1 00:00:00,501 --> 00:00:10,289 Picture a guy, I don't know, fifty one, fifty two years old, worked a stamping line outside of Toledo, Ohio for twenty six years. 2 00:00:10,410 --> 00:00:15,394 He made those steel brackets that hold your car's dashboard to the frame. 3 00:00:15,774 --> 00:00:22,059 He voted for the man twice, wore the red hat, believed it. 4 00:00:22,340 --> 00:00:26,042 The way you would believe a thing that you need to be true. 5 00:00:26,043 --> 00:00:28,242 In March, his plant came out. 6 00:00:28,242 --> 00:00:35,874 Cut a shift, not because nobody wants cars, but because the steel his plant buys got hit with a tariff. 7 00:00:35,875 --> 00:00:39,656 And the parts his plant sells got hit with a counter tariff. 8 00:00:39,656 --> 00:00:47,698 And somewhere in an office he will never see a spreadsheet decided that he was the cheapest thing to cut. 9 00:00:48,178 --> 00:00:50,538 He is not in a recession. 10 00:00:50,819 --> 00:00:53,559 That's the part that kind of frustrates me. 11 00:00:53,559 --> 00:00:57,390 The official numbers say actually the economy is fine. 12 00:00:57,820 --> 00:00:59,781 Inflation, it's fine. 13 00:00:59,781 --> 00:01:02,342 Unemployment, basically fine. 14 00:01:02,643 --> 00:01:08,005 He is standing inside a fine economy holding a pink slip. 15 00:01:08,006 --> 00:01:10,997 Like a whole bunch of other people who are doing the same thing. 16 00:01:10,997 --> 00:01:13,718 They're they're holding up not not a literal pink slip. 17 00:01:13,718 --> 00:01:18,671 I don't think that many people get actual pink slips anymore, but they're unemployed. 18 00:01:18,671 --> 00:01:26,875 They're searching for jobs on LinkedIn, they're talking about, you know, l about to to default on their mortgage and their and their kids. 19 00:01:27,034 --> 00:01:32,022 aren't gonna have food in the in their their countertops and and and it's getting bad. 20 00:01:32,023 --> 00:01:34,784 83,000 people. 21 00:01:35,144 --> 00:01:44,028 That is how many manufacturing jobs people are just gone since this administration started. 22 00:01:44,048 --> 00:01:49,710 Gone while the man on the television says manufacturing is roaring back. 23 00:01:49,711 --> 00:01:53,972 And here's the thing about a lie that specific. 24 00:01:53,973 --> 00:01:57,064 It doesn't feel like a lie to the people telling it. 25 00:01:57,064 --> 00:01:59,051 It feels like a forecast, right? 26 00:01:59,051 --> 00:02:02,556 Prosperity is just around the corner any day now. 27 00:02:02,557 --> 00:02:04,258 He's still gonna hurt. 28 00:02:04,680 --> 00:02:06,842 That's the whole episode right there. 29 00:02:07,564 --> 00:02:12,392 This Trump regime is cracking, but it's still going to hurt. 30 00:02:27,883 --> 00:02:29,347 Welcome back, friends and family. 31 00:02:29,347 --> 00:02:31,147 This is The Overlap. 32 00:02:31,147 --> 00:02:32,628 I am your host, Joshua. 33 00:02:32,628 --> 00:02:40,432 This is a show where we talk about people and systems of power and labor and all of the things that matter to everyday Americans. 34 00:02:40,432 --> 00:02:48,535 It's the things that the government should be focusing on, or things that the government's doing that they shouldn't really be focusing on. 35 00:02:48,535 --> 00:02:53,507 But it's a place for you and it's a place for me, and I'm happy you're here. 36 00:02:53,508 --> 00:02:57,889 So I'm recording this in July of 2026. 37 00:02:58,209 --> 00:03:02,691 And I want to be careful about how I say this because it's easy to get like giddy, right? 38 00:03:02,691 --> 00:03:08,852 And giddy and happy and joyful and literally dancing around the room makes you sloppy. 39 00:03:08,853 --> 00:03:11,913 The Trump regime is coming apart. 40 00:03:12,174 --> 00:03:13,594 You can feel it. 41 00:03:13,594 --> 00:03:20,052 The coalition is fracturing, the donors are getting nervous, the MAGA true believers are. 42 00:03:20,052 --> 00:03:24,474 Are quietly checking the price of gas and health care and groceries. 43 00:03:24,474 --> 00:03:26,714 What an old-fashioned word. 44 00:03:26,715 --> 00:03:31,096 And doing math they don't want to do out loud. 45 00:03:31,096 --> 00:03:32,497 That's real. 46 00:03:32,877 --> 00:03:34,538 That is happening right now. 47 00:03:34,538 --> 00:03:37,959 And it's not the same thing as relief. 48 00:03:38,079 --> 00:03:48,925 Because what nobody tells you about the end of a bad economic project, what nobody tells you about the end of a bad presidency. 49 00:03:48,925 --> 00:03:56,401 Of a bad regime is that the falling apart doesn't undo the damage. 50 00:03:56,521 --> 00:03:56,881 Right? 51 00:03:56,881 --> 00:04:01,665 The falling apart is when the damage gets handed to you. 52 00:04:01,666 --> 00:04:09,252 The people at the top, they structured this so that when it wobbles, it wobbles onto the guy in Toledo. 