#2509 - Caleb Hammer

19:28Caleb Hammer:Both Pelosi, who knows? I mean, other people in Congress, they want to pass something where they can only invest in like large cap index funds like the S &P 500. They're not passing it. They don't care. They don't care. It's also, it's completely bipartisan. You know, it's not like it's, Nancy Pelosi is the scapegoat. She's the one that everybody beats on. But if you look at it, it's red, blue, across the line. They're all doing it. Yes. They're all trading. They're all making shit tons of money. They all go into Congress broke. They all come out rich as fuck. Yes. And they get$100 ,000 a year.

20:01Like, fuck off. Fuck off. It's crazy. What is – pull up the Santos case. Find out what's happening. I'm fascinated by that. I mean, honestly, he – today's the second – I guess it was yesterday. He was contacted by NPR. He's contacted by NPR? He was like, it's news to me. He said it's news to him? There you go. Reached by NPR. Well, that's news to me when asked about the insider trading probe underway, this activity on Calci. Santos said, I'm not saying yes. I'm not saying no. On the NPR question whether he had a Calci account. He wanted to say the co-founder of Calci, Luana Lopez Lara, is a fellow Brazilian whom he personally knows.

20:41He said he would call her to get to the bottom whether an investigation had been launched. Santos promised to update NPR on how the call went. He did not respond to NPR's follow-up messages. the thing is like he had some crazy background discrepancies that you know they deviated from the truth slightly right there was some other stuff it wasn't just this like that's what the guy does yeah but meanwhile he's in this amazing position he's got a name he's famous people like him he's fun and he got a fucking pardon from the president it's crazy like bro straight and narrow Yeah. Get yourself a podcast.

21:21Get yourself a YouTube show. You would make some real money. He would make some real money.

21:27Caleb Hammer:Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what's going on with that guy, man. I really don't. I think he's just trying to get that. Get rich quick. Let's see. Jamie put it into perplexity. It says, he built much of his public persona on false claims about his biography, finances, and identity, and later also faced criminal charges tied to deception and fraud. Damn. He falsely claimed degrees from Baruch. Is that how you say it? Baruch College in NYU, even saying he graduated summa cum laude, although he has no college degree. He said he worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Both firms reported no record of him as an employee.

22:06Financing career, Santos portrayed himself as a seasoned Wall Street financier and successful businessman, reporting a rapid jump in income and large loans to his campaign, Meanwhile, journalists found big gaps and unclear sources of wealth. He claimed Jewish heritage and that his grandparents were Holocaust refugees, later backing off saying he was Jew-ish after his maternal family background, not actually Jewish. He also made disputed statements about being a landlord with a family real estate portfolio and about his mother's death being related to 9-11, although she died in 2016. That's crazy.

22:44What a king. I love him. There's a bunch more. Animal rescue claims. He said he founded a non-profit that rescued 2 ,500 cats and dogs, but reporters found no records of such an organization. Cultural and lifestyle claims. Brazilian drag performer shared photos of Santos in drag. He initially denied ever doing drag and later minimized it as just dressing up for a festival when he was young. That's a funny dude. He's a funny dude. Back to jail. Yeah, he's fucked. He was sentenced to 87 months in prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, with officials describing his conduct as a mountain of lies, theft and fraud.

23:26His short house tenure ended with expulsion after an ethics report detailed misuse of campaign funds, including personal luxury spending. Fucking dude, you could have been in jail for 87 months and you got out and you blew it all on a bet. How much did he make off the bet? I don't think...

23:47Caleb Hammer:It's very fresh, this story. I heard it on the news this morning. Homie. I don't think it said specifically how much. Because it was more about what he did. So I don't think... Did they track his account? I don't think they've announced how much he bet on it. And that is hard to trace, which is why I think he did it. Right. I mean, those platforms are hard to trace. I think Polymarket, I think they're specifically even just in crypto on the back end. Oh, really? If I'm not mistaken, are in those similar kind of exchanges. So, like, it's hard to track. So it's a good place to insider trade. And he made some money.

