Greed is Destroying the World

0:00 I feel like for the past 3 years,

0:01 I've heard over and over again that a recession is about to hit.

0:04 The stock market is going to crash.

0:05 The housing prices are going to come back down to earth any day now.

0:08 And yet, somehow all of these things keep not happening.

0:11 And for most people, it doesn't make sense.

0:13 What do you mean the economy is good?

0:15 My dentist just tried to get me to sign up for a credit card.

0:18 Since the pandemic, the cost of living has skyrocketed.

0:21 Inflation is out of control.

0:22 Groceries have never been more expensive.

0:24 Layoffs are happening at an alarming rate.

0:26 At this point, a college degree might be more likely to get

0:29 you into crippling debt than it is to help you find a job.

0:32 And even if you have savings, you're more than likely one stroke of bad

0:35 luck away from losing it all to medical bills.

0:37 And yet, some people will look you right in the eyes and tell you,

0:41 "I don't know what you're talking about." The numbers are green.

0:45 Is this guy stupid?

0:47 The problem is each of these people are kind of correct in their own way.

0:51 This is the best the economy has ever been.

0:54 If you already have money, if you bought a house 5 years ago,

0:57 there's a chance it's already doubled in value.

0:59 If you invested in the S&P 500 in 2021, you could be up as much as 80%.

1:04 And that's not like saying, you know,

1:05 you'd be rich if you just bought Bitcoin in 1973.

1:07 That's just the regular stock market.

1:09 You didn't need to have some genius level of foresight to be able to do that.

1:14 You just needed to already have a bunch of cash sitting around.

1:16 And obviously, for the overwhelming majority of people, that is not the case.

1:20 If you're living paycheck to paycheck,

1:21 you're not thinking about the stock market.

1:23 If you're in your 20s,

1:25 you haven't even been working long enough to save any money to invest.

1:28 You don't get to benefit from rising home equity if you don't own a house.

1:32 The only thing this graph represents to you

1:34 is how much further away that dream is getting.

1:37 Right now, the average age of home buyers is 59 years old.

1:41 What a depressing statistic.

1:43 This is the problem with an economy that disproportionately benefits

1:47 asset holders instead of the people still trying to earn them.

1:51 Wealth grows exponentially, but wages aren't even outpacing inflation.

1:54 Which means if your salary hasn't been going up every year,

1:57 you're effectively making less money.

1:59 Meanwhile, the fastest way to make a million

2:01 dollars is to just already have 10 million.

2:03 Leave it in an investment account for a year and congratulations,

2:06 you now have $11 million.

2:08 At a larger scale, this is why it feels like there's

2:12 two different economies happening and they're

2:14 both moving in opposite directions.

2:15 50% of the stock market is owned by the top

2:19 1% and only 1% is owned by the bottom 50%.

2:22 Don't let somebody tell you that these numbers

2:25 going up should discredit your own lived experience.

2:28 Don't let somebody who's benefited from untaxed

2:31 inheritance or years of compound interest granting

2:34 them passive income tell you that your problem

2:37 is you're just not working hard enough.

2:39 No, the real answer is sorry, you should have been born sooner.

2:43 Have you thought about that?

2:44 Maybe instead of wasting all that time farting around kindergarten class,

2:47 you should have been investing in real estate.

2:50 It's not my fault you're lazy.

2:52 People are getting squeezed in every direction while also

2:55 being gaslit into thinking that it's somehow our fault.

2:58 There's CEOs in earnings calls bragging about how they get

3:01 to make customers pay for inflation so they don't have to.

3:04 The economy is so bad right now,

3:06 I'm about to segue into an extremely illtimed brand deal in a video about greed.

3:10 You think I like looking like a hypocrite?

3:12 Of course not.

3:13 But my avocado toast isn't going to pay for itself.

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4:36 The economy sucks ass for most people right now.

4:38 The only reason we're not technically in a recession

4:41 is because the GDP is still going up,

4:43 but the only reason the GDP is still going up is because of the AI industry.

4:48 Uh, but the only reason that even looks as good as it does

4:52 is because a handful of companies are just like passing money back and forth.

4:55 But there's no recession.

4:57 You're hallucinating because the AI industry is

5:00 now single-handedly propping up the entire global economy.

5:03 There's really only two paths forward.

5:05 Worst case scenario,

5:06 turns out it is all[ __] The bubble pops in spectacular fashion.

