This Has Been a Weird Week | Lemonade Stand🍋

19:18Aiden:I mean, if I'm being real, like the most like cynical, the most cynical evaluation, which is what I felt like I had at the beginning of the year was you like, what does the U.S. want out of this? You want like a new version of the government that's just more cooperative or like subservient to you, which is like, you know, there wasn't this big institutional change. It's this new woman in charge who like works with you. And then you want access to Venezuelan oil. and you're getting that slowly.

19:48Atrioc:Yeah.

19:48Aiden:And you have those two things now. You don't necessarily need anything else to change. Yeah, it still seems kind of short-sighted though, right? Because you got to imagine that the more, you know, disaster and poverty-stricken the region is, the more likely it is that there will be things that upset your ability to build a prosperous... What sort of cascading consequences could there possibly be? It just feels like... I feel like you're just making shit up. You know, if you think about like post-World War II when America did the Marshall Plan and they're like, they had to invest to rebuild everything in order to, they could buy American consumer goods.

20:23Like that didn't we just, even if it was a cynical reason. Even if it was a cynical reason. That's what happened. They fixed it right up.

20:31Aiden:If you read draft one of the Marshall Plan. It's like just sending Chevron. Chevron and Eric Prince. And it's weird because Eric Prince, it was like a prophecy. Eric Prince wasn't even born yet. It was a prophecy about Eric Prince. yeah I don't know it does not seem like well I don't know I guess if I'm being less cynical it does seem like much slower than you'd like but there is some positive green shoots like there is more money flowing into Venezuela their primary export oil is growing in output if this debt is restructured it does open up a lot of investment other non-oil things in Venezuela

21:09Atrioc:yeah well like one of the big things going on over the last couple decades is as they nationalized the private oil companies, they lost the expertise and the people to manage their own state systems. And so the overall production dropped. So in theory, private investment is coming in, and then they're also building up their national side, and then they're able to produce a lot of money through that. They also said the longer-term plan is for Delcy Rodriguez to step down and they hold actual open free and fair elections. The problem is they said that and there's been no follow-up. You're just making shit up.

21:42When is that happening? There's been no follow-up. And it's like... We'll get the elections going. We'll get there. Give me that oil, though.

21:55Because, yeah, she just shouldn't be a long-term leader of the country. That she's part of the regime. It doesn't make any sense.

22:02Aiden:I am interested in getting a longer response from two of my friends just to get their opinion of what the experience is like right now. But I really, really hope in the short term that people like Nock's family can find some stability and a place to live. Because I asked him about the short-term hopes of places getting rebuilt. And he was just like, I don't think institutions are really in place right now to get things rebuilt. Yeah, money and stability, all that stuff is required to begin the process. So hopeful. You know, another place in a state of emergency just to transition a little bit because across the globe, Crimea is in an official state of emergency.

22:58Here, can you pull this map? Just to give a little background or history. Okay, here's a map of Crimea. It's at the southern part of Ukraine. in 2014, Russia seized it. Okay, they've been occupying it ever since. This is before the Russia-Ukraine war of 22. And it's obviously very strategically important to Putin and Russia, the access to the Black Sea, as Aidan Elkman mentioned. So... So... I'm looking at this.

23:27Aiden:The Black Sea's all over the thing. You know, Aidan has a good point here, Brandon.

23:32Atrioc:Have you seen kind of what's around it? Yeah, it's the Black Sea. Wait, do you think Putin knows how much the Black Sea is there? I think if he saw that, he'd be willing to be part.

23:40Aiden:If you're an audio listener and you're wondering what's around Crimea on the map, I'm telling you, it's the Black Sea everywhere. No, he's pinpointed it. A subtle detail of Crimea is that it has access to the Black Sea, and that actually turned out to be really important. So it's been a huge, I don't know, area of fighting in the Ukraine-Russia war, and recently, you know, we talked about it a few episodes back, Ukraine's been striking back with incredibly effective drone warfare, and they have been hitting Crimea like crazy. And first it was like you'd start to see gas lines at gas stations. Then Crimea cut off all non-military gas access.

24:19So you cannot buy gasoline in Crimea unless you are part of the military. And then they declared an official state of emergency. So the whole place is like under full military lockdown. That was like today, right? Yeah.

24:31Atrioc:I read an article like two days ago that said, like a quote from someone in Crimea is like, it's bad, but it's not urgent. We're going to be okay. And then literally 24 hours. And the drone strikes from Ukraine are like literally as we speak over the past 48 hours, like ramping up insanely. They're hitting all throughout Russia, all these fuel depots, lines. They're hitting trucks so he can't transport. Like there's just fuel shortages all cascading across the country. but especially in Crimea. And so it is, I don't know, it's a definitely very successful tactic so far about Ukraine. I don't know what it means in the broader picture, but that is what's happening.

25:13Aiden:I thought I saw something pretty wild about how because Moscow is under threat and there's such a limited supply of anti-air weaponry within Russia, They are consolidating what they have for air defenses in Moscow. They are moving that stuff towards that area of the country in order to better protect it. But that leaves areas like Crimea vulnerable in a way they haven't been in the past, which allows these attacks to happen. Yeah, I mean, Moscow had this three ring air defense system that's supposed to be impenetrable. And now that it's been breached recently, it's like shattered this sense of, you know, I mean, if you take a look at Russia's economy, it's like Moscow, St.

26:02Petersburg, and nothing. Those cities have so much more of the wealth and everything, and the upper class of society are all in those cities. And so them feeling, oil is the rest. Those two in oil is like the economy. And the people in those cities feeling under threat is dramatically decreasing the support for the war. Now, again, these polls are obviously biased because they're done. I'm reading here, but they're done door to door and being openly critical is a dangerous thing to do in Russia, but it's dropped from like 99 % to 69%, which is like a pretty big swing of support in a war where you can't really publicly.

26:42You're like, hey, I'm with Putin's militocracy.

26:47Atrioc:What do you think about Putin? And like, if I'm willing to one third of the time. Yeah, that's wild. It's actually kind Kind of a big deal. And so they're saying Crimea is becoming Putin's trap. It's too symbolic to abandon, and now it's too exposed to use, as he once did, for access to the Black Sea. So, yeah, it's – again, we don't know. It's all under fog of war. But I have to say, just me personally reading a lot about this recently, the Ukraine vibe shift has been crazy. They've just been so successful on a number of fronts in such a short period of time. and every day I feel like you're getting more news of some crazy strike that you thought was impossible happening.

27:25Aiden:There's a really good video piece that came out I think like five days ago from the Keeve Independent and it is a video breaking down how the drone operators and drone attacks work right now. It's like an inside look and it's crazy because it's like this 24 year old kid with a headset and a controller and he goes into the like the vr shot of the drone the little like dji madvik looking drone has a bomb attached to it and he flies it around in a first person perspective and on the video you can literally watch him fly the drone they fly it through trees with like the fiber optic like uh connections they use so they can navigate through like really dense forests and then he spots a Russian troops in the trees and then flies the drone and the bomb physically into them.

28:21Aiden:And then the feed cuts when the bomb explodes. And it's insane to watch. It is, and that has been like the past years of warfare. That's like how it works. And I think to have this like strong visual of what is actually going on, it's like this kid sitting at a desk, hitting his vape, and then flying the next drone into a Russian troop, like a Russian person. Like it is surreal to watch. And honestly, if you're, if you feel like you can, cause to be totally honest with you, you're, you're watching someone die and it's, and it's awful. And if, uh, but I think if you want a real look at what this is like, I recommend going to watch it.