24:25Caleb Hammer:But I think I listened on the news this morning. It said four people close to him reported him, though. Well, when you're that kind of a fraudster, allegedly, and that kind of a liar, allegedly, you tend to not have close friends that you could trust. You probably fuck those guys over, too. Yeah. If they're turning him in, allegedly. I think it's funny, though, because it's really unfortunate. He had a real opportunity. He became a public person. Maybe he still does. Maybe he'll get another pardon. Nah. Who knows? I doubt it. I doubt he'll give him a pardon for that. I don't know why he got the first one.

25:03He'd probably be so mad if Trump got a phone call from him, asking for a second pardon.

25:08Caleb Hammer:Why did he get the first one? Do you know? I have no idea. Let's find out. Let's ask. Why did he get the pardon? Yeah. Why did he get pardoned? There's a lot of people that get pardoned where you're like, wait, what? Yeah. The Biden thing was nuts. Where they pardoned more people than ever, ever, any president, ever. And how much of it was done with the auto pen? So he's literally like barely there, right? We all agree at this point. I mean, there used to be dispute. Oh, yeah, there's a stutter. We all now say he was barely there. So someone else was doing that. So what's the legality of that?

25:45What is the legality of selling pardons? And the preemptive pardons, too. Oh, those are nuts. How about for crimes that just don't exist? You're not being accused of anything. What did you do? He did not receive a pardon. His prison sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump, which led him out of prison early but left his convictions in place. Interesting. In October 25th, October of 2025, rather, Trump signed a commutation for former representative George Santos ordering his immediate release from federal prison where he was serving a roughly seven-year sentence for fraud and identity theft.

26:22Commutation shortens or eliminates the punishment but does not erase the conviction or declare the person innocent, unlike a full pardon. Trump said Santos had been horribly mistreated and had spent long periods in solitary confinement, which Trump framed as too harsh for a rogue politician compared with others. Commentators widely interpret the move as fitting Trump's pattern of granting clemency to political allies and loyalists rather than based on traditional justice system criteria. I mean, look, it's a weird thing that you could do. The fact that you're the president and you could just say, what did you do?

26:58You robbed a bank? Eh, you're sorry. Get free. Meanwhile, if you don't know the president, you're in the bank forever. That is a crazy loophole that still exists that makes no logical sense whatsoever.

27:11Caleb Hammer:Yeah. You just help people around you or your kids, whatever it is. Or a friend of a friend. Yeah. Donation. Yeah. Somebody hooks you up and you know them and their cousin needs a thing and there's a guy and maybe he did it. Maybe he didn't. But you can get him out. I mean, I'd pardon a lot of people. I would pardon a fuckload of people. I get it. Well, we've on this show, we've done a lot of work with my friend Josh Dubin, who used to work with the Innocent Project. And now he works with the Ike Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice and criminal justice. So it's all people that are wrongly convicted.

27:46And there's a shit ton of them. And you find out that there's these rogue politicians or rather prosecutors, these rogue prosecutors and rogue DAs and rogue cops that just have fucking dozens and dozens of bullshit convictions where they fucking hid evidence. They absolutely knew the person that they arrested was the wrong person. They don't care. They just want a conviction. They just they don't care. They lose their ability to give a fuck whether or not the person that's in jail is actually guilty of that crime. and they justified in their head while he was a drug dealer or he was a this or he was a that and he fucked off his whole life.

28:24We're better off with him being in jail. Let me go to Morton's and have a steak.

28:28Caleb Hammer:You take that and then you compare it with like every violent crime that has happened in Austin this year are people that have been repeat criminals just let loose. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so locking up people that don't deserve it. And then a guy, a guy off a 360 here in Austin killed his family and he was let out a couple times before. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not a fan of that. That's a different thing. You know, um, so you got both things, right? You have these, uh, very liberal, uh, DAs who are letting people go if they think that they're, you know, from a protected class or if they think they've experienced racism or they've experienced some sort of an unjust situation as a youth and they need a second chance and the system is racist.

