A National Housing Emergency (EP. 428)

25:01This is why I don't think this chart is that big of a deal. because look at how uneven the 50 to 100 range is. This year alone, it dropped in April, then it spiked for two months, then it fell again. It's noisy. It's very noisy, right? This isn't like a three-year chart. This is a one-year chart. You know, I didn't even realize until you said it, I didn't realize that this starts in November 2024. Yeah. So it's a very noisy chart. But I thought this part was funny. So anyway, with all this stuff, Like it's, it's so dependent on where you live, right? Middle class is not a national thing. It depends where you are.

25:39So these national numbers, middle classes, 50 to a hundred thousand dollars. I think this is part of what like annoys people is these definitions. I thought Pew had a good research, a Pew research had a good definition for middle class. Those earning from two thirds to double the median household income. Fine. All right. Anyway, this, this quote made me laugh a little bit. not like ha ha, but like, of course, it's a dumb quote. Folks that are low and moderate income, they don't have any extra money anymore. Bostic told an audience at a recent town hall meeting in Alabama. Obviously. You don't say, you don't say.

26:16Is there like, there's like a weird amount of, I don't know if virtue signaling is the right word, but an obsession about how little money, lower-class income, lower-income people have? Obviously. And it's not to be insensitive. But this is not – you're not making a point by suggesting that folks that are low and moderate income, they don't have extra money anymore. Or are going to struggle to – yes. Wow! You don't say. Yeah. Well, the article was full of stuff that kind of showed how this cohort is getting squeezed. This was the one – this is one of the examples that made the most sense. So United Airlines said premium cabin revenue in the most recent quarter increased 5.6 % when the economy cabin was negative.

26:57So they're just saying, again, that the high end is still very willing to spend. The lower and middle ends are cutting back. And there was a lot of different examples in it. So that does seem to be a trend that we've been hitting on lately. Yeah. Okay, but this is another thing. The Wall Street Journal, there was a new poll. This is another reason why I think the sentiment ones are so hard to understand. So they look at that question is, people like me have a good chance of improving our standard of living. Agree or disagree? And this goes back to like the 1980s. So this has been going on for a long time.

27:29And for a while there, it was 60 to 70 percent or so. And then the pandemic hit. And it kind of started happening a little bit before the pandemic. But this thing has crashed in the past 10 years. And now it's 20. I think they said it's the lowest it's ever been. 25 percent, which is a record low dating back to 1987. think that people like me have a good chance of improving our standard of living. And I think this is just a case of social media breaking sentiment readings forever. There is a before social media and an after social media. And it's completely rendered sentiment and vibes impossible to measure anymore.

28:06But I think the pandemic broke it. The pandemic helped. Well, this was already trending down. The pandemic broke it wide open. Yeah. And I just think that these figures are much, much harder. Like, I don't know how they did this, but they did an actual versus predicted consumer sentiment. This goes back to like 20 years. And the actual versus predicted, to your point, tracks pretty closely until the pandemic. And then coming out of the pandemic, the predicted what the sentiment should be based on past readings is not like that at all. Maybe, I think you mentioned this a couple weeks ago, how weird life seems since then.

28:44Maybe we haven't spent enough time think about how many brains were just completely melted from the pandemic and haven't recovered. It was a period of time that we went through, and it changed us forever, and some people haven't grappled with that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we spend a lot of time talking about how a lot of these surveys are either broken or not real life or talk to people, and it just doesn't feel this way, and it doesn't matter for the market. But it definitely does matter for politics, which obviously matters a whole lot because that's where the laws come from. And people vote based on how they feel.

29:16So it's definitely not nothing, even if it feels overblown. Yes, that's probably the place where the vibes matter the most. 100%. Right? Because the economy, eventually the data wins. You can think of what you want about the economy, but it is what it is. But yes, it's in total sleep. Also, not to be insensitive, but just to be objective here, we spend a lot of time talking about how the lower income consumer does not move the stock market. They are responsible for less than 1 % of the earnings of the overall market. But as a cohort, obviously, their vote matters as much as everybody else's. And I don't know how it breaks down in terms of the number of votes, but that's where it shows up in a big way.

29:55Right. And of course, politics, local, national impact, national discourse. And maybe that's why those sentiment numbers are so volatile, right? Because people are changing their minds about this stuff all the time, depending on what happened. All right, Roger Lowenstein had a great piece in the Wall Street Journal about why U.S. capitalism is unlike any other. And this is the thing where that last sentiment reading from the Wall Street Journal doesn't make sense. People like me have a good chance of proving our standard of living. He compares us to Europe, but he said, American capitalism is especially pitched toward getting capital to entrepreneurs.