29:06There's also, yeah, this guy. Oh God. Have you heard, we talk about the show the the gamification aspect they've added to it so you brought this

29:14Aiden:up and i thought it was crazy but it's funny because in the wake of you saying that on the show i saw two more reports including this video that came out with in the following week about how the system works and about how you're rewarded for the number of like targets that you successfully damage uh people or like enemy troops that you kill your unit has access to better uh resources or drones depending on how well you're performing. Yeah. And like when you look at the, it looks like a kid playing a video game. No, it's insane. It's so gamified. It really is shocking. And the fact that it's effective is even crazier.

29:54Atrioc:I don't know. It's very much feels like start of World War I when the French showed up with like colorful cavalry to a machine gun fight, you know? And that's what's happening now. And like a science fiction novel. It feels in both ways like warfare advantages in the past and then also just something so weirdly black mirror. It's crazy.

30:17Aiden:I mean, as far as the tides turning, you had mentioned this change in the Russian advance, and they're talking about that in this video. They say normally during this time of year, they would have a lot more targets because Russia would be making an effort to advance at this time, but compared to last year there's way fewer uh there's way fewer advancements and uh i think i feel the same way like the fog of war like war reporting always feels like a little like vague and difficult to understand you don't want to like jump to conclusions and just like hope that the side that you kind of want to win is winning but it's biased right so but it does feel like something significant is changing.

31:08Aiden:And I really, really recommend if you feel like you can watch it to go watch that piece. One, two, three. I'm standup comedian, John Marco Cerezi.

31:19Atrioc:And I'm actor penis model, Russell Daniels.

31:22Aiden:The downside is our podcast where we bring on guests to talk about how miserable their lives are. Because let's face it, things are not getting better. Every episode, we talk about what's wrong with our lives,

31:34Atrioc:our guest lives, the world, but in a fun way. Bottom line is you're going to walk away feeling better about your life.

31:41Aiden:We've had so many cool guests. Caleb Huron, Busy Phillips, Stavros Halkius, Laverne Cox, Hassan Piker, Alana Glazer. I promise you're going to have a good time. Now on the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is The Downside. Okay, let's get off of war. We've covered that one before. I mean, there'll be more happening next week, but let's talk about the war on wealth.

32:08Atrioc:Yeah. Yeah, everything's a war today, but like one of the more lighthearted wars. Yeah. So this is from New York City. Zoran put on VR goggles and flew a drone into Kathy Hochul's - Yes. To deliver a congratulatory letter saying, hey, we passed the tax. It's crazy.

32:26Aiden:I miss this. Yeah.

32:28Atrioc:He's got all this new tax. So we already mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, but Zoran passed a, I don't know how to say it, a Peter Terry tax. And so the idea is that Holmes, you know, that's not it.

32:40Aiden:I was like, you said it right before we started it right correctly.

32:44Atrioc:When you guys didn't respond, I was like, Oh, if they don't say anything, I'm going to get angry. If they don't acknowledge that at all, people are going to be furious. Okay. So this past, this past in May, the idea is that it is taxing second homes in New York city, like a home where somebody doesn't live there at least the majority of the year. Right. And so this was, you know, touted as, Hey, I'm passing one of my things to tax the rich. Generally people are kind of excited about it. Some numbers. If you have a home that's over$5 million, then you're going to have an additional property tax of like 0.8 to 1.3 % for condos.

33:21Atrioc:It's a lot lower. It's only like a million dollars. And then the percentage is higher. It turns out the valuation is kind of weird here. Homes are valued based on how much they sell for, like how much comparable homes sell for. Condos by the Department of Finance are valued as if they are rental buildings, like how much value you would rent would generate. And so Ken Griffin, the big hedge fund manager, has a$238 million penthouse that's worth $15.5 million. So that's where there's like a little bit of strangeness. Tomfoolery. Well, it's not tomfoolery. The idea is like we value condos lower so the tax on that is going to be a lot higher so the tax on condos is going to be like five percent tax on homes is going to be like 0.8 oh they made the tax higher yeah yeah it's mostly just if you hear different percentages weird way to evaluate just the way it is strange so they're actually going to update it in 2028 i believe the first year but that explains the disparity in the percent of the tax yeah that you might hear but in the end uh pierre debes a lawyer figures the charge could basically double the property taxes on a five million dollar apartment so this tax is really adding a substantial amount of revenue.

34:28Atrioc:And so this Bloomberg article tied Momdani's new PDT tax leaves wealthy with few loopholes. I thought it was a fun little lighthearted story because, quote, the scramble for workarounds began almost immediately. People who would be impacted by this policy are going to try to avoid this tax at any cost, and they're usually very good at doing so. And while there's a few legitimate exceptions, there's no obvious strategy to circumvent the new charge, and you have to either use it or not. So here's a couple of things that rich people are trying to get out of paying this tax. First off, they're like, what if my family lives there?

34:58Atrioc:Well, it doesn't, it has to be your direct family, like your kids or your spouse or your parents or your grandparents. Can't be your cousins. And then they have to live there full time. So you can't just be like, yo, nephew Jerry, show up, party in my apartment a little bit. That doesn't work. And so they, you know, if this is Ken Griffin's apartment, he has to have his family members living there full time confirmed. Other people are like, what if I sell it to an LLC and then a company owns it and not me. And they're basically like, look, New York city is going to look out for that. They're going to look and see who the actual beneficiary of the LLC is.

35:31Atrioc:And the penalties are very high. If you're trying to hide or skirt this, they're like, okay, what if we rent it to somebody, you know, for a dollar, I rent it to like my, my, my maid or something. Again, it kind of works, but the tenants have to live their full time. If they like bail out of the lease midway through, it doesn't work. So they probably need a 12 year, 12 month guaranteed lease. And again, they have to, a person has to live there. So you can't just be like, yo, my friend, you're paying, you're renting this for me for a buck. They're going to be really strict about it. Um, one example, broker Michelle Griffith helped the owner of a$9 million house in Tribeca list of the property for$40 ,000 a month.

36:09Atrioc:So people are being forced to put these extraordinarily high rental prices in order, which in a way is like, if that's what happens, that's fine. because now that house, instead of being the, you know, this super wealthy person, empty second home, like, you know, they're, you know, if they try to go to through this loophole in quotes, they're just being a landlord that is selling, you know, they're actually renting out their thing. So in the end, the more likely outcome attorneys say is a simple reckoning, either a primary resident lives in the property or it'll be taxed. Yeah. And an owner of a$20 million Manhattan Pita Tay, who primarily lives in Greenwich, Connecticut told Finch he's likely going to sell his NYC apartment if he can't find a way around his estimated $210 ,000 second home surcharge.

36:54Atrioc:So a little F in the chat for extremely rich people. Why do you need a second home in New York? That's my question. What happened to this country?

37:01Aiden:You can't have a fucking second home anymore? You can't have a... Am I crazy? Am I crazy? I should be able to have a second home. You should be able to have a second home. I think, one, they need to carve out. They need to carve out if my... I can understand.

37:12Atrioc:For you or for just rich people? I think for, if it's just for me, that's fine for starters.

37:17Aiden:And then I think it makes sense if the second home is like on a lake where your family took you to when you grew up, that should be like, that should probably be in there, right? You should get a carve out for that. Yeah. It's one of those carve outs.