5:09 Trillions of dollars of investments cannot get

5:11 paid out and everything goes up in flames.

5:14 Or best case scenario, a few billionaires get even richer.

5:16 Wait, is that what we're hoping for?

5:18 All right, you're going to have to bear

5:20 with me while I go on another AI rant here.

5:22 I know I do this like every 6 months, but it's not going away.

5:25 It doesn't count as beating a dead horse if the horse is still alive.

5:29 We got to kill that horse first.

5:31 People largely do not like AI and are worried about the future it imposes.

5:34 It's currently being used to make a bunch

5:37 of promises that almost no one asked for.

5:39 The main appeal of it comes from corporations who see advancements

5:42 in AI as a way to further reduce their dependence on human labor.

5:45 The only thing cheaper than outsourcing

5:47 jobs is just eliminating them altogether.

5:49 The wet dream that soils the sheets of every CEO is a company that's somehow run

5:54 entirely on its own and they can just

5:56 sit back and collect all the profits for themselves.

5:58 No more dealing with pesky labor laws

6:01 or health insurance or can I have Saturday off?

6:05 My family died.

6:06 No.

6:06 Shut up.

6:07 That's the eventual goal and why they're all pouring billions of dollars

6:12 into Nvidia chips and data centers and cool shirts for Mark Zuckerberg.

6:16 And in the meantime, we're stuck with ChatgPT,

6:19 a humanized Google search designed to affirm whatever belief you share with it,

6:24 even if it's incredibly dangerous.

6:25 more generative video apps that are already being used

6:28 to trick people into thinking something happened that didn't actually happen.

6:32 Awesome technology.

6:33 I'm so glad this exists.

6:34 And I think the best thing we can do to fight

6:36 back against AI is to simply not engage with it.

6:39 The problem is even if you don't use these tools,

6:42 if you live in certain parts of the country, you might be paying for them.

6:45 There's been a lot of really good investigative journalism done on all

6:48 these new data centers that are popping up around the country.

6:51 Who's funding them and who's getting screwed over in the process?

6:54 For example, some residents in New Jersey who noticed that their power bill

6:57 kept going up even though they were actually using less electricity than usual.

7:01 Well, it turns out it's due to an overall supply cost.

7:04 Basically, when the total amount of electricity usage in an area goes up,

7:08 power companies tend to pass those higher costs onto their customers.

7:10 And for the past several years,

7:12 electricity usage has been skyrocketing with over half

7:15 of that increase coming solely from data centers.

7:18 Your utility bill is going up because Elon

7:21 Musk wants to pretend to have a girlfriend.

7:24 You see, AI doesn't just exist in some theoretical space.

7:27 It has to be trained on trillions of gigabytes of data.

7:31 And that data has to be stored in a physical location.

7:34 To power this, it requires an absurd amount of electricity,

7:37 which generates an absurd amount of heat,

7:39 which then requires an absurd amount of water to cool off.

7:42 Most of these buildings use over a million gallons per day,

7:45 roughly the equivalent of 10,000 people.

7:47 This would be even more problematic if they were

7:49 being built in areas where water is extremely scarce.

7:51 So, we should be good as long as we don't build

7:54 a bunch of them in like the middle of the desert.

7:57 But to be fair, they are extremely efficient about it.

7:59 They don't just use the water, they also poison it.

8:03 Every part of this process is wasteful and destructive,

8:06 and this is only the beginning.

8:07 AI is still a relatively new phenomenon,

8:10 so we're only just starting to see the effects of this.

8:13 But the Department of Energy projects that the percentage of electricity used

8:16 by data centers could nearly triple in just the next 3 years.

8:20 And who gets to pay for it?

8:22 We do.

8:23 It's hard for me to accurately express how infuriating this is.

8:27 The giant buildings that power this stupid[ __] technology are

8:32 being subsidized by people who just happen to live near them.

8:37 Oh, but hold on.

8:38 Because they're technically contributing to the operating cost.

8:40 So, does that mean that they get to share in the eventual profits?

8:44 No, of course not.

8:45 They're more like um involuntary investors doing it for free.

8:48 Or really worse than free because a lot of them

8:51 are being kept awake at night by the deafening hum endlessly

8:55 emitting from the factory shoved into the backyard of their homes

8:58 that have now surely plummeted in value as a result.

9:00 But hey, at least they're doing all of this to make

9:04 a product that hopes to replace 80% of humanity.

