Episode 136: Taxes

0:09 Welcome back to a record of my father. Today we're going to be talking about taxes. I paid my taxes for the first time in since last year and so I went to H&R Block for the first. That was the first time I really went to H&R Block ever. I've been using TurboTax before and they get sent back every time. Every time for the last two years previous they've been sent back. So I said maybe I'll do this differently now. You tax cheat. Is that what you're meant? No, I'm not. They they said you suck at paying your taxes. I like how they said there's not enough information, so please mail it in. And then I mailed it in and they said go fuck yourself. So I said OK, and then and then I had to do it again. I had to refile last year and then this year, hopefully it's right.

0:51 I hope to God, because I'll be very transparent. It's $590.00 to file through H&R Block. Crazy. That is another 200 price increase from your TurboTax regular. What is it? Well, that's not even regular TurboTax. That's TurboTax Pro, which they always try to tack in at the end, which is 240. Ridiculous, ridiculous. But I think normal TurboTax like 100 run $90.00 ninety 100. Well, it went up because they they no longer give it away for free. Yeah. They used to give it away for free. The IRS paid for it so every U.S. citizen would be able to the ability to file your taxes and not have to pay a service. So, you know, when you think about all the different things you have to do, the fact that you have to pay a service to do your taxes seems like like you, I'm giving you money and you want me to pay a service to give you money. Like a scam.

1:42 Almost like the whole entirety of the US government, yes. But when you think about it, I mean, there's there's good, let's, let's, let's fiscal 2020, four $5.1 trillion in gross tax revenue that was 9% over the previous year. So the money is coming into the government. The revenue was individual tax provide 2.4 trillion. Payroll taxes was 1.7 trillion. Corporate income taxes only bought in 530 billion which surprises me that they have such a low amount. We, we, you individuals, we paid half the individuals income tax provided of the money.

2:24 That was the revenue. The IRS said it came from 62.2 million people. There were made refunds, there was 400. Nearly 490 billion to 553 billion and refunds were issued to taxpayers. No way. Yeah. That's shocking. Surprise it wasn't a dollar. Gosh. Oh yeah, yeah, no. Well, The thing is, you get a lot. I mean, you're getting a refund but. You pay 100 or something? But it but it's not really a refund. It's you paid in 400 and you get back 200. It's like they only took 200. It's hard for me to say that that's a refund. OK. Yeah, no, exactly. Well, we didn't screw yet that bad. That's kind of what they always talk about.

3:05 Well, that's what makes people feel good at the end of the year when you give them, I mean, so many friends. It was like a way to save. It's like, well, you know, I always do this because then I get like $1000 and I can buy ATV or a new car or something like that. Used to be able to buy a new car with 1000, you know, you, you put out, you put a down payment on a car and you get you get a good ways on it. You know, in my grow up days, but everybody always wanted a big check back and it's like, well, until I had a professional accountant, I didn't realize it's not it isn't how much your check, your refund check is it isn't anything to do with that. What it is, is, it is, is how much you paid. So you, you got to look at your tax bill over the course of the year.

3:51 And then if you look at your tax bill and, and to what you actually made, how much did you make? You know, mine, mine last year. Why? I don't know what mine's going to be yet, but I, I switched a lot of things around. I did the whole, one of the big things that was pushed last year was converting your IRA to a Roth IRA. So pay taxes on it now. So with no taxes in the future, I mean, in a nutshell, kind of simple. And if you have cash on hand now, you should do that because then it will be, you know, a dollar paid today is blah, blah, blah, you know, the, the time value money. But also there's, there's the idea that I had expiring tax credits that I need to use because we, we give away a lot fair amount of money.

4:37 And you can only take off when people say, Oh yeah, you can deduct that. It's like, well, not if you give away more than 40% of your net income, you can't. Interesting. Did you know that? I did not know that. It's like if I make, if I make 50 bucks and I give away more than 20, I, I can't deduct it. It's carry over to the next year. So it's weird. So people. So when you give to charity, it's not always a deduction. It's a carried forward deduction. And those deductions were for me were expiring because they're, they're 3 or 4, three to five years old, something like that. And it was not, it was like little bits.

5:17 It was big numbers, so big enough numbers to convert to a Roth R8 so I could use all of it and capture it. So I captured a part of it, but not, you know, I'll lose a bunch, but I, I don't give to charity for the write off. I give more to charity because I have the capability to have a write off. That's, that's, that's what it does. It doesn't say give or don't give because I wouldn't, I'm not that, you know, because you're here like, oh, you just do it for the write off. And it's like, no, I don't. I, I do it because I support the cause. But if you give me 25% off and I have a dollar, I'm giving a dollar 2025.

5:58 Explain this to me because I asked you an important question that I kind of just, I don't know, came up with the other day. I asked you, I said, why do I have to pay taxes when America has been printing, printing money for the last, I don't know, some odd years ever since we went off the gold standard. What? So why? Why why, why do? I Why do you why do you pay taxes? What do you mean? When they're just printing money all the time. Well, there's there's checks and balances where it gets put into the system. No, you know what? Do you mean no? No what? I mean, technically, technically if we spent $21 trillion and right now 5.1 trillion was made last year, right? We spent more than that, OK, 2 trillion extra. We, we, instead of printing another $2 trillion, right? And just to pay, pay our debt, you know, with fake money, we issued bonds.