29:16And so you let them loose. But you've got people that, you know, like the guy that pushed someone in front of the train in New York City had been arrested over a dozen times. Like, the fuck are you doing? And there's some kind of crazy statistic, particularly about New York City, that something like 50 percent of all the crimes are by a very small number of people. a very small number of repeat people. And if those people were in jail, literally crime, you could half violent crime, half robberies, half, 50%.

29:46Caleb Hammer:It's crazy. I saw some people doing analysis of the kind of content and news we were getting in 2015 by people that I watched and liked, like the Vlogbrothers and stuff on YouTube, where everything was about the prison industrial complex, which I'm not saying is not a thing. It's certainly, there's definitely issues for sure. But it was about how, you know, we have the highest prison population and stuff. And again, these aren't untrue things. But it started putting out all this unchallenged information about how we are too critical in this country and too punishing. And then what you started to see after that was the politicians like the DA here, the DA in San Francisco coming around the 2020 stuff after the George Floyd situation and everything, where all of a sudden it was beyond soft on crime, like beyond where they could do any amount of property damage that they wanted in San Francisco and just no challenges.

30:39Caleb Hammer:So the DA in Chicago that raised, I think, the theft for felony threshold from like$50 to$500 or something. It was something crazy. So all that information— I think it was$900. Crazy. All that information that we were all consuming was just unchallenged. All you had was like a boomer on Fox News just yelling. That was like the only challenge to that kind of information that was coming around 2015. And I was a fan of that information. I ate it alive. And then now we're facing the consequences of it. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. Well, it's also you find out that there's sort of a dark element to it all.

31:22And there's people like George Soros and the Open Society Foundation. And what they do is they invest their money in politicians. They invest their money in DAs. and they get like the most liberal, the most progressive, the one who's going to do the most damage to the city in terms of crime. And then he funds the next guy to compete against him who's further left. And they just go further and further and further until you've got people like the guy they got rid of in Los Angeles that was just violent crimes. This guy pulled a knife on a sheriff who was trying to attack a sheriff with a knife, And then they let him out.

32:00And then he hacked up some guy with his kids with a fucking machete in Malibu or in Santa Monica, wherever it was. It's like you hear these stories and you're like, this is fucking insane. When someone's a violent criminal and they commit violent crimes, they need to go to jail. And if you don't do that, you're going to encourage people to do violent crimes. So why are these prosecutors doing this? Why are these DAs doing this? Are they doing it because they want to? Do they want society to fail? Well, some of them do. Some of them actually do. They would like our civilization to fall. They think America is evil.

32:35Interesting.

32:36Caleb Hammer:That's interesting. Elon's deep into it, man. I've had conversations with him about it and he explains the way Soros does it. And that's actually – it's a great investment because like to invest in politicians in terms of like to spend money on a campaign for the president, it's a lot of money. Spend money on a campaign for becoming the governor, that's a lot of money. But a local DA, not that much money. And for a great return on your investment, you can fucking tank a city by having one insane DA. Like, who was the guy in L.A. they got rid of? Was it Garza? Was that his name? This guy was fucking out there.

33:10I mean, he was releasing all kinds of crazy criminals. And you're like, why would you do that? And there was a video, there was a podcast that I was listening to where there was a former gang leader who was leaving Los Angeles because he was saying it's getting too dangerous. and they're about to release thousands of people from prison because the prisons are overcrowded. So they're releasing thousands and thousands of violent offenders. And he was sounding the alarm for it. Former gang leader. He's like, this is too hot. We got to get out of here.

33:40Caleb Hammer:That's the primary reason I'm against the things like all the funding for the train in California. Specifically, because I actually really like, I'm a big advocate for public infrastructure and even like dense living. Like I love when you visit a place that is like dense and really cool, lots of community. I love that. We can't do that because we have these people that just let the violent criminals out. They let people hop fairs in San Francisco and smoke meth on the train. I want trains. I want so. I wish Austin had an incredible subway system. We can't if we keep letting out these horrible people that will be everywhere.

