0:03 - Introduction to Tariffs
0:47 - Understanding Tariffs
2:56 - Direct vs. Indirect Tariffs
4:05 - The Role of the WTO
5:47 - Historical Context of Dependency
7:18 - Free Market Competition
9:05 - Impact of Low Wages
10:39 - The Welfare State's Effect
13:42 - The Challenges of Labor Mobility
17:29 - Stagnation in Small Towns
19:49 - The Consequences of Deindustrialization
21:05 - Trump's Tariff Strategy
22:55 - The Temptation of Easy Money
26:00 - Globalism vs. Nationalism
28:47 - The Reckoning of Political Parties
29:54 - The Math of Economic Survival
32:12 - The Logic Behind Raising Tariffs
33:17 - Open Floor for Discussion
In this lecture, we explore the complex issue of tariffs and their implications for domestic production and economic structures. Starting with a foundational understanding of what tariffs are—taxes imposed on imported goods—the discussion broadens to include both explicit tariffs, like those levied on foreign cars, and implicit tariffs, where domestic industries receive government subsidies that effectively lower their production costs. The lecturer emphasizes that tariffs are often justified as a means to stimulate local manufacturing and bolster union strength, ultimately creating a reciprocal relationship between government revenue and union benefaction.
As we delve deeper, the conversation shifts to the indirect effects of tariffs, particularly those seen in Europe. Here, subsidies offer a competitive advantage to local industries, allowing them to market goods at lower prices relative to imports. Examples, such as the pricing power of French car manufacturers, illustrate how government actions can distort market dynamics to the detriment of foreign competitors and, potentially, domestic workers. The lecture touches upon the World Trade Organization's role as a mediator of these tariff-related disputes and hints at the overarching philosophical concerns regarding the initiation of force and the violation of individual rights that accompany the use of tariffs.
Furthermore, the lecture scrutinizes the broader historical context surrounding economic policies, particularly the interplay between governmental support mechanisms and societal dependency. The lecturer draws connections between the post-World War II welfare state and rising reliance on government assistance, noting how such systems can create a cycle of dependency that counters the natural drive for economic self-sufficiency. Examples include unemployment insurance, which while necessary in some instances, can also inhibit a motivated search for new employment, particularly within communities that have become accustomed to governmental support.
In exploring the effects of globalization, the discussion emphasizes that free competition typically drives innovation and productivity but can lead to job displacement in certain sectors, notably manufacturing. The lecturer compares American and Mexican economic conditions, illustrating how differing wage structures and production costs can influence labor mobility and market performance. The insights on how labor-saving technologies gain traction when high-wage jobs face competition from lower-cost foreign labor add depth to the analysis of labor market dynamics.
The conversation then transitions to the long-term implications of current economic policies, particularly how government programs can perpetuate economic stagnation. Drawing upon personal anecdotes and historical examples, the lecturer articulates the notion that in the absence of external pressures, such as competition or necessity to innovate, the drive for improvement can dissipate. This stagnation is further exacerbated by a complacency fostered by welfare policies that allow citizens to remain disengaged from active participation in the economy.
The lecturer subsequently discusses the political landscape surrounding tariffs, including recent administrations' approaches to foreign trade relations, particularly under Trump's administration. The sentiment expressed reflects a belief that raising tariffs may prompt domestic investment and counter the erosion of the industrial base seen in the U.S. This perspective contemplates the complex reality that while tariffs may provide short-term relief, they also introduce potential long-term challenges, especially if future administrations pivot back to more free trade policies.
Ultimately, the lecture culminates in a call for a critical examination of economic policy and a re-evaluation of the societal shifts that have allowed for increased dependency on government support. The core thesis resonates with a mathematical simplicity—an economy must transition individuals from reliance on government benefits to active participation as taxpaying members of society for sustainable growth to occur. The discussion concludes with an invitation for audience engagement, encouraging reflection on the roles of government, economics, and individual agency in shaping our collective future.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Fourth of the fourth, 2025.
[0:03] It's just past 11 in the morning and sorry I've been a little bit under the weather, back, getting back in the saddle. So I thought to have a little chat with you guys, see if there's any questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, suggestions, arguments, debates, compulsions of reason that I could be subjected to.
[0:27] I have, want to do, want to receive, I have had some requests to talk about tariffs, which, yeah, I mean, you could say it's a little bit politics, but it's really much more economics than politics. So I'm certainly happy to do that, if that's of interest to you. All right. It looks like tariffs it is. Excellent. Okay.