30:28Last year, the U.S. registered a record 5.5 million applications for new businesses, one for every 24 households. And I don't know the exact number, but it's something like 60 to 80 % of all small businesses don't make it, right? They completely go out of business. So, but this is the, these are the people who think like, yeah, my life is going to get better. If I try to do something like this and I try to start something on my own, it's going to work for me. Like that is - Those are the bulls. Yeah, right? And this is one of the things out of the pandemic that happened that was crazy. More people than ever decided to start their own businesses.

31:03Yeah, like take - You never would have predicted that in a million years. Take Dr. Mayo 07, for example. Right. He just said, hey, I'm going to fix Michael's cold. Anyway, like and subscribe. And if there's any werewolves or vampires in the neighborhood, they're going to be good too. This one is crazy to me. He says, Europe is more equal but also poorer. Per capita income in Arkansas, one of the poorest states, is greater than in Germany. Huh? Overall, per capita income in the U.S. is an astonishing 84 % higher than in Europe. He said, obviously, but to his point, the lower income, he said, is way worse in America because there isn't as big of a safety net.

31:38All right, this seems like a weird stat. per capita income in Arkansas is greater than in Germany. Come on. He said, you don't believe it. No. He said overall per capita income, the U S is in the gap shrinks of one adjuster purchasing power. But by any measure, I mean, yes, the point that's a fair point. I just, that sounds, that sounds truly unbelievable. Okay. Grock. Is this true? Okay. Ben, speaking of Grock last week, I think, tell me if I'm wrong here. I think when I mentioned what I was doing on McDonald's, on Quarter for McDonald's, we were talking about quick service restaurants versus sit down and fast food and all that sort of stuff.

32:21And I asked the AI in Quarter to make me a chart of same store sales. And then it grabbed me. It numbers the quotes. So then you scroll over it and it takes you to the paragraph and question what they're talking about. So I was talking about that. and through the lens of Fatswood, the reason why I brought it up was just to demonstrate how fast AI is moving. And the email that we got a couple of weeks ago from the analyst who is being let go, all of this sort of stuff is truly breathtaking. Yeah, by the way, it's hard to cut in. I had a phone call with a guy who lost his job. He's getting interviews and he's moving on.

33:08He's going to be okay. That person? That person? Yeah, I talked to him. Good. So somebody emailed this to us. A paper out of Stanford said, canaries in the coal mine, six facts about the recent employment effects of artificial intelligence. I uploaded this to ChatGVT because I'm not reading 57 pages. I asked for the most important points. And literally, Ben, maybe two seconds, I think it was closer to one second, it gave me this, six key facts. That is the most impressive thing is just how quickly – if it takes like 10 seconds to do it, you're like, geez, this is taking forever. But most of the time, it's like instantaneous how it does.

33:50It is pretty fast. So let's look at some six key facts. Employment decline for young workers in AI-exposed jobs. So early career workers, 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles, software developers, customer service, have seen steep employment drops. Overall employment strong by young workers' leg. We know that. Automation versus augmentation matters. So declines are concentrated where AI automated tasks versus augmented tasks. Anyway, I don't need to read all six, but look at this chart from Ned Davis Research. So it shows unemployment rates by education. Less than a bachelor's degree, high school graduates, no college, no high school diploma.

34:31And look at the unemployment rate for college graduates. It's the only one that looks like this. it's very entry-level jobs are in a world of pain and this i guess this is the big worry not that ai is going to replace every job or you know make sure that we're all out of work or anything like that but the entry-level automated work here's the weird thing though with this chart that i maybe i'm not reading so less than a bachelor's degree high school graduate no high school diploma to your point though like less than a bachelor's degree is is falling these other ones are stable haven't moved at all.

35:06I thought the big worry was like, you know, call centers and maybe those things just haven't happened yet. But shouldn't this be the low-hanging fruit? It's interesting that it's the college grads that would be impacted first. I don't understand why the people below college are not also seeing a big impact from this. Because you would think, well, those jobs can, or is it because those are more in-person, physical, labor type of jobs? Also, the immigration crackdown is probably why less than a bachelor's degree unemployment is falling. I guess. Good point. Okay. All right. Last week, we talked about the micro strategy.

35:44And I thought that you gave a pretty – I thought you kind of gave a defense of Michael Saylor. You have been recently. Well, hold on. Hold on. Not a defense. Not of the stock. I just think what he's doing is super interesting. Yeah, you gave him credit for pulling it off essentially. It is funny though. So anytime you talk about something like this, the crypto people will come in and be like, you guys still don't get it. I do get it. But someone sent me this article from CoinDesk, and it talked about what Jim Chanos is doing. I think I forgot to mention this. So he called it financial gibberish.

