'd think of, 53 00:03:27,756 --> 00:03:29,707 there are there are actually four of them in Texas, 54 00:03:29,707 --> 00:03:31,727 New York City, Chicago, Phoenix, 55 00:03:31,727 --> 00:03:34,238 Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco, 56 00:03:34,238 --> 00:03:37,819 the big top ten most expensive cities in the entire country. 57 00:03:37,819 --> 00:03:39,959 I removed that from the entire list. 58 00:03:39,959 --> 00:03:42,320 The average rent for a one-bedroom, 59 00:03:42,320 --> 00:03:45,400 one-bath apartment is $1,663. 60 00:03:45,400 --> 00:03:51,792 So that typically brings the average down once you remove it to $1,400 $1,500, 61 00:03:51,792 --> 00:03:52,922 depending on whether. 62 00:03:53,454 --> 00:03:56,196 A median or mean average is used. 63 00:03:56,196 --> 00:04:00,309 So let's say they find an apartment for 1600 bucks. 64 00:04:00,309 --> 00:04:03,211 That's that's the number I have in my mind, 65 00:04:03,211 --> 00:04:06,333 certainly when I was in college and when I was a younger person with a one-bedroom, 66 00:04:06,333 --> 00:04:10,216 one bathroom apartment. Sixteen hundred bucks was about the going rate for rent now. 67 00:04:10,216 --> 00:04:15,039 So that leaves a single person by themselves in a one-bedroom, 68 00:04:15,039 --> 00:04:16,090 one bath apartment. 69 00:04:16,722 --> 00:04:19,815 With $1,010 left for the entire month. 70 00:04:19,815 --> 00:04:26,290 Back in 2025, just feeding yourself costs anywhere from $245 71 00:04:26,290 --> 00:04:32,405 to $500 every month. And that was before the grocery index climbed another 72 00:04:32,405 --> 00:04:36,308 2.7% in 2026. That's the CPI. 73 00:04:36,308 --> 00:04:40,491 It keeps track of the most common things that we buy and gives them 74 00:04:40,752 --> 00:04:43,704 a general price throughout the national average. 75 00:04:43,704 --> 00:04:44,704 Again, they're using 76 00:04:44,833 --> 00:04:46,463 Swapping between mean and median, 77 00:04:46,463 --> 00:04:52,465 and they arrived to a 2.7% increase on CPI. 78 00:04:52,465 --> 00:04:57,726 But those broad averages don't tell the whole story of what happens at the register. 79 00:04:57,726 --> 00:05:00,627 They hide the actual math of a shopping trip. 80 00:05:00,627 --> 00:05:06,068 In fact, if you like coffee, just a good cup of black coffee like I do, 81 00:05:06,068 --> 00:05:09,669 coffee prices spiked by 33 to 35%. 82 00:05:09,669 --> 00:05:14,250 And if you want to have a hamburger or 83 00:05:14,750 --> 00:05:18,913 I don't know, a beef sausage in the morning with a little bit 84 00:05:18,913 --> 00:05:23,867 of oatmeal or something. Ground beef went up twenty two percent year over year. 85 00:05:23,867 --> 00:05:29,672 But there is good news there was one grocery staple that did drop thirty percent 86 00:05:30,172 --> 00:05:34,586 eggs. Everything else has been consistently higher month to month 87 00:05:34,586 --> 00:05:37,278 at the grocery store. That is what we're working with. 88 00:05:37,278 --> 00:05:41,901 Keep that number. The entire conversation is about whether that person 89 00:05:41,901 --> 00:05:42,901 can live on it. 90 00:05:43,147 --> 00:05:45,928 And what makes that possible or impossible? 91 00:05:45,928 --> 00:05:50,290 Now let me tell you who's talking because you should weigh it. 92 00:05:50,290 --> 00:05:53,951 My name is Joshua. In most of my life, 93 00:05:53,951 --> 00:05:58,983 I am the computer guy. I'm the one you call when your email stops working 94 00:05:58,983 --> 00:06:02,194 or when your iPhone starts doing something it did not used to do 95 00:06:02,194 --> 00:06:04,055 and you can't figure out what changed. 96 00:06:04,055 --> 00:06:07,917 I come over, I fix it, I don't make you feel stupid about it. 97 00:06:07,917 --> 00:06:11,378 I mention that because this is the same job. 98 00:06:12,168 --> 00:06:15,499 Somebody hands you a machine and a story about how it works, 99 00:06:15,499 --> 00:06:19,411 and sometimes the story's wrong and somebody has to sit down and go through 100 00:06:19,411 --> 00:06:22,102 it with you without being a jerk about it. 101 00:06:22,102 --> 00:06:26,114 Here's the other part. And it's the part that matters for weighing what 102 00:06:26,114 --> 00:06:30,105 I'm about to say. I was a Republican for thirty years. 103 00:06:30,105 --> 00:06:34,107 Not casually. I walked door to door for George W. 104 00:06:34,107 --> 00:06:37,488 Bush two times. Once before I was old enough to vote. 105 00:06:37,488 --> 00:06:39,949 I knocked on strangers' doors in the heat. 106 00:06:40,809 --> 00:06:43,010 Living in Louisiana and made the case. 107 00:06:43,010 --> 00:06:47,692 I believed it. If you and I had talked politics in two thousand four, 108 00:06:47,692 --> 00:06:52,483 I would have argued with you from the other direction and I would have been good 109 00:06:52,483 --> 00:06:55,574 at it. I left the party officially in twenty sixteen. 