37:28Atrioc:Rhode Island and Montana are doing the same thing, PEDA taxes. Yeah. And one of the reasons Rhode Island is called the Taylor Swift law, like casually, because she has like some giant mansion in an island on Rhode Island. And people are basically like this, look, this fucking sucks. Oh, okay. I understand now. You could have your primary residence in an entirely different state and your secondary ones in New York and that's taxed. Yes. Okay. I thought it was, you have two homes in New York city and I'm like, how could you possibly need to? Okay. If it's not, no, no, no.

37:58Aiden:So, I mean, that's, that's, so if you have a second somewhere else, you know what? Get rid of all the taxes.

38:05Atrioc:So yeah, I should just super clarify this whole tax, the entire premise, what a pdete is is saying this is a second home that you do not live in as your primary residence and it is basically saying if you are going to purchase living space in our city and you aren't going to live there you need to pay extra taxes to have that which i think is totally reasonable perfectly personally and what i thought was really interesting in this bloomberg article is that part of the reason that this is palatable right like getting taxes raised like property taxes. Most people do not go for that. That is a horribly politically untenable the most of the time.

38:42Atrioc:But if you're passing a P to take tax, by definition, you're taxing people who don't vote in your city. Yeah, they're not going to. Isn't that awesome? So it's actually way easier to pass this. And then as much as, you know, rich people are awesome. Like this really feels like, dude, if you're buying a second home, like you're so rich that you're buying a second home, you can't, you don't like rent a nice studio or something when you happen to be, you have to have an entire your home in another city dude pay more taxes like you're so rich isn't it funny like you can't even

39:13Aiden:use the uh well i'm gonna leave the city argument you don't you know what i mean you don't you don't live there yeah you already don't live there yeah i guess my my interesting thing now would be if they can't find the loopholes and they just fucking dump them on the market does the does the tax just not raise any money though is my is my yeah you know they're the

39:40Atrioc:worst case scenario is that all the people holding these homes say the having the second home in new york isn't worth anymore and they dump it on the market and they don't sell but presumably if a big supply of new homes comes in and the prices drop like already prices are dropping that's good because that's a good outcome regardless i'm just i remember when i first talked about this, it was a good chunk of the new budget is the amount of money they were going to raise from this tax. It's like$600 million, right? It's not that much. Yeah, it's not much. I mean, I wouldn't say a good chunk then, but it was one of the biggest new tax increases.

40:12Yeah, yeah. And so, other than just the one-time thing from whole group.

40:15Atrioc:Yeah, and there's also a weird thing like now they're even trying to drop their prices. So there was a condo owner that dropped their list price from$5.8 million down to$4.7 because they're literally just trying to sell underneath this$5 million threshold. But then even because of that the you know the problem from their perspective is they can say oh yeah this is this isn't worth enough to be covered under this tax you can buy it as a second home but if the value goes up again as soon as the value hits five million they're paying it again so um it seems good i mean it's just nice to see that you know a tax on wealthy is actually being paid seemingly and kind of cathartic yeah yeah i i the thing i like about this story is that all of the obvious workarounds were tried and failed.

41:00That's like a nice, usually you think, oh, there's this new law. They immediately think of a way around it and everyone just moves around their business.

41:06Atrioc:And there's a world where they did figure it out and they've been very good at convincing journalists that they have not figured it out. And they paid Bloomberg to say, oh, we're totally confused. We're fuddled, dude.

41:18Aiden:I wonder how this applies to like corporate ownership over buildings. Like if you're a company that owns say like 10 or 20 apartments in New York, how that applies to you? Yeah, like a WeWork or something. Sometimes I'm in a bunch of buildings. How does that? Yeah. I'm not saying you have the answer right now. I'm just curious.

41:36Atrioc:I believe this is only for homes. This is not a corporate.

41:38Aiden:Yeah, I guess you're less likely to like, oh, if you're a corporate landlord, you're less likely to be owning a ton of$5 million plus properties because your approach is to rent things out to regular people. Okay, well, on the East Coast, we figured out how to tax the wealth. But on the West Coast, there's a war brewing.

41:57Atrioc:But on the West Coast...

41:58Aiden:On the West Coast, there was Ken. And then on the East Coast, there was Azen. And they were kind of on a collision course.

42:03Atrioc:Such a deep cut.

42:05Aiden:Dan, it's going to be 10 people who are pumping their fists right now. Sorry. It's a game on myself. Game on myself. And I knew that Gavin Newsom is kind of like the Azen, or the Ken, I guess, of this situation.

42:16Atrioc:And he has put on a VR headset and is driving a drone directly in the building. We don't have this very one-on. We don't have this very one-on. No, metaphorically, he is proposing a federal billionaire wealth tax. So I'll keep this super brief. This is just another wealth tax update going on. Over this last year in California, people have put forth a proposal to have a one-time billionaire wealth tax. This would be a 5 % tax on all net worth over a billion dollars in California. So this is very unusual because the reason billionaires don't pay much taxes is because it's all on their assets, which they don't sell.

42:53Atrioc:So it's not marked as income. And there's, you know, many nuances to this that we can obviously get into. There's like 200 people in California who this would even apply to, who have over a billion dollars. And this is unique in that it would basically force them to sell their assets, to produce the money for this tax, which is a huge departure from really any tax that we have in America. Um, this is going to generate in theory, if it happens anywhere from tens of billions to hundreds of billions, although that depends a lot based on, again, like what are the mechanics of billionaires even being forced to sell assets, which is part of the criticism of it.

43:27Atrioc:And it's basically going to go all to healthcare, 90 % to healthcare, which is particularly relevant for California because of federal Medicaid cuts. And it's 10 % to education and food. So this debate has been going on for a while. Uh, if you, you know, read the all in podcast guys on Twitter, they have been frothing over the mouth at this for, for many months, a nuclear bomb is a nuclear bomb. Uh, so obviously billionaires are not stoked about this. People in favor are, you know, many different groups, folks who want progressive taxation. Bernie Sanders has explicitly supported this.

43:56Aiden:It's going to be a tough time for all in, you know, you got wealth taxes, you got the Sharia second home tax. It's rough all around for these guys. The world's crumbling.

44:07Atrioc:And David Sachs isn't allowed to work in the White House anymore. You only get like a hundred days if you're a voluntary government advisor or whatever. so he's not even oh really they checked that yeah yeah i can't imagine anyone would have cared um he could go into the mustache so okay this is the california proposal so this has been the california proposal it is officially going to go on the ballot so this is this is happening and this is potentially a really really big thing gavin newsom who i've heard rumors he's going to run for president next and people suspect that he is trying to navigate this in a way where he can position himself kind of in the middle so that he can get through this.

44:45Atrioc:So not super surprisingly, he has been vocally opposing this billionaire wealth tax in California. And he has a really, really easy excuse, which is if we only implement this in California, the billionaires will just leave. This is already happening. Billionaires are leaving. There's like five of them who've left.

44:59Aiden:Could I give the genuine, a couple of genuine arguments against the, I mean, this is from what I've read, basically the arguments against the implementation of the California tax.

45:08Atrioc:I mean, let's just broaden it out because they're basically the same thing. So this last Friday, Gavin Newsom broke a little bit for being like, you know, down the line Democrat and said in a sub stack called it's time for a national billionaires tax and a new social compact. He basically argued, I want to implement a national billionaire tax, not just a California one. The California one is people are just going to flee the state and it's, it's not helping our teachers enough. It's only helping Medicare. That's not fair. and basically suggested I want to increase tax rates. Trickle down economics has been an explicit failure.