36:17So he obviously is an idea believer. He just said the company offers nothing unique beyond owning Bitcoin. And so Chanos' strategy is he's going short micro strategy, long Bitcoin. Well, if you look at a chart of micro strategy divided by IBIT, it is very much at like key potential support. It hasn't outperformed all year, which is interesting. I think that, so he's just saying, listen, the premium is going to shrink. And to me that is, yes, as opposed to like trying to short micro strategy. This is a way more reasonable strategy to me. Yes. If you really don't believe in it, that this is going to last.

36:54Yes. If you short micro strategy outright, that's wild. And he thinks just, he thinks all the other firms doing this, he said 140 firms worldwide are doing this. These treasury strategies, that will cause a premium to shrink. And that to me seems like a reasonable bet. I don't know. Yeah, same. But I was on Coindesk and looking at this story, and another story came up. And it says, rich Bitcoiners are reportedly spending BTC on luxury holidays. Does this really make sense? So I guess there's a story in the Financial Times about how people are now allowed to spend crypto on private jets and taking yachts and these really nice hotels.

37:30And people are spending their crypto. And this article was like, hey, hey, hey, is this the right thing to do? Remember the Bitcoin pizza guy? He spent 10 Bitcoin on a pizza or however ever it was. And does it really make sense for these people to spend this money? If you have$50 million in Bitcoin, you have to spend it. What the hell? And it's like, well, we don't know for sure. if the bull market continues, then maybe not. It's like, guess what? If you have enough Bitcoin and crypto to take private yachts and private planes, and yes, it's okay to spend some and enjoy it. What is wrong with people?

38:06Yes. Counting your Bitcoin is not going to make you happy. I think there might be more to life than that, Ben. Yes. Wow. Okay. All right. So there was a report last night. Trump weighs declaring national housing emergency. Besant told the Washington Examiner quote we're trying to figure out what we can do and we don't want to step into the business of states, counties, and municipal governments we may declare a national housing emergency in the fall I mean there is a housing emergency the solution is again this is like out to my purview can't they buy mortgage bonds and just get the spreads down a little bit that's the thing though what could they actually do that would fit because the whole point is depending on estimates we're 3 to 5 million housing units short.

38:59That's what we've underbuilt in the past 10 or 15 years. So I guess yeah our solution to almost everything is just more debt and it would be okay we'll lower rates but would that really fix the housing emergency? Would that make it I mean it would decrease the monthly payments but wouldn't it just spur demand? It would unlock a lot the demand it would unlock a lot of supply too. I'm not saying that would fix everything because you're right, that we are underhoused. Prices would probably go up again though. That lowering mortgage rates alone is not going to fix the housing emergency if it really is.

39:31The thing is, he said, they don't want to get into the business of states, counties, and municipal governments. That's what they would have to do. They would have to say, blanket, we're going to make it easier for home builders to build. Cut through all the red tape. If you do this, we'll give you a government-backed loan to build houses. That's what they did in the 50s. That's how they got all those middle-class houses from the people who came home from the war, the government literally backed the mortgages. And they took all the risk off the plate of the home builders. That's what they'd have to do.

39:58Short of that, I don't see how they could fix it. That's my thinking. Like, what would actually help? I don't know. All right. The Wall Street Journal had a piece on private equity returns. And it says Yale's trendsetting private equity strategy is getting harder to pull off. We talked about this a little last week. They look at the annualized returns for the decade ending June 30th. Why June 30th? Because that's when most of these Ivy Leagues report. and they look at the 10-year returns in 2025, 2015, and 2005, and private equity continues to go down. The S &P has kind of slaughtered private equity in the past 10 years.

40:30Now, here's the thing. These numbers for private equity are probably even worse than they look on here because I don't ever really trust these private equity indexes because they're usually self-reporting. The returns for IRRs are not the same as compounded returns for mutual funds and ETFs. So I would always take these numbers with a grain of salt. That's funny. I was going to say, these numbers actually look good. Like, all right. Yeah, the S &P did 13, like whatever. It is what it is. But 9 % for private equity for 10 years, that doesn't sound bad at all. But you're telling me that you don't even think it's 9%.

41:02I don't. I never believe these private equity index numbers. I think because, again, they're self-reported. Like, if you have a really terrible fund, you're not going to go, hey, here, take these results, put them in there with the other ones. So I think they're always a little lower than they look. But yeah, you're right. So there were 9%. But the thing is, they talk about how all these Ivy Leagues are not following what David Sunson said. And his whole thing was, you should always have at least 30 % of your assets. This is for the Ivy Leagues in cash, bonds, or hedge funds. And they said five out of the 10 Ivy League universities do not have that.