110 00:06:55,574 --> 00:06:59,275 I'm not gonna perform pride or or shame about that, 111 00:06:59,275 --> 00:07:04,177 it's just what happened. And I ended up well to the left of where I started, 112 00:07:04,177 --> 00:07:08,579 which I also am not going to hide because you would find that out in about 113 00:07:08,579 --> 00:07:09,579 a minute anyway, and 114 00:07:09,981 --> 00:07:15,214 Then nothing else I said for the rest of this episode would you actually listen to? 115 00:07:15,214 --> 00:07:19,797 I'm telling you all of this in the first minute instead of the last one, 116 00:07:19,797 --> 00:07:25,151 because the whole point here is that you should not have to take anybody's word 117 00:07:25,151 --> 00:07:30,974 for anything, including mine. Every number I just read and every number 118 00:07:30,974 --> 00:07:33,366 I am about to read is public information. 119 00:07:33,366 --> 00:07:36,148 I will tell you where each one comes from, 120 00:07:36,148 --> 00:07:37,599 and you can go and check them. 121 00:07:37,599 --> 00:07:39,450 If I have one wrong, I want to know. 122 00:07:39,804 --> 00:07:45,558 You can send me an email. It's the overlap at FOF dot foundation. 123 00:07:45,558 --> 00:07:48,119 No dot com at the very end. Just 124 00:07:48,600 --> 00:07:54,083 the overlap at FOF.foundation. 125 00:07:54,083 --> 00:07:59,337 I'm not here to convert you. I spent thirty years on the other side 126 00:07:59,337 --> 00:08:02,949 of this and nobody ever converted me by winning an argument. 127 00:08:02,949 --> 00:08:09,313 Not one time. I changed my mind slowly by myself over years and 128 00:08:09,699 --> 00:08:12,631 After the facts stop fitting the story that I had. 129 00:08:12,631 --> 00:08:17,413 That is the only way it has ever worked for anybody. 130 00:08:17,413 --> 00:08:22,776 What I can actually do is hand you the definition of a phrase as the people 131 00:08:22,776 --> 00:08:25,057 who hold the position actually use it, 132 00:08:25,057 --> 00:08:30,180 instead of the version that circulates on your favorite mainstream media channel. 133 00:08:30,180 --> 00:08:33,862 That's the whole job. So here is the phrase. 134 00:08:33,862 --> 00:08:39,245 Democratic socialism means the workers 135 00:08:39,557 --> 00:08:45,338 And the community have a say in who owns and who controls the things they depend 136 00:08:45,338 --> 00:08:49,600 on to live a power plant, a water system, 137 00:08:49,600 --> 00:08:53,461 a hospital, a utility, who owns it, 138 00:08:53,461 --> 00:08:58,822 who runs it, and whether a fund in another state gets to buy the factory 139 00:08:58,942 --> 00:09:01,343 in your town, strip it for parts, 140 00:09:01,343 --> 00:09:04,003 lay off five hundred people, and disappear. 141 00:09:04,003 --> 00:09:06,203 That is what the phrase means. 142 00:09:07,103 --> 00:09:09,124 Not that the government seizes things, 143 00:09:09,124 --> 00:09:13,325 not that you own nothing. A say, 144 00:09:13,325 --> 00:09:19,986 a vote, a seat at the table when decisions that determine your life get made. 145 00:09:19,986 --> 00:09:23,466 Let me be also very clear about what it does not mean, 146 00:09:23,466 --> 00:09:27,007 because this is where the conversation got hijacked. 147 00:09:27,007 --> 00:09:32,998 It does not mean communism. Communism says the state owns everything. 148 00:09:33,714 --> 00:09:36,426 And you cannot vote that out ever. 149 00:09:36,426 --> 00:09:39,207 Democratic Socialism says you vote, 150 00:09:39,207 --> 00:09:42,330 and if you do not like it, you vote it out. 151 00:09:42,330 --> 00:09:44,692 That is the entire difference. 152 00:09:44,692 --> 00:09:48,375 Elections. That phrase is load bearing, 153 00:09:48,375 --> 00:09:52,699 and it's the one that never survives the trip to television. 154 00:09:52,699 --> 00:09:58,264 It does not mean the government takes your house or your truck or your gun. 155 00:09:58,998 --> 00:10:04,571 It means the community decides who owns the water system and the power lines. 156 00:10:04,571 --> 00:10:07,813 Shared infrastructure, not personal property. 157 00:10:07,813 --> 00:10:09,754 Those are different categories, 158 00:10:09,754 --> 00:10:12,415 and they get deliberately blurred. 159 00:10:12,415 --> 00:10:14,956 It does not mean that nobody works. 160 00:10:14,956 --> 00:10:20,059 The one I want to spend a minute on because it's exactly backwards from the history. 161 00:10:20,059 --> 00:10:23,080 Eugene Debs was a railroad man. 162 00:10:23,080 --> 00:10:26,082 Fireman on a locomotive at nineteen. 163 00:10:26,556 --> 00:10:29,387 He helped build the American Railway Union. 164 00:10:29,387 --> 00:10:33,218 In nineteen eighteen he gave a speech in Canton, 165 00:10:33,218 --> 00:10:38,610 Ohio against the draft, and the federal government convicted him under 166 00:10:38,610 --> 00:10:42,452 the Espionage Act and sent him to the Atlanta Penitentiary. 