9:07 It's not enough that these people already own everything they could ever want.

9:13 They could so easily afford to pay for these things

9:16 without even noticing that that money is gone.

9:19 But why would they do that when they

9:21 could simply have poor people pay for it instead?

9:24 Because nothing will ever be enough for them.

9:26 You know, when a rich person makes some

9:28 shady deal to screw over the working class,

9:30 people will joke that they just need that money to buy their fourth yacht.

9:33 And like, I don't even think it's that.

9:35 They could buy a thousand yachts and still not run out of money.

9:39 They don't want to spend their wealth.

9:41 They just want it to get bigger.

9:43 It's the same obsession with seeing number go

9:45 up that keeps me addicted to Old School Runescape,

9:48 except the only life that's ruining is my own.

9:50 What they have is a disease.

9:52 They have been scourged with the blight of insatiable greed,

9:56 cursed to an endless pursuit of wealth

9:58 that will never bring them true happiness.

10:00 I would almost feel bad for them if

10:02 they weren't actively destroying the world in the process.

10:05 One of the most frustrating things about this problem is that if you even try

10:10 to suggest that maybe these guys should just have a a little bit less money,

10:14 like you guys can still be rich, whatever.

10:16 Just turn it down a notch cuz you're

10:18 kind of making[ __] terrible for everybody else.

10:21 You're treated like you're crazy.

10:23 No, this is the American way.

10:25 If you don't like it, then leave.

10:27 And yet, these ideas aren't radical.

10:28 They're not even new.

10:30 Most people who advocate for a more progressive tax system are only

10:34 calling for a return to something that used to exist in this country.

10:38 We just forgot about it.

10:39 So, I think it's important to do a little history lesson here.

10:42 If you can believe it, there was a time where the working class

10:45 in this country actually had it really good.

10:47 And it was mostly because things got so bad during

10:49 the Great Depression that the government

10:51 was worried about the country collapsing.

10:53 Thousands of banks had closed.

10:54 Millions of people lost their entire life savings.

10:57 Unemployment peaked at 25%.

10:58 So in fear of a revolution happening, the government was like, "All right, fine.

11:03 We'll give you livable wages.

11:05 Just please put that musket down.

11:07 I don't like the way you're looking at me." So the New Deal was born.

11:10 And with it came social security, better labor standards,

11:13 the right to unionize, a national minimum wage, an 8-hour workday.

11:17 And over the next two to three decades,

11:19 America became the most prosperous country on Earth.

11:22 Productivity skyrocketed, and wages rose with them.

11:25 Extra profits weren't just redistributed to employees,

11:28 but their employers were proud to do it.

11:30 They would brag about how lucrative it was to work for them.

11:33 Look, 37% of profits went to our employees

11:36 last year because this is a team effort, and when we win, they win.

11:40 In 1943, Johnson and Johnson puts out this mission statement that's like,

11:43 here's our list of priorities in order.

11:45 Customers, number one, we got to make good products.

11:47 Employees number two,

11:48 everyone who works here needs to feel valued and respected.

11:51 Our community, number three, we all want to live in a better world.

11:54 And as a company of our size,

11:56 we feel like it's our responsibility to contribute to that however we can.

12:00 And finally, all the way at the bottom,

12:02 our shareholders can just have whatever's left.

12:03 Of course, we need to make a profit to survive and grow,

12:06 but that should just come naturally

12:08 as a byproduct of focusing on these three tenants.

12:12 Compared to modern corporate standards,

12:14 this is all such a foreign concept that it

12:16 almost sounds like it's coming from a fictional universe.

12:19 But this actually happened.

12:20 This was just America 70 years ago.

12:22 Now, during this time,

12:24 what do you think the tax rate was on the wealthiest Americans?

12:27 For reference, in 2025,

12:28 the highest income tax bracket is supposed to be around 24%.

12:31 But because of how many ways there are to circumvent the rules,

12:35 it often ends up being as little as 3%.

12:37 For someone like Elon Musk, who doesn't take a salary from Tesla and instead

12:41 just owns a large percentage of its stock,

12:44 as long as he doesn't sell any of that stock,

12:46 then technically there's no income to tax him on.

12:49 Now, he can still leverage the value

12:51 of those stocks to make purchases, you know,

12:53 like how money works, but it's still not taxable because of um the rules.

12:57 This is how people like him and Jeff Bezos can be in terms of net worth,

13:01 two of the richest people on the planet and in some years pay 0 in taxes.