41:36So the liquidity crunch you mentioned a few weeks ago in Jason Zweig's article, that's why they just did not think through that calculus of having something. No, it's weird about a private equity index too. Like it's not, it's obviously not investable and nobody gets, nobody gets this return. Exactly. Yes, it's impossible to get. I mean, some, some people would say, well, if you invest in like the big private equity players, that's probably essentially what you're getting is an index because they're so big. But yeah, it doesn't exist. All right. I was listening to a firm's conference call because they had a blowout.

42:13Stock had a great response. So is this another one? I think last week you said DoorDash is the stock you've been most wrong about. Don't you think the collective Royal We was probably the most wrong about a firm as well? I was not bad. I'm not saying you. This is a firm that people mocked relentlessly. Well, in fairness, in fairness, I think people just LOL mocked putting Chipotle on a buy now, pay later type of thing. Yeah, but the whole thing of buy now, pay later, it's like this is a fad. This is a flash in the pan. This is never going to work. Yeah, there's probably some of that. I feel like there's a lot of that one.

42:45this company first came out. But I see Affirm popping up way more when I'm buying stuff on my phone. It's a button there next to Apple Pay and Venmo in a lot of cases. That's true. I use it a few times early on, but now I'm like, what's the point? I don't. I would use it on a big ticket item if you can get 0 % APR for, I don't know, a watch, for example. Right? And you could, I mean, that sounds appealing. Anyway, the gross merchandise volume up 43 % year over year and a $10.4 billion. Active consumers up 24%, transactions per customer up 19%. They finally reported their first quarter of gap operating income.

43:29But this is the chart that I wanted to share. If the consumer were under any duress, now these are, well, it doesn't matter the duration of loans. I just said these are short-term loans, but it doesn't matter. If the consumer were under duress, this is the place that you would expect to see it, right? You would expect like a younger cohort. I'm looking at delinquency performance 30 days plus, and they show it every year, 20, 21, 19, et cetera. Nothing here. Absolutely nothing here. I had a friend this weekend. We're at the beach and the, the, the great lakes are aptly named. I'll just say that beautiful day on the beach this weekend, but a friend there at the beach asked me like where are we like do you think that we're gonna get like could we get a recession in the next year like when is this stuff gonna like uh the tariffs gonna hurt and it just anything could always happen it just doesn't seem like it seems like people are still waiting for something really bad to happen and it just feels like we're gonna keep waiting and waiting and waiting well no i mean come on something bad will happen because that's the way it works we don't know It is.

44:35Something will happen. Right. But I think my point is I think it has to be something bad to happen to force the hand of a recession. It's not just going to happen. Yeah. No, no. There needs to be an event, a catalyst. Like it doesn't, yeah, we're not just going to, we're not just going to run out of money or just, yeah. But that's what, that's what people thought. I think, well, once the excess savings is gone, that'll do it. But no, it's not just going to end. We've been doing this for so long, not just a podcast, but talking about markets and this is in the record books. I was thinking about that.

45:06This period will never not have existed. I know that sounds really silly and dumb and obvious, but my point is this. For people that have been following the markets that are around our age, that came in in the, I don't know, 07-ish timeframe, coming out of that, in 2013, when we first hit new all-time highs, there's been people that have been fighting this bull market since 2013, that have been waiting for the return of whatever, value, this, the way that things used to be. Guess what? This period of time, this bull market from 2013 to 2025, this is 12 years. It's not nothing. Now, it's not 30 years, but whatever happens from here, and maybe there's a bear market that takes it all away and we have a lost decade.

45:57This period of time is in the history books. We've read all the books from about the 60s and the 70s and this. This is a chapter. This is like a not-so-small chapter in the history of the stock market that we just experienced. All right, if this was a 1980s movie, I'd give you one of these.

46:15Slow clap. Right? No, yes, I agree. We just lived through one of... This time was really different. 100%. It absolutely was. Oh, remember? Oh, if this time is different. People kept saying, oh, I guess this time is different. Yeah, it was. Yes, very. It literally was. All the baselines for how big stocks can get and the growth rates they can have, it really was different. I remember Michael Moveson did this piece in the mid-2010s about like if we just put a baseline on these tech stocks, they would have to have like some of the highest growth rates in history to justify these valuations. He wasn't saying like, and guess what?