167 00:10:42,452 --> 00:10:45,593 He was inmate number two hundred two five three, 168 00:10:45,593 --> 00:10:50,535 and in nineteen twenty, from inside that cell he ran for president 169 00:10:51,075 --> 00:10:56,167 of the United States of America and got nine hundred fourteen thousand votes. 170 00:10:56,667 --> 00:10:57,917 Think about what that number means. 171 00:10:57,917 --> 00:11:01,178 Almost one million Americans, 172 00:11:01,178 --> 00:11:04,279 most of whom would never have called themselves radicals, 173 00:11:04,279 --> 00:11:07,320 voted for a man in federal prison. 174 00:11:07,320 --> 00:11:09,901 Not because they had read theory, 175 00:11:09,901 --> 00:11:12,481 because they remembered the coal mines. 176 00:11:12,481 --> 00:11:17,463 They remembered twelve hour shifts in the mills seven days a week. 177 00:11:17,463 --> 00:11:22,744 They remembered men worked until they died and then replaced on Monday. 178 00:11:22,744 --> 00:11:25,565 The demand those people were making was 179 00:11:25,718 --> 00:11:27,629 Was not that nobody should work. 180 00:11:27,629 --> 00:11:30,129 The slogan was eight hours for work, 181 00:11:30,129 --> 00:11:33,910 eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will. 182 00:11:33,910 --> 00:11:37,711 They wanted a life on the other side of the shift. 183 00:11:37,711 --> 00:11:41,612 And they won it in pieces over forty years. 184 00:11:41,612 --> 00:11:46,023 The Adamson Act in nineteen sixteen gave railroad workers 185 00:11:46,023 --> 00:11:48,834 the first federally mandated eight hour day. 186 00:11:48,834 --> 00:11:52,695 The Fair Labor Standards Act in nineteen thirty eight. 187 00:11:53,019 --> 00:11:56,961 Establish the forty hour work week and the minimum wage. 188 00:11:56,961 --> 00:12:00,042 Your weekend came from that fight. 189 00:12:00,042 --> 00:12:03,524 Overtime pay came from that fight. 190 00:12:03,524 --> 00:12:06,425 If you have ever gotten time and a half, 191 00:12:06,425 --> 00:12:10,047 you have collected on a debt that those people paid, 192 00:12:10,047 --> 00:12:13,938 sometimes with their lives. That is not nobody working, 193 00:12:13,938 --> 00:12:18,730 that is everybody working, and not having your entire life be your job. 194 00:12:19,230 --> 00:12:22,771 And here's the part I want you to sit with because it's the one that got me. 195 00:12:22,771 --> 00:12:28,023 There is a decade a lot of people on the right point back to as when this country 196 00:12:28,023 --> 00:12:31,234 worked. One income could carry a house and a family. 197 00:12:31,234 --> 00:12:35,696 A man could get hired at a plant at twenty and retire from it. 198 00:12:35,696 --> 00:12:38,697 You could buy a home on a factory wage. 199 00:12:38,697 --> 00:12:41,458 That was the middle of the nineteen fifties, 200 00:12:41,458 --> 00:12:43,129 and in nineteen fifty four. 201 00:12:43,983 --> 00:12:49,187 Union membership in the American workforce hit its all time peak right around 202 00:12:49,187 --> 00:12:52,248 a third of every worker in the United States. 203 00:12:52,248 --> 00:12:55,769 Those two facts are the same fact. 204 00:12:55,769 --> 00:13:02,754 The era people are nostalgic for is the era with the highest union density 205 00:13:02,774 --> 00:13:06,276 in American history, the strongest labor law, 206 00:13:06,276 --> 00:13:09,578 and the top tax rates of this century. 207 00:13:09,578 --> 00:13:11,690 That is not a coincidence but 208 00:13:12,116 --> 00:13:15,337 And it is not a coincidence anybody wants to explain to you, 209 00:13:15,337 --> 00:13:17,718 because the moment that you notice it, 210 00:13:17,718 --> 00:13:21,900 a lot of what is on television stops making sense. 211 00:13:21,900 --> 00:13:26,842 It does not mean that Venezuela or Cuba or the Soviet Union. 212 00:13:26,842 --> 00:13:30,063 Those were disasters, dictatorships, 213 00:13:30,063 --> 00:13:33,505 no real elections, and millions dead. 214 00:13:33,505 --> 00:13:36,726 I am not going to soften that or walk around it, 215 00:13:36,726 --> 00:13:38,497 and I understand completely. 216 00:13:38,829 --> 00:13:41,941 Why those are the places that come to mind when you hear the phrase. 217 00:13:41,941 --> 00:13:47,154 Those governments used the word and betrayed it by making sure no 218 00:13:47,154 --> 00:13:50,566 one could vote them out. That is not democratic, 219 00:13:50,566 --> 00:13:53,188 and that is not democratic socialism. 220 00:13:53,188 --> 00:13:57,331 That is the opposite of it. And the thing that makes it the opposite 221 00:13:57,331 --> 00:14:03,615 is the elections. I will say this very plainly because it cuts both directions. 222 00:14:03,615 --> 00:14:07,237 Plenty of people who use the word socialism in the 223 00:14:07,337 --> 00:14:09,679 In this country are insufferable. 224 00:14:09,679 --> 00:14:12,581 You know the type, university types, 225 00:14:12,581 --> 00:14:15,103 campus types who have never had a job, 226 00:14:15,103 --> 00:14:17,345 who use the word as a costume, 227 00:14:17,345 --> 00:14:21,068 and could not tell you what a shop steward does. 228 00:14:21,068 --> 00:14:23,970 They exist. They are annoying. 