45:42Atrioc:We need higher corporate stock. We need higher corporate taxes and suggested building a national public equity fund with AI and automation. So this is not him. He's not suddenly, you know, AOC here, but he is, I think, changed his tune a little bit to say, hey, I want to substantially change the wealth code or the tax code and push for higher taxes, push them on AI and whatever else.

46:06Aiden:And I think one of the other arguments against the California one is that it's one time. And by not being something that's implemented continuously, you're mitigating a large point of the reason in doing it at all. and some alternative suggestions were like a more consistent tax that like every time a billionaire leverages their assets as collateral for loans you're basically pricing out the value of that asset and then you have to pay tax against that to try and like close that loophole that is that no no no that's like a counter argument against the california one is like this is one time is implemented poorly there's better ways of doing this uh and and on top of the idea that like

46:57Atrioc:there's a lot of organizations that are like progressive organizations that are against the california one and i think the more interesting question is kind of is there substantial movement

47:06Aiden:to do something like this at a national level i i think i think in he's in a weird spot right because for the largely like progressive audience that is very critical of him they don't the reaction to his sub stack was not good they were like gavin you're just trying to like shift your perspective or position yourself for your present presidential run like you're just gonna walk this back like you've walked back other things i saw a lot of that criticism from like the further left audience sure and then the right-wing audience that hates gavin newsom already isn't one eight they hate the wealth tax to begin with and they just hate gavin newsom i like it's interesting because i do think that a national wealth tax is a huge solution to the problem of a state implemented one like i think this is a a good move personally with you know with a bunch of stipulations about the details, but he's trying to like win back a crowd that already hates him so much.

48:11Atrioc:That's what's so, that's what's so interesting about this is like, it's partially about the tax system and it's partially about Gavin Newsom trying to get his foot into camps. Yeah. You, you hung out with him. I think just for fun. And then it happened to be recorded for a second. I mean, the disregarding who wrote it, right. Cause I think there's a certain aspect of like, this guy really wants to be president. So he's doing, but the core principle of like, Hey, if you put this in California only and it's a one-time tax, they will flee it. Uh, I think it's true. I believe that. I mean, Jeff Bezos fled the Seattle one and went to Florida.

48:46Like they're all, they do do this. Uh, a national tax sounds better to me. What, whether he's the guy to follow through on that's entirely different question, but I think the core purpose of the sub stack is true. So I don't want to be like hating on it for that. As written, I agree with it. I agree with the idea that we should have a national one. I agree with the idea that using all of the money on Medicaid is, in my mind, one of the worst ways to use it in general. I think the mass majority of our budget going to elder people in health care is poor. I disagree with it as a point of principle.

49:19Aiden:Yeah, it sucks because I feel like the base principle of this is tax the wealthy more, close loopholes that allow them to continue to dodge paying taxes. I want that. Yeah. And it is so difficult to get progress that effectively taxes the wealthy that I feel like I'm like, I'll fucking take anything I can get. Give me a hint. Just give me a little bit. Just give me a little bit. for all the reasons we've explored on this show the california one sucks for like x x and x reason i want like an effective better version of this implemented at the national level but will i ever get that right is it worth do i have to like fight another x years to to even have a hope of something like that moving into place do i just have to take the cookie of the california

50:11Atrioc:one in the meantime it feels shitty that this is the choice well well well aiden yeah a little tiny he's i don't know if representative dan goldman introduced a new act to congress in december 2025 called the robin hood act okay so here's the problem right it taxing billionaires sounds good but as you said a criticism of like a one-time five percent tax again billionaires do not just have cash sitting around that means they need to sell a ton of assets and that causes a cascade of problems for them and potentially their own wealth like just plummets downwards as you start trying to sell massive quantities of it also the long-term effect like i don't even if i don't give a shit about current billionaires i do think this would have a cooling effect on people starting companies in california which i do think is good for this day i think they would start it in austin they would so let's just say even at the chance of becoming a billionaire yeah no but just nationally let's say the idea nationally okay different but so okay so there's like some i bernie for example is very explicitly in support of the california one and the california one is you just have to like liquidate five percent of your assets basically and sell them but as we talked about on a patreon if you start selling your stocks at a massive quantity the stock value plummets because you were introducing a massive amount of supply into the market it is hard to actually realize as like money when you are at that scale would be the argument on the other side, you know, how do billionaires get away with not paying taxes?

51:35Atrioc:Well, they lent, they get loans, right? Using their assets as collateral. And then they basically just borrow repeatedly. And that doesn't count as income. It's a loan. It's not technically income. And they just do that forever using their unrealized assets to get out loans, which gives them cash. And then they die and they just give it to their, you know, heirs or whatever. And it doesn't get tax. So the new Robin hood act is basically tackling the loans specifically. So it's saying a 20, it's proposing a 20 % excise tax on loans that are backed by capital assets for people who make over 400 ,000 a year.

52:09Atrioc:So I, I really liked this one, right? I feel like this is really smart, which is saying, Hey, if you are a billionaire or somebody who's just, you know, egregiously wealthy and you try to use, you don't sell anything you have, you know, appreciated over time. you can't go use that as collateral to just get a ton of cash from a bank or whoever without paying taxes because essentially you are making that money at this point. So this bill seems really great and I'm really excited for it to be shut down by corporate interests. No, it'd be a cool idea.

52:39Aiden:I think my last thing I wanted to say about this was I think the one time part is one of the biggest weaknesses of it. and it comes back to something we talked about on the Patreon like over a year ago. And I think the principle of why a wealth tax is important is not just because you're trying to raise tax revenue, but you're trying to like curtail the amount of wealth that is able to consolidate at a tier where it like damages the rest of society. So if you take a one-time wealth tax of 5%, And even if there's no way of dodging it and all these people pay it, they're at a tier of wealth where the money they have remaining just continues to build up and fuel a lot of the same problems that already exist now.

53:30Aiden:It's like very important that these laws in the long term, like curtail the long term consolidation of wealth in a way that fixes the ways it damages the rest of society. And the fact that this is one time makes it like borderline, borderline useless for that long term goal. It is great for like short, maybe it's great for short term tax revenue purposes, or maybe it's like a proof of concept for what can be passed later down the line that's more effective. But that to me is like one of the biggest weaknesses is like you can, the max effectiveness of this, if it is implemented correctly and nobody dodges it, does nothing to fix that longer problem, which is the like virus eating away at so many aspects of society.

54:18Atrioc:Massive wealth inequality. They have to do something. I agree. We have to do something. There needs, something needs to be done. What an idea of you just take the stock. You know, like if you have 10 million shares and you have to get taxed 10 % and you're like, I can't sell a million shares. It'll fuck up to everything. The government just takes the shares and puts them in a fucking wealth fund. That's it.

54:39Aiden:I mean, that seems interesting. Like the idea of like everything that can be sold or can't be sold, it just gets tokenized or it gets like, and they just get that percentage and they can sell it on their own time over a long period of time.

54:51Atrioc:Potentially same thing with inheritance, right? Which is, I'm dumping$100 million of assets onto my kid, and hey, that kid has to actually just give a portion to the government, something like that. I do think the argument of like, I can't possibly get an accurate value on this to tax it is a little foolish because we do that with property taxes. That's how property taxes work, and so they should be able to work on other forms of wealth.

55:15Aiden:They do it when they value it to get the fucking loans. Yeah. They do it when it works for them. Yeah. We can't do it when we need to tax it. Yeah. It just feels like a pretty weak argument when you look under the hood.