[0:47] So as you know, I'm sure tariffs are taxes on goods being imported. And that's sort of this explicit tariffs and there are implicit tariffs. So the explicit tariff is if you want to sell a car in Japan, right? You've got an American-made car and you want to sell a car in Japan, then if Japan imposes a 25% tax on the car that is coming into Japan, that's a tariff. Now, of course, the purpose of tariffs is to stimulate domestic production. At least that's from an economic standpoint, of course, it's to raise revenue and so on. And it is also to allow for the fostering of union activity. Because if unions are subject to international discipline of prices, that's tougher for them to make sort of very large demands for massive amounts of healthcare, retirement benefits, high wages, job security, and so on. So, okay. For, let's say, politicians in Japan, for them to put a 25% tax on cars coming into the country. I'm not saying that's what it is, but this is just an example, right? It protects local manufacturing. It allows for unions to grow in strength. And of course, once the unions grow in strength and they're reliant upon the government for protectionism, then the unions donate to politicians, they donate to the government, and it becomes a pretty cheek-by-jowl or symbiotic relationship.
[2:16] So that's the general idea. So the government gets to raise money, unions get stronger, they give money to the government's job security, at least for a certain time period, is allowed, and the workers get paid more. And because the workers get paid more and get more benefits, they pay higher taxes. So a lot of it accrues to the government. Now that's a sort of direct tariff situation. The indirect tariff situation is also very interesting because that is when you cross-subsidize. So in many places in Europe, it's not necessarily a very high direct tariff, but what happens is the government will subsidize the industry. This could be direct straight money subsidies.
[2:57] This could be subsidized electricity. This could be subsidized steel. It could be any number of things. So they give a softer competitive advantage to the local industry by reducing costs for that industry. And then, of course, what happens is when the industry has reduced costs, it is able to sell those cars cheaper to other markets. So let's say you have a French Fiat. It's a French Renault, free Fiat. So a French car company that is getting these kinds of soft subsidies might get 20% of the price of its car taken off by government subsidies and.
[3:38] Various benefits and so on. And then if America only has, say, a 5% tariff, then the French car can still be sold at 15% below the price, because you've got a 20% subsidy, but you pay a 5% tariff, so you can still sell at 15% below what it might otherwise be. And that's, of course, not great for the local American workers.
[3:59] And there is an organization, I'm sure you've heard of it, called the WTO. It's the World Trade Organization.
[4:05] And, of course, the purpose of the World Trade Organization is an attempt to mediate or deal with these conflicts around tariffs. Tariffs, of course, are a result of statism, and therefore, you know, they are the initiation of the use of force, and they violate the non-aggression principle, they violate UPB, and all of that kind of stuff. However, you know, we live, sorry to sound so redundant, but we live in the real world, and we have to deal with sort of these real world issues. So what is going on at the moment is the result of many decades of bad thinking. And it's not just, of course, tariffs. It's not just this question of protectionism. It's not just a question of subsidies. There's a whole other set of situations that are going on that won't really be talked about much by people in the mainstream, because it goes sort of into the deep history of statism in the 20th century. So, you know, one of the aims of, I mean, there's the type of government that seeks to preserve and strengthen the country, and then there's the type of government that seeks to undermine and, in a sense, harm the country. Now, the governments that wish to undermine the country, what they tend to do is they tend to want to move people from paying taxes to receiving benefits. Because those who are paying taxes want smaller government. Those who are receiving benefits want larger government.
[5:34] So, if you sort of look at the history of the 20th century in the West, there are two major factors that have moved people from paying taxes to receiving benefits.
[5:48] The first is war, and the second is the welfare state. War, of course, destroys the flower of the young male population.
[5:58] And the war then creates a lot of widows and single mothers and it depends widows well not single mothers but women who have to try and raise their children alone and they require benefits from the government in order to do that, So war is a horrifying way of transferring people from being productive to being dependent on the state. And number two, of course, the welfare state sort of very obviously does that as well. So the welfare state creates a sort of dependent underclass of people who require large government, ever larger government in order to survive. But there's another one. So I mentioned two, there's a third one, which is interesting and varies from country to country. I mean, And that's, in Canada, it used to be called UI, unemployment insurance. Now it's called EI, employment insurance, because apparently dropping a syllable changes the whole thing. So employment insurance is money that is paid to people who have lost their jobs. And usually, you know, if you get fired for cause, it's not so easy, but it's also kind of tough. A lot of times, I think employers, they fire for cause, but they say the person's just been laid off so that they have a more graceful exit strategy for a difficult employee. or an unproductive employee.
[7:12] So, if we look at the free market, say, okay, how would the free market handle all of this?