53 00:04:09,253 --> 00:04:10,454 Not onto them. 54 00:04:10,454 --> 00:04:12,095 Never onto them. 55 00:04:12,576 --> 00:04:14,017 So that's today. 56 00:04:14,017 --> 00:04:15,678 Not a victory lap. 57 00:04:15,936 --> 00:04:23,372 a reckoning with what its ending actually costs and who pays for the ending. 58 00:04:23,813 --> 00:04:24,914 Why now? 59 00:04:24,934 --> 00:04:31,703 Because right now is the window where everyone wants to declare it over and move on. 60 00:04:31,703 --> 00:04:32,686 I I feel it. 61 00:04:32,686 --> 00:04:43,120 I I don't know if you do, but I keep thinking, man, God, there's no way that this can just keep going on like it's going on and happening as fast as it's happening. 62 00:04:43,478 --> 00:04:48,059 I saw a a Facebook ad for a uh the Freedom Fuel Network. 63 00:04:48,059 --> 00:04:58,552 It wasn't I guess it wasn't an ad so much, it was literally posted on the White House Facebook page that that showed, you know, opened up with a a an African American guy, 64 00:04:58,552 --> 00:05:08,805 black guy talking thanking Trump because his co gas costs so much less and there apparently is this new Freedom Fuel Network and i i it's pretty disgusting. 65 00:05:09,105 --> 00:05:12,916 Because it's not at all reflective of reality. 66 00:05:12,917 --> 00:05:15,810 If you want that link, I'll I'll include it in the show notes. 67 00:05:15,996 --> 00:05:16,786 But 68 00:05:16,787 --> 00:05:19,138 We all wanna kinda move on, right? 69 00:05:19,138 --> 00:05:30,333 I mean, we wanna go, God, I just uh k well if he would just uh, you know, succumb to his age or if he would just this and we could just move on from this. 70 00:05:30,333 --> 00:05:32,584 And the truth is that's not really gonna happen. 71 00:05:32,584 --> 00:05:42,118 There's a lot of people in place and there's a lot of of people in places that they never should have been that have broken things that are gonna be broken for for a decade at 72 00:05:42,118 --> 00:05:43,959 least or more. 73 00:05:43,959 --> 00:05:44,444 But 74 00:05:44,444 --> 00:05:55,857 But moving on is exactly how the people who did this, the people who, as far as I'm concerned, are treasonous traitors to our country, they're gonna walk away from this 75 00:05:55,857 --> 00:05:56,797 clean. 76 00:05:56,798 --> 00:06:01,479 So let's go back to almost uh a hundred years first, right? 77 00:06:01,479 --> 00:06:04,740 Because America has done this exact same thing before. 78 00:06:05,060 --> 00:06:10,972 Same script, told a country the fundamentals were strong while the floor was already gone. 79 00:06:10,993 --> 00:06:16,415 And then we come back to 2026 and the names and the numbers and the guy in Toledo. 80 00:06:16,415 --> 00:06:17,755 So stay with me. 81 00:06:17,756 --> 00:06:27,739 1928, Herbert Hoover accepts the Republican nomination and he says a sentence that should be carved somewhere as a warning. 82 00:06:27,740 --> 00:06:38,647 He says We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of. 83 00:06:38,647 --> 00:06:40,498 Of any land. 84 00:06:40,499 --> 00:06:44,080 Now, this was Herbert Hoover, right? 85 00:06:44,261 --> 00:06:46,442 This wasn't our current president. 86 00:06:46,442 --> 00:06:53,066 So I can't hear like stand but hear these words in his voice when I read these out loud. 87 00:06:53,066 --> 00:07:03,702 Nearer to the final triumph over poverty in 1928, one year before everything fell into the ocean. 88 00:07:03,703 --> 00:07:07,586 And the thing is, I I don't think that Herbert Hoover was lying. 89 00:07:07,887 --> 00:07:08,628 Not exactly. 90 00:07:08,628 --> 00:07:13,411 I mean, if you were if you were standing where Hoover stood, the numbers were beautiful. 91 00:07:13,512 --> 00:07:14,953 Beautiful. 92 00:07:14,953 --> 00:07:17,095 The stock market had gone up. 93 00:07:17,095 --> 00:07:20,839 Something like 300% across the 20s. 94 00:07:20,839 --> 00:07:29,466 A 300% return in 10 years is something that even the the the smallest. 95 00:07:29,558 --> 00:07:31,062 stockbroker would feel. 96 00:07:31,062 --> 00:07:36,617 Even the smallest four hundred three B or four one K would would definitely feel. 97 00:07:36,618 --> 00:07:39,809 There were more millionaires than there had ever been, right? 98 00:07:39,809 --> 00:07:43,349 The men writing the reports were the men holding the stock. 99 00:07:43,350 --> 00:07:46,991 And from up there, whew, final triumph over poverty. 100 00:07:46,991 --> 00:07:48,491 You could almost see it. 101 00:07:48,492 --> 00:08:00,015 But if you go down to the ground, right, the the place where where people work, the American farmer had been in a depression the entire decade. 102 00:08:00,415 --> 00:08:04,269 Crop prices collapsed after World War I. 103 00:08:04,424 --> 00:08:06,445 And just kind of never came back. 104 00:08:06,445 --> 00:08:16,307 Half the country was rural, and half of that half was quietly going under the entire time the market was breaking records. 