7:01 So people have a piece and instrument from our U.S. government. It's backed by the full faith and credit of the US government and what we do. Faith in the US government. Right. And the dollar which has dropped 20% this year. So it's it's kind of. I was about to say, it seems like more and more people are getting tired of the belief in the system and that it actually works. I don't know. Well, you're starting you. You've seen a huge shoot in the last 10 years, the number of haves and have nots if the, the the distance is, is really grown. I mean, I am, I am shocked by the number of people when you when you talk about look at poverty rates 10-15 years ago, 20 years ago and look at them today and look at like people coming out of school, what the opportunities are. This is this is prime for that, that that's how terrorists happen in foreign countries.

7:57 Did you know that you got, you got 1% of the population eating 99% of the money? And they'll say, well, we pay 90% of the taxes. Yeah, but you get 99% of the money. You shouldn't, you shouldn't it? That's not the way it should work. It should be. If you take if you get 90% of the money, then you pay 90% of the taxes. Don't be, you know, they always say, oh, they pay over 50%. It's like, yeah, but they got 95%. What? What are you, what are you talking about? I mean, So what, 95 is more than 50? Shut up. It's, it's, it's like simple math when you start to look at how much and I got to tell you all my tax bill is done. It's gone down. And, and I remember when I sold the first company, the whole George Bush tax credit where he took capital gains. Now capital gains means I didn't do a damn thing. All I did was invest in my company, grow it and then sell it.

8:53 And I was going to have to pay 20% on my gains and my gains were a lot, OK. Now he changed the long term capital gains to 15% and 20 wow, 5%. So my take increased by multiple millions of dollars because he moved that tax law. And I will tell you that that actually did. I mean, it impacted me on just giving me, you know, a bunch of money and which I ended up giving away. But it's like it's the whole idea. Most people don't do that.

9:36 I don't think. I don't think that's the what they do that that one thing and they go, oh, it's spurs investment. It's like, no, it doesn't, it all it does is it spurs investment in more yachts and more houses and more things for your personal gain. At some point, you know, we need I, I, I think the idea of taxation. If you, if you tax companies more, what do they do? What does a company do if if you tax it more? If you tax it more. Right. It's going to spend more of its money. Doesn't want to make profit, right? I don't make profit, so I'm going to spend more money. What am I going to spend it on? Infrastructure, people growth. What does that do?

10:18 That makes Zach gets paid more. Zach gets better equipment that everything grows. Same thing with the kind of structure. Same thing. You don't think wages get cut? I think I think the the problem. I think that's a nice need. No, you need. You need. No, it's happened in the past when, when, when the bill the, the, the companies that many of the companies that were strongest is when we had really high tax rates. You know, we had international companies that were huge strong because of high tax rates because they had to, they were forced to invest. The thing they didn't have is they didn't have buy backs. So you could do it. You could do an artificial thing. So think about this.

10:59 So you, so you make me payless taxes, right? Or you taxed me at a higher rate. So what do I do? What do you do? What happened when they brought all that money back from overseas, when Bush gave the first big giant international, we were going to bring them, make them bring that money back and spend it here. And what they did, what the big companies did, every single one of every single one of them did stock buybacks. So they, they shrunk the amount of shares out there, which means the share price goes up and you're like, well, so you're just moving checkers around on the table, right? It's like, not exactly. When the share price goes up, the executive team makes more money, They get more bonuses because your, your performance is tied to how the stock price goes.

11:47 If the stock price is going up, you get, you get more, you get a piece of it, your options are worth a lot. If you do buy backs and you say if we got, if we've got 100 shares and, and we've spread them around to 100 people, or if we only have, we have 10 shares and I have nine of them, we buy back. We, or we buy back 99, we buy back half the shares or third of the shares. That means the price is going to elevate the same amount. So it's it's it's I mean, there is statistically some things to it, but all it does is it's a short term gain for the company. You're you're you're spending capital on something.

12:28 You think that your your price, that your stock price should be undervalued. That's the only reason you would do a buy back. And it's sort of like there should be some limitation on what you can because it's kind of game in the market for the CEOII think the stock price should be counted in in the year only for any type of any type of compensation for the CE OS, for the for the C level executives. If it's going to be tied to the stock price, it should be tied to the stock price minus buy backs because they affect it anytime they affect it like that. And it's and it's something it's it's monkey shit stuff. It's not like we didn't take a risk on building a new technology or we didn't advance our machinery.

13:12 We didn't sell into a new market. It isn't anything that actually took any balls. All it took was legal fees, you know, banker fees and, you know, probably a consultant to say that it was a good idea. You know, hey, you want to raise your stock price 20%? Here's how. Buy 20% of the shares. What? Well, yeah. And it's like, whoa. I mean, I don't even have to do anything. I can, we can be flat. Everything else can suck ass. And I can make the stock price go up just by buying stock back. And that's that's called gaming the system. You know, in Vegas, you couldn't do that. You know what I mean?

13:54 That kind of weird. I mean, we think about this tax thing. I I got a little bit. What is it? What is taxation? It's a you. Know, but I've got what I was reading about the other day, is the President Lyndon B Johnson's signature tax law, the Revenue Act of 1964. Yeah. Do you remember that when enacted, a massive $11.5 billion tax cut to stimulate the economy, reduced individual rates from 91% to 20% and 70% to 14%, and the top corporate rate from 52% to 48%, which I thought was in Yeah, people say that that is one of the most important things that ever happened. With tax law, good or bad, good, good. Well, see, I would say bad because it was it was come out that what how can we do a tax cut during a war?