13:06 In the middle of the 20th century,

13:08 the tax rate on the ultra wealthy was not 3% or 20% or even 50%.

13:13 It was between 70 and 94%.

13:16 It honestly sounds crazy, but even a lot of the people being taxed

13:22 understood that it was necessary for society to continue

13:25 to exist and having a strong middle class was

13:28 a crucial investment into the future of the country.

13:30 But I don't know, man.

13:32 I just think it's kind of interesting that during

13:35 what's referred to as the golden age of capitalism,

13:38 the government did a bunch of socialism.

13:40 During the period of time that birthed the idea of the American dream,

13:44 the government was taxing the absolute[ __] out of the richest Americans

13:49 and using that money to provide jobs and welfare programs for everybody else.

13:54 A single inome household working a regular

13:56 ass job could afford to start a family,

13:59 buy a house, send their kids to college, and retire at a reasonable age.

14:03 No wonder people who grew up then gush about capitalism

14:07 the way they do because for them it was great.

14:10 But at this point, it is disingenuous to use that time period as the example

14:15 for why capitalism works because that version

14:17 of it stopped existing a long time ago.

14:20 The generation of people who started as beneficiaries of a more equitable system

14:25 changed the rules once the roles were reversed and they had the power.

14:29 So what the hell happened?

14:30 Everything was going great.

14:31 What changed?

14:31 Well, there were a lot of things obviously,

14:33 but one of the first big dominoes was the US's involvement in the Vietnam War,

14:37 which was expensive and deadly, but to be fair, um, also accomplished nothing.

14:42 And this had long-term ramifications.

14:43 America had been diverting so much

14:45 money away from manufacturing and towards defense

14:48 that it opened the door for other

14:50 growing industrialized countries to surpass them.

14:51 More and more products were becoming cheaper

14:54 to import than they were to produce.

14:55 This led to factories getting shut down, unemployment starting to creep back up.

14:59 A recession hits and we're now facing a pivotal

15:01 fork in the road in the late '7s.

15:03 Either we could go back to what worked in the past,

15:06 prioritize the working class, reinvest into our own infrastructure,

15:08 try to help lift people out of poverty

15:10 they've fallen into through no fault of their own.

15:15 [Music] Or or we say, "Fuck the government.

15:19 We don't owe you[ __] We're stupid.

15:22 Isn't that right?

15:23 I don't even know my own name." Exactly.

15:25 The deal is you pay taxes and we don't do anything.

15:28 And you like that, right?

15:29 They like that.

15:30 Sounds good to me.

15:31 The prevailing philosophy throughout the 80s became trickle down economics.

15:34 The logic being, oh man, these rich people are really handcuffed.

15:38 You know, I bet if we lower the corporate

15:41 tax rate from 70 all the way to eventually 28%,

15:45 then companies will use all that extra money to pay their employees more.

15:49 I mean, if there's one thing we know about rich

15:51 people is that they're always looking out for the little guy.

15:54 Um, now, for some reason, this hasn't worked out yet,

15:58 but it's only been 55 years, so the juryy's still out.

16:00 See, I would argue that part of the reason why companies in the 40s and 50s

16:04 were so generous with their extra profits was because the tax rate was so high.

16:08 I mean, think about it.

16:09 If you're faced with the decision between giving

16:10 a huge chunk of money to the government

16:12 or redistributing it back to the employees who

16:14 helped you earn it in the first place, you would be much more likely to do

16:18 the latter because it's an investment in your own company.

16:21 It's a mutually beneficial exchange.

16:22 Well-compensated workers are proven to be more loyal and more productive.

16:26 And those are two things that you want.

16:28 Now, there were other factors as well,

16:30 loosening a lot of anti- monopoly regulations,

16:32 the legalization of stock buybacks,

16:34 but this dramatically lower tax rate is a big reason why the8s serves

16:39 as the dividing line on just about every economic graph you could look at.

16:43 This was the beginning of a long and continuous transfer

16:46 of wealth from the working class to the top 1%.

16:49 And while it would be very easy to just

16:52 blame all of this on then President Reagan, that would only be mostly true.

16:56 Sure, this new approach opened the door for more exploitation and greed,

17:00 but you still needed a few scumbags willing to go

17:03 through that door for the evolution to be complete.

17:07 And nobody sprinted through it faster than one man,

17:10 the real life cartoon villain who designed the blueprint

17:13 that most modern CEOs are still following to this day.