[7:19] Let's say that you're in America, let's take America and Mexico, right? So, you're in America, and Mexico starts adopting free market policies and private property rights and, you know, starts to do the whole capitalist thing. Well, Mexico is then going to start to be able to create and produce goods that compete with you. So, that would put a downward pressure on your goods and services. Well, really goods more than services. Services are a little tricky to cross borders, although I guess with the internet now, that's not so bad, but sort of back in the past. So let's say Mexico is able to produce a car. Let's just take some simple math, right? So let's say that Mexico is able to produce a car for $5,000, but because of high wages in your country, you are only able to produce a car for $10,000. And of course, you know, when people are coming their way out of poverty, they tend to be quite happy making less money, obviously, right? Well, because they're making more money than they used to. I remember being absolutely thrilled to be making $2.45 an hour working in a convenience store in the Don Mills Mall because I was 12. So I was thrilled to be able to do that.
[8:30] So in the free market, you then have cars that are coming in that are undercutting the cars in America. Now, what do you do? Now, we're going to assume a pure free market situation, which means you can have unions, but they're not monopolistic unions. They can't shut down the entire plant forever and ever. Amen. So you have a downward pressure. And so the management, you know, managers in general, I mean, maybe not the international, whatever, right? Super rich, but the local managers usually have a great loyalty to their workforce. They work with them, they're kind of pals with them and so on, right?
[9:05] So they then face a challenging situation in that cars are coming in that are made for half the price. So what do they do? Well, they would sit down with their workers and say, we have to figure out how to get more efficiencies. Because lower wages are only a temporary competitive advantage. It's really, really important to understand. I mean, if you look at the lowest possible wages, we're talking slavery was a massive competitive disadvantage because lower wages retard the development of labor-saving devices. So lower wages will give you a competitive advantage in the short run, but because the wages are so low, it doesn't really make any sense to invest in labor-saving devices.
[9:53] So, although you may have a flood of cheaper goods in the short run, in the long run, because your labor costs are higher, you invest more in labor-saving devices, and that means, of course, you need less labor, but that labor then gets freed up to other places in the economy where it can add more value.
[10:07] So, low-wage competition drives capital investment in labor-saving devices, which, I mean, the fundamental driver of economic growth is worker productivity. How many goods can the worker produce per hour? And the more labor-saving devices you have, the better that ratio is, therefore the better your economy does. So in the short run, low-cost labor competition drives capital investment, which increases worker productivity and will often result in fewer workers. But that's how you kind of beat that back as a whole.
[10:40] You can, of course, also appeal and you can run a big ad or marketing campaign and you can say you should buy local it's better for your community like lots of things to buy American buy Chinese or whatever it was you can do all of that sort of stuff and that's really good, now it can be you know people have a loyalty to their local communities their local geographical regions or whatever you want to call them and so you can do all of that and that that can work pretty well now when you have things like the welfare state and unemployment insurance what happens is people start to get laid off because it's hard to compete with cheaper labor, at least in the short run. In the long run, you end up doing better. But I mean, if you look at the productivity of the North of the US where there was no slavery versus the South of the US where there was slavery, the North was far more productive per laborer.
[11:28] So with unemployment insurance and with the welfare state, what happens is people get laid off and they move from paying taxes to receiving benefits, because they're not as driven to go and get a new job. You know, maybe they hope the jobs will come back. I remember there was a Michael Moore movie about this, about Flint, Michigan, just how everything just kind of fell apart with all of this competition.
[11:55] So normally what happens in a free market environment when you get low cost goods coming in from another country is you get some workers laid off from the affected industry. In this case, with the car industry, you get some jobs, some people are laid off. But then, of course, let's say you get 20,000 people laid off because they're making things more efficient from a capital investment standpoint, maybe more robots or more automation or something like that. So then you have, let's say, 10 or 20,000 workers going into the workforce that is going to drive down wages for other people, which corrects some of the high wage situations or too high wage, right? And again, I know it's saying, I know it's saying tough things to say, ah, yes, but you know, all these workers coming into the workforce, that's going to drive down the wages of other workers. That's true.
[12:44] That's true. But then that's the question, would you rather be hungry or starving? Right? So let's say you have to take a 10% or 20% wage cut. That's, you know, maybe you've got to go from 50k to 40k, 100k to 80k, something like that. Well, that's better than having no job at all, right? I mean, I think most of us over the course of, certainly in the course of my varied career, wages have gone up and down depending on various circumstances, depending on whether it's a recession or whatever it is, right? So I'd still rather have a job than no job. I went from making good money as a waiter in 1991 to making minimum wage washing cars and weeding gardens in 1992 because there was a terrible recession, but I was very happy to have that work. It was way better, way better. So yeah, normally low-cost competition, you get workers laid off in the domestic industries that drives down the prices of labor and it starts to correct itself as a whole. Now.