229 00:14:23,970 --> 00:14:27,333 They are also not who I am describing. 230 00:14:27,333 --> 00:14:32,397 They are not who wrote any of the history that I just gave you. 231 00:14:32,397 --> 00:14:36,120 But anybody who argues against socialism. 232 00:14:36,639 --> 00:14:40,981 Using only Venezuela without ever mentioning Denmark or Norway 233 00:14:41,161 --> 00:14:43,202 is picking examples that serve them. 234 00:14:43,202 --> 00:14:46,803 If the claim is that it does not work, 235 00:14:46,803 --> 00:14:50,325 then explain Denmark. Then explain Norway. 236 00:14:50,325 --> 00:14:53,566 Explain why those countries have higher wages, 237 00:14:53,566 --> 00:14:57,268 shorter work weeks, better health outcomes, 238 00:14:57,268 --> 00:15:02,150 longer lives, and functioning economies with shining examples 239 00:15:02,150 --> 00:15:04,201 of capitalism working within their system. 240 00:15:04,701 --> 00:15:08,873 GLP ones, simaglutide, terzepitide are a perfect example of that. 241 00:15:08,873 --> 00:15:12,114 An honest argument points at all of them. 242 00:15:12,114 --> 00:15:15,616 Now here's the part that I think actually matters, 243 00:15:15,616 --> 00:15:18,757 and this is not theoretical. It already exists here. 244 00:15:18,757 --> 00:15:21,738 You already use it, you already like it. 245 00:15:21,738 --> 00:15:25,600 Medicare. That's not capitalism. 246 00:15:25,600 --> 00:15:28,821 You do not buy Medicare on an open market. 247 00:15:28,821 --> 00:15:33,563 There is no Medicare store. No company competes to sell it to you. 248 00:15:34,063 --> 00:15:36,955 You pay over your working life. 249 00:15:36,955 --> 00:15:39,736 And then when you turn 65, it's there. 250 00:15:39,736 --> 00:15:43,758 You do not have to hope your employer still offers coverage. 251 00:15:43,758 --> 00:15:46,039 You do not have to fear losing it. 252 00:15:46,039 --> 00:15:49,501 Who pays for it? Workers through taxes. 253 00:15:49,501 --> 00:15:53,123 Who owns it? All of us. Who does it serve? 254 00:15:53,123 --> 00:15:59,327 Everyone over sixty five. That is public ownership and democratic control. 255 00:15:59,327 --> 00:16:00,457 The VA. 256 00:16:00,957 --> 00:16:03,019 Veterans Affairs funded by taxes, 257 00:16:03,019 --> 00:16:07,201 run by the government, serving people who served. 258 00:16:07,201 --> 00:16:11,065 It has real problems and gets overstretched, 259 00:16:11,065 --> 00:16:17,210 and in a number of measurable areas it still posts better patient outcomes than 260 00:16:17,210 --> 00:16:21,173 private hospitals. Who pays? Taxpayers. 261 00:16:21,173 --> 00:16:26,096 Who owns it? The public. The Interstate Highway System. 262 00:16:26,096 --> 00:16:28,809 Eisenhower, a Republican general, 263 00:16:28,809 --> 00:16:29,809 built it. 264 00:16:30,135 --> 00:16:33,756 Paid for it with gas taxes, built by public works, 265 00:16:33,756 --> 00:16:36,077 maintained by public agencies. 266 00:16:36,077 --> 00:16:40,198 Every truck carrying goods across the country runs on it. 267 00:16:40,198 --> 00:16:44,460 If a company owned the highways and charged by the mile, 268 00:16:44,460 --> 00:16:47,521 commerce would be slower and more expensive. 269 00:16:47,521 --> 00:16:51,222 Who owns it? The public. Who does it serve? 270 00:16:51,222 --> 00:16:53,963 Everyone. The fire department, 271 00:16:53,963 --> 00:16:58,095 funded by property taxes, staffed by public employees. 272 00:16:58,689 --> 00:17:01,191 It shows up whether you can afford it or not. 273 00:17:01,191 --> 00:17:04,053 Your house is on fire, they come. 274 00:17:04,053 --> 00:17:06,675 Nobody asks about your insurance. 275 00:17:06,675 --> 00:17:09,017 Nobody bills you for the water. 276 00:17:09,017 --> 00:17:11,599 That is what a public service is. 277 00:17:11,599 --> 00:17:15,782 A county road crew that salts the roads when there's ice or snow. 278 00:17:15,782 --> 00:17:19,985 Crop insurance that carries farmers through a bad year. 279 00:17:19,985 --> 00:17:24,349 Rural electric co ops which are owned by the members who use them. 280 00:17:24,349 --> 00:17:26,248 And when they run a surplus, it's 281 00:17:26,622 --> 00:17:29,048 It goes back to members as lower rates, 282 00:17:29,048 --> 00:17:33,148 instead of out to a shareholder who has never been to the county. 283 00:17:33,648 --> 00:17:37,891 The Tennessee Valley Authority brought power to seven states 284 00:17:37,891 --> 00:17:40,133 in the nineteen thirties Tennessee, 285 00:17:40,133 --> 00:17:43,176 Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, 286 00:17:43,176 --> 00:17:46,258 North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia. 287 00:17:46,258 --> 00:17:51,842 Before that, fewer than one in ten rural homes had electricity. 