14:41 We used to have to pay for a war as you go. There was, there was the whole, the, the fight was always you can't have guns and butter. You got to either have guns or butter. You can't. You got to pay for what you're doing. And that tax cut led to a deficit, didn't it? Did they talk about that? How do we pay for the Vietnam War? After that we printed money. Oh, so that is what shrunk our economy in the deficit? Right. See. That's what, 90? 1% to 20%. Why do you think the taxpayers wanted that? Why do you think that he did that? Well, because it's a short term gain. Well, think about it. You want to pay everybody, Everybody I know. I mean, I see people today that are paying the lowest taxes they've ever paid in their life.

15:28 And all they do is bitch about taxes. And it's like, why you you don't like good schools? I don't have any kids. You don't use the roads? No. I have a driver. Whoa, please. It's all about me. It's not about the next generation. It's not about the betterment of the country. It's about the betterment of my own personal. It's. Also about running on a platform to get votes and I think if you're going to say I want to lower your taxes from 91% to 20%. I'm going to give you cash. Oh my God. Like, is that cash? Yeah. It's basically I'm going to bribe you and, and, and I'm OK with lowering taxes as long as you can figure out where it's going to come from. But right now, every tax cut that's happened for the last, what, 10 years, 15 years?

16:13 I mean, they did argue that the one, I think the one that Obama did paid for itself with the infrastructure because infrastructure actually makes a place more accessible and more people use it and it creates more commerce. You know, it's so it's very interesting when you think about projects and how they're funded and what is the impact on people. Military, you know, building tanks may be good for tank builders and for the people that work at the tank factories, but then it goes off somewhere and it doesn't really do any good. I mean, it defends your nation or something. Or I remember the last time I saw it, they were spending like $20 billion on 3000 new tanks.

17:01 And it's like, but but they have 3000 tanks sitting in a sitting in a field. Why are they, why are they doing that? And you know what the justification is? Well, the we need jobs. And you're like, well, why don't we? Why don't we build trains? Why don't we connect our society better? Why don't we? Why don't we, why don't we make sure the roads are nice and the bridges are good and the schools let's teach the kids to be better than 6th grade. I mean, I think we can do better. 56 percent 6th grade reading level. I've said that across three different podcasts here. You know what was funny? Somebody was talking about? They're like, for every woman in Texas that gets her wages garnished and dies of starvation, 15 bridges are built in China. So it's like you look at communism and you look at capitalism and I don't know, I think we're late stage capitalism now where it's at a point to where you're seeing StubHub buy seats out for a stadium and you're seeing completely empty concerts.

17:55 And it's like what? Are they empty? I don't know. They're the ones I've been to that I paid 3 grand to sit in the front row. I mean, you're going to go to Oasis, it's going to be full. I don't know about that it. Depends if Fleetwood pack was full, we went to Cat Stevens, it was full through StubHub. Cat Stevens we couldn't do through StubHub. It was at the Kennedy Center. Interesting, and remember that. I have been to concerts that have been partially empty, which is interesting. I have. Been to those that way. They're all, I mean, the Redskins were, I mean, the Commanders, whatever, they were just like hammered, you know, I mean, it was crazy. Well, they've never been good. That's the problem. They were good for three years back in the 80s or something like that. Clinton Portis was.

18:40 They were. They. Were they even good when he was on the team? No. No, right? They were bad. No, no, he was he was a star play. Usually what they do is they find some new star player, surround everybody around that person and then he pulls people into the stadium and then he gets hurt or the rest of the team does shitty and they do a 5050 season. That happened with with Snyder for years. But all Snyder did was, you know, $25 cigars, $18.00 buds it, it was, I believe at its peak, the most expensive food and things. You couldn't drive to the stadium. You had to park near it. And then you had.

19:20 To are you talking about FedEx Field? That's what you're talking about. Yeah, the, oh, the worst. Everything he did, everything he did was maximizing the revenue of the thing. And I, I, I mean, to this day, the, the fact that we, the American people use a penny to build a stadium that we don't own, it makes absolutely zero sense. How is the NFL non profit? I don't understand that. How is that possible? And there's a wonderful book I. Can't remember what it's. Called but it's about distracting the general populace and for the emperor, right and that's what it's about it's about comparing gladiators to modern sports and that's. Exactly what it is and it works.

20:01 Exactly what it is. Oh my gosh, it's crazy. And you have the American people paying for it on their facts for a non profit which is ridiculous. It's funny, isn't it? But I mean, it's just like Joel Osteen's church or what have you. It's the same thing. It's. Crazy. No, it's different. It's different. That's also, it's completely different. It's completely. Different. Well, they don't. They're not filing a Form 990 at the IRS. So the kind of money that Joel Osteen Ministries get, you can't look at There isn't there isn't anything right. Wow. When it's a. Church, the NFL, you can look at they. Hide they hyped it and they can make it.