105 00:08:16,687 --> 00:08:23,369 Wages for working people had gone basically flat while productivity doubled. 106 00:08:23,569 --> 00:08:25,129 All that new wealth, right? 107 00:08:25,129 --> 00:08:29,170 All those those millionaires, they they went up. 108 00:08:29,171 --> 00:08:32,562 It didn't spread, it concentrated. 109 00:08:32,563 --> 00:08:36,566 Now let's meet a new man that you you've probably heard of. 110 00:08:36,646 --> 00:08:45,093 Andrew Mellon, Treasury Secretary under three presidents, one of the richest human beings in the country. 111 00:08:45,094 --> 00:08:51,138 And he ran the United States Treasury like it was a subsidiary of his own fortune. 112 00:08:51,619 --> 00:09:00,179 He cut the top tax rate from seventy something percent down to twenty five, told everyone that the benefits were 113 00:09:00,179 --> 00:09:02,101 Would trickle down to the working man. 114 00:09:02,101 --> 00:09:03,081 What does this sound like? 115 00:09:03,081 --> 00:09:04,482 We've heard this before. 116 00:09:04,482 --> 00:09:06,544 Literally, this is the before. 117 00:09:06,545 --> 00:09:15,391 And when the crash finally came in nineteen twenty nine, then the whole illusion, the mirage lit up in flames. 118 00:09:15,432 --> 00:09:17,934 And do you know what Mellon's advice was? 119 00:09:17,934 --> 00:09:26,060 He said, and this is documented, he said, liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers. 120 00:09:26,061 --> 00:09:27,822 Those are his words. 121 00:09:27,823 --> 00:09:30,266 Purge the rottenness out of the system. 122 00:09:30,266 --> 00:09:33,950 People will work harder, live a more moral life. 123 00:09:33,951 --> 00:09:37,062 Uh l rewind that if you need to. 124 00:09:37,123 --> 00:09:47,188 But the the richest man in the room was watching regular people lose everything, and his prescription is that they needed it. 125 00:09:47,189 --> 00:09:51,432 That was the the somehow the the cure was suffering. 126 00:09:51,432 --> 00:09:53,872 That was the medicine for this disease. 127 00:09:53,993 --> 00:09:57,274 And that it would somehow make them more moral. 128 00:09:57,275 --> 00:09:59,286 That's not economic policy. 129 00:09:59,287 --> 00:10:02,489 Sounds more like theology, and I know a thing or two about that. 130 00:10:02,550 --> 00:10:04,651 And it's it's the oldest one we've got. 131 00:10:04,651 --> 00:10:13,028 The idea that when people up top win, that's the market being being intelligent, being wise, being smart. 132 00:10:13,028 --> 00:10:19,843 And then when the people down below lose, well, that's just the market teaching them a lesson. 133 00:10:19,844 --> 00:10:22,506 And Hoover kept saying it right up until the end of this. 134 00:10:22,506 --> 00:10:24,027 Prosperity's just around the corner. 135 00:10:24,027 --> 00:10:28,040 He said it so many times that it actually became a joke. 136 00:10:28,228 --> 00:10:32,100 People put it on signs in the the Hoover V Hoovervilles. 137 00:10:32,100 --> 00:10:37,122 The they were shanty towns, if you if you haven't heard the Hooverville or don't remember it from your American history class. 138 00:10:37,122 --> 00:10:43,364 They were shanty towns full of men his corner prosperity forgot. 139 00:10:43,364 --> 00:10:49,517 His his prosperity gospel was that prosperity is just around the corner and that corner never came. 140 00:10:49,517 --> 00:10:55,009 Because the people who could have turned it, it decided that the herding was good for you. 141 00:10:55,010 --> 00:11:01,185 And here's the through line, and you should hold on to this because we're about to watch it happen again in real time. 142 00:11:01,185 --> 00:11:11,744 You can run an economy that looks amazing, especially spectacular from the top, but is quietly dying at the bottom for years and decades. 143 00:11:11,985 --> 00:11:12,505 Years. 144 00:11:12,505 --> 00:11:21,493 Like the and the men at the top, they're they're never gonna see this because they have arranged their entire life with a beautiful golden parachute. 145 00:11:21,753 --> 00:11:27,838 So that they never have to, and when it breaks, they will tell you it broke because you weren't tough enough. 146 00:11:27,839 --> 00:11:30,201 That's the machine in today's episode. 147 00:11:30,202 --> 00:11:36,798 So let's let's fast forward to the twenty twenty six model, almost a hundred years later. 148 00:11:36,799 --> 00:11:37,771 Okay, the numbers. 149 00:11:37,771 --> 00:11:45,740 And let's do this carefully because this is kind of unfortunately the boring part, the numbers are where the propaganda lives. 150 00:11:45,862 --> 00:11:50,167 And if you only look at the top line, it looks survivable. 151 00:11:50,188 --> 00:11:54,012 Inflation at the end of twenty twenty five was around two point seven percent. 