288 00:17:51,842 --> 00:17:54,945 People were living like it was eighteen eighty, 289 00:17:54,945 --> 00:17:58,608 no power, no refrigeration, no modern tools. 290 00:17:58,608 --> 00:18:01,280 Your CPAP didn't work, and your 291 00:18:02,262 --> 00:18:04,743 Diabetes medication could not be refrigerated. 292 00:18:04,743 --> 00:18:08,404 Private companies had already looked at it and said no, 293 00:18:08,404 --> 00:18:14,064 it's not profitable. That was communities deciding some things are 294 00:18:14,064 --> 00:18:16,085 too important to leave to profit. 295 00:18:16,085 --> 00:18:19,286 So we will own it, we will run it, 296 00:18:19,286 --> 00:18:22,507 and we will decide together what happens to it. 297 00:18:22,507 --> 00:18:26,528 Every one of those falls into the same category public 298 00:18:26,748 --> 00:18:30,069 or community ownership democratic control. 299 00:18:30,837 --> 00:18:33,279 No outside fund extracting value. 300 00:18:33,279 --> 00:18:35,140 They have been working for fifty, 301 00:18:35,140 --> 00:18:41,725 seventy, ninety years. Your family depends on several of them right now. 302 00:18:41,725 --> 00:18:47,348 And nobody calls them socialism because nobody ever had an interest 303 00:18:47,629 --> 00:18:51,971 in making you afraid of the word when it's attached to something you like. 304 00:18:51,971 --> 00:18:57,824 So what democratic socialism asks for is not something different from Medicare. 305 00:18:58,114 --> 00:19:00,536 Or the fire department. It's the same thing. 306 00:19:00,536 --> 00:19:02,717 It's just applied more broadly. 307 00:19:02,717 --> 00:19:05,759 It asks who owns the hospital? 308 00:19:05,759 --> 00:19:09,182 Right now, a lot of them are owned by private equity, 309 00:19:09,182 --> 00:19:12,404 and they're buying more every single month. 310 00:19:12,404 --> 00:19:17,308 Let's give a specific example because this is real and recent, 311 00:19:17,308 --> 00:19:20,690 and I want you to look up every single part of it. 312 00:19:20,690 --> 00:19:24,443 Anchor Hawking Glass. Charleroi, 313 00:19:24,443 --> 00:19:26,164 Pennsylvania in Washington County. 314 00:19:27,040 --> 00:19:31,293 That plant had been running in that town for a hundred and thirty-two years. 315 00:19:31,293 --> 00:19:34,735 Multiple generations of the same families worked there, 316 00:19:34,735 --> 00:19:36,637 learned the trade from their fathers, 317 00:19:36,637 --> 00:19:42,480 passed it to their kids. Around three hundred people had employed jobs there. 318 00:19:42,480 --> 00:19:44,772 Decent wages for the area too, 319 00:19:44,772 --> 00:19:47,184 plenty of benefits, an employee union, 320 00:19:47,184 --> 00:19:50,786 stability in a town that does not have a lot of stability. 321 00:19:50,786 --> 00:19:53,468 In February of twenty twenty four, 322 00:19:53,468 --> 00:19:56,300 Center Lane Partners, a private equity firm, 323 00:19:56,607 --> 00:20:00,360 Acquired that business. By the end of twenty twenty four, 324 00:20:00,360 --> 00:20:03,762 the Charleroi plant was closing three hundred jobs. 325 00:20:03,762 --> 00:20:07,845 The firm that bought it was not in the business of making glass. 326 00:20:07,845 --> 00:20:12,928 They looked at the assets and the property and the inventory and came 327 00:20:12,928 --> 00:20:17,331 to the conclusion that it was worth more shut down and moved than running. 328 00:20:17,331 --> 00:20:22,074 The Pennsylvania Attorney General filed an antitrust complaint that October 329 00:20:22,255 --> 00:20:23,255 to stop it. 330 00:20:23,629 --> 00:20:26,462 And a federal judge ruled the closure could proceed. 331 00:20:26,462 --> 00:20:31,146 The people in Charleroi did not get to vote in any of that. 332 00:20:31,146 --> 00:20:33,728 The workers had no seat at the table. 333 00:20:33,728 --> 00:20:35,690 They didn't ask the community. 334 00:20:35,690 --> 00:20:42,687 132 years ended because a hedge fund in another state decided that 335 00:20:42,687 --> 00:20:45,069 was the best use of the asset. 336 00:20:45,569 --> 00:20:48,701 It's happening now all across the country with data centers. 337 00:20:48,701 --> 00:20:51,022 And if that feels like something new, 338 00:20:51,022 --> 00:20:55,265 like some modern private equity invention, 339 00:20:55,265 --> 00:20:57,967 it is not. It happened on that same river, 340 00:20:57,967 --> 00:21:01,759 and it's worth knowing how because it explains why nobody wanted a seat 341 00:21:01,759 --> 00:21:03,210 at that table in the first place. 342 00:21:03,210 --> 00:21:10,045 Homestead, Pennsylvania, twenty some miles up the I'm gonna mispronounce this, 343 00:21:10,045 --> 00:21:13,657 but Monangahila from Charleroi. 344 00:21:14,157 --> 00:21:17,949 July of eighteen ninety two, Carnegie Steel, 345 00:21:17,949 --> 00:21:20,991 the most productive steelworks in the country, 346 00:21:20,991 --> 00:21:27,534 and the men in it belonged to the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, 347 00:21:27,534 --> 00:21:30,996 which was then the strongest union in America. 