55:28Atrioc:Anyway, to the billionaires in our audience, let us know your perspective. Most of you guys are billionaires, so it's like I...

55:34Aiden:It is a bit of a billionaires club around here.

55:41And some of those billionaires are Saudi, and that's why we introduced a brand new segment called The Saudi Zone. What?

55:47Aiden:The Saudis own what? What do they own, Aiden? Well, this week on the Saudis own what? I have an amazing story. We could also call this gaming is back.

55:58Atrioc:Is it related to the Nordics at all?

56:01Aiden:It's not related to the Nordics at all. Okay, audience, skip ahead five minutes. Don't worry, audience. I got you covered. We'll get to that. I thought, because Evo, the largest fighting game tournament in the world, was this past weekend in Vegas. And there is a special game that is at Evo. and it is called Fatal Fury. Are either of you familiar with this game? So there is a famous, at least within the fighting game community, a game developer, SNK, that made the Kings of Fighters series for a long time, an established old fighting game series that began fading out. Didn't manage to stay relevant in the way that a series like Street Fighter would.

56:41Aiden:And as this developer was failing and the Saudi government was stepping into a lot of investments around eSports, they decided to buy out that studio and gave them a bunch of funding to make a new fighting game, which became the Fatal Fury. What's interesting about Fatal Fury is that it is a competitive game, a fighting game, that they could immediately integrate into the broader Saudi-owned esports environment. And if you haven't been keeping up with this, Saudi-owned or Saudi-backed companies have become the owners of large portions of the esports industry. This is companies like ESL, FaceIt, which you and our producer actually used to work at.

57:31Aiden:uh there are companies like uh the the holding company that owns evo itself now the tournament uh is saudi owned and the esports world cup is this gigantic event across a bunch of different games uh with huge prize pools for participating teams uh participating developers as sort of the uh esports arm of the broader you could say saudi sports washing initiative that they'd taken across a bunch of different things. Things like golf, things like F1, finding ways to integrate culturally into the world in ways they hadn't before. And the Nordic Update of the Week is... No, we'll get to that. So this game, Fatal Fury, immediately commands a premium space in eSports.

58:24Aiden:It's integrated into the eSports World Cup with a million-dollar prize pool. and this game has i checked this morning this game has like half of the concurrent players that rivals of aether 2 has which is like 500 like 400 to 500 concurrence on at any given time and of those limited pool of people playing like a huge portion of the active player base are like really high level professional fighting game players that were good at other games who solely play this game, not because it's good, because of the extraordinary amount of prize money that is available through all the tournaments for Fatal Fury.

59:07Aiden:Most prominently, the Esports World Cup, which is that million dollar prize pool. So these old fighting game players like Goichi or Go1 or like NY, Chris G, these recognizable names from like fighting game history, if you're a fighting game guy by chance, these people have moved on in the late stages of their career and the fgc is like famously broke they you're it is a compared to like the pc gaming scenes like it comes from an era uh of of just having having less money going to garages going to laundromats and playing at the arcade that is kind of the vibe that permeates the fgc and as a result a lot of the money in fighting games previously has been small especially compared to other larger esports.

59:55Aiden:And now this is the game and the opportunity to cash in, even though this game has like no real player base. And I just thought this was so interesting. This game has been around for, I think it's been over a year. And they also have weird inserts. So because of the Saudi Football League, Cristiano Ronaldo is a playable character in this fighting game. What? And then also, Also, I forget his name. One of the characters in this game is a real-life Swedish DJ who just happens to be friends with one of the Saudi crown princes, and they put him in the game.

1:00:39Atrioc:You just beat the shit out of Cristiano Ronaldo?

1:00:42Aiden:I think what's also crazy is his character, he doesn't look like Ronaldo in the game. You know, to be fair, LeBron's in Fortnite. It's not that crazy. LeBron being in Fortnite, Fortnite's one of the most popular games in the world. Yeah, so Fatal Fury is not far behind. Fatal Fury has 400 players, you said, on any given day.

1:00:59Atrioc:Fortnite has every IP known to man. It's different. It's not the same as having Cristiano randomly in this game. They have nobody else in just Ronaldo. It's like if you put Messi and get to work. It's like it's just weird. That's coming. We're working on that. That's the only feature of the sequel.

1:01:15Aiden:So I thought in this like broader time of Saudi sports watching. My grand larger theory is that Saudi Arabia is a teenage boy wasting a bunch of money. They have infinite oil wealth, and they are dumping it on eSports World Cups that make no money, and sports washing that makes no money, and golf that makes no money, and the line that makes no money, and they're just dumping money on Zupac, and it's not working. There's no way this has any return. This is not like, oh my God, this is improving the standing of Saudi Arabia. They just bought a developer to make a game that made no money, and now they're making a World Cup that's going to lose a million in prize pool.

1:01:49Atrioc:what if the professional players because they're primarily playing other games right and they're just going like part time to this one to try to make a whole bunch of money we should have some sort of p to take tax on their winnings you can't be a second game player you need to be have a fucking primary residence primary main game um yeah I don't sorry I can't play Street Fighter anymore

1:02:09Aiden:I've been paying too much tax on my Fatal Fury winnings

1:02:13Atrioc:has it even has it ever worked where someone comes in with infinite money and says I will make a game successful? I don't think so. I mean, other than like... I mean, there's a million stories. Like Jason Schreier has written a million stories about how that doesn't work. Yeah. Does it ever work? Especially with esports. Like if you're going to dump your money, dump it on new features for the game or something. But like the idea of like, we're going to make the tournament so big.

1:02:36Aiden:Esports is a famously good place to spend money. You take that back. You know, there's all the guys waiting like, I don't want to play this game because it only has a million prize. But if it's a million and a half, me and my friends are jumping on Fatal Fury. Yeah, all it does is pull these top, very capable players in already. It just pulls the mercenaries for five minutes, and then they take your money and they leave. I thought this was just crazy, because so few people know this game exists, and it has a slot at this huge eSports tournament now, massive prize pool. And at that one tournament, I think Goichi won 300 grand for first place.

1:03:10Aiden:It's more money than he's ever won from anything ever. I think he's played fighting games for 20 years. Okay, well, your new segment was not the Nordic Fun Fact, and it turns out that people have been demanding the Nordic Fun Fact. I saw that two weeks in a row you hadn't filled our Nordic Fun Fact, so I decided I would do it. Okay, I'll take the mantle upon myself. Thank you. Because at the end of the day, our show is just a vehicle for delivering Nordic Fun Facts. Can I speak for the audience here?

1:03:36Atrioc:Thank you, Brandon Ewing. I know. I just realized that everything else is kind of a wrapper on our core purpose, and you're ignoring it. It's crazy you built this up, and then you just abandoned it for Saudi Arabia.

1:03:47Aiden:I included something about Sweden in that, if you think about it. Hey, do you think there's some dark money flowing around here? Suddenly he's talking about Saudi Arabia? I do think there's some dark money. I'm glad you brought that up. So I have a Nordic fun fact that's related to the World Cup. The first one is that Sweden lost right now. Right as we were speaking, they lost 3-0 to France. Which is just funny. It was 1-0 when we started the episode. And I was like, don't worry. Don't worry. They'll come back. But I saw a funnier Nordic fun fact. And that is, have you guys seen the Viking row that is taking the social media world by storm where all the Norwegian fans do a collective row?