152 00:11:54,013 --> 00:12:01,805 Which is actually a hair lower than the two point nine it was when Biden walked out the door. 153 00:12:02,186 --> 00:12:05,586 Unemployment in January was four point three. 154 00:12:05,587 --> 00:12:07,387 It was four point one before. 155 00:12:07,387 --> 00:12:12,349 So the administration goes on television and says, look, stable, steady, we fixed it. 156 00:12:12,350 --> 00:12:14,470 And here's the thing that they don't say. 157 00:12:14,531 --> 00:12:16,011 Stable at what? 158 00:12:16,012 --> 00:12:20,675 And we're look at the research of a economist named Gerald Epstein. 159 00:12:20,675 --> 00:12:28,358 Not not the Epstein you're thinking of, a completely different Epstein, one of the the serious macro economists. 160 00:12:28,599 --> 00:12:31,400 And he he said some things that that kind of stuck with me. 161 00:12:31,400 --> 00:12:37,083 He said that this economy is mostly a continuation. 162 00:12:37,084 --> 00:12:41,378 Of the last economy, but with a big tilt to the top. 163 00:12:41,379 --> 00:12:43,661 A tilt to the top. 164 00:12:43,661 --> 00:12:44,902 That's the phrase. 165 00:12:44,902 --> 00:12:55,440 The leverages hold like they hold very, very steady while underneath them the money slides uphill and the costs slide down onto you. 166 00:12:55,441 --> 00:12:59,228 Because the average doesn't feel the tariffs. 167 00:12:59,228 --> 00:13:00,469 You do. 168 00:13:00,470 --> 00:13:05,098 Peter Navarro is back running the tariff religion and tariffs are just a tax. 169 00:13:05,098 --> 00:13:06,860 They've always been a tax, right? 170 00:13:06,861 --> 00:13:13,706 It's a tax you pay at the the the cash register that doesn't show up with a word the word tax on it. 171 00:13:13,706 --> 00:13:23,392 Howard Lutnick, uh you might have seen him looking like a giant douchebag over at the Department of Commerce, defending it like it's somehow like genius and that that 172 00:13:23,392 --> 00:13:28,235 manufacturing number I gave you at the top, the the 83,000 jobs gone. 173 00:13:28,256 --> 00:13:31,918 That's not despite the tariffs, that is the tariffs. 174 00:13:31,998 --> 00:13:34,850 You tax the steel a factory buys and 175 00:13:34,850 --> 00:13:37,321 And the factory just makes less stuff. 176 00:13:37,641 --> 00:13:42,143 And the factory, because they're making less stuff, they need less people. 177 00:13:42,143 --> 00:13:43,424 That's not that complicated. 178 00:13:43,424 --> 00:13:45,024 That was predictable. 179 00:13:45,245 --> 00:13:46,825 It was predicted, right? 180 00:13:46,825 --> 00:13:48,186 And then the debt. 181 00:13:48,386 --> 00:13:50,577 This is this is this this should scare you. 182 00:13:50,577 --> 00:13:54,689 And and it's the one that nobody really, you know, puts on their campaign bylines. 183 00:13:54,689 --> 00:14:00,231 The Congressional Budget Office, supposed to be nonpartisan, they do the math. 184 00:14:00,673 --> 00:14:10,986 The annual deficit is running around one point nine trillion dollars right now, and their projection has it climbing three point one trillion by twenty thirty six. 185 00:14:10,987 --> 00:14:19,850 Federal debt held by the public going from about one hundred and one percent of the whole economy up toward one hundred and twenty percent. 186 00:14:19,850 --> 00:14:29,272 Our debt is currently greater than our whole economy by one percent, and it's gonna go up by nineteen more percent. 187 00:14:29,273 --> 00:14:33,025 You want to know the last time when it was even close to that high? 188 00:14:33,266 --> 00:14:34,587 1946. 189 00:14:34,587 --> 00:14:39,910 The year after we finished fighting the entire Second World War. 190 00:14:39,911 --> 00:14:45,234 We are running up World War debt levels, and there is no world war. 191 00:14:45,494 --> 00:14:46,755 Where did it go? 192 00:14:47,356 --> 00:14:48,136 Up. 193 00:14:48,156 --> 00:14:49,277 It went up. 194 00:14:49,277 --> 00:14:55,161 I mean, that's probably not surprising if you're listening to this podcast, but tax cuts tilted to the top. 195 00:14:55,161 --> 00:14:57,172 Same as Mellon, same playbook. 196 00:14:57,172 --> 00:15:00,243 A hundred years later, same exact move. 197 00:15:00,244 --> 00:15:02,064 So who decides this, right? 198 00:15:02,064 --> 00:15:06,786 That's the question Will usually makes me answer, so I'll answer it for him. 199 00:15:06,786 --> 00:15:07,656 It's not a mystery. 200 00:15:07,656 --> 00:15:09,566 It's it's Navarro on trade. 201 00:15:09,566 --> 00:15:11,707 It's Lutnick at commerce selling it. 202 00:15:11,707 --> 00:15:16,128 It's the tax writers who make sure the cuts landed up top. 203 00:15:16,588 --> 00:15:25,756 It's a health secretary Kennedy Junior gutting the infrastructure that keeps. 204 00:15:25,756 --> 00:15:29,888 Ordinary people from getting wiped out by one bad diagnosis. 205 00:15:30,589 --> 00:15:39,595 Named people, real jobs, real signatures on real documents, and the tell, the real tell is the confidence numbers. 