46:52We did have that. It is pretty crazy. And by the way, Moveson, he was 100 % right. Very few people could have forecasted this, that these giants would continue to grow and take market share and accelerate their margins. And if Mobison's piece said, and I'm making this up, that there was a 3 % just base rate that this could have happened, it happened. Right. Yes. It's really wild. Okay, here's something people might be concerned about, but I think this is more of a personal – Duncan says we're jinxing the market right now. Yeah. No, stop. We do this every week. we've been doing this for years yeah one time so this is one of the and i've talked about this a lot i think i wrote a blog post about this i got a question about it from someone but bloomberg has a piece that cars are getting so expensive that buyers need seven-year loans and it talked about how once rare seven-year car loans are fast becoming the norm uh so average sales prices for cars is up 28 in the past five years and seven-year loans represented 22 of all new vehicle financing six-year loans once considered the upper end of the range are almost common 36%.

47:58So six years and up is more than half of all new loans, which is kind of nuts. And so they interviewed a few people to ask them about this. I think this is more of a personal finance issue of people have in their head what their monthly car payment should be. And they'll do whatever they can do to get their monthly payment to that level. Now, it's not a very smart personal finance decision, unless you can borrow at, I don't know, 3 % or something, 4%. And obviously it says the 84-month loan versus a five-year, you're paying on average almost five grand more in interest over the life of that loan.

48:39But I think this is just people having this idea of what their monthly payment should be. I don't think this is a sign of consumer distress or any means. I think this is just people wanting to keep their line item on their budget the same. 100%. I've got a new car coming up in April. I don't know what I'm going to do. We'll talk about it when we get there. Okay. Relax, Duncan. All right? But you know what? So I didn't put this in the doc. Yes, we've been called toppy for like six years now. So eventually sometime it's going to happen. September. Duncan's not wrong. September is not a great month for stocks, especially in the first year of a presidential cycle.

49:20Now, why is that the case specifically? is it total noise? Maybe. I do think there was something about people returning like to Wall Street. I don't know. It is funny how that is always a thing. Of like, well, the Wall Street traders are all in Hamptons for the summer. Now they come back, then things are going to really start to matter. Yeah. I know it's silly, but what other reason would you ascribe to September not being a great month? It is bizarre. It does. I don't know. I do wonder if the first week after Labor Day is a seasonally week. Week. Ooh, a week week. And also, who cares? But just like.

50:01Also, I said we needed a healthy correction. Maybe this is it. We do need a healthy correction. Just 5 % slapping on us. People hate when you say that, that we need a correction. You know why? Because it's like, oh, we want people to lose money? No, we don't. I think my point when stocks get too expensive and go straight up, which by the way, they have it. We have cooled off. So any of the excess that was in the market, like the XXXS, we blew that foam off the top, right? We've gone sideways for couple of weeks. It's all good. But expensive stocks, you just have less margin of safety. Right? Like a stock that's trading at 10, 12 times earnings, if they miss by a penny, it's probably not going to go down to 20 % the next day.

50:37Stocks trading 100 times earnings, missed by a penny, fall 30%. Ben, we got an email. Somebody was wondering, your friend who got cut off at 18, how'd they turn out? oh good question it's funny I looked it up because this is a friend that I kind of lost touch with he moved away so he went to massage therapy school out of high school I think he wanted to become a chiropractor but probably couldn't afford the schooling because he did it on his own so he went to massage therapy school first then decided to go to college much later on I think he went down somewhere in North Carolina where he was and I looked him up and now he's a chiropractor living in Texas so he made it it turned out well good friend yeah Yeah, good question.

51:19All right. So we had a bunch of work done in our house for like the last five or six weeks and it was a giant pain in the ass, but now that it's done. But they did our flooring. I love that you threw this at the dock. Well, they put new wood flooring in and there was a lot of sawdust. There was sawdust everywhere, right? But they were doing all the cutting and stuff in our garage. And after they're done, the guys would clean up and they just leave all their tools in the garage. And they did them in a nice, neatly fashion over in the corner, and we put a spot for them. But they left their huge Milwaukee leaf blower thing because they would blow the sawdust out, right?

51:48That's a good-looking leaf blower. So in the years past, I use a leaf blower a lot. Just the wood chips for my dog and the kids, and I like to blow the garage out all the time. I like to keep a nice, clean garage. And I got this cheapo Black & Decker one from Amazon. It was probably$80. Yeah, of course I would. But the thing stinks. It doesn't work very good. And they had this Milwaukee blower, and I used it a couple times because they left it there. and I just thought, oh my gosh, this thing is 10 times more powerful than mine. And so I went on Amazon and it was probably, I don't know, triple the price of my Black & Decker, but it works 10 times better.

52:27Sometimes it makes sense to pay it for quality and not be a cheap ass. That's a great looking leaf blower right there. It is amazing. I mean, right? Look at that. It looks like it could power a jet or something. It's amazing. All right, Ben, we've been in a bear market for TV shows. Although, thank you for the platonic wreck. Oh, you liked it? Well, I fall asleep every night. Robin watches and she's giggling. By the way, me falling asleep has nothing to do with the quality of that show. My bedtime has been getting earlier and earlier and earlier to an embarrassing level. I've been sleeping at 9 o 'clock the past couple of weeks.