[13:43] You have unemployment insurance and you have the welfare state, what happens, of course, is that people get laid off and they don't look very hard for work and they don't move. You know, we have this sort of polarity in our lives as a whole in that we like to stick with the familiar, but flourishing often means moving to the new. I saw this, you know, very directly when I was working up north after high school, that there were these small towns that there was a mine there like 40 years ago, 50 years ago. The mine closed down, but because of welfare and other government programs, people were still around.
[14:29] And because they had grown up in small communities, everybody knew each other. They didn't have the meet new people social skills that you kind of need to move and flourish in a sort of modern economy. I mean, I moved 18 times when I was in my 20s. I went to probably six or seven or eight different schools as a child. That was too much, but I did learn the social skills of meeting new people. So that was good.
[15:00] But if you grew up in a small town, and I remember there was a woman I knew when I was younger who came from I think Brantford and she was like it was just the armpit of the north and she hated it and couldn't wait to get out and so on and I remember working in a town called well I worked outside of a town called Nikina which was sort of near the end of the highway back in the day if I remember rightly and I remember that I worked with actually I worked with a bunch of women out there for a while which was interesting and we went into town and we had a nice cooked meal and we ended up going to a local bar and danced the night away and i remember shaking my 19 year old tushy to prince's kiss and then i remember i had to buy some clothes because you know when the next day, and i went to a the local store which was like the everything store and i had to buy because you know working in the bushes rough on the clothes and you could scratch and torn and all that, and i remember the guy when i went to change room to try on the clothes he was like hey man do you want me to put on some dance music for you because i guess everyone had heard about my dance moves.
[16:09] In nakina back in the day so everyone they kind of knew each other they'd all grown up together, and this was also the case when i worked in another i mean i worked in a bunch of these sort of small mining towns and not not in them but that's where we would sort of be based we generally lived in the bush, in what they call prospectors' tents. So...
[16:31] People grow up in these small towns and normally when the mine closes everybody has to leave, and people don't want to leave because this is their familiar area and it's how we evolved there's nothing wrong with that but that tension between staying where you are and going where the opportunity is is something that's kind of been frozen in time through the welfare state and through unemployment insurance other sort of general government benefits the schools keep running right because the government's paying for them the libraries keep running and certainly back of the day the towns were always sort of arranged the same way you had the post office and then you had the convenience store and then you had the beer store all next to each other and i remember pointing this out to somebody who worked up north for a while he's like oh yeah so you go you go to the post office to cash your government check and then you go to the convenience store to pick up, your smokes and food snacks and then you go to the beer store and then you go home.
[17:30] So so people get kind of frozen in time and because they're not out there competing wages stay high or relatively high plus you have the unions and the government protecting each other, so there's these problems tend to get worse over time so what happens of course is that, if there is a massive de-industrialization without the attendant government programs, then the market solves that problem, right? There would be no such thing as what's called in America the rust belt, right? The rust belt is, you know, the tens of thousands of manufacturing plants that shut down since NAFTA in the 80s. They all become rusty and the job skills are all gone and the people are depressed and you've got fentanyl issues and you have the usual problems of despair problems of despair are addiction violence self-destruction suicidality mal family formations a single motherhood and and so on it just people need resistance in order to maintain moral strength and when all that resistance is taken away with you know the infinite government money glitches then people they just decay they just decay and it's again i've i've really seen this up close and personal.
[18:49] Not just in, of course, the generally white towns up north, but in the indigenous population reservations as well. Absolutely appalling. You can just see these kids walking around at two o'clock in the morning, five-year-olds, no pants, just a t-shirt, cold. It's horrible, horrible. So people get stuck in time. They stay stuck on the government money. And normally if there was a massive de-industrialization there would be a lot of resistance people would get mad they'd get mad but they don't get quite as mad because they're given a bunch of free stuff free health care free education free dental care for a lot of people if their poor government money. And so the normal impetus that you would have for change no longer exists. No longer exists. Like you're falling and you've sort of forgotten that you're falling, you've just got used to it.
[19:50] So with regards to the tariffs, the US generally has low tariffs and other countries generally have higher tariffs. And as people have pointed out, like you can sell a Japanese car in America, but you really can't sell an American car in Japan.