206 00:15:39,935 --> 00:15:49,121 Only about a quarter of Americans, twenty five percent believe they will ever improve their standard of living that they currently have. 207 00:15:50,222 --> 00:15:55,725 Lowest that survey's been since they started asking it in nineteen eighty seven. 208 00:15:56,029 --> 00:16:02,631 Nearly seventy percent of our country thinks the American dream is dead. 209 00:16:02,731 --> 00:16:03,691 Done. 210 00:16:04,030 --> 00:16:05,431 That's not a feeling, right? 211 00:16:05,431 --> 00:16:06,382 Like that's a measurement. 212 00:16:06,382 --> 00:16:07,772 We can know that. 213 00:16:07,772 --> 00:16:14,274 The people living in this economy have already filed their review, and it's not five stars. 214 00:16:14,275 --> 00:16:16,245 And it's the the guy in Toledo's review. 215 00:16:16,245 --> 00:16:22,717 He's still gonna hurt and he already knows it, and the number proves that he's right. 216 00:16:22,718 --> 00:16:23,918 Take a breath. 217 00:16:24,239 --> 00:16:25,879 I might need one too. 218 00:16:25,880 --> 00:16:34,503 And let me bring it back to the ground because trillion is a word that has really sort of stopped meaning anything. 219 00:16:34,504 --> 00:16:37,545 Like i i it's just a number, and like the number keeps going up. 220 00:16:37,545 --> 00:16:41,487 It's probably what a million dollars felt like in nineteen twenty nine. 221 00:16:41,488 --> 00:16:44,440 Because we now have a a trillionaire, one trillion. 222 00:16:44,440 --> 00:16:49,162 Uh one point nine or something like that, but uh anyway. 223 00:16:49,163 --> 00:16:55,557 Think about what a tilt to the top actually is when it lands on a kitchen table. 224 00:16:55,558 --> 00:17:06,006 It's a retired couple, both worked their whole lives, who did everything the country told them to, saved, owned the house, and now the property tax and the insurance and the 225 00:17:06,006 --> 00:17:11,349 grocery bill have quietly eaten the buffer they spent forty years building. 226 00:17:11,770 --> 00:17:16,923 And the tariff on everything imported means the fixed income. 227 00:17:17,227 --> 00:17:19,717 Doesn't stretch to the end of the month anymore. 228 00:17:19,718 --> 00:17:21,458 They're not poor on paper. 229 00:17:21,458 --> 00:17:22,649 They're fine, right? 230 00:17:22,649 --> 00:17:27,880 They're they're inside this beautiful burgeoning economy. 231 00:17:28,300 --> 00:17:32,261 And they're rationing like normal things. 232 00:17:32,262 --> 00:17:35,723 Like toilet paper over prescription medications. 233 00:17:35,723 --> 00:17:40,094 It's it's a woman who runs a small boutique shop. 234 00:17:40,094 --> 00:17:44,165 She buys her inventory from overseas because it's the only place that they make. 235 00:17:44,165 --> 00:17:52,891 Things anymore and she watched her costs jump the day that tariff hit, and now she looks like the bad guy because she has to raise prices. 236 00:17:52,891 --> 00:18:00,736 Her customers are pissed off at her, not at the people who wrote the policy, but that's kind of the design behind it. 237 00:18:00,836 --> 00:18:05,179 The anger gets pushed downhill the same as that cost. 238 00:18:05,180 --> 00:18:12,192 You get mad at the shop owner, you get mad at the at the Toledo plant for cutting the shift, but you never. 239 00:18:12,192 --> 00:18:16,316 Get to be mad at the spreadsheet because you never get to see the spreadsheet. 240 00:18:16,317 --> 00:18:18,639 And it's the guy from the top of the show. 241 00:18:18,640 --> 00:18:19,922 Let me get back to him. 242 00:18:19,922 --> 00:18:22,164 He voted for it twice. 243 00:18:22,165 --> 00:18:23,997 He had the big red hat. 244 00:18:23,998 --> 00:18:26,349 And I don't want to do the easy thing here, right? 245 00:18:26,349 --> 00:18:27,890 The thing where I just dunk on him. 246 00:18:27,890 --> 00:18:32,011 Ha ha, you did this to yourself, because that's kind of melon talking. 247 00:18:32,011 --> 00:18:33,912 That's liquidate the farmer. 248 00:18:33,912 --> 00:18:39,054 That's you needed the suffering to become moral, and I'm just not going to do it. 249 00:18:39,055 --> 00:18:42,437 Here's what I think is actually true about that guy. 250 00:18:42,437 --> 00:18:44,377 I don't think he was stupid. 251 00:18:44,378 --> 00:18:50,560 I think he was lied to by professional con artists because somebody looked him in the eye and 252 00:18:50,560 --> 00:18:53,141 promised him the factory was coming home. 253 00:18:53,142 --> 00:18:55,043 The good job was coming back. 254 00:18:55,043 --> 00:19:01,927 Prosperity was just around the corner, and he wanted it so bad that he handed them everything. 255 00:19:01,928 --> 00:19:12,334 And now that the corner has yet to come again, the shift is gone, the people who lied to him are already writing books about how it really wasn't their fault. 256 00:19:12,355 --> 00:19:13,495 He got robbed. 