17:17 His name was Jack Welch,

17:19 and he's often referred to as the man who broke capitalism.

17:23 During his tenure as CEO of General Electric,

17:26 he turned the once quintessential American company

17:29 that reshaped people's lives and supplied hundreds of thousands

17:33 of high-paying jobs all across the country

17:35 into a worthless carcass and a joke of a corporation.

17:39 All while he became one of the richest people on the planet.

17:42 In the century before Jack Welch took the reigns,

17:45 GE invented things like X-ray machines,

17:47 jet engines, TVs, radios, and just about any kitchen appliance you can think of.

17:53 In the 1980s, Jack invented laying people off.

17:56 That was his big idea.

17:57 What if we just fire a bunch of people

18:00 and then we don't have to spend as much money?

18:03 It seems so simple and obviously very common place today,

18:05 but before Jack, companies were not doing this.

18:08 It was almost seen as unamerican to fire somebody unless you absolutely had to.

18:13 But Jack didn't think like everybody else.

18:16 He was a pioneer.

18:17 He bravely instituted the rank and yank system where every year

18:21 the bottom 10% of employees would get laid off no matter what.

18:25 Not because they all deserve to be fired,

18:27 but just because they fell on the wrong side of a spreadsheet.

18:31 What's that?

18:31 You were 3 years away from retirement and now you no longer qualify for pension.

18:35 Okay, then die.

18:36 And to be clear, the layoffs were

18:38 also not because the company wasn't profitable.

18:41 It very much was, but it just wasn't profitable enough.

18:44 See, when you routinely shut down entire facilities,

18:47 you uproot thousands of lives, you create a toxic and selfish work

18:51 environment where loyalty is replaced with fear.

18:52 And if you're a company with the size and influence that GE had at the time,

18:57 you can almost single-handedly destroy any semblance

18:59 of a middle class across all of America.

19:01 But this number gets a little bit bigger.

19:04 So, it's kind of a fair trade.

19:07 GE was at the forefront

19:09 of this countrywide philosophical transition from an economy

19:12 that cared about making things and rewarding the labor it took

19:15 to do so to an economy that only cared about shareholder value

19:19 and would prioritize anything it could to make that number go up.

19:24 But the thing about the stock market is it's mostly just about perception.

19:28 As long as something seems to be growing in value,

19:32 then people will be more likely to invest in it,

19:35 which will in turn cause it to be more valuable, even if it shouldn't be.

19:39 A lot of what Jack did during his time as CEO did not make the company better,

19:44 but it did make it bigger.

19:45 And in the eyes of Wall Street, that was all that mattered.

19:48 I mean, come on.

19:49 A business that relies on something boring,

19:51 like selling products, can only grow so much.

19:54 But a company that's constantly acquiring other companies simply has no ceiling.

19:58 I mean, they could be worth infinity dollars when you think about it.

20:01 So that's what they did.

20:03 Over the next few decades, GE bought and sold hundreds of companies.

20:06 And Jack was lauded for his brilliance because from the outside,

20:09 everything seemed to be working.

20:11 I mean, sure, they were becoming a bloated,

20:14 nonsensical hodgepodge of unrelated businesses,

20:16 eroding the company's infrastructure and prioritizing

20:19 constant quarterly gains over any long-term sustainability.

20:22 But no one gives a[ __] because the stock price has never been high.

20:25 They've stumbled upon an infinite money glitch.

20:27 They're just alchemizing value out of thin air.

20:29 It gets to a point where the company founded

20:32 by Thomas Edison doesn't even make their own light bulbs anymore.

20:36 It's cheaper to get them somewhere else.

20:38 Who cares?

20:38 All they care about now is their ballooning financial division.

20:41 They're issuing highinterest loans.

20:43 They become a massive holder of subprime mortgages,

20:46 a famously good investment to make in the early 2000s.

20:49 Literally, whatever it took to juice the numbers, that's what they would do.

20:53 After about 30 years of short-term

20:55 decisions that received instant gratification from shareholders,

20:58 but were gradually making things worse

21:00 for the company and its dwindling number of employees,

21:03 GE had become severely overvalued.

21:05 And it wasn't until right after Jack retired with his $400

21:10 million severance package where his successors stepped in and were like,

21:14 "Wait, this doesn't make any sense." The time

21:16 bomb Jack planted explodes in their faces.

21:18 And GE spends the next 20 years slowly bleeding out.