20:41 And that to me is, I mean, I think every single church should have a tax return. I don't care if I can totally agree. It should be a form 990. It should go in and we should say who the top five is high is compensated. Where does the money go? Who do they, who do they spend it on, and how? So the top five most compensated should be on the front page of every newspaper. Just saying. I don't know well if these mega churches and it's. Transparency. Yeah, I I don't it's. Theatrical. It is theatrical and I don't. Yeah. You you pay to make yourself feel better. OK, if you if, if you know. And I, and I think that that's, I mean, I knew. I would love to believe in magic if I could, but I don't.

21:22 So it's just that's kind of where I'm at with that. Remember him? No. He was a Virginia Beach guy. Really. Really. Or was it Jimmy Swaggart? It's one of the other. That's a cool name. I have relatives. I have relatives that they're West Virginia. And they wrote to him because their daughter had become wayward and left at 16 and went to Florida with a guy in the Mafia. And she was dating him. And he said he would pray, but he would need compensation. He didn't mean token. They always say that, you know, you need to show that you really believe in God. And the way you can really believe in God is to send me, you know, 2 dollars, $10 a month or whatever. And now they didn't have money.

22:09 They lived in a trailer. They used to mail checks to him every month. And they did this for about 2 1/2 years. And then she got away from that guy when she was 19. She had a kid. He dumped her and then she and then she came home and 25 years later I was talking to her and she said he gets his check before we eat. And you're like, what? It's like I send my check to I forget if it's Oral Roberts, Oral Roberts, that's who it was. Oral Roberts gets his check before we eat and I'm like, what? Why? Why would you what?

22:49 And it's like they were so in belief that he had saved their daughter's life because he had prayed to the Invisible Man in the sky, him, not anybody else. Some human walking around had prayed to a man in the sky that he deserved to be paid. And they've been doing that for 30 years every month. Whoa. I'm like, whoa. It's almost comparable, Yeah. It's kind of interesting to believe is is so incredibly powerful. Like when you show somebody a coin trick, I don't know it. To me, in my mind, it's the same thing. The coin trick as praying is the same thing to me other than the fact there's an idea behind praying that you are talking to yourself and that endorses your own morality and your own kind of ability and manifestation, which is incredibly powerful.

23:43 It is incredibly powerful tool in this world, which is actually a form of magic. I would say when I think that prayer is powerful, when it's a self reflective endeavor because it gets you to act on what you are telling yourself, right. So I think that that's an incredibly powerful thing, but. It's also making a promise. It's making a promise that no one can check. OK, but sometimes I mean it. Depends on make it a promise. It's no one can check because it's that promises salvation after you're dead. But then only you can check that only you believe. Well, you can't check you're dead. I'm talking about general prayer, that's what I'm talking about. And the ability to manifest things, That's what I'm talking about.

24:23 Yeah. In existing reality. Not when you're dead, of course. Funny that we talk about taxation. That's matter at the same time. That's magic. Well, I mean churches I man, what do you say you have the Catholic Church, multi maybe even trillion dollar organization that is goes unfettered. Do you know that they have a bunch of, what was it Catholic schools for teaching ministers in Italy that are all untaxed as well? And it's crazy. The functionality of this business is great. I like, I, I remember I have a paper on it and religion 100 in Community College is an amazing paper that I wrote about what they make a year. And it, it was really, really hard to calculate that.

25:06 Yeah. You it's it's a hard well, the thing that I always think and I remember when we were in Guatemala, remember we stopped in the was it go out city or was it, it might have been the one where we we did a tour. Antigua, I think it was, was one of the cities and it was dusk. You were with me, I thought, And. Oh yeah, and. We walked by that church and inside it was had a big huge doors open in the front because it was warm outside and there was barricades out in front to keep the four people. Out I remember. That the homeless and they were all around it and you looked into the church and the walls were gold and there were gold everywhere. And I was just, all I could think was like, so you collect money from all these people and you put all this gold, gold, just thousands of, I mean, millions of dollars in that church on the walls and people starving to death right outside. It's like, well, they're not really starving enough. Well, they're whatever, you know? But it was just like, so it just like, wow, that that struck me as incredibly sad that that we would let that happen. And it was and it was but.

26:36 We see that all the time. We see that all the time with religion. And it's like, you know, do we see that with taxation? I don't know. We think about taxation. What is tax? You know what tax is? Mandatory non refundable levy post by governments on individuals and entities to fund public services like infrastructure, libraries and education. I like the library. I got to say. The library is the last good thing in the world. I love it. I love the library. Oh my gosh. Favorite place? Yeah. I, I, I tend to think that that would be when, when, when they talk about defunding libraries and stuff. That's crazy. Well, they're trying to make that 56% higher. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to also.

27:19 That's like the last place you can get free Internet in the world. Yeah, they that's like the last. Do you know who did that? Who did what made the library? No. Do you know who funded the free Internet? Who? The government. No. Who? Bill Gates? Really. Yeah. That's that was his his goal when and and that was one of the mandates of Microsoft. I don't still don't know if they still pay it or they still did, but they went and said everybody needs access to the Internet. And the only way we're going to have access to the Internet is how we going to distribute it. Well, we will actually have a fund that goes around and sets up a computer that has access to the Internet and every library in the country. And they did that my.

28:04 Question is, how did he have access to military technology like that? Like, that's crazy. Like the government created the Internet, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, yes and no. I mean, it was the, it was the government, but also it was, it was in conjunction with an educational, I think Stanford educational institution. They were involved in it as well. Interesting. And, and then they funded it. The government usually funds things that then they fund the big thing and then they they roll it into the private sector. It's like which? I think hence Bill Gates, right? Right. Well, he didn't do it from the Internet, He did it from he did it with software and it was software on computers.