257 00:19:13,495 --> 00:19:19,130 He got robbed by the exact same men who are doing it to you now and are gonna walk away 258 00:19:19,130 --> 00:19:22,473 calling it a market correction, a bull run. 259 00:19:22,474 --> 00:19:26,159 Or bear run, I don't I don't know marketing terms. 260 00:19:26,159 --> 00:19:31,054 And the fact that he cheered it while it happened does not make it less of a robbery. 261 00:19:31,054 --> 00:19:33,056 It just makes it kind of sadder. 262 00:19:33,057 --> 00:19:42,650 So to pull this thread all the way through, because that's the part that actually matters more than any single number, nineteen twenty eight, the final triumph over poverty. 263 00:19:42,650 --> 00:19:45,748 Twenty twenty six, stable and ready, we fixed it. 264 00:19:45,748 --> 00:19:47,187 It's the same sentence. 265 00:19:47,187 --> 00:19:49,611 It's just dressed up a little differently. 266 00:19:49,612 --> 00:19:54,913 And both of them are true from exactly one seat in the house the seat at the very top. 267 00:19:55,293 --> 00:19:57,054 The seat where the money pooled. 268 00:19:57,054 --> 00:20:02,229 And let me tell you, Donald Trump's family has profited about nineteen billion dollars. 269 00:20:02,229 --> 00:20:07,401 Babilon dollars since Donald Trump has taken office the second time. 270 00:20:07,402 --> 00:20:12,034 The pattern is not that these men are stupid or that they're uniquely evil. 271 00:20:12,034 --> 00:20:17,516 I mean, and don't get me wrong, there are uniquely evil people that voted for this man. 272 00:20:17,796 --> 00:20:23,489 We saw Patriot Front march on Washington just a couple of days ago. 273 00:20:23,489 --> 00:20:28,501 The pattern is that we keep building economies with a one way valve in them. 274 00:20:28,501 --> 00:20:32,562 Prosperity flows up easily and never comes back down. 275 00:20:32,562 --> 00:20:34,603 I think they call it a check valve. 276 00:20:34,604 --> 00:20:44,328 And when the thing finally strains, when it cracks, the crack always opens directly over the heads of the people who had the least to do with actually causing it. 277 00:20:44,489 --> 00:20:48,490 Mellon knew that, and he said it out loud liquidate labor. 278 00:20:48,791 --> 00:20:51,132 He wasn't being cruel for fun. 279 00:20:51,132 --> 00:20:55,273 He was describing his inbuilt safety feature. 280 00:20:55,394 --> 00:20:58,615 The machine protects the top by sacrificing the bottom. 281 00:20:58,615 --> 00:20:59,896 That's not a bug. 282 00:20:59,896 --> 00:21:01,106 That's the point. 283 00:21:01,107 --> 00:21:03,899 So here's what you should take out of this today. 284 00:21:03,899 --> 00:21:15,485 And the thing uh kind of underneath the the clickbait title, and I don't know if the title's that clickbait, it's pretty accurate, but the regime falling apart is not the good 285 00:21:15,485 --> 00:21:16,365 news. 286 00:21:16,366 --> 00:21:17,367 Hear me. 287 00:21:17,528 --> 00:21:19,549 It's not bad news either. 288 00:21:19,549 --> 00:21:20,189 Get out. 289 00:21:20,189 --> 00:21:21,590 Get them all out. 290 00:21:21,590 --> 00:21:28,992 As far as I'm concerned, they should all go to trial for treason and plead their case before. 291 00:21:28,992 --> 00:21:31,519 A judge, but maybe not the Supreme Court judges. 292 00:21:31,520 --> 00:21:37,808 But the falling apart is this dangerous, incredibly unsafe window. 293 00:21:37,809 --> 00:21:47,543 Because a collapsing project spends its last bit of effort, its last strength doing one thing above everything. 294 00:21:47,543 --> 00:21:51,564 It's making sure the bill lands on you and not them. 295 00:21:51,565 --> 00:21:54,847 The looting is the heaviest on the way out the door. 296 00:21:54,847 --> 00:22:03,880 Anything that's not nailed down they're grabbing and taking with them, including those gaudy home depot gold decorations in the Oval Office. 297 00:22:03,881 --> 00:22:05,528 It's always been this way. 298 00:22:05,528 --> 00:22:09,581 The last act of a rigged system is arranging who takes the fall. 299 00:22:09,582 --> 00:22:11,332 That guy in Toledo, he's still gonna hurt. 300 00:22:11,332 --> 00:22:13,108 You're still gonna hurt. 301 00:22:13,109 --> 00:22:26,732 But after the hat comes off, after that man on television is gone, after the whole rotten thing is just a chapter in a book, the plant doesn't unclose. 302 00:22:26,733 --> 00:22:31,837 The eighty three thousand jobs don't just unvanish. 303 00:22:31,838 --> 00:22:37,272 The debt that they ran up in your name comes due in your kid's paycheck. 304 00:22:37,273 --> 00:22:38,585 For the next thirty years. 305 00:22:38,585 --> 00:22:42,231 That's the part that outlives the regime. 306 00:22:42,231 --> 00:22:49,831 That's the part where they're counting on you to forget it the second that it's over because well we've we've moved on. 307 00:22:49,833 --> 00:22:53,252 And they're counting on you to forget the second that it's over. 308 00:22:53,253 --> 00:22:54,837 Don't forget that part, right? 