1:04:26And it's been, there it is. And it's, you know, it's charmed people and it's pretty cool. But there is one group of people who are not charmed by this. And it turns out it's other Nordics. The Scandinavian neighbors are irked by this. by the celebration. And there are many Swedes quoted in this saying it's just a bit much and they keep overdoing it. I've been saying that. And I'm just wondering why the fuck Sweden is such a party pooper on this seemingly fun celebration. I don't want to know. I don't want to get the bottom out of this. I stand with them.

1:05:03Aiden:Whatever they're... And to the Sweden Migration Agency, whatever you think is what I think. For the Swedes, their neighbor's celebration is more of a nuisance than a novelty. Was some finding the rowing simulation too reminiscent of the Thunderclap made famous by Iceland fans? They think they stole it from Iceland? They can't just have a fun...

1:05:23Atrioc:Can't a country celebrate hundreds of years of plundering and slaughtering their neighbors? Jesus. Can't they do it anymore? That's that one friend who's too woke. I know.

1:05:36Atrioc:Dude, there's no way that... They looked at Twitter or something, and they found a couple angry commentators. Oh, it found his angle? I always say that because it's Reuters I was like that Reuters posted? I saw who published this and I was like

1:05:52Aiden:wait Reuters said this? It's not like just a clickbait on MSN or whatever and then people on the Swedish squad were denigrating it which is just crazy to do in the middle of the tournament It paid off by the Saudis So the northern fun fact is that right now only the nor part is fun and the rest of it just have facts next topic immediately well I've got a good vibe story for you guys if you could picture an ideal sponsor for this show a company we would love to work with who just refuses to contact us oh I don't know where are you going with this like a company that would let you bet on like anything oh yeah please please prediction markets we did right haven't we been offered multiple We already declined it.

1:06:41I don't know if it's by them specifically. Only because the offer wasn't big enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're waiting for the big cash.

1:06:46Aiden:I said, Polymarket, you think I'll compromise my values for that? Up. One more zero, buddy. I do want to say this is one of the things that makes me the most pessimistic right now. For those of you watching the World Cup, at least in the US, you may be seeing this Rick Rubin ad where it's filmed all nice and he's asking profound questions flashing across the screen. And it's a fucking, I can't even remember if it's Polymarket or Cal sheet because it makes me seethe so much. There's a fucking Timothee Chalamet one too. There's back to back different prediction market ads as you're watching the World Cup everywhere.

1:07:21Aiden:And one of the worst things about prediction markets as it's being discovered is the betting on military events over the course of this year. And 60 Minutes just did an interesting piece where they go and speak to a few different companies that analyze Polymarket data. and they saw the rate at which military u.s military actions have been bet on like against the odds and the rates of success by certain users and one person actually in the u.s who was a soldier i can't remember what his position was but he's he's being prosecuted for for insider training on uh that's crazy because you probably just watch his lemonade stand and gets up to the minute information on war through the fog of war and knows exactly what to bet on that's not we see things that nobody we have the foresight and so i don't think it's a insider trading but uh what one company's evaluation stood out to me they they uh were they saw that uh a specific group of people that was making bets across a bunch of u.s military actions made two and a half million dollars with a 98 % success rate across different, across betting on different U.S.

1:08:36Aiden:military actions, primarily in the Iran war. And, uh, another person, uh, saw that any long shot bet things that had less than 35 % chance of success had a very like high rate of success from specific users, like with like a 60 plus percent win rate across a group of users on long shot US military bets. The point being that the scale at which insider trading on war is making people money is kind of this new facet of war existing at all. As prediction markets get bigger, basically any information that you have that someone else doesn't have becomes profitable. And so the incentives start to make everybody an insider or become like there's somebody in every group becomes insider trader on anything that you can trade on, which is like a crazy.

1:09:34It hits militaries, corporations, earnings before they come out. It's entire trading. Everything, everything you can insider trade on is now like there's a direct monetizable line that isn't enforced, like very few crackdowns, very few. The big one that I saw is a kind of a pivot, but it just is reality TV shows. they're filmed in advance and every single one has now been spoiled like if you if you went to episode one of survivor and said who will win already betting they knew who won oh my god wow and it because it already been filmed and they can't crack down on the hundreds of people that worked in the show they just can't they can all sign ndas but and so it's also well because like

1:10:12Atrioc:most of the shows are i mean not scripted entirely but you know heavily influenced by production anyway so it's not even yeah it's not like you're watching like a completely organic match between people like the journey of it's like you're betting on what the writers are gonna write and then the right god what a but they know the writers are once betting on it right or anybody

1:10:30Aiden:working on the show obviously i saw something crazy about the the military bets is if you move past the general discomfort of insider trading the uh dystopian idea of making bets on like war decisions to begin with and making money this way. If like the way these data companies in the 60 minutes piece are like evaluating anonymous accounts to see who's a likely insider trading in order to predict the outcome of events. They're like, we're doing this as independent data analytics companies, but people like say you were in a war with Iran. It's the U S and Iran. Both sides can be doing the same thing within their military to analyze the upcoming decisions of the opposing side.

1:11:16Aiden:Find someone you think is an insider trader and then track their bets. It compromises military operations and then puts the additional lives at risk because people can analyze the decisions you're going to make because of the people breaking from planning to insider trade. I thought that aspect, this is insane. No, there was a guy inside Google who was insider trading on every, they had so many bets on who would be the most searched person of the year or whatever. And then people were able to use some of his bets to figure out how Google's earnings would do because he was clearly a Google insider.

1:11:55Like, yeah, it was just weird knock-on effects.

1:11:58Aiden:I do, the one thing that is kind of funny to me is like the general premise of prediction markets, which is like you're using the power of the public guessing to predict the most accurate outcome in a way. No, it kind of works on that point. In a way you're getting closer because you have all the insider traders participating. Like from an outside, if I have somebody who doesn't have an account on there, it's like there is some value to me of the insider traders moving it towards more accurate. It's just that everybody using it is playing a rigged game where you will lose money almost certainly unless you have insider trading knowledge.

1:12:36Aiden:Yeah, there's no incentive to use. It's just, it's farming dumb people to take their money. They should ban everybody except insider traders. Almost, yeah. That's what I was kidding. Right.

1:12:48Atrioc:You have to prove that you work on the show before you're allowed to bet. Yeah, then you can bet. Then we'll know it's accurate. Honestly, that could bring back competitiveness to reality TV because then you have a whole group that's trying to get a different outcome and they're fighting for it until the very last episode. Dude, I saw one of those super, super prediction markets tech-pilled people on Twitter who was like, we should get rid of Uber Eats and instead make a prediction market where you say, food won't arrive at my doorstep. And then someone could take the counter on that and then deliver you a burrito.

1:13:21And that's how they get paid. There's no need. Every human interaction can be reframed as a polymarket bet.

1:13:26Atrioc:It's just so disgusting.

1:13:27Aiden:It's just so disgusting. Have you seen that interview? it's there i think it's polymarket uh the owner or like the founder is being asked about why donald trump jr is on the board yeah i saw that and here's one answer the right donald trump jr on the board right now of cal and then they're at the the interviewer is like so why is he on the board and it was like well we have a lot of advisors and then she's like yeah but that's the president's son that's a pretty like special guy and he's like again we have a lot it's like and they all provide insight and she's like but this is special what insight does he provide what does he do and he's like you know it's he won't answer i think this is one of the proliferation of these things is one of the things that i think just makes me the most upset right now maybe it's not the most important issue in the world like i understand that but when i see these ads on tv It just, it genuinely disgusts me.