53:02What time do you get up in the morning? Are you early riser now? Not really. 6.15, 6.30. Okay. But I wake up to a bunch of text messages. I wake up to a bunch of text messages and people are probably like, Why hasn't he texted me back? It's like 9.15. Passed out. Blame it on the sun. Okay, so what do we got coming? All right, so yeah. So what I was saying is that shows have been in a bear market. Big time. I made the point on Twitter. This might have been the worst pop culture summer this century. No fantastic shows. No groundbreaking movies. No huge sports moments. Like the last two months, literally nothing has happened in pop culture besides the royal wedding.

53:43Yeah, it was not a great summer for movies. I had fun, but it was definitely not great at all. There wasn't one movie you go, oh, yes, classic. Weapons. All right. I can't put horror movies in a classic genre. That's just me. If anybody watched Alien Earth, let me know how it is. I saw the first two episodes, and I haven't picked it back up. Not that I didn't like it. I just haven't watched it yet. Didn't they squeeze the juice dry on that yet, the alien stuff? I didn't love the last one, Romulus, but it's one of my favorite things. All right, anyway, there's a new crime thriller. From the mayor of Easttown, the HBO original series follows an FBI agent, Mark Ruffalo, on a mission to end a string of violent robberies led by an unassuming family man, Tom Pelfrey.

54:28I don't know who that is. It's called Task, and I can't wait. Who's Tom Pelfrey? Isn't he the guy from Ozark? There's also a new Ethan Hawke show coming to Hulu. So I'm, yeah, you know? Oh, was he the nephew? I don't recognize this guy. Yeah, he's the brother. He was Laurel Lenny's brother, wasn't he? yes but more shows are coming you know those those help is on the way is what we're saying you know those articles that say like here's everything coming to these streaming networks this month because every month it changes i love those articles yeah i read those all and i come up with lists when i watch that watch that all right uh jack raines had this thing this morning on young money and it talked about how young people aren't going to burning man anymore it's it's only older people and they say all the bay area zoomers have exchanged alcohol and ecstasy for lifting heavy and 996 work schedules.

55:14So here's 996. I'd never heard it before. So someone said the current vibe in San Francisco is for young people. No drinking, no drugs, 996. Work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. Lift heavy, run far, marry early, track sleep, eat steak and eggs. What is happening? I don't like this. The 996 thing is the biggest one that throws me. It's just, if that's your whole life. Wait, no drinking, no what else? Let's see. No drinking, no drugs, track your sleep, eat protein. I just think the optimization thing can be taken way, way too far. You still have to be a young person. Like, I feel like these young people are going to totally regret not living life.

55:58This feels, is this real? Is this real? I know, I'm sure this is happening in San Francisco. I believe it. I mean, that's the thing. Maybe San Francisco isn't real life. And that's just, that's a place unto itself. But I do think young people, if they don't enjoy their lives, they're going to regret it someday when they have way more responsibilities. All right. Let me ask you this, Ben. In the year 2025, how come we can't get good self-service? You know what I hear every time I'm on the phone? Or if God forbid I try a video. Michael, Michael, Michael, you're breaking up. Michael, you're breaking up.

56:30And I'm like, I'm on the Cross Island Parkway. I'm in New York City. I use Verizon. Why can't anybody hear me? I don't know. Is it the AirPods or is it the cell service? No, it's a cell service. Okay. That's a good question. I've been cleaning. It shouldn't be a thing. Like, you know, in the old horror movies, you used to like, you're, you'd try to start your car and it wouldn't turn over. But that doesn't exist anymore because cars just start. By the way, turn over is a very old phrase. I was about to say that. I only learned what that meant when I started watching with closed captioning. Right?

57:03Like, you don't have to worry about that anymore. And that should be the thing with cell service now. Like that, the whole you're breaking up should be a thing of the past. Come on. How am I breaking up? It's 2025. Speaking of quality, Ben, paying up for quality. I'm paying up for quality. Quality sucks. So thank you to somebody who emailed me. You know, I saw this email exchange in our inbox and I wanted to, I should have roasted you on it, but it was the most middle-aged thing I've ever seen. It was like this guy offering you socks, which socks you should get. And you writing him back and going, oh my gosh, these socks are amazing.

57:32And I'm going to, it was a whole email exchange about socks. I immediately spent$300 on socks. Why? I have no more socks. I threw out, as I'm prepping for the move, I threw out all my old socks. And my socks, I have Under Armour slash Nike socks that are easily, I don't know, six years old. Like, there's no reason to be wearing socks that are six years old, right? Here's what I do. The thing, I don't spend up on, like, the really expensive socks because I feel like after two washes, they don't feel expensive anymore. So, it's new socks. So on Amazon, I have a subscription. Every six months, I get a brand new pack of socks.