[20:10] And that's bad, right? That's no good. So then how do you deal with this? Well, I sort of don't mean to use a negative term, but I will. You can be a libertarian and bleat about it and say, well, tariffs are bad. Okay. But how does saying tariffs are bad affect difficult political decisions in the real world. Yeah, tariffs are bad. Violations of the non-aggression principle. So how do you deal with them? Well, I guess you can go to the World Trade Organization, you can lodge a complaint, there can be a multi-year analysis and so on. And that's what people have been trying to do since the WTO was established many decades ago. Has it solved the problem? Nope. So that's not going to do it. So how do you deal with tariffs? I mean, I obviously don't know exactly what's going on in Trump's mind, but it seems to be something like, we are going to raise tariffs on you.
[21:06] And when we raise tariffs on you, that is going to stimulate domestic production. Will it do that? It's tricky. It's tricky because to build a significant plant is a multi-year endeavor. And if those who are not Trump get into office, right, he's running for his second term, oh, he's in his second term. So will it be able to be sustainable? Hard to say, right? if you spend 10 i don't know 100 million dollars building a plant and then the tariffs all get undone in the future then you've lost your 100 million dollars and that's not good right so there's a certain amount of oh let's see right let's see if this could be sustained let's see if this can work right so the way that you deal with someone let's say just take this sort of analogy that somebody's robbing you right somebody comes into your house and they're stealing from you. Now, if you just say to them, stealing is wrong, are they likely to change their behavior? They are not. They are not likely to change their behavior because they're stealing from you. However, if you say, I don't know, I'm going to throw you out. If you keep stealing from me, I'm going to write retaliatory force or something like that, then maybe they'll drop what they're doing and leave or wander off or something like that, right?
[22:21] Trump's argument, I think, is something like, you know, we've tried the WTO, we've tried libertarian exhortations to low or non-tariffs. And because the sort of hollowing out of, I mean, it really is Europe and America's industrial capacity because of the hollowing out of that and the fact that there has not been any particular social pushback. Because it's like it's a terrible temptation, right? I mean, you've got some hard job at a factory with sparks flying all over the place.
[22:56] You've got to wear, you get a wheeled and acetylene torch and you've got your welder's goggles and, you know, it's hot, difficult, dangerous, you know, Sean Connery outland style, drudgery and dangerous and, you know, stinky, unpleasant, loud. And then someone comes along and says, oh, you know, we'll give you like two thirds of your money just to stay home. It's pretty tempting.
[23:17] I mean i remember when i was working up north humping these 90 pound drill bits on my back through deep snow and bramble bushes in in with snowshoes on if somebody had said to me well you can get two-thirds of the money just by sitting in a hotel room be like yeah it's pretty tempting it's pretty tempting so you know the these situations get to an extreme you know that the worst illnesses are the ones you get no discomfort from, because they just kind of grow and get worse. And so, because we've had all this government redistribution of money that has numbed people's rebelliousness against this kind of stuff. I mean, the people who are not, this is sort of the question of nationalism versus globalism. It's a very interesting question from a sort of economic standpoint, which is, if you are, let's say, an international hedge fund, then tariffs don't really bother you that much. Like, let's say you could only invest in America for whatever reason, well, then tariffs that harm America are bad for you. But because you have international finance now, it doesn't really matter to you. Because if Japan raises a bunch of tariffs on American goods, you can just shift your investment from America to Japan.
[24:31] All you're doing is moving bits of digitized value back and forth internationally.
[24:37] Well, I said they always had this thing in the 80s that some trader, some stock trader would be, it's like, oh, but the Japanese market's open in two hours or whatever it is, right? And I got to be ready for that. And that really was the plot of the Michael Douglas movie, Wall Street, with Charlie Sheen and Hannah, Daryl Hannah, who was terrible. Anyway, so If you're an international investor, tariff activity is actually an arbitrage that you can make a good deal of money from. If you have some sense that you believe or maybe you've got some insider information that Japan is going to impose a bunch of tariffs, then you would shift your investments from the American industries or the other industries hit by those tariffs that were negatively impacted by those tariffs, and you would simply swiftly shift to the Japanese markets. And you could make some serious coin out of that. So, this is one of the reasons why the middle class has been hollowed out, and the ultra-wealthy have become ultra-wealthier. It becomes, when reactive economic adaptation is numbed through government goodies, government spending, government resources, welfare, unemployment insurance, other things like that, when the reaction of the markets is paralyzed.
[26:01] Buy all of that, then the opportunities for arbitrage become a whole lot better, for longer term arbitrage.