309 00:22:54,837 --> 00:22:59,499 That's that's kind of the whole ask behind behind this episode today. 310 00:22:59,500 --> 00:23:03,434 Don't let the ending clean that ledger. 311 00:23:03,835 --> 00:23:10,423 Alright, so usually at the close we give you kind of something to think about, something to to ponder over. 312 00:23:10,423 --> 00:23:16,289 Um so so here's what I want you to to start noticing and and paying attention to. 313 00:23:16,290 --> 00:23:24,062 Closer than you're when you're watching, you know, mm Real Housewives or whatever you guys watch when you're when you're not uh working. 314 00:23:24,063 --> 00:23:27,554 Watch where the losses get assigned on the way out. 315 00:23:27,894 --> 00:23:29,895 That's the that's kind of the game now. 316 00:23:29,895 --> 00:23:33,777 I mean it don't make it a drinking game because you don't have the liver for it. 317 00:23:33,777 --> 00:23:42,520 When this thing finishes cracking, there's gonna be a very organized, very well funded effort to write the story as a natural disaster. 318 00:23:42,580 --> 00:23:44,721 A storm nobody could have seen. 319 00:23:44,721 --> 00:23:47,282 Watch for the words market correction. 320 00:23:47,282 --> 00:23:49,722 Watch for structural headwinds. 321 00:23:49,722 --> 00:23:54,224 Watch for it wasn't the policy, it was the timing. 322 00:23:54,676 --> 00:24:01,079 Every one of these phrases is a man in an expensive coat handing you his bill. 323 00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:13,707 And the single most absurd thing in this whole story, the thing that tells you everything, is that we are carrying debt at levels this country last saw in nineteen forty six. 324 00:24:14,107 --> 00:24:16,088 After a world war. 325 00:24:16,089 --> 00:24:17,729 We fought no war. 326 00:24:17,870 --> 00:24:20,351 Well, he said it wasn't a war. 327 00:24:20,352 --> 00:24:21,692 Iran, that is. 328 00:24:21,693 --> 00:24:23,293 And it's still not done. 329 00:24:23,294 --> 00:24:25,435 But there is no rubble. 330 00:24:25,436 --> 00:24:26,937 Nobody stormed a beach. 331 00:24:26,937 --> 00:24:28,578 This isn't Normandy. 332 00:24:28,579 --> 00:24:37,406 We handed a a a top tax cut to the richest people in our entire nation. 333 00:24:37,407 --> 00:24:38,858 That's the punchline, right? 334 00:24:38,858 --> 00:24:42,210 That's the whole shitty story in one number. 335 00:24:42,210 --> 00:24:46,313 So so three things, and none of them are call your senator. 336 00:24:46,314 --> 00:24:48,556 I'm not gonna tell you to call your senator anymore. 337 00:24:48,556 --> 00:24:54,249 I I don't know about you, but my senator's office knows me by name, and all I ever get is the form letters. 338 00:24:54,249 --> 00:25:01,693 So don't I mean I guess you could you could vote you could donate to a nonprofit about it. 339 00:25:01,693 --> 00:25:04,095 Maybe maybe that'll help you feel better. 340 00:25:04,095 --> 00:25:10,099 But I I don't know many people who have the money to donate to anything right now except the causes most close to them. 341 00:25:11,500 --> 00:25:14,012 One, learn to read a tariff on a receipt. 342 00:25:14,012 --> 00:25:15,523 Like really do it. 343 00:25:15,523 --> 00:25:21,728 Pick one thing you buy every week and track its price to put a name on the reason that it moved. 344 00:25:21,728 --> 00:25:27,612 And when you see the tax they hid, stop being mad at the shop owner. 345 00:25:27,712 --> 00:25:29,313 That's the real radicalization. 346 00:25:29,313 --> 00:25:30,450 No, don't get me wrong. 347 00:25:30,450 --> 00:25:31,621 You should be mad at the big guys. 348 00:25:31,621 --> 00:25:39,024 You should be mad at Walmart, which apparently I don't know, Trump has done some weird under the ground under the table handshake deal with Walmart to lower the price of ground 349 00:25:39,024 --> 00:25:39,314 beef. 350 00:25:39,314 --> 00:25:45,687 So apparently you won't be eating steak, you won't be eating fish, you won't be eating, you know, pork fingers or or w w chicken. 351 00:25:45,687 --> 00:25:49,498 You're gonna be eating ground beef because that's what you deserve, I guess. 352 00:25:49,498 --> 00:25:52,319 But it is they're lowering the price of that. 353 00:25:52,319 --> 00:25:54,010 So don't you don't have to feel sorry for Walmart. 354 00:25:54,010 --> 00:25:59,012 Walmart's probably one of the worst corporations in the history of humanity. 355 00:25:59,164 --> 00:26:01,955 Despite what the Waltons have done for the world. 356 00:26:01,956 --> 00:26:03,719 But get radical about it. 357 00:26:03,719 --> 00:26:04,999 It's boring. 358 00:26:05,301 --> 00:26:07,003 It's a spreadsheet on your fridge. 359 00:26:07,003 --> 00:26:07,864 I'm sorry. 360 00:26:07,864 --> 00:26:10,047 But that's that's just notice. 