21:21 And at this point, they couldn't fall back

21:23 on just like selling microwaves because they'd been

21:25 cutting corners on production so long that nobody

21:27 wanted to buy any of their shitty garbage anymore.

21:29 And of course, they had fallen way too far behind on innovation

21:32 because they spent all their money on acquisitions instead of research.

21:35 By 2021, the company that helped bring

21:38 electricity to America was mercifully laid to rest.

21:41 Split into three separate institutions,

21:42 none of which have come close to the dominance

21:45 or influence that GE once had over the American economy.

21:49 But here's the thing.

21:50 You know who isn't affected at all

21:53 by the cataclysmic downfall of General Electric?

21:57 Jack Welch.

21:58 Because he's dead now.

21:59 He already got to live his entire life of luxury and adoration

22:03 without ever having to deal with the fallout caused by his actions.

22:07 He took control of a building

22:09 with a rockolid foundation and just kept scrapping it

22:11 for parts until the only thing left for it

22:14 to do was collapse under its own weight.

22:16 But by that point, he was long gone.

22:18 I believe that this is the goal of those who now follow in his footsteps.

22:22 They don't need to care about whether

22:24 or not what they're doing is harmful or unsustainable.

22:27 as long as the facade can be maintained

22:31 long enough for them to reap the rewards.

22:33 It doesn't matter that the ship is

22:35 sinking behind them because they have a lifeboat.

22:37 It doesn't matter that America spent the past 60 years

22:40 exporting all its jobs and decimating the economies of small

22:43 towns all across the country because a few hundred people

22:46 responsible for those things already got to live long happy lives.

22:50 They don't give a[ __] This cutthroat corporate culture

22:54 that Jack pioneered is still seen all around us today.

22:57 And through the magic of time, it's only getting worse.

23:01 CEOs make $1,000 every second while their employees have

23:04 to piss in water bottles so they don't fall behind.

23:07 Routine layoffs, regardless of if a company is even struggling,

23:10 are so normalized that it's just something we've come to expect.

23:13 The stock market rules the world.

23:15 Every major decision is dictated

23:17 by this inherently volatile and short-sighted metric.

23:20 And look at where that's gotten us.

23:22 millions without jobs, an inshitification epidemic,

23:25 and a concentration of wealth that should be seen as a threat to humanity.

23:30 Even while owning everything, billionaires live in fear of losing it.

23:34 So, they weasle their way into politics.

23:37 They influence elections.

23:38 They buy policy changes.

23:40 They use their wealth to reshape the world to benefit them even further.

23:44 They try to control narratives by buying up news outlets.

23:47 They can dictate what's on our social media feeds.

23:50 They spend an enormous amount of resources on pitting us all against each

23:54 other so we're too distracted to see that the real problem is them.

23:58 Should the human race survive?

24:00 Uh, everything kind of sucks right now.

24:03 And as a result, most people are justifiably pretty angry.

24:07 But for media outlets and politicians,

24:09 that anger is their single most powerful tool

24:12 because they can tell you where to direct it.

24:15 And they don't even really care who it is so long as it's not them.

24:18 That's why it changes all the time.

24:20 Sometimes it's trans people, sometimes it's immigrants.

24:23 Most recently, it's been poor people.

24:25 There's been this whole war going on over

24:27 food stamps because when the government shut down,

24:29 42 million Americans lost access to SNAP benefits.

24:32 Now, that's an objective piece of information, an inarguable statistic,

24:35 but depending on how it's presented to you,

24:38 it may lead you to draw a drastically different conclusion than somebody else.

24:42 For some, it might put into perspective how dire the situation has gotten.

24:46 Like surely there's underlying issues with a system that's allowed

24:50 12% of its population to be unable to afford food.

24:53 Alternatively, you might hear that and think, "Wait a minute,

24:56 my tax dollars are paying for these greedy freeloaders.

24:59 I'm busting my ass over here to barely make ends

25:02 meet and these leeches are using my money to buy cookies.

25:05 That's not fair." And all it takes is highlighting a story

25:08 or two of someone taking advantage of the system to make you

25:11 think there's this rampant issue that you're expected to feed all

25:14 of these people with money you barely have enough of to feed yourself.

25:18 This narrative has been used since the 70s because it's very effective.

25:22 You work hard, they're lazy, this program is bad.

25:25 It's easier than ever now to push this narrative because you can just AI

25:29 generate a video of a fat lady screaming in Walmart and get everyone pissed off.