[26:07] So if Mexico starts selling half price cars into the US, then the US labor market is going to react fairly quickly and shift and change and more investment, more adaptation, higher worker productivity to compete with all of that, marketing campaigns, telling people to buy local, all of that sort of stuff, right? You won't have as long an investment arbitrage situation. You'll still make some, but not as much. Whereas if Japan imposes a bunch of tariffs, or let's say Mexico starts selling the half-price cars, and you simply, you shift your investment from America to Mexico.
[26:44] And normally this would cause significant change in America, American industry, in order to recapture the investment and the market share, but because people are just falling into the cushy life rafts of the welfare state, that pushback doesn't really happen, which means that, of course, you can keep your investments in Mexico or Japan going for a lot longer.
[27:06] Now, of course, in the long run, this is bad for trade as a whole and so on, but the international investors don't care. Because the other thing, is that a local population doesn't want to have no manufacturing capacity in its country for reasons of war, conflict, right? I mean, it's a whole lot easier to turn a car factory into a tank factory, say, than it is to turn a floor full of traders and accountants into a tank factory, right? And given that this kind of aggression is still around in the world, and people feel, I think kind of uneasy having a sort of financial services economy rather than the actual make things economy. It's also cruel. It's cruel to those who have like one of the things that is pretty clear when you've worked with people who do, I don't mean to say manual labor, but skilled manual labor. It's sort of what I was doing up north. And if you've seen those guys working on the oil rigs, you know, they're grappling with all of these pipes and drills. And it's incredible what they're doing. So people who have maybe a little less intellectual dexterity and a whole lot more manual dexterity, most people are amazing.
[28:28] Amazing. And why should they not make their money? Why should they not make their money? Why should they just be tossed aside because of tariffs? Why can't they have their skills, their abilities, their families, their barbecues, their 4th of July picnics, their, communities. They should. They should.
[28:47] So, I think that there is a big reckoning that is happening right now. And I'm old enough to remember when the Democrats, I mean, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama were all railing against, tariffs and the tariffs had to come down and it was harming the industrial base. But that's back when the Democrats at least had the pretense of looking out for the physical labor, lower to middle classes. They don't really do that anymore because they're all just captured by the money magnet merchants of international arbitrage.
[29:21] So this is something that Trump has been talking about since the 80s, for sure, that America is getting ripped off. America has low tariffs, other countries have high tariffs and this is destroying america's industrial base and i mean the only chance really that america or any country it's really not america it's just math right but the only chance that any of these countries have to survive at all is is one equation one equation and one equation only is that people have to be moved off the consumption of government money to the paying of taxes. That's all.
[29:55] I mean, it's as simple an equation as if you have too many people, like you're some medieval villager, you've got winter, you've got no calories coming in, really, and you stored up all your food for the winter.
[30:08] If you're eating more than you have, or you'll be able to get by spring, people are going to starve to death. So you have to cut people's calories or you have to cut the calories they're consuming or you have to increase the calories they're producing like hunting or whatever you could do right so it's just math, there is no way for the deficit to be solved there is no way for the economy to be sustainable unless you move people from consumption to production it's it's honestly it's just math now again there's bitcoin and other things but for the most part it's just math so the idea of course, is that if you raise tariffs, and this libertarians bother me because they just look at one dimension and say, tariffs are bad. Yeah, I get that. But you've got to look at the whole.
[30:59] Purely economic standpoint, right? I get the morals are different in some ways, but just looking at it from a survival standpoint. I mean, nobody wants to have a hungry child unless if the child isn't hungry, he's not going to make it through the winter, right? So then you have to make some tough decisions. So my understanding is that the purpose of these tariffs is to stimulate domestic investment in manufacturing. When you stimulate domestic investment in manufacturing, then people move from the consumption of resources to the production of resources. Now, some of this consumption could just be young men in their parents' basement playing video games and really not really producing or adding much to the economy or society as a whole. But you absolutely must move people from the consumption of government money to the production in the economy, from receiving taxes to paying taxes. There is no other way. Mathematically, for the system to survive. Now, maybe that's a bit abstract for people, people who are sort of too emotional or can't look at these things from a sort of logical or mathematical standpoint. But that is the fact. That is the fact.
[32:12] In the current trajectory of people dependent on government money versus people paying taxes, the system will not last. and it's not even like long to go. So raising tariffs.