28:45 Software on computers in the 80s before the Internet. OK, you needed to have Microsoft Windows and like, I don't know, but how do you? Even have access to something like that, it's. Crazy. Well, the Internet started and it became it was free if you could get to it on your computer. But how would you even do that? Well, limited access I imagine. No, you had to have a a browser and then you had to have a telephone line. Oh, the dial. Dial up and most people were dialing up AOL Miracle online because it was online and you know they were huge and but you dialed in and you had modems in the beginning of our business I used modems we had 9600 baud modems.

29:33 They went to 12 they went to 14 four then they went to 28 eight and then I think 56 six and then it was just like no, let's just connect directly. They started running the fiber optic cables and running the Internet directly to your computer as opposed to you had to dial into the Internet. It it it became a lot faster easier. I, I don't know the exact technologies that made it happen, but think about what that help from the government making that communication type vehicle thing that that was the advent of e-mail. It was the advent of, you know, many, many great things, of course, many shitty things.

30:17 Sia, I don't know. I don't think we should have ever made it. I don't think we ever should have had a level of, well, my business. Would have been harder. Yeah. I would have, I think it still would have succeeded. You know, we, we were growing, we were growing really fast. We were growing with bodies. And when you're in service business, the more you hire more people you hire, the more money you make because they can do each person basically does, you know, you, you pay them like 20 grand and they make 30 grand or 25 grand or whatever. And you use, you know, 2 of that, it goes into overhead and two of that goes in to grow for another hire. You know, and it just, that's how you grow a business. That's how we would grow a business. And provided that they had some minimum level of productivity, you know, can you pull and copy documents if you're requested to go get a 10K and A10Q and a proxy for a company? I have to teach you what they are. I have to show you how to read the company name. I have to show you the date on it and where it is. And then the more paper there is, the more questions there are about what's on page 42.

31:25 What's on page 65? Where is the I'm looking for the credit agreement for such and such. I'm looking for the indenture, I'm looking for the employment contract. I'm looking, you know, so it's it, it's a whole lot of searching by an individual as opposed to a computer where you can just do it instantaneously from a desktop. And I don't have to trust you, I can trust myself. The Ready access to learning is great. I think that that's fantastic. That's definitely a tribute. You no longer need to go to the library to look something up, but I think that there's no sort of understanding of how much information you are able to access. It's more of been pigeon holed into social media as a distraction.

32:06 I don't think that people are learning at the same capacity that they were learning at 10 years ago. I don't believe that. I think that it's used as more of a distraction and a detraction from your own life to spend money. I think that that's exactly what it is now, and I don't think that it is what it was like. What I think about two specifically is taking Spanish junior year of high school and the the teacher is a facilitator for an online program to teach you Spanish and he comes by and he checks that you did the modules and then he got AB or an A throughout the whole thing. I'm like your job A, a fucking 14 year old could do your job and you're like 50 years old. And I'm like, if this is the future of education, I don't want to be alive. No, you got to be able to you, you well, the the person that what they're supposed to do is motivate you. Sorry.

32:57 Which he didn't. I don't know they need. To they need to, they need to motivate you to see what the value is and what you're getting out of it and hopefully open your eyes to a different view or different perspective. But how could you open your eyes to a different perspective when you're being judged on a primary basis from a computer that doesn't even know the difference between accent marks? Like, I remember that and I was like. This. Yeah, no, it was absolutely ridiculous. Not to mention that we were, or you specifically were paying tuition for a school to teach me on a computer Spanish. And I'm like, this is the most lackadaisical teaching method and they're getting away with it. And I think that's when I first really discovered that some education is a scam.

33:43 I mean, some of it is. No agreed. Agreed, some of it's a scam, not all, not all, but some is definitely a scam. I think a lot of people that that that talk about different types of education is like, it's not all the same. There's, there's, there's a small percentage that's absolute shit. I would say, you know, I and I get, I get worried by what someone would consider education, what and use our tax dollar for and, and those that they want it and they want to take it away from the public schools and put it into private institutions. So I can get, I can get a bigger tax break on for sending you to a private school and I have to pay less. And it's like, I don't need to pay less. I I should pay more.

34:26 OK. I don't think that that I don't, you know, well, the public education is not good. Well, then you need to support it. Well, I love you need to make it better. You need to make the public education better instead of running away. How do you make it better? You you don't make it better by taking money away from it. That doesn't work. It's it's never worth. Taxes, that's what you got to. Do well. It's not just in there's, there's a whole lot more things that go into it and the. No Child Left Behind ACT really screwed a lot of people. A lot of people. And that the standardized tests in low income neighborhoods allocate funding, right? But what you know what happens when a school is not really testing high? And then the eventuality they close or even near close, a charter school is normally put in that neighborhood and then it's gentrified. And then you have these kids competing for a raffle for a discounted tuition to go to said private school where as you have all of these other people coming in from higher income neighborhoods for that gentrification process. And that is kind of where DC has been at in Capitol Hill area for a long time.

