Why Young Americans Don’t Like Capitalism
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Is capitalism broken? You know, I get messages, emails from people from time to time, hey Chris, you sound a little communist there, you sound like a socialist. Yeah. I’ve always been a tried and true capitalist, Adam Smith capitalist, where again, my belief system is that two people can do business with one another and both can walk away from the table happy.
I’ve been saying on this program now for decades that capitalism is broken. We don’t have capitalism on a national level really much anymore. Local level absolutely within communities, small businesses. But if you don’t think that big money, money interests have forced their way
into Washington DC working hand in hand. How often? How often do I lament public private partnerships? We talk about regulatory capture and how bad it is. It has gotten quite frankly out of control.
I was actually glad to see, was glad to see, because again, I have various different bits sent over to me from listeners and I had no idea. Many people, older people that knew who Charlie Kirk was, watched Charlie Kirk, didn’t see everything that he said, sounded very much like yours truly. And what I’ve been saymarkoing for decades about where we are at as a society.
keeps talking about Mamdami in New York. Mamdami is not possible. He’s not possible if we were actually exercising capitalism. We’re not.
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We’re not. When an old lady with dementia dies in her apartment and her family gets a bill for close to five grand because she breaks her lease, you don’t see a problem with that. When a median price home doesn’t jive with a median price income, homes are more expensive than ever before, yet inventory is through the roof. You don’t see a problem with that. Grocery prices.
spiked the highest level in three years. As we’re told, everything is awesome. Prices are coming down.
again, I see it from, yeah, it’s the usual boomer types out there that think, right, kids are just not working that hard. Shut up. A lot of kids, you know, a lot of kids lazy, coddled, yeah, whatever. Yeah, that old line from the Godfather when he’s ripping into Sonny about how he spoils his kids. Many are not the case, Kids are working their tail off.
They’re working their tail off. And to get an apartment, get an apartment in one of these cities that are offering jobs. I don’t care if it’s in Florida, don’t care if it’s in New York, I if it’s Boston. They well over half their month’s salary from what they’re offering at this point in time. Not to mention certain places like Massachusetts or New York and the taxes you’ve got to pay.
How do you get escape velocity? How do you break free from that? This is a story here talking about 67% of American workers are living paycheck to paycheck. These stories have been around for some time. These numbers are high, but again, many people have lived paycheck to paycheck. I live paycheck to paycheck. That’s kind of how it is. It takes a while before you can get out of living paycheck to paycheck.
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But if you don’t think we’ve got a good economy right now, we do. We do. The Pope came out and actually mentioned, talked about the type of pay packages that was maybe with Elon Musk and how that none of this is good for society. we had people, oh, you see, we another socialist communist pope out there. I see you had your mind.
Are you kidding? I have been going off on corporate pay packages forever. I go back in time, back in the 1990s, when again, I think it was probably part of the setup where, you know, the Democrats were like, you know, we’re not going to allow any salaries over. I don’t know what that time was. it over a million dollars? Won’t be a deduction to the company. All of sudden corporations, they all said, well, geez, we’re to have to start paying people in stock.
How much do you think that these salaries that these people have, know, again, they’re tossing around words like must could be getting a trillion dollar or some sort of trillion dollar pay package. You’re not getting cash. You’re not getting cash. You’re getting stock. That’s how they get paid. Now it’s real simple folks, real simple. Okay. I made this perfectly clear.
You got the doofuses like Elizabeth Warren that want to do wealth taxes and all this stuff. Something that makes it completely bloody impossible to account for. An absolute nightmare. whole entire idea is stupid. But why can’t you tax stock grants? Why, I mean, why can’t you tax stock grants?
Like right now, the IRS is actually considering taxing your health insurance. That’s right. So if you get health insurance from your employer, whatever that health insurance costs, they want to actually tax you on that. They’re actually thinking about doing that.
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Anyway, I got an idea. Why not tax stock grants for the C-suite, for the people up in charge, or people that make over X amount of dollars, whatever that may be. Corporations that give stock grants to their lower level workers. My father-in-law, you know, he worked at the Plaza Hotel as a room service waiter. He also worked for JP Morgan and doing their dining room for their executives there as well. And he got some stock.
from doing that. I’m not talking about those works, not just talking about the people, know, the secretaries and the lower level workers that are getting stock grants at Christmas time. No, the executives. Even now, another option is as well, because they don’t, you know, they very rarely sell the stock. I mean, they do from time to time, but they borrow money against those positions that they have. That’s how they, that’s how they spend. Proper tax strategy.
And that’s why our tax code is close to 75,000, 80,000. I don’t know what it is right now. 75,000, 80,000 pages long. What difference does it make? Why is it that long? Well, you know what? It’s got a lot of loopholes in it. You could simplify the whole damn thing. You could deal with a lot of this problem because without a doubt, we have problems right now.
You take a look across the board, you take a look at the allure that socialism has with young people. Old people getting angry at that. What do they have to lose?
Oh, it’s a product of the schools and they’re not teaching socialism and communism like… Yeah, maybe. Maybe. But do you think, do you think if the kids were graduating, again, we’ve got unemployment for youth right now over 10%. 10%. Again, I’m an employer, okay? Not to mention the fact I’ve got young kids…
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Kids that are doing well in school, friends did well in school, college athletes, impressive resumes, and how difficult it is for them to find anything at this point in time. That’s the reality of the terrain. And many young people out there are like, screw this. Okay. I did, I just see it all the time. I did everything right. I listened. Again, they made, many of them made the mistake.
made the mistake of going out and taking student loans that they shouldn’t have. Do you understand how screwed up, screwed up just the way we set up, you know, many jobs here in our country and the barriers that we put up for no reason? You know, I could take a kid, I could take a kid that graduates from high school. I could take a kid graduates from high school. I could train, they don’t have to go to college. I could train a kid.
in finance better than any freaking college professor is going to be able to do. train at all levels of our company, working as an apprentice, training them, making sure that they’re learning the proper material, all this stuff, passing all of their licenses, all that stuff. You know, they can’t get a CMP unless you get a college degree.
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Why? Why? She’s one of the richest countries in the world doesn’t do that. Switzerland doesn’t do that.
They offer apprenticeships for certain jobs, certain careers. We set up these barriers because what? Colleges are a big business. It’s a big entrenched business for crying out loud.
These are all issues that we need to deal with as a society. Is capitalism broken? Capitalism has been broken for a long time. Long time. Too big to fail, bailing out automakers, bailing out this one, regulatory, all sorts of stuff has been broken for a long time.
And until we deal with this problem, you’re going to continue to see these stories and you’re going to see the continue to see kids upset. Doesn’t make them confident, natural communists or socialists. They’re desperate.
They’re desperate. And again, they’re looking in the wrong places for any sort of help. Quite frankly, they are.
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But this is again, this is something that needs to be dealt with. I’ve been addressing problems that could be fixed by the Trump industry. Rounds regards to the housing market inflate a myriad of different things. There’s going to be blowback in some way, shape, matter or form.
You take a look at these numbers, call it journal today, two-speed economy. As low-income Americans are giving up their gains, how difficult it is.
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Quick side story, my brother Michael, went to a grocery store. He went to a grocery store, I haven’t been to grocery store in while. He just jaw dropped. Jaw dropped how expensive everything is. He said, I don’t know how young people are able to make it. I don’t know how people can afford to live. Not wrong.
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