[32:27] Nobody wants to sit there on any given Sunday and put a bunch of sandbags up around their house unless there's a flood coming and then that's what you do. And raising tariffs, I think the understanding is from the general conservative standpoint, and you know, we'll see how this plays out, of course, right? But I think the general approach is if we raise tariffs, then more jobs are created domestically. And if we raise tariffs and government expenses go down because people are shifting from welfare and unemployment to actually having jobs and government income goes up because they're paying taxes, we can begin to close the deficit and we can try to find a way to have a sustainable economic system. I mean, whether you agree with that or not is an interesting question, but I think that's the general idea and argument behind it. So that's my two cents on it.
[33:18] I'm certainly happy to hear your thoughts and comments with whatever is on your mind, if that is helpful. And you can unmute yourself if you like, if you have any comments or things you want to talk about. It could be this, could be any topic you'd like. Let me just check your questions here in case there's anything in the chat that I missed. Yes, thank you. Fredomain.com slash donate. I appreciate that. A hi from Australia. Where or how do I apply for a call in? Fredomain.com slash call. fredomain.com slash call telling people no more free stuff we're broke it will never happen knowing running for office will say that or be elected.
[33:54] Pretty clear about what happens to the American economy without significant change. I mean, I think the idea that the entire population in a democracy is just absolutely unwilling to be told the truth to, I don't think that's a factual statement. I think that there are some people who do sort of recognize that. All right, let's see here.
[34:16] Paul writes, hi Stef, my mother, sorry, a little bit of a shift here. My mother-in-law seems to perfectly fit the description of borderline personality disorder. My wife used to get upset at me for not playing along to appease her dysfunctional mother, but after a few years of therapy came to realize that behavior is not normal. She drew boundaries and cut regular contact with her mother, and our lives became much more peaceful. We now have an 11-week-old baby, and her mom is trying to come back into our lives as if everything is normal. I would love to cut contact with her, but my wife wants to do her due diligence before she cuts her out. She let her mother meet our baby boy, but I've refused to let her hold him. We both know we need to have a direct, difficult discussion with her mother, but my wife fills with anxiety at the thought of the confrontation. There is no point of contention in our marriage. We are in agreement, and everything is great except having her mom continually trying to meet up with us. Is this worth a call-in? There is something holding my wife up from this, perhaps hearing from someone other than me. can help. Yes. Yeah, freedomain.com slash call. I think that would be very helpful. You can make it a public call or you can make it a private call if you like.
[35:28] Somebody says, I have a two and a half year old toddler. He screams a lot, especially when big feelings are involved. Can we do something about it? Well, I think my first question would be, where is this behavior learned from? Where is this behavior learned from? Has your toddler been around anyone who screams, right? Has your toddler been around in any environment where there's a lot of screaming? Now, I think, I mean, obviously there's innate aspects to the personality, but I'm not sure that this level of intensity or hysteria is one of them. So I would say, what loud people has your toddler been around? It could be a daycare, it could be a relative, could be somebody within the family, but I would imagine that, I mean, toddlers, it's amazing how much they copy right it's amazing how much they copy you stick your tongue out at a baby the baby will stick that tongue back out at you right they just they copy.
[36:28] If you want to know why your child is doing something, it's not the only place, but certainly the first place to look is in the environment and see what is the child copying. All right. Someone says, I can't unmute myself now. How do you recommend moving to the private sector? I'm 26 with all professional experience being government IT contracts. Thanks. Ooh, I wish you'd done it before Doge, if you're in the US, because now you're going to be in competition with a whole bunch of other people.
[36:56] So so the the best quality jobs i generally got in my life was through contacts and, if i were in your shoes you're 20 26 right yeah so if i were in your shoes what i would do, is i would contact all the people i went to school with as many hey remember me blah blah blah right, i would contact all the people i went to school with and i would work as hard as humanly possible possible to try and find out where they landed, what industry they're in, take them out for drinks. You know, there's nothing wrong with networking, right? And find out where they've landed, find out what their job is like, find out what their company is like, find out what their boss is like, and try and figure out if there's a place that you can land. The sort of the personal recommendation stuff you know i mean i think it's fairly useless trying to send emails you know over the internet where there's going to be some ai or hr resource who's probably not going to really know much about things i think the sort of blind sending of emails is pointless when it comes to work.
[38:08] Excuse me, the real value of education, particularly post-secondary education, the real value in education is not what you learn, but who you know. I mean, the real value of going to some Ivy League school is not the content of what you learn. And this is particularly true for IT, of course, because in IT, the knowledge is changing all the time. So the real value area contacts. So let's see, you probably went to school at 17 or 18, so maybe it's been half a decade since you graduated. But you can look people up, of course. I mean, it's pretty easy to find people as a whole. Look people up, and how you approach them is very dependent upon what you remember from each individual. There are not many people in this world, unless they have very fond memories of you, there's not many people in the world who are like, oh, you need a job and you're contacting me after ignoring me for half a decade or whatever. I mean, that's why it's sort of important to maintain your professional contacts, even when you don't need things. Like, honestly, it's not a huge deal. You just touch base with people every couple of months. Just give them a call. How are they doing? What's new? How's life? What happened to that girl you were dating? Honestly, be a 20-minute conversation. But you have to, have to, have to maintain your professional contacts, particularly as a young man.