58:09Send it to my mail. I throw the old ones out. I put the new ones in. These new socks feel amazing. Anyway, I wore a pair of socks, not like ankle socks, socks that go up to your calf or whatever. Not super high, but with a pair of shoes that have typically or historically graded on the back of my ankle. Guess what? Comfort, no blisters, pay up for quality. All right. Well, that's good for future proof because there's a lot of walking that goes on there. Yeah. So I feel very good. You're not wearing your Jordans, I hope. I'm not bringing my Jordans. Very good about my new socks. What else? What else?

58:40What else? All right. This is very random and it happens very rarely, but nevertheless, it always annoys me. Probably happens to me once every two months. You ever type and you look up and you've been in all caps for 30 seconds? Yeah. Is there a way to just control Q uppercase select where you can just change it to lowercase? It would be easy if it auto-corrected for you. How weird, do you think Walter Bloomberg is shouting in his own head as he's typing? Because everything he types is all uppercase? But I feel like he's pulling from someplace, right? He's not actually typing. I know. He's not a real person.

59:17All right. So yesterday, we were driving home. We tried to get one more day on the beach. And then we had to drive home because my son had football practice. It was his first, I'm a very proud father because it was his first day they could hit each other and tackle football. He had the crunch of the pads. He's not shy, right? No, he's not shy. But it was funny. It's third and fourth grade, and he's like one of the only third graders on the team. And I asked him, how did it go? He's like, oh, I totally trucked this kid. I'm like, well, how about you? He goes, oh, yeah, I got demolished. These guys were hitting me so hard.

59:46And I'm like, are you okay? You know, you didn't mind? No, it's fine. I got hit really hard. Okay, good. So we had to leave the beach, and we had to drive him back to practice. So we had to go through the Burger King drive-thru to get him some food before his practice. And we go into the Burger King drive-thru. There's a big van in front of us. And we pull up to pay and the van is in front of us waiting for their food. And the lady in the drive-thru window goes, I don't know if you want to pay for your food or not. We're like, what do you mean? She goes, the van ahead of you got$130 worth of food.

1:00:13It's like nine value meals. It's going to take a very long time to make. So you're going to sit here and wait forever. And we said, well, we're kind of in a time crunch. We have to get on the road. So we just left. Like, don't you think her response should have been, you know what? We're going to sneak your meal in real quick here. Give it to you and let you get out of line. Yeah, of course. Instead of telling us. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Do the right thing. Thank you. At least I wasn't going to wait for that. We did a ghost tour in Newport. And I don't know why in my head I thought it was one of these ghost walks where it's scary and people pop out at you.

1:00:47Like a Halloween spook tour. What was it? Old cemeteries? It was just a girl telling stories about... I don't know. I wasn't listening, but it was nonsense. And she was like, if you take pictures you might see like an orb or something like that. So like the boys are taking pictures like the whole time. Like, oh, I think I see somebody. Anyway, the point is this. There was three women on the tour. I'm going to guess they were mid to upper 20s, 27 to 30 years old-ish. And they were taking it seriously. And they were like, we better see something. And I wanted to like, I was so confused. I was like, what are you doing here?

1:01:29What are you actually doing? It was so bizarre. But people will always fall for that. How many of those shows are there about ghost hunting? I guess. They were otherwise normal people. They seemed like very normal people, but they were seriously looking for ghosts. But there are people who totally believe in that stuff. I guess. Okay. All right. Recommendations. I only got one this week. Okay, go ahead. So we rented Mission Impossible Final Reckoning, finally. We saw the previous one in the theater, and here's my take as the biggest Tom Cruise fan there is. I tell my son all the time, he's the best action star of all time, obviously.

1:02:09This movie didn't need to be made. They could have ended it on a lot. The last one was great. I mean, there was good stunts in this, but it kind of felt like a farewell tour, I guess, for Tom Cruise, even though he might make another one, I guess. I just the whole AI thing being the bad guy I feel like is going to get so overdone in the next 5 to 10 years and that just doesn't interest me at all having AI right? The story made no sense at all right? Like it was hard to follow I mean there I guess like it's the storylines are sort of besides the point but like in this one it was so convoluted I had no idea what was happening It just to me felt like they kept extending the last movie when they could have just ended the movie easily at the end of the last one it would have been a great send off Listen, it was entertaining.