34:19Caleb Hammer:These people with mental health issues that we won't put in a place that is more humane than letting them sleep on the street will let them crash at the – anytime me and my girl, we drive past a bus stop and we're just like we would never ride a bus here. Right. Because just every – I've seen people light up a meth pipe on South Lamar at a bus stop and there's just people that are just sleeping there and you can't even wait for a bus. I want these nice things. We can have these nice things, but we can't if we just let people overrun them. So what do you think if you had to put on your tinfoil hat and really try to make an assessment of like why this is happening?

35:02Like why are they allowing this? Why hasn't no one done what is the sensible thing? Protect the peaceful, taxpaying, kind and compassionate people of the city from violent criminals. Why are you allowing these people to continually be released? Why are you so soft on crime? Like, what are you doing?

35:22Caleb Hammer:Yeah. Well, honestly, definitely not as deep as Musk is on this. But for me, I really think it's this political capture. When you get in those ecosystems now online, you can get on TikTok and it'll immediately figure out within three minutes what group to put you in. And then you hear no other perspective. And we know young generations, especially young women, they've moved more politically extreme than any other generation in the history of the United States. And they've moved to the left. Left, right, I don't care. But they've moved to the extreme version. And when you're politically captured, you then vote for the people that are more politically captured on that left.

36:02Caleb Hammer:And there is a lot of that moral masturbation that comes with it. It sounds good. We had all that information around 2015, 2020 that anyone that's going to prison is just for having weed or anything like that. We're just evil as a society. Right. And when you get that and you start moral masturbating about everything, it sounds right. Like things like rent control, it sounds good. It sounds like the moral thing to do. Not letting many – not just putting people in prison for a long time. Sounds nice. Sounds nice. Not kicking people off the street when they're homeless. It sounds nice. Not doing those sweeps.

36:41Caleb Hammer:It sounds nice. Yeah. And people that are politically captured online, especially in our algorithms, this is so brutal. And they just vote for that on repeat because they hear no alternative perspective. And even still, it's so politically captured now where it's like if you disagree with 1%, you're a Nazi and you're, you know, get out of here. You're not one of us. Right. It's pretty brutal. I always considered myself like pretty left of center, actually. I'm probably more centrist now. Economically, I've moved a little to the right over the past few years. But compared to the people surrounding me in college that were definitely like far left because, you know, music school and all that stuff.

37:20Caleb Hammer:But they were still algorithmically captured. I was borderline like a Nazi because I just didn't agree with everything. Yeah. You know, maybe the taxes shouldn't fund tits. Right. I'm sorry if I'm a Nazi for that. Like we have too much bloat. I think you're absolutely correct about the political capture, but I think it's also manipulated. And that still doesn't account for who's funding the DA campaigns. And the fact that Soros does get involved in these kind of things and not just him, but others as well. Do you think he truly believes in it, though? Like this is the right thing. Like we have a prison issue.

37:55No, no, I don't think so. I think he banks on it. I think I mean, he's he's made money off of collapsing societies. It's like he's of interesting character. He seems like completely immune to the consequences like spiritually of what he does.

38:11Caleb Hammer:Fair enough. Yeah. It's a flaw of mine, I guess. I just assume the worst until I see the best. So I just— That's not a flaw. That's—you're a good person. Well, it's fucked me over a lot of times. But like, I mean, I just assume that even if I disagree with them politically, they think it actually has a positive outcome. Yeah. I want to think that. I used to. I think now more they want to pretend that they think it's going to have a positive outcome because it justifies what they're doing. And then it also – I think with politicians, it's really a self-serving thing. They just know that people are politically captured.