348 00:21:30,996 --> 00:21:33,197 Andrew Carnegie wanted the union out. 349 00:21:33,197 --> 00:21:37,159 He also wanted to be in Scotland while it happened, 350 00:21:37,159 --> 00:21:39,361 so he left it to his chairman, 351 00:21:39,361 --> 00:21:41,912 Henry Clay Frick, and Frick. 352 00:21:42,128 --> 00:21:46,912 Did it thoroughly. He built a fence around the print plant three miles long with 353 00:21:46,912 --> 00:21:51,746 barbed wire on top, and holes cut in it at rifle height. 354 00:21:51,746 --> 00:21:55,710 The men called it Fort Frick. He locked them out, 355 00:21:55,710 --> 00:22:00,293 cut the wage, and hired three hundred Pinkerton agents. 356 00:22:00,293 --> 00:22:05,577 On july sixth, he floated those Pinkertons up the river on barges in the dark, 357 00:22:05,577 --> 00:22:09,300 armed, to take the plant. The town was waiting. 358 00:22:10,232 --> 00:22:12,374 What happened next was not a labor dispute, 359 00:22:12,374 --> 00:22:17,668 it was a gunfight on a riverbank that went most of the day and left men dead 360 00:22:17,668 --> 00:22:20,640 on both sides. The Pinkertons surrendered, 361 00:22:20,640 --> 00:22:24,223 and the workers won. They won for six days. 362 00:22:24,223 --> 00:22:28,066 Then the governor sent eight thousand state militia, 363 00:22:28,066 --> 00:22:31,949 and that was the end of it. The plant reopened without the Union, 364 00:22:31,949 --> 00:22:35,492 and Union steel in that valley did not come back for forty years. 365 00:22:35,492 --> 00:22:37,153 Now hold the 366 00:22:37,607 --> 00:22:41,890 These two things next to each other Homestead in eighteen ninety 367 00:22:41,890 --> 00:22:44,922 two and Charleroi in twenty twenty four. 368 00:22:44,922 --> 00:22:51,578 Same river? Same question? Who decides what happens to the place where three hundred 369 00:22:51,578 --> 00:22:55,451 people work? And do the three hundred people get a say in it? 370 00:22:55,451 --> 00:22:59,834 In eighteen ninety two the answer arrived on a barge with rifles. 371 00:22:59,834 --> 00:23:03,187 In twenty twenty four it arrived as a filing. 372 00:23:03,926 --> 00:23:05,997 Nobody had to fire a shot in Charleroi, 373 00:23:05,997 --> 00:23:09,479 because nobody there had any mechanism to say no. 374 00:23:09,479 --> 00:23:15,442 That is the whole difference. And it's not the kind of progress it sounds like. 375 00:23:15,442 --> 00:23:21,445 Democratic Socialism says no. It says when you own a plant in our town 376 00:23:21,445 --> 00:23:26,918 and employ our people, the workers and the community get a voice in what happens 377 00:23:26,918 --> 00:23:30,069 to it. Now, not necessarily a veto, 378 00:23:30,069 --> 00:23:31,170 a voice. 379 00:23:31,708 --> 00:23:33,719 A union contract with real teeth, 380 00:23:33,719 --> 00:23:40,420 a mechanism where the people who eat the consequences have input into the decision. 381 00:23:40,420 --> 00:23:47,342 It says the water system cannot be a cash extraction machine for a hedge fund. 382 00:23:47,342 --> 00:23:51,343 It says a hospital cannot be a thing you buy, 383 00:23:51,343 --> 00:23:54,324 squeeze for five years, and flip. 384 00:23:54,324 --> 00:23:58,395 It says the power grid is a utility that has to work. 385 00:23:58,919 --> 00:24:04,583 Not a stock to trade. And it says a working person who works forty hours 386 00:24:04,583 --> 00:24:06,734 a week should be able to live. 387 00:24:06,734 --> 00:24:11,918 The warehouse worker we started with at two thousand six hundred ten dollars 388 00:24:11,918 --> 00:24:15,921 a month not survive, live, make rent, 389 00:24:15,921 --> 00:24:20,145 have food, a vehicle that gets them to and from their job, 390 00:24:20,145 --> 00:24:24,579 take a kid to the doctor without it being a financial event. 391 00:24:25,079 --> 00:24:27,780 That is what the argument is actually about. 392 00:24:27,780 --> 00:24:32,211 Now, the honest part, and I'm gonna be straight with you rather than sell 393 00:24:32,211 --> 00:24:34,421 you something. It costs money. 394 00:24:34,421 --> 00:24:40,153 Somebody has to pay for it. I'm not gonna pretend public systems are free 395 00:24:40,153 --> 00:24:43,044 or that they don't require taxes because they do. 396 00:24:43,044 --> 00:24:47,865 That is real, and anybody who tells you different is selling you something. 397 00:24:47,865 --> 00:24:52,266 And government does run things badly sometimes. 398 00:24:52,968 --> 00:24:55,100 I have sat at the DMV like everyone else. 399 00:24:55,100 --> 00:24:57,822 Public programs have waste in them. 400 00:24:57,822 --> 00:25:02,466 They have people being paid to move paper instead of solving the problem. 401 00:25:02,466 --> 00:25:07,570 I understand exactly why that makes you nervous because it makes me nervous too. 402 00:25:07,570 --> 00:25:12,034 And I'm not going to insult you by pretending that the concern is irrational. 