[39:34] And if you have done that work, then you're not just calling someone up because you need a job. If you haven't done that work, then I would suggest starting to do that work and have a couple of calls building rapport before you start asking for a job. But, Yeah, stay in touch with people. It's very easy to get isolated in the modern world. But do your absolute best to stay in touch with people. And you will find that that kind of stuff just pays off really, really well as a whole. Somebody says LinkedIn is great for this. I really appreciate the advice. Yeah. Yeah.
[40:12] Here's the thing. So, in the world as a whole, you want to be in the position of both being able to give and receive favors, right? If you're just in the place where you just want to get favors, that's not great, because that's kind of exploitive, right? If you're just in the place where you give favors, then that's not great either, because you're being exploited. But to be able to trade value is kind of important right you know you want to arouse desire in a woman and you also want the woman to arouse desire within you that's the trade of value, of course you want your employee you want your employee to work for you and make money for you but you also want to pay your employee because that's sort of a mutual exchange of value in your case you want to provide value to your employer and you want your employer to provide Successful relationships are those which transfer maximum value back and forth.
[41:14] Networking, it's, and I say this, you know, it's, it's something that I did not do as much as I should have when I was younger, but I did enough that I kept working.
[41:24] So yeah, stay, stay in touch with people. It just, it doesn't take much. It doesn't take much, even, you know, text messages back and forth once in a while, but you must, you must professionally, you must stay in touch with people. You don't want to end up being that face in the crowd where nobody knows you, you know, a lot of jobs. I mean, I've been a hiring manager, as you all know. I interviewed like a thousand people, probably hired a hundred people over the course of my career and had a very good success rate. I think I only had to fire three or four out of the hundred people that I hired.
[41:56] So if you end up in a situation where you are a face of the crowd, you are an email in an inbox, you're doomed. Doomed, I'm telling you, you're just doomed. And so you have to have some sort of personal connection with people to get I think any reasonable job I mean that's one another thing of course you can do is is you can become an expert you can write about things you can try and find ways to present at conferences I was always eager to do that it's a superpower to be able to talk to people in a group and so even if it's even if it's just within your own organization you can do a presentation on some new technology or you know here's how to use this AI or something like that right just become known as the guy who can talk to people and that will be enormously valuable for your it career that's just something you have to grit your teeth and i think learn how to do let's see here how do you remember do you recommend writing cover letters when applying to jobs i think that is supposed to add the personal touch but i never made them and.
[42:59] If you have contacts, you probably don't need a cover letter. I will certainly tell you this, I always appreciated when I was interviewing someone, if they had gone through the website, and understood the business and said, you know, maybe why they were passionate about the business, all that kind of stuff. That was a very big deal for me. Very helpful. If that was present in the cover letter so much the better but certainly if you get a face-to-face interview you have to go through the website and you have to go through the business you have to go to the industry you have to know the main competitors you just have to know the business because quality managers are not looking for workers quality managers are looking for partners they're looking for participants in the business they're looking for people who understand the business to the point where they can make independent decisions about how to add value. So if it's just a blank, bland job, I mean, again, I don't want to give anybody any particular advice because it's been a while since I've been in the job market.
[44:02] But in general, work your contacts. Work your contacts and get your recommendations. It just takes one person to say, you got to check out so-and-so's resume. It's really good. I knew him from, he was really smart in computer science and all that. And, you know, do this now because, you know, I think there's going to be more and more government workers who are going to be looking to land in the private sector and you want to get in there. Ahead of time or beforehand so i don't know a general cover letter in a random job you're just applying to online may not be that valuable but the moment you're talking to someone in the business you better know their business very well and there's lots of ways to research this now with ai that can really help that to me would be a bare minimum like if i ever and this did happen of course i ever interviewed someone who didn't really know what my business was didn't understand the environmental stuff the health and safety stuff and it's just like i like coding it's like well no no no no all right well thank you everyone so much for dropping by today it was a real pleasure to chat with you thank you for the great questions and comments and we will see you tonight at 7 p.m eastern bye.
Support the show, using a variety of donation methods
Support the show