35:31 For the last 10 years, you've seen houses go from 500 to 600,000 to multiple millions of dollars. And just the time that I was 15, told I was maybe 18, that that is when that changed. And it's crazy. That whole area there, that was. Ben's Chili Bowl is now a safe area. Like that's crazy and it's we should be safe. We should go down there and shoot some white people. Of the closing of those public schools and the forcing out of those people. Yeah, yeah. And the establishing of the private schools and for those raffles as rich. People coming in, Yeah. Yeah, that's how you gentrify a neighborhood as you get rid of those schools through standardized testing. And I don't.

36:13 Know well you think about standardized testing in the No child left behind act that which came under Bush. One of the things that a lot of people fail to realize is that his brother, no, was not only the head of Silverado Federal, but I think it was Neil was. The other one is he started an educational program that was based on the No Child Left Behind and it was a public company or I'm not sure if it was public or private. He funded it. They hit a software program that had that had all of the standardized testing and that was then sold to all the public schools. Oh, wonderful. So the government, the government was paying, some would say, really, yeah, they paid for that program.

36:59 And that program was a relative of Bush. And a lot of people can see that as being. Bad. I miss being lied to so well that I didn't know that. That's what I miss. There's so many lied to so well that I didn't know about that. It's like, it's like if you look at look at Reagan when he came out, this is the biggest one, the biggest payday up until of course, more recently with Trump. I mean, Clinton made a lot, but he didn't make what Reagan, Reagan the week after he had he had signed a most favored nation status with Japan and that they were they kept pushing for it.

37:40 And that means that billions of dollars will then be focused on their economic and they will have less taxation and all this other kind of happy horseshit. Well he went on a 7 day speaking tour, 7 days. He went to Japan, Tokyo and he spoke it for like Toyota Motors and all the multinational corporations over there. They paid him $9 million for a week, for a week and this dude had Alzheimer's. Then think about that. They had an Alzheimer's speaker that they paid $9,000,000 to because he made them billions.

38:21 Figure that one out. Doesn't that sound a little dirty? You know, you start to look at them and you're going like you whore, you know, Clinton came out and Clinton did the Clinton initiative. And I don't, I don't really know. I just know that it was audited all the time. So I kind of have, I have a trust in what accountants do because it's PwC and I had AI have a a pretty good feeling about Price Waterhouse. I don't about KPMGI think that they are. They've been sued and jailed and not jail. They've never put anybody in. I don't think they've ever put anybody in jail to enforcement actions. But they have been known over and over and over and over to cheat.

39:02 So I don't know if there's many as the others. PABC is not that much of A cheating auditor. I mean, we think about taxation and money that's being spent where we have we have a trillion dollar defense budget and the, the dude in charge wants to make a trillion and 1/2 and they can't pass a damn on it. And you think to yourself like we are giving money to someone. Think about this Zach, if you had a friend who said we're going to do good with what you give us. Well, where are you going to spend it? I'm going to spend it over here. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to feed all the little cripple children. And then you gave them $1,000,000 and then they go and they say, well, I fed the cripple. Can you show me anything?

39:46 And the receipts? Well, no, I can't. Well, can you show me? Can you Can I meet the cripples? No, I can't. We we don't know where they are now. Well, can you can you give me any proof? Well, I give you proof. My my my brother says that we did well. Let me ask you something because I was going to ask you. That's failing an audit. That's what that. Is under Bill Clinton the Graham Leach Lily Act killed there we go. He allowed commercial investment makes insurance companies to merge creative massive financial supermarkets. What do you think about that and the economic expansion? Well, that was that's what they said was part of the the housing crisis was the the repeal of Graham Leach by Lee, which happened in the 30s because of the market crash. Then the that's been part partly attributed to it. Now Fast forward to 2006.

40:46 If you wanted to borrow money in 2005, 2006 and 2007, you had to have a job and it had to have a credit rating and it had to have a history. Well, in 2006, 2007 took 18 months for it to crash. They passed legislation and it was called the no doc loan specific legislation that said that we don't need your income and we don't need to know. The the less work history you have, the better for us. We'll lend you $500,000. We'll lend you $1,000,000. Wasn't that also be part of the Rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act in 1995? No, this was they were not allowed. They were not allowed to.

41:33 They were allowed to to donate to these communities, but they had rules. They took away the fricking rules in O6 and O7 but. In 1995, there's an increased pressure on banks to lend to low income inner City Council. Right there was. And they did. And they did some, but not a lot. And then in two. 1006, 2007 completely OK. Right. It was like, yeah, I can't lend. I can, I can, I can change the credit. It's like they no longer could use your color as a reason not to loan to you. So that was the whole, that was one of the big points. And but you know, your work history and whether or not you paid your bills and things like that matter. Well, if you didn't have work history, that was cool. They made that.

42:14 That was the best thing in the world was somebody that never worked before because you came in and then we could, you know, you, you don't have any negative credit. We could loan you $500,000. And you're thinking like, and they, and remember, if I loan you that money, I get paid because then I'm going to take that loan and then I'm going to throw it and I'm going to put it into a, a, a bond mortgage bond then goes into the market. And that mortgage bond that went into the market was then rated by Moody's, and Moody's would say triple AI. Remember this? Yes, yes. And, and remember, Moody's didn't even fucking look at it. You know, they were just throwing it all out there. I was talking to a guy in the late 90s who was tracking them and for specifically Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and he was looking, they, they called something called the whack and the Wham, which are the, they have to do with the interest rate that's charged and the interest rate you're paying on the bond.