1:02:54And the stunts he does obviously are amazing, but it's totally unnecessary. And I'm a Tom Cruise guy, as you know. Yeah, I agree. That's the right take. All right. I'm sorry in advance. I'm going to be annoying about audiobooks. I just am. I'm not going to try and convince you to listen, but I'm going to be talking about it, what I've listened to, because this is my podcast. In Rhode Island, because I'm an early riser, my kids sleep forever. How late are we talking? I came back to the hotel. So I don't know why I woke up at like 530. So by 545, I'm out. And I especially, you know, I like to walk when I'm in new places.

1:03:29That's like my thing. So I walked out the hotel at about 550, got a Starbucks, and I was just walking. And I got back to the hotel at 840, and they were still sleeping. Wow. My point is, I had a lovely morning. I'm walking for three hours, listening to my audio book. I had a great time. And because I am listening on 1.8 times speed, what's great about now I have three different devices, Audible, Spotify, and Libby. Spotify, you get 15 hours a month. Libby are free books and Audible obviously is paid. So if Libby doesn't have something because you have to order it, and if I've used up all my Spotify, then I will buy books on Audible.

1:04:09So with 1.8 times speed, Tycoon, for example, this is a giant book. I believe it's on my shelf. I never read it. it's 28 hours long, but at 1.8 times speed, down to 15 hours. So guess what? I walked three hours on Saturday and Sunday, whatever day it was. I'm almost done with the book. See, you should be an Instagram influencer doing this. So now - I live three days and every one day you just did. Yeah, I 10X that shit. You're living one day a week, a day. I live four days a day. Anyway, all of these books that I've been meaning to get to, The Power Broker, the Lyndon Johnson stuff. That is true because some of those biographies It's just, you look at it and you go, oh my gosh.

1:04:46You just say no. So there's an Eisenhower one that I want to read, a Truman one that I've been meeting three. Guess what? Those all would have waited until my retirement. I never would have gone to these books, ever. I've started probably like seven different biographies and made it through the first two chapters and just stopped them all. So one of the books that I listened to and finished was a book called Tough Jews, which I guess popped up after I read the other one last week. And this was a book, actually somebody else bought me this book too. I never read it, never would read it, but it was great.

1:05:14it was a lot about like the early Jewish gangsters. And of course there was a lot of overlap with the Italian gangsters in the mafia. So in the, in the book they mentioned the movie once upon a time in America. And I said, you know what? I've tried to fire that movie up before. And I just, I watched him as my guy, I'm not watching. I don't even know what that is. What movie is that? I've never heard of it. So once upon a time in America, it's Sergio Leone. It's his last movie. Matter of fact, it's 1984. And it is once upon a time. Listen to this cast. De Niro, James Wood, Joe Pesci has a small role.

1:05:50Jennifer Connelly, she was like eight and she has a small role. Treat Williams. Who else is in here? Danny Aiello, William Forsyth, Burt Young. So the main stars are De Niro and James Wood. I've never heard of this movie. James Woods. You never heard of Once Upon a Time in America? You've definitely seen the poster where it's like the kids with the Manhattan Bridge in the background that it's like the 1920s. Okay. Maybe. Must have escaped me for some reason. Okay. Well, it's three hours and 47 minutes, and it is a slog. I mean, there's whole parts that feel like, it took me like, I don't know, five days to watch.

1:06:28But it felt like I watched a marathon. I felt like a sense of accomplishment at the end. So it is good. Not worth watching. Oh, okay. No, it is good. Is it worth it? Yeah, probably not. I mean, three hours and 47 minutes. My God. What else? What else? What else? I believe that's it. Oh, wait. One last thing. There's a documentary on Netflix called Unknown Number, The High School Catfish. Is this on your radar? My wife watches all these. I don't really watch this stuff. Ask her about this one. Okay. The reveal, I won't spoil anything, is one of the craziest things I've ever seen. It is so mind-bending.

1:07:02I can't stop thinking about it. Is this more than one episode? No, it's like an hour. Okay. It's one thing. It's one thing. All right. Anyway, all right, I think we're done. This felt like a long week, a great week. Had a great time. Got Sally's Pizza on the way home, the New Haven Connecticut Pizza. Great stuff. So you're saying that you have another time hack. You cut your audible time in half, but by going on vacation, you extended time. Made time feel longer to you. Yeah, it was time dilation, totally. Okay. Everyone come say hi to us at Future Proof. Plus that, and I'm drinking onion juice with garlic cloves.

1:07:40Come on. Yeah. I hope you have some gum. Chase it with a gum. Come say hi to us at Future Proof. We'll be around. Come do live Animal Spirits. It'll be fun. See you then. And next week will be our live show. You'll be able to hear, right? Yeah. AnimalSpirits.com. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next time.

1:08:11Thank you.