1:14:26I think the funniest part to me is that everything we're talking about, like military, Google, reality TV, and the ads, all this stuff is just a rounding heart on what it really is though is sports betting. Like all of the money in it is sports betting. Everything about it is just a sports betting website and they've added all this extra stuff, which is weird and has problems. But the core of the business is a fancier DraftKings. It's just wild. Like they've made all these externalities terrible just to also shoehorn in gambling. Well, I have a small story that I just want to throw in because I think it's really funny.

1:15:02And I just heard about it today. Do you guys know that the winner of a recent, I think,$38 million Powerball is the store Circle K?

1:15:14And I'll explain why. And I just thought this was so funny.

1:15:17Atrioc:You mean the people who sell the lottery tickets? They sold the lottery ticket and they won it. And that's because a woman came up to buy lottery tickets. She said, I want$80 worth of lottery tickets. Then when they printed out the tickets, she said, I only have$65. So she only bought. So like, well, we'll have to keep some of them back here. They kept them behind the counter and they fell to the floor or whatever. Later, the cashier looked at the ones on the floor like this one. And so she told her manager that her manager clocked out, put on a different outfit, came in and bought the ticket from her behind the counter exchanging it.

1:15:51Then he tried to cash it, and then it was immediately found out. As you're an employee of Circle K, you legally can't buy a ticket. And it went into this limbo. The person who did the original$80 bet said, okay, well, it's mine, right? That's my ticket. I should win. And they said, no, you didn't pay for it. And so it went up in the air, and they're like, well, I guess it belongs to Circle K because they take a loss when they printed it and didn't give it to anybody. Yeah, heartwarming. A win for Circle K. And so it seems like Circle K may actually win the fucking lottery.

1:16:21Atrioc:Willy Wonka won the chocolate factory tour. I thought it was so crazy. That can't be the rule. There must just do it again. You can't give it to circle fucking K. That's so funny. But that's seemingly the way it's going. Now, there's ongoing lawsuits. Can we bet on it on Polymer?

1:16:42Yeah, all right. So I just threw that story in. That's funny.

1:16:46Atrioc:All right. You want to get serious? Yeah, get serious for a second. It's good. It's a good thing. um get serious okay as of what this morning right uh the supreme court announced that they have ruled against donald trump and reinforced the idea that birthright citizen birthright citizenship is enshrined in the 14th uh amendment to the constitution so uh this is pretty big this is one of the the things that trump did literally within hours of inauguration and he wrote day one day one and he wrote an executive order that basically says that uh your parents have to be a lawful permanent resident of the United States in order to get citizenship.

1:17:22Atrioc:So if you are, uh, you know, an undocumented immigrant, if you are here on a temporary visa, like a tourist or student, or even H one B someone who is like living here for years, you would no longer get automatic citizenship for your kids. Um, so quick backup historical context of why this amendment exists before the Civil War, the Supreme Court and the Dred Scott decision had actually legally said that black Americans can't be citizens. And so then after the Civil War, Congress passed the 14th Amendment and it said, anybody born in the United States, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.

1:18:07Atrioc:So, you know, right after Civil War, we very definitively defined in large part in response to that court ruling to say, if you're born here, you are a citizen. And then this was reinforced in 1898. There was a ruling, the Wong Kim Ark case, where basically two Chinese immigrants, their kids were born here. And in that case affirmed, it doesn't matter that you guys are immigrants, your children, because they're born here, are citizens. The only exceptions are going to be if invading militaries give birth in America, their kids don't get to be American citizens I think that's fair foreign ambassadors right if you're like a diplomat from Sweden or whatever and you have kids here that doesn't count you're representing Sweden and Native Americans for some reason just to kick them while they're down I guess I don't know why that was the case they carved that out they said Native American yes that's part of the 1898 it's those three groups I wonder what the

1:18:59Aiden:explanation yeah I

1:19:02Atrioc:didn't I did not dive into that deeply because that's that's the type of thing it takes a lot of I imagine there's a lot nuance there, but yes. So this has been established for a long time, right? Every American person learned about this in school, like a lot. And so then it was a little bit of a surprise to hear that Trump was pushing for the idea of repealing this because it's, it very explicitly states any persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens. And so the sort of anti-immigration, more rightly right-wing crowd, the argument is somebody who is here illegally is not actually subject to the jurisdiction of America.

1:19:39Atrioc:And therefore they should not qualify. And really what they're upset about is the idea that there is, you know, uh, you know, someone from, let's say Mexico crosses the border illegally and they give birth here and the, it incentivizes people to try to come here and just basically give birth. And they're sort of getting around to the normal citizenship process. So Trump did this executive order right when he came into office the supreme court it went all the way to the supreme court and today they ruled six three that that is still withheld it doesn't matter if you are undocumented if you are born in america no matter what except again for a couple carve outs you are a citizen so that's cool i actually what i was a little i was wondering like how many people are born in this how many immigrants like how much is even happening so per bloomberg which they didn't quote a source and so i went and it's from the center of immigration studies there were 250 000 kids born to undocumented immigrants and temporary visas in 2023 which was nearly seven percent of all u.s births oh wow which is crazy and that's a lot um and then looked at a little more this is from the center of immigration studies who are like a right-wing think tank and i'm like okay all right maybe a little disclaimer here but those are the best numbers that people seem to be quoting that's also during biden's years where there was like a lot of borders a big surge of yeah 2022 and 2023 were like the biggest ever it was like 2 million a year something like that so to make the argument they're kind of quoting the worst you know the the most immigration they're quoting that year with a seemingly pretty biased um think tank and so who knows you know ironically now that trump has made the border very intense arguably this is not even nearly as relevant um but anyway so as you can imagine uh democrats moderate most people are happy that this is the outcome and they're saying yes this is great so what did donny t say he said the sport supreme court upheld birthright citizenship which is too bad for our country but we can easily make it up in congress through legislation with the support of the president no long and unwieldy constitutional amendment is necessary this is not really true kind of but actually we'll get to it He also followed up and said, I would like to congratulate president Xi and the great country of China on the massive birthright citizenship.

1:21:55Atrioc:When implying that president Xi Jinping is benefiting from Chinese immigrants, having kids here and getting citizenship, I think, which is not where the majority of people come from. I don't know how to read this. Is he trying to say that China has a different policy? I literally looked up and I was like, did China just also pass an immigration bill? No, no. He's referring to our ruling.

1:22:19Aiden:Okay. I'm glad you guys were confused in the same ways that I was. Yeah.

1:22:24Atrioc:So I think he's making this about China, which it really is not. But one thing I thought was interesting is that Brett Kavanaugh, one of the Supreme court justices, he ruled in favor of birthright citizenship, that it should be guaranteed for all people. But it's like written directly in the constitution, right? I think it's like, it's like not ambiguous. Yes. It's just, it's just that the, you know, subject to the jurisdiction is a little vague. Okay. And then the second, you could argue, and then the second argument is that is clearly not the intention of the law. The intention, this is the argument, right?

1:22:59Atrioc:I'm not saying. It was clearly intended to ensure that black Americans post-slavery or anybody post-slavery was like, had guaranteed rights. And the idea that somebody could jump over the border for two days, give birth and then leave and their child is guaranteed citizenship is probably not what the, you know, constitution was meant to represent. And as a reminder, the vast majority of the world does not have birthright citizenship. I would not expect to be, have my, if I go to Japan and have a kid while I'm on a tourist visa, I wouldn't expect my child to be Japanese.