43:12 And what is the underlying properties? And you would look at the underlying properties and what were the zip codes? Because certain zip codes around the country. And you can, if you look at a mortgage-backed security, you can see all the zip codes. If all the zip codes are in Woodbridge, Woodbridge has a 18% bankruptcy rate. OK, so, so there's a good chance that 20% of that debt is shit. Southern California has a 2% bankruptcy rate rating those two bonds. And usually what they would do is they would grab the Woodbridge bonds and they would staple them in those mortgages. They would staple those in with San Diego bonds, and the San Diego bonds would be AAA, but they're in the same tranche.

43:55 And so then I'm rolling a $500 million issue with, you know, 50 million of good shit and 450 million of just trash. It's called a House of Cards. And then the, the answer that the government came to, which is, is, is once again a really controversial answer. Remember the guy they make the big thing about the big short and what a great guy he was, how he had figured it all out and he shorted the market. That the story they don't tell is that the, the government was going to refund the money directly to the mortgage holders, not the bankers. They were going to give it to you and me, to the public. The public they were going to, they were figuring out a plan that if why give it to a middle man? Why would you do that?

44:43 The banks are crashing well, but all the homeowners are the ones that are crashing. If the homeowners had the money, they could pay back the banks and the banks would be. Why would you give it directly to the banks? Because the banks just fucked them all. You know, they didn't give it to the people that were hurt the worst. Should have paid. Your loan should have paid. Your loan should have paid your loan. Well, you shouldn't have bought. You shouldn't have loaned in the money, you dumb fuck. You know, I mean, no one ever said that. Well, nobody went to jail either. Nobody went to jail. And that, that was what made me incredibly frustrated. Yeah, it was very, it was, it was sad. And no, that person that did the big shore spent like 50 or $75 million on politicians to kill that bill to, to reimburse the homeowners, not the banks.

45:30 They got rid of that and then the money came out and then only went to the banks because the banks were insolvent. Because remember, the banks have been earning fees off of this for years. They're talking about Barry. The guy Barry in the movie in real life as well. OK, gotcha. Well, he started his own fund and I think he's shorted a number of things since then that and they'd be, it was just one great idea, but that that built his empire. He made it like a billion 2 or a billion 3 on that trades, those trades. And but you know, the whole idea that they lobbied the government to change what they were going to do 'cause if they would have paid the homeowners back, he would have lost his ass.

46:10 Well. Because, because then the mortgages wouldn't have. He was bet, he was betting that they would go bankrupt and the banks would go and the only way that they if they gave the, if they bailed the banks out. He he got, he made all his money. The mortgages rose the price they were still viable. I guess. I don't know. Well, interesting. But you know, you think about all these, you know, we're, we're, we're drifting away from taxes and stuff. I wonder if he paid any taxes. That's another thing that you think about with the VCs and they talk about carried interest. You know that if you, if I buy a company, let's say you're ZHB Productions company, I invest $50 million in it. And if you in a or a million, let's just or $100, I invest $100 in your company. If you turn that company around in five years at 10X and say say I make 5 grand off of it.

47:04 If I take that 5 grand and I put it into ZHB Productions too, I don't pay any taxes. It's called carried interest. Seems wrong, doesn't it? Yeah. I would say so. You know, it's kind of like, oh, really? You're encouraging investment and it's like, well, but he made a ton of money. Are we going to invest in building the roads? Nobody invests in building the roads really. I mean, you're going to sub that out? I can't believe we can't sub stuff out like that. It's just not going to happen. We can't sub out infrastructure. We can't do, you know, just so many things. Sad, sad, sad. It really is.

47:45 It really is no. It really is. What's it all mean? Well, so you you were an anti tax guy, right? Yeah. So you don't you don't believe. And see, my thing is, is weirdly and I whip over to my little notes here that what the types of taxes we pay. Income tax, payroll tax, sales tax, property tax. Well, I'm I'm getting to a few there. Capital gains, excise tax. What else? Estate taxes, how it's calculated tax rates. the US total tax is 25% of our gross domestic product. But the thing it's for, for me is, you know, public services, infrastructure, defense, education, income, you know, all the different types.

48:32 See, I think that that those things are needed and they're necessary and that that, I mean, that's the reason that I. Think roads are nice? You, you always tell me that and talk about the roads. I mean, well, that's the first thing. Roads, education, connection of people. Well, if you really want to think about it, you know, that football stadium, that's your tax dollar. You want to think about it, the airlines. Well, I'm just happy that I have bananas year round and the Chiquita waged war on an island so and killed a bunch of people so that I can have bananas year round. That's what it's all about, do. You drink the water out of your faucet.

49:14 I do do. You know why that's clean? Because of the government. That's it. No fucking other reason. You know that building you live in right now? Yes. Do you know why that roof doesn't fall in on your head? Also food at the grocery store. Yeah, the food that you eat, the drugs that you take. Some of it should be illegal though, not going to lie. They get away with too much. Yeah, every you go to any other country, they're like, yeah, that's illegal here. We're we're not allowed to eat sawdust. And I'm like, well, I like it. It tastes good on my hot. Dog, it's OK as long as they tell you it's sawdust. I love the remember Taco Bell. Yeah, what was it? Sand. Silk, silicone, something or other which turns out to be sand. And the Taco meat, it's 38% sand. That's why I can eat like 7 menu items, it'd be fine. Christ, you know, and their and their answer was we start out with real beef.