361 00:26:10,047 --> 00:26:12,370 Notice how much things cost for yourself. 362 00:26:12,370 --> 00:26:19,820 There is a CPI that keeps track of this, but now it's run by a department that has loyalty to one person and it's not you. 363 00:26:19,821 --> 00:26:28,756 Two I I'm I'm kinda hesitant to say this because I I've gone no contact with at least one of my parents over this very thing. 364 00:26:28,757 --> 00:26:32,219 But maybe find a Toledo guy in your life. 365 00:26:32,219 --> 00:26:38,202 Maybe not somebody who has the direct ability to hurt you like a parent or a sibling that you've you've not talked to. 366 00:26:38,202 --> 00:26:42,505 But think about a person in your life who wore the hat, right? 367 00:26:42,505 --> 00:26:46,527 And don't gloat, don't don't try to convert that person. 368 00:26:46,587 --> 00:26:48,848 Just be the person who was right. 369 00:26:49,242 --> 00:26:51,833 And didn't pay them back for being wrong. 370 00:26:52,133 --> 00:27:04,297 Because the men who lied to him are counting on you to treat him like garbage, which is gonna push him back right into their arms for the next election out of pure spite. 371 00:27:04,417 --> 00:27:05,337 Deny them that. 372 00:27:05,337 --> 00:27:08,098 That's tactical, not sweet. 373 00:27:08,099 --> 00:27:14,340 As much as that might hurt, I I mean it and it gosh, the even thinking about it, I'm just like, I don't know. 374 00:27:14,500 --> 00:27:17,511 Cause I think about these people and and they're hard to deal with. 375 00:27:17,544 --> 00:27:19,805 But there are people who've been quiet about their support. 376 00:27:19,805 --> 00:27:22,236 They haven't said anything, but now they're starting to speak up. 377 00:27:22,236 --> 00:27:27,888 Uh I am a member of the subreddit uh Leopards Eating Faces. 378 00:27:27,948 --> 00:27:32,159 And I see it all the time and sure I get a good joke at it, but these are real people too. 379 00:27:32,159 --> 00:27:35,711 And the truth is I want national health care for them too. 380 00:27:35,751 --> 00:27:39,262 I want reasonable food costs for them too. 381 00:27:39,262 --> 00:27:47,217 I want their access to fresh foods and fruits and vegetables and healthcare and and reasonable jobs and and income. 382 00:27:47,217 --> 00:27:47,767 that matters. 383 00:27:47,767 --> 00:27:50,110 But the people that are doing that are unions. 384 00:27:50,110 --> 00:27:51,010 I hate to mention it. 385 00:27:51,010 --> 00:27:57,796 I hate to say it again, but but labor, organized labor is what produces those things. 386 00:27:57,796 --> 00:28:01,360 Um so, you know, be nice. 387 00:28:01,360 --> 00:28:03,772 Um do your best not to gloat. 388 00:28:03,772 --> 00:28:05,664 It's difficult sometimes. 389 00:28:05,664 --> 00:28:09,757 Also, this week I want you to write down uh like w with a pen. 390 00:28:09,757 --> 00:28:14,771 Uh there's a little bump on your your finger, your middle finger that everybody 391 00:28:14,922 --> 00:28:20,565 In the millennial gen millennial and before generation has where we we've written with pens for our whole lives. 392 00:28:20,565 --> 00:28:24,026 Um bone spur or something, but write down their names. 393 00:28:24,267 --> 00:28:33,731 Vaught, Navarro, Lutnik, the tax writers, the policy disruptors before the memoirs come out and and clean it all up, right? 394 00:28:33,732 --> 00:28:38,634 Memory is the one thing that they can't tariff, and they are coming for that too. 395 00:28:38,794 --> 00:28:41,035 This regime is failing. 396 00:28:41,175 --> 00:28:42,116 Good. 397 00:28:42,117 --> 00:28:43,822 But it's still gonna hurt a lot of people. 398 00:28:43,822 --> 00:28:49,634 It's gonna hurt a lot of people like you, and it's gonna hurt a lot of people like me, and it's gonna hurt a whole lot of people that aren't like you and me. 399 00:28:49,635 --> 00:28:53,157 And they hope you'll just let them walk away from it. 400 00:28:53,157 --> 00:28:54,727 And let's not do that. 401 00:28:55,147 --> 00:28:55,828 I'm Joshua. 402 00:28:55,828 --> 00:28:57,188 This has been the overlap. 403 00:28:57,188 --> 00:29:03,692 Um, yeah, you can find us at FOF.foundation, check us out on Apple Podcasts. 404 00:29:03,983 --> 00:29:09,575 we're also available on Spotify, or you can go to our website and find your platform of choice there. 405 00:29:09,575 --> 00:29:14,557 We're also on Blue Sky and Mastodon and a couple other of other things, so you can you can check us out there as well. 406 00:29:14,557 --> 00:29:16,608 Um 407 00:29:16,672 --> 00:29:18,893 Yeah, hopefully we'll be back with us sometime soon. 408 00:29:18,893 --> 00:29:22,666 Take care of that guy in Toledo, even if he doesn't deserve it yet. 409 00:29:22,666 --> 00:29:25,988 Take care of your friends and and your family as well, comrades. 410 00:29:26,208 --> 00:29:27,389 Signing off. 411 00:29:27,869 --> 00:29:29,310 Bye.