1:23:33Aiden:I'm going to preempt, the last time we said that on the show, a bunch of people got in the comments and were like, so many countries have birthright citizenship. If you look at it, the number of countries that have birthright citizenship in the same capacity that the U.S. has is very low. Like the larger, there's a bunch of more countries with like birthright citizenship, but with like some more clauses on like how it works and things like that. Yeah. I'm just preemptively trying to beat those comments out.

1:24:03Atrioc:So, you know, I think it's probably fairly obvious that the majority of the pushback for this is people just upset about non-white immigration, right? Like that's obviously, I think, the main draw here. but I think there's a valid argument of like most countries in the world don't have this where somebody, I mean, even like one of our world cup stars, right? His Nigerian parents while living in England came to visit America and they were going to fly home to England, but they, but his mother was too pregnant, gave birth here and he's an American citizen and is now playing for America. Which is why I'd argue this is best.

1:24:40Aiden:Yeah. Because we need it. It's a benefit.

1:24:42Atrioc:that guy that guy stored two goals against that's and you could argue it's a little bit silly that his nigerian parents who lived in london who came here for a vacation and tried to go home but couldn't because she was too pregnant and they gave birth here and then immediately went home to england and he never grew up here or spent any time here is an american citizen you could argue that's a little wonky do i care no i think it's you should have a clause if you're really american I don't know if you're really good if you're really good at sports yeah I think you know I think probably for all of us it's like one this is not a massively influential thing and two it's like it's part of the spirit of America you know it's like I like the idea that you know we're kind of pro-immigration even if there's like some weird edge cases the most strict counter-argument would be you are encouraging a sort of like birth tourism or for example you encourage the cartel to basically black market traffic people and say hey when you're in late stage pregnancy we're going to sneak her across the U S border.

1:25:38Atrioc:You're going to give birth in the borders and you're going to, your kid's going to get American citizenship, but it's extremely dangerous for all involved. And you're incentivizing this kind of perverse market. That would be the strongest counter. I think that's fair.

1:25:50Aiden:Yeah. Yeah. I think that the argument is, I don't know. I think the scale you'd have to like show, am I, am I wrong? Like, I feel like I'd have to be shown like more large-scale abuse of the system. Maybe that's already been showcased and I'm ignoring it. I think from my perspective of somebody who is naturalized and does not have birthright citizenship, I... My thing with the ruling was always it feels so clear-cut in the way that it's written, but if we went through the arduous process of amending that to fit some sort of modern version of what the country broadly agrees on, like two thirds of the country agrees on, and we want to change it, then go through that process, I guess.

1:26:42Atrioc:The weird battle to fight. It's stupid. I don't know. It just feels -

1:26:47Aiden:I feel like the narrative of it at this time feels primarily abused or on the back of this anti-immigrant narrative that exists, that exists broadly rather than the actual like foundational issues that it presents. Like somebody could be building the case in the, in the way that you've described, right? Like that is the argument that I'm reading online too. And I think that, uh, maybe it needs to be articulated to me better. Like it could be fair, but then you have to go through the process of like changing the constitution in order to. All right.

1:27:23Atrioc:Real, real quick aside because you audience or you guys might hear about this brett kavanaugh who's one of the people who voted to support this decision said that the problem he has with it is actually not the 14th amendment he there's the 14th amendment and then there's a statute by congress that was started in to oversimplify a bit 1940 that basically repeats the 14th amendment and gives additional information that says things like okay what if you don't know what your who your parents are? What if you're born in a, in a U S territory, blah, blah, blah. So there's actually two kind of things we have regarding this.

1:27:56Atrioc:We have the, the constitutional amendment itself. And then you have this statute and Brett Kavanaugh's argument is the statute, which is just something Congress can pass. If Congress goes and updates that, that can have a carve out for somebody who does, you know, birth tourism as they are calling it. And that could work, but that would still have to go back to the Supreme Court.

1:28:17Aiden:But then he would change his position in that case

1:28:19Atrioc:if that legislation... I mean, he's implying that. Who knows if the other five justices who voted in favor of shutting down the executive order. So if you hear Trump or Brett Kavanaugh or other people talk about how this can now go to Congress without a constitutional amendment, that is the idea. But it seems to not hold a lot of weight. And then, again, even if Congress changes it, it has to go get approved by the Supreme Court again. Again, five out of the nine justices said clearly today that they are going to be in support of birthright citizenship. So most likely this is done. It's closed book.

1:28:54Aiden:I think it's interesting to see, not that this hasn't happened a couple times already. I think the general narrative that the court is like ruling heavily in Trump's favor because of the way it's like politically stacked right now is true. But House, a lot of these decisions, more prominent ones, are not going in the way that he's hoping. To see a conservative, a wholly conservative court ultimately decide against this in a way that he's publicly unhappy with is really interesting. Yeah, on the tariffs too. There's a couple big things where he's been hit. But I will say under the radar today, there was Kavanaugh sided with him pretty strongly on a thing that I didn't think get reported very much, which is that spending limits on campaigns, a law that has existed since Watergate, completely got removed today.

1:29:42Yeah. All political parties can now spend unlimited amounts on any candidate. And it's like a bonus on top of Citizens United in 2010, which is a law that I think has been pretty negative on America. And so this is a follow-up that has just happened, and I feel like it's kind of went under the radar. It's the tail end of J.D. Vance coming out on stage and saying that Watergate would be a 12-hour story today, and now the laws they pass after that are getting undermined. And I do think...

1:30:17Aiden:There's another big ruling, too, that I don't know if we have the time to fully explain, but the right for the executive to fire heads of agencies at will, but with a carve-out for the Fed, the Fed still is fully independent and cannot be fired by the executive, but everybody does, or fired without cause. But I want to come, I think this stuff is worth coming back to at a time when we have more time to talk about it, because I think there have been some really big Supreme Court decisions very recently that are worth covering more, and over the course of the entire year. I think Perry actually had a really good suggestion for an episode where we can come back and do that.

1:31:02Aiden:But I think this is the end of this episode. Thank you for joining us for another week of Lemonade Stand, and if you'd like to join us for an extra hour of the show on patreon.com slash lemonade stand, feel free to pop over there. We're trying something new this week. We're doing a bit of a game show. We're doing a bit of a game show this week. So if you want to check that out or the other bonus episodes we do, you can hop on over there. Let's go. Go north, young man, for 200. I hate this category. Go north, young man, for 200. Founded in 1943, this Swedish company is. You're kidding me. He's got a faster fiber wire.

1:31:41He's like those companies that built it one frame closer. Founded in 1943,

1:31:46Atrioc:this Swedish company has grown to become the largest furniture company in the world. What is it, Doug? What is Ikea? What is Lego? This is crazy. All right, Doug, you get bored again. Okay, let's go all aboard for 600. All aboard for 600. Initially used to jumpstart 600 million in funding for the Brightlines Florida project. Doug. I clicked it 100 times over. I clicked it. All right. initially used to jumpstart 600 million in funding for brightlands florida project this is what is the name of the tax-exempt investment vehicle i actually don't remember this exactly what is public debt bond that is incorrect i'm buzzing i'm buzzing how is it what i'm literally buzzing

1:32:31Aiden:what are private activity bonds that is correct myself i'm gonna say public activity bonds i was loser and i loser and let's go i would love to see gaming is back for 200. gaming is back for 200 with long blue twin braids this league of legends character is hey who is jinx oh my god that is correct with a long blue twin braids this league of legends character carries an arsenal of weapons including a rocket launcher it is jinx nice looking game really fast there you should play League of Legends. Pick the next one. Pick the next one.