403 00:25:12,034 --> 00:25:15,557 It is not. But here's my actual answer to it. 404 00:25:15,557 --> 00:25:20,601 The comparison being offered to you is the worst of governments. 405 00:25:21,361 --> 00:25:26,404 Against a gleaming vision of private business that exists in theory. 406 00:25:26,404 --> 00:25:30,627 In practice, private systems have enormous waste too. 407 00:25:30,627 --> 00:25:34,209 They also have people moving paper instead of solving problems. 408 00:25:34,209 --> 00:25:36,230 The difference is you do not see it. 409 00:25:36,230 --> 00:25:42,334 Because it's buried in premiums and executive compensation and marketing budgets, 410 00:25:42,334 --> 00:25:45,896 it comes out before the bill ever reaches you. 411 00:25:45,896 --> 00:25:47,847 But that is still your money. 412 00:25:48,347 --> 00:25:51,359 The question is not whether or not there will be waste, 413 00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:56,252 there will be. The question is whether the waste is serving you 414 00:25:56,893 --> 00:26:00,935 or extracting from you. So let me put real numbers on it. 415 00:26:00,935 --> 00:26:04,677 An ambulance ride in this country ten minutes, 416 00:26:04,677 --> 00:26:10,981 local transport, that runs you roughly a thousand dollars out of pocket. 417 00:26:10,981 --> 00:26:16,585 One thousand dollars for ten minutes in a vehicle with lights on the roof. 418 00:26:17,085 --> 00:26:21,187 Air transport, a medical emergency needing a helicopter. 419 00:26:21,187 --> 00:26:24,291 The government accountability office looked at this. 420 00:26:24,291 --> 00:26:27,954 You are talking tens of thousands of dollars, 421 00:26:27,954 --> 00:26:30,556 and a large share of those flights are out of network, 422 00:26:30,556 --> 00:26:32,497 which means your insurance covers part, 423 00:26:32,497 --> 00:26:34,679 and you get billed for the rest. 424 00:26:34,679 --> 00:26:41,014 People have gotten bills over twenty thousand dollars for a helicopter ride when 425 00:26:41,014 --> 00:26:44,187 they were unconscious and did not choose it. 426 00:26:44,187 --> 00:26:45,828 In Norway. 427 00:26:46,458 --> 00:26:48,188 That ride does not generate a bill. 428 00:26:48,188 --> 00:26:51,700 Neither does the ambulance. They pay for it in taxes, 429 00:26:51,700 --> 00:26:54,390 and yes, their taxes are higher. 430 00:26:54,390 --> 00:26:56,551 I'm not going to pretend that they're not, 431 00:26:56,551 --> 00:27:01,052 but nobody in Norway gets a twenty thousand dollars bill for 432 00:27:01,052 --> 00:27:05,153 a helicopter because that is not how they decided to build it. 433 00:27:05,153 --> 00:27:08,254 And they decided it democratically. 434 00:27:08,254 --> 00:27:13,155 Here is the big number. The United States spends fourteen thousand dollars. 435 00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:18,592 seven hundred and eighty one dollars per person per year on healthcare. 436 00:27:18,592 --> 00:27:21,753 That is everything. Your share, 437 00:27:21,753 --> 00:27:25,134 your employer's share, the government's share. 438 00:27:25,134 --> 00:27:29,196 Every year, whether you go to a doctor or not. 439 00:27:29,196 --> 00:27:34,418 Denmark spends seven thousand seventy one dollars per person. 440 00:27:34,418 --> 00:27:38,440 That is roughly half, not somewhat less, 441 00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:39,440 half. 442 00:27:39,860 --> 00:27:41,581 And the Danes work fewer hours, 443 00:27:41,581 --> 00:27:44,704 take more vacation, live longer, 444 00:27:44,704 --> 00:27:47,566 and have lower infant mortality. 445 00:27:47,566 --> 00:27:51,068 Half the money, better outcomes. 446 00:27:51,068 --> 00:27:57,273 That is not an opinion. That is spending data from countries doing it right now. 447 00:27:57,273 --> 00:28:02,256 So the question is this: Do you want the water system owned 448 00:28:02,256 --> 00:28:06,259 by a fund looking to maximize extraction? 449 00:28:06,791 --> 00:28:09,798 Over five years before selling it to another hedge fund, 450 00:28:09,798 --> 00:28:13,786 or owned by the community that drinks the water. 451 00:28:13,786 --> 00:28:15,771 That is the actual vote. 452 00:28:16,271 --> 00:28:18,762 I want to say one more thing and I'll get out of your way. 453 00:28:18,762 --> 00:28:23,725 Some profit is fine. Investment requires return. 454 00:28:23,725 --> 00:28:27,227 Building something requires a reason to build it. 455 00:28:27,227 --> 00:28:33,550 I am not confused about that, and I'm not arguing against business existing. 456 00:28:33,550 --> 00:28:39,923 What I am arguing again is that what happens when profit becomes 457 00:28:39,923 --> 00:28:42,535 the only thing we care about. 