38:42So they say the things that the politicians – like listen, Gavin Newsom in any other world could easily be a Republican. OK? If we were living in the 1990s, he might have been. Like this is nonsense. Like his perspectives on things is about personal gain. It's about his campaign and his image and that's why when he addresses any of the issues with California He always goes into this pre-planned speech about we're the biggest tech sector We're number four in the world of the world economy starts moving his hands around He's got a little fucking voodoo dance He does because it's not really about addressing the situation It's about framing it in a very positive way so that he looks good so that he moves forward

39:20Caleb Hammer:That's what he wants to do and you're starting to see him come closer to center now being opposed to the billionaire tax and other things like that in california and leaving they're leaving but a lot of the you know everyone running for governor on the left was okay with the billionaire tax but since he's going to be eyeing for president yeah he needs to be a little more sane and i mean pretty much every independent report says yes it'll capture tens of billions quickly but it'll lose hundreds of billions over the long term because the wealth that you tax on a yearly basis is just leaving. It's not just that.

39:54It's a slippery slope. It might start with billionaires. It'll work its way down. It'll work its way down to thousandaires. Yeah, taxes typically have. They always do. And also, they have the ability to change the goalposts once the bill gets passed. The bill gets passed. They don't have to have you vote on who gets taxed more. And we can just decide. Like Bernie Sanders used to rally against millionaires. It always would be millionaires. Oh, these millionaires, that's the problem. They're not paying their – and now it's billionaires. Why? Because Bernie's a millionaire now. It's adorable. It's adorable in its transparency.

40:31But like these fucking kids don't understand. Like there's a giant number of kids today that come out of the university system that think that communism is the solution. Oh, yeah. It's scary. They genuinely believe in it. Yeah, it's scary. Because you're literally saying, first of all, how does that get enforced? How do you think it gets enforced? How does it work? Who tells the people that they have to give up their money and their property? The fucking government. Then who's holding the military and the property? The government. Oh, so the people with the guns? Oh, so you want a military dictatorship, essentially, to be able to control all the finances?

41:07Who owns a home? Who owns a farm? Where the food comes from? You think that's a good idea? It's time for works. I don't know why they're for it. Ever! There's not even a mildly decent version of it out there. They can go, well, they're not as good as us, but it's not too bad.

41:23Caleb Hammer:I'll give them some credit. I'll give them a little bit of grace. Sure, I think they're a little retarded, but I'll give them some grace. A lot of times when you ask them, those people that come out of college, what communism is, they think it's like Scandinavia. Okay. And socialism. That's how they define it. Not like very literal. And those aren't socialist countries anyway. All their programs are funded on capitalism. It's taxed through the income that's earned on capitalism. So I'll give them that grace. But no, it is true that many people are viewing communism in general as more favorable.

41:55Caleb Hammer:And we know college is also very politically captured. It's very politically captured. That's the danger. The danger is children are getting a very distorted perception of what the reality of the world is, like right out of school, by people who don't live in the world. That's what's so fucked. Like these people that are teaching, they've essentially gone from being a student to working in a university to being a professor. That's their entire life. And they're telling you about the outside world. They're literally prisoners who are telling you about things that are going on in places where they never go and never visit.

42:29Like you're not living in the real world. Like your concepts about socialism and communism that you're teaching these kids. Like you don't live in the real world. You didn't start a business. You don't get fired by one company and hired by another and you're trying to build your own small business. You're not doing that. You're just teaching concepts and ideas, which most people that have done those things, that have jobs, that have started a business, think are fucking ridiculous and don't work and have never worked anywhere in human history. And yet that's how you're employed to shape young minds.

43:08Caleb Hammer:That's crazy. They've looked at some universities and they look at the political identification or doing pollings on different departments. And they've had like sociology departments where it's like 300 Democrats and one registered Republican. But again, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a left wing position or viewpoint. I'm not saying that at all. Again, I agree with a lot on the left. But when something where you're spending four years has that ratio, it's going to get overwhelming in terms of the information you get without any alternative perspective. Right. I was in college again in music school, and this was the amount of just craziness that I was around.

43:50Caleb Hammer:even though i'm slight you know have those left-wing social positions i'm vehemently against that woke shit because when i was there we had a visiting professor talking about music she played a piece of music and she was like okay give me your feedback i just want honest feedback on this and i was you know i didn't really like it i was like you know to me i can't really describe it but it's a little weird then i had to listen to a 10-minute lecture about how the word weird has been used for colonialism and slavery and imprisoning people and murdering people of color and people who have transitioned and stuff.