25:33 But in order to properly analyze this, let's take a look at the data.

25:36 First of all, SNAP only makes up about 1.5% of the overall federal budget.

25:40 Less than an eighth of what we spend on defense and an eighth

25:43 of what we spend just on interest on the debt that we owe.

25:46 By my math, cutting this program would only

25:48 save the average taxpayer a couple hundred a year.

25:50 And of course, that's assuming that if they were to cut it,

25:53 they would send you a refund in the mail.

25:55 Now, I'm pretty sure they would still take the same amount,

25:57 but instead of reinvesting it into the economy,

25:59 which is what SNAP ultimately does,

26:01 they would just buy some more missiles or send a pile of cash to Argentina.

26:05 Second of all, by definition,

26:07 the majority of SNAP recipients fall under the umbrella of elderly,

26:11 disabled, veterans, full-time caretakers, or just temporarily unemployed.

26:15 Remember, not everybody who isn't working does so because they don't want to.

26:19 It is very hard to find and keep a job right now.

26:22 The fact that SNAP spending es and flows so closely with the overall state

26:26 of the economy should be proof

26:27 that this program is primarily used for temporary relief.

26:30 Even still, many of the people on SNAP do work,

26:33 and about 70% of the ones that do work full-time.

26:36 That doesn't seem like a laziness problem.

26:38 That seems like a wage problem.

26:40 They need supplemental income to survive

26:42 because of how little they're being paid.

26:44 Of those full-time employees,

26:45 their two most common employers were McDonald's and Walmart,

26:49 who combined to earn $23 billion in profits last year.

26:54 $23 billion.

26:54 And you're telling me they can't afford to pay

26:58 their employees enough so that they don't need government assistance?

27:00 See, what that means is you wouldn't have

27:02 to help pay for these people's food if their employer,

27:05 a nearly trillion dollar corporation, just paid them a livable wage.

27:09 You're more upset at the people using the program than the companies who have

27:12 put them in a position where they even need it in the first place.

27:16 Also, Walmart double dips here.

27:18 The majority of food stamps are redeemed at Walmart.

27:21 So, not only do they save money by underpaying their staff,

27:24 but their revenue then gets subsidized by this program

27:27 because that's where people tend to use it.

27:30 Final statistic, about a third of SNAP recipients,

27:32 over 12 million of them are children.

27:34 What's the argument there?

27:35 Are they not working hard enough?

27:37 What?

27:37 You don't want to get a job just because you're seven.

27:40 Like, can we stop for one second to think about what you're saying here?

27:44 You have let somebody convince you that in this situation,

27:48 the only way to make your life better is if 12 million children starve.

27:53 So, I want to ask, who is more to blame here?

27:56 a bunch of kids who got born into poverty or CEOs with more money than anybody

28:01 could spend in a thousand lifetimes who expect

28:04 you to solve the problem that they helped create.

28:07 For some people, it doesn't matter what you say about capitalism,

28:11 they will still go to war for it.

28:14 Even if it's not working for them, statistically speaking, it's probably not.

28:17 They'll try to criticize a multi-billionaire who's not paying enough taxes,

28:21 and people will defend them like, "Hey, it's not their fault.

28:23 They're just taking advantage of loopholes like any smart business person would.

28:26 And you're like, "Okay,

28:27 so then we agree there's a problem with the rules, right?

28:31 If they're just exploiting the system,

28:33 then maybe the system shouldn't be so easy to exploit." We've reached a point

28:37 where a lot of the core principles of a free market no longer apply.

28:40 Like the idea that you can vote with your dollar.

28:42 I get to pick which businesses I support.

28:44 Therefore, the best ones will succeed and the worst ones will fail.

28:48 Yeah.

28:48 Except when one company is allowed to corner

28:51 the market and price out all their competition, suddenly there isn't any.

28:54 And we would have small businesses tell us

28:56 if they walked into a Walmart or a Costco, the retail price at those stores,

29:01 the price on the shelves at those stores is

29:04 lower than the wholesale price a small business is getting.

29:07 And so there are huge disparities here.

29:10 And that's now feeding into itself, right?

29:12 The more dire the economy is for everyone,

29:14 the less freedom they have when they're deciding what to pay for.

29:18 Amazon is certainly not the only place to buy things,

29:20 but historically speaking, it's almost always the cheapest and most convenient.