50:13 I'm like, hey, you know, before I go to the bathroom, I start out with a real Taco. But what the hell? Well, that's how it also, it's nothing you want to eat. You know what they do? They pump it full of sodium too, because you, you see sodium warnings on every single one of those things. It's like this is 75% of your daily sodium inside. A Taco Bell man. Well, that's why you get full after, it's not the actual content. It's the. Sodium that makes you appear to be full, but you're really just bloated from the amount of sodium in the product. Wow, crazy isn't it? You mean the sand and the sodium? The. Sand and so good. They really do. The crunch wrap. Oh my God. Especially when you're almost blackout drunk.

50:56 Oh my God, When you eat a crunch, the crunch wrap. Yeah, but you got to eat it. What, like right after you get it, it's really bad. Like I remember I was travelling in the car with somebody and they're like, we got to wait to eat till we get home. And I'm like, this is not we're going. I want, I'm going to want to throw this away when we get home. Right. You don't what? No, you eat it in the parking lot at the after the drive through. And it's like we had the Let's Get Hammered night here and one of the guys, Jeff, ordered the $99.05 of Burger King. We. Got so much Burger King that. Got we got, we got hammered and it was like. And he started ordering and then he started saying, well, you know, everybody's going to want a veal parm. Well, everybody's going to want a whopper. Well, everybody's going to want.

51:40 And there was only like 3 of us. Everybody's going to want large fry and well, everybody's going to want. And he and he went down the list like this and he said, I didn't realize it. And then it was just like, you know, my credit card was saved and I hit my credit card and it was Uber and Uber eats and they brought it and, and it just sat on the front porch and he didn't see it. And I can't. I got it the next day. I picked it up. I picked up the bag and the bag was like, you know, one of those giant double bags. It was only one huge bag. And I saw the price and I was like, Oh my God, you idiot. They must have been pissed because they close early too. It was. Lukewarm. I pulled it out, I whipped it out and I said OK, I got AI, got AI. Can't just pitch it all. It's been sitting out there.

52:21 And The thing is, is that I have raccoons and every other animal well. Let me ask you something. And they did not eat it. What? Time did he order at? Because it might have been closed and then he did a timed order for the morning by accident. No, but it was. Cold. No, it was cold. OK, gotcha. It was, it was because I pulled it out and I said I didn't even try to eat it. I just took, I whipped out the Whopper and I took a bite and I was like, no, it's not a good idea. And I put it back and I said, OK, but but cheeseburgers don't have all that mayonnaise and shit on them. They should be good. So I pull out the cheeseburger. I take a bite. No, this is not good. Well, maybe the hamburger doesn't have the cheese. It might be good. And I take, pull out a hamburger and I take a bite of that. I'm like, why do you wear hamburgers? And I was like, no.

53:02 And then, and then I opened up some of the little boxes because they had those little, those little weird cheese things, you know, with marinara sauce. And I picked it up and I went squish, squish. And I was like, no, I can't do that. Marinara. I didn't even bite. I didn't even bite those but I had like 3 or 4 bites of different things and then I'm like and I the thing that was bothering me is that it was $100.00 of food. That's a lot. And the thing about the amount of cows that dine for that, you know? And it was just. It was. Probably 1, I don't know it was. Utter and complete garbage and and I was like and me as growing up wasting I mean a literal waste of $100 on something is was just bothered me. So I felt like I needed to eat the food to justify, but I would have died, I think, if I ate it.

53:53 And I ended up just pitching it all, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I pitched it all and I called him and I laughed and he was like, you know, I think I yeah, I remember ordering that. I we got high and it's like, oh God, that's it. That's what happens. You get, I mean, you get high and then you pay your taxes. Oh my God. That's what I always do. You what? I always get high at the H&R Block with the, with my guy, with my supervisor, and we do it together. Was it? Is it we hot? Box the H&R Block and make. Sure is it hit and run? Hit and run. Oh, hit and file. That's what it is it. Should be H and FH. And F. Instead H and RH and R is hit and run block.

54:37 Hit and run block. Yeah, hit and hit and run. Somebody on my block, right? Oh, God. I want you to H&R Block, my neighbor. There you go. Maybe that we have time. What do we have here? We're at. Oh, my God. You talked. It's over an hour, man. Way too much talking. Sounds good to me. Taxation without representation. No taxation with that representation. We should free Puerto Rico and free Samoa and free DC. Give them all voting. Give it all. Give it all everybody to vote. I hope they have. What they don't have, they don't have. They don't have. No, they don't have voting rights. Not really. No. That's crazy. Yeah. I'm not Hawaii. Surprised. Yeah.

55:17 Why in Alaska? State, right? Yeah. Yeah, Alaska has 11 people and they have two senators. Territory should be able to vote. That's crazy. New York has 900 million and they have two senators. But hey, it is. What else? Right, well, that was meant to prevent tyranny, but you know, like where we are now. Thank you guys for listening as always. Go check out the website. And then we have a new marketing team that's hired on and yeah, so. What's their name? I should do a plug for them, actually. Yeah, plug them. We'll plug them next time. I don't remember the marketing team. That's how good. We are. I will if reach out if you're interested. All right. Technical love, man. Technical love. Give a love to technics, man.

55:59 Come on. Do it. All right, bye. Bye.