458 00:28:43,532 --> 00:28:48,883 When a pension gets looted by a fund manager two states away who has never 459 00:28:48,883 --> 00:28:53,404 met a single worker and has no reason to care whether they can put food 460 00:28:53,404 --> 00:28:55,125 on the table at seventy years old, 461 00:28:55,125 --> 00:29:01,196 when a utility is run to pull value out now instead 462 00:29:01,196 --> 00:29:03,947 of maintaining the lines for the next fifty years, 463 00:29:03,947 --> 00:29:09,608 when a hospital gets treated like a playing card or a trading card, 464 00:29:09,608 --> 00:29:12,329 that's not really capitalism anymore. 465 00:29:12,875 --> 00:29:18,607 That is extraction. And you can tell the difference because extraction never builds 466 00:29:18,928 --> 00:29:21,749 anything. We have done it the other way before, 467 00:29:21,749 --> 00:29:24,510 in living memory, in this country. 468 00:29:24,510 --> 00:29:27,492 The New Deal, rural electrification, 469 00:29:27,492 --> 00:29:30,573 the forty hour work week, the VA, 470 00:29:30,573 --> 00:29:33,754 Medicare, all of those things exist. 471 00:29:33,754 --> 00:29:36,476 They are imperfect. But they work. 472 00:29:36,476 --> 00:29:40,007 And they work because they were built on one idea. 473 00:29:40,859 --> 00:29:45,512 Some things are too important to leave it to a profit motive. 474 00:29:45,512 --> 00:29:49,875 So we own them together and we decide together. 475 00:29:49,875 --> 00:29:53,677 Now back to our person, the warehouse associate in Illinois, 476 00:29:53,677 --> 00:29:57,380 forty hours, two thousand six hundred and ten dollars a month. 477 00:29:57,380 --> 00:30:00,422 Right now between premiums, copays, 478 00:30:00,422 --> 00:30:05,657 deductibles, coinsurance, that household is losing several hundred dollars 479 00:30:05,657 --> 00:30:07,058 a month to health coverage. 480 00:30:07,603 --> 00:30:09,424 Before anyone actually gets sick. 481 00:30:09,424 --> 00:30:13,346 Under a system built the way Denmark or Norway built theirs, 482 00:30:13,346 --> 00:30:18,930 most of that becomes tax. At roughly half the total per person cost. 483 00:30:18,930 --> 00:30:22,753 What is left over is not a rounding error to somebody at that income. 484 00:30:22,753 --> 00:30:26,515 It's the dentist. It's a car that starts. 485 00:30:26,515 --> 00:30:29,767 It's winter boots that are not held together with duct tape. 486 00:30:30,267 --> 00:30:34,700 Will it take more taxes? Yes. The question is whether you would rather 487 00:30:34,700 --> 00:30:41,065 pay through taxes into a system designed to serve you or through premiums 488 00:30:41,106 --> 00:30:46,770 and deductibles and surprise bills from out of network anesthesiologists into 489 00:30:46,770 --> 00:30:50,073 a system designed to extract money from you. 490 00:30:50,073 --> 00:30:54,736 You're already paying for it. That's the part that gets left out. 491 00:30:54,736 --> 00:30:58,089 You are already paying and paying more. 492 00:30:58,797 --> 00:31:01,547 For less. You're gonna keep hearing this word, 493 00:31:01,547 --> 00:31:04,948 this phrase, democratic socialism. 494 00:31:04,948 --> 00:31:08,449 And it's going to get thrown at you on television and in arguments 495 00:31:08,669 --> 00:31:10,510 and by people running for office. 496 00:31:10,510 --> 00:31:13,030 But now you know what it actually means. 497 00:31:13,030 --> 00:31:15,891 You know how it differs from communism. 498 00:31:15,891 --> 00:31:19,011 And that the difference is elections. 499 00:31:19,011 --> 00:31:24,933 You know why Venezuela is not the comparison and why Denmark is. 500 00:31:25,275 --> 00:31:29,097 And you know you already use several pieces of it every week. 501 00:31:29,097 --> 00:31:31,718 So when somebody uses the word at you, 502 00:31:31,718 --> 00:31:35,240 you can tell whether they know what they're talking about. 503 00:31:35,240 --> 00:31:39,162 If they tell you it means the government seizes your house, 504 00:31:39,162 --> 00:31:43,364 they're either lying to you or they read it somewhere and never checked. 505 00:31:43,364 --> 00:31:46,225 If they tell you it means that nobody works, 506 00:31:46,225 --> 00:31:50,748 they do not know what a union is or what the labor 507 00:31:50,924 --> 00:31:56,689 Bur movement actually won. If they bring up Venezuela and never once mention 508 00:31:56,689 --> 00:32:00,072 Denmark, they're cherry picking their examples. 509 00:32:00,072 --> 00:32:02,093 That is what I wanted to hand you. 510 00:32:02,093 --> 00:32:07,217 Not a conclusion, just the actual definition of democratic socialism 511 00:32:07,757 --> 00:32:12,321 and the receipts, so that next time it comes up you are arguing about 512 00:32:12,321 --> 00:32:16,064 the real thing instead of a caricature you were sold. 513 00:32:16,064 --> 00:32:18,406 You can disagree with all of it. 514 00:32:19,328 --> 00:32:23,000 Plenty of people do, and some of them are rather good at arguing it. 515 00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:26,762 But now you can disagree with what it is, 516 00:32:26,762 --> 00:32:30,784 not something that it's not. That is worth something. 517 00:32:30,784 --> 00:32:32,235 Thank you.