29:23 So, how do you convince somebody who's also been forced to pinch pennies due

29:27 to their own circumstances that they need to spend more time and money buying

29:31 that same thing from a local mom and pop shop when they could just

29:35 click three buttons and have it magically appear at their door in 3 hours?

29:38 It's not even really fair to impose that because that person is also struggling.

29:42 But then the cycle continues.

29:43 The small business closes.

29:45 Amazon and Walmart extend their reach even further.

29:48 And once all competition is defeated,

29:49 then they can just raise the prices to be whatever they want.

29:52 They can train an algorithm to charge you the maximum

29:55 price they think you'll pay at any given moment.

29:58 Now, one of the most common counterarguments you'll hear if you bring

30:00 up the idea of raising taxes on the ultra wealthy is that, well,

30:03 if you do that, they're just going to leave.

30:05 First of all, no, they're not.

30:07 That's a bluff they've been using for years,

30:09 perpetuated by media networks owned by, you guessed it,

30:11 rich people who don't want their taxes to go up.

30:14 A few of them might leave,

30:15 but the kinds of people who are willing to go to the trouble

30:18 of moving their entire business from New York City to like CMI,

30:22 Florida, are probably already doing everything they

30:25 can to avoid paying any taxes at all.

30:27 It doesn't seem like a very productive mindset to cater

30:30 to this parasitic minority at the expense of everybody else.

30:33 Second of all, oh my god, can we grow some[ __] balls here?

30:38 You don't understand.

30:38 They're not going to like it if we raise their taxes.

30:41 Do you hear yourself?

30:42 Do you hear how pathetic you sound?

30:44 Okay, so what?

30:45 We can't do anything then?

30:46 That's it.

30:47 It's over.

30:47 They won.

30:48 Your plan is that we should just give

30:50 up and let the billionaires have whatever they want.

30:53 Buddy, we've already tried that and that's not working either.

30:56 Third of all, this criticism is predicated on an idea that taxation

30:59 essentially has a bell curve to it where after a certain rate,

31:03 your overall revenue actually decreases because people will lose the incentive

31:06 to work as hard or like you're saying, move away.

31:08 With this in mind, there have been studies done by economists who

31:11 believe that every country has its own ideal rate for maximum efficiency.

31:15 However, the implication that raising taxes would cause

31:19 the overall revenue to go down would only be true

31:23 if we were on the tail end of this bell curve and we are nowhere close to that.

31:29 So, if your main concern is to maximize total revenue,

31:32 it's pretty clear which direction we should be moving.

31:36 Otherwise, the very metric your point is

31:39 referencing contradicts the argument you're trying to make.

31:41 Now, even having said all of that, I'm not going to sit

31:45 here and act like just raising taxes is an immediate fix

31:48 to all of our problems because we'd still have to rely

31:51 on elected officials to actually use that money in a sensible way.

31:54 I'd be happy to contribute more if I knew it

31:57 was going to better healthcare or nicer parks or public transportation.

32:00 But if my money is just going to be used

32:02 to blow up a hospital on the other side of the world,

32:05 then yeah, maybe I'd rather just give it to a food bank.

32:07 I don't know all the answers because at the end of the day,

32:10 no matter how hard I try to expand my legacy beyond it,

32:12 I'm still just the road work ahead guy.

32:14 But I do know that this amount of wealth inequality that's

32:17 showing zero signs of slowing down anytime soon is not sustainable.

32:22 Turns out that actually every single thing

32:24 in the world becoming a forprofit commodity from housing

32:28 to healthcare is just a way to enrich a few people at the cost of many.

32:33 And I have to wonder if we've finally reached a point now where the greed

32:37 has gone too far that it's now so

32:39 impossible to ignore that no amount of gaslighting

32:42 about how the economy is good actually

32:44 will convince people who are dying because they

32:47 can't afford to go to the doctor that this is just how life should be.

32:52 History shows that unfortunately sometimes things have

32:54 to get worse before they can get better.

32:56 And if this is what it takes for a return to class solidarity,

33:00 then I guess at least we're closer to that than we've been in a long time.

33:04 We just need to put down our phones,

33:06 set aside our differences for a little bit, and unite on this one issue.

33:11 They want us divided because they're afraid of how

33:13 strong we would be if we stood together.

33:16 Do not fall for it.

33:17 Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go argue on Reddit about how Ghost of Yotay

33:21 is woke because they didn't make the main character hot enough for me.