44:24Caleb Hammer:Because I said the word weird. It's politically captured. And there wasn't, no one would speak up against that. No one would speak up against that. I don't know if there are other normal people around me, other professors that didn't believe what she was saying, but no one was willing to because you'd be ostracized. Right. You'd be fucked. You wouldn't have friends there. Exactly. So when the ratio is something like 500 to 1 in certain departments, you're never going to get an alternative viewpoint. So it makes sense that it gets more extreme. It doesn't even have to be 50-50. But 500 to 1 is crazy.

44:56Caleb Hammer:200 to 1 is crazy. Even 50 to 1. Yeah, for sure. Well, it's something. You need to have alternative perspectives from respected people. They need to be able to communicate with each other. That's what the real diversity is all about. It's not just like where your fucking ancestors came from. It's also diversity of thought, which is crazy that the people that are really into diversity reject completely diversity of thought. This idea that no one who is more to the right of you could possibly have a point is insane. Now, I'm with you socially. I'm very liberal. Financially, I agree with you. I tend to swing more to the right because I believe in human nature.

45:37My problem with the concept of socialism, it goes against human nature. People – if you're going to punish people who are ambitious and reward people who are not, that's not good. That's just not good for human nature. It rewards laziness. It rewards people that feel entitled. It rewards this idea that the government, that they should pay, that these rich people should pay because they've done well. Well, why aren't you doing well is a question that doesn't get asked to these people.

46:07Caleb Hammer:Well, the question of taxes is getting completely turned on its head anyway. I've never been opposed to paying more in taxes if it went to something good. Right. But people are no longer proposing it to go to good things. When you see it advocated online, now it's that person has a lot of money. Let's take some. Yes, exactly. And it's also very abstract. Like they should pay their fair share. Shouldn't we figure out where the fucking money is going first? When you have thousands and thousands of NGOs, you have all these billions moving around in very mysterious ways. You're not concerned with that.

46:40But instead, you want to take money from this guy who's got this giant penthouse like that Ken Griffin thing where Mom Donnie is standing in front of it. Yes. Crazy. This guy has a$250 million.

46:50Caleb Hammer:You're doxing his fucking house. Crazy. Which is stupid because now he's just going to take all the wealth from New York and go down to Miami. I know, but it's a weird thing where some of these, you know, Democrat socialist mayors, they don't seem to think that that's a problem. Like that lady in Seattle is like, well, if they leave, goodbye. OK, I actually like Mondami as a person. I really dislike the lady in Seattle as a person. She seems like a bad person. Just laughing at people leaving, laughing at wealth leaving, laughing at jobs leaving. They're not even leaving Washington. They're going to Bellevue.

47:23Caleb Hammer:They're going across the river where Microsoft and everyone's building new campuses. They're living in Seattle and she's laughing at it. They have the second highest downtown office vacancy in the country and she's laughing at it. That's not a good person. Well, she's also never had a job, which is crazy. Imagine your first job. You're the head of a fucking city. Yeah. Well, then you end up with that and now people are leaving. and the mondani thing is also interesting because one of the things you said recently is that they if they have bad landlords they might take the house have you seen that yeah which is like okay communism you're you're going to capture real estate you know the farm is spending too it's too much money for a tomato we're going to take over the farm like this is north korea this is how it started give us your farm we'll feed everybody oh great yeah i'd love to see that That survived the courts, but it's a crazy idea that we're even there.

48:22Caleb Hammer:And, of course, those bad landlords that we're talking about, they're usually like rent-controlled units where they can't bring in enough money to even maintain the units. Right. So then the units fall. I mean, the percentage of units, I don't know. You can look up the exact number, but that are just sitting empty because there's not enough money to put into them just to bring them up to date is crazy. This is the most populated city in the country. People need places to live. And we have a system right now where people can't even bring units to rent up to date for people to live in. So there's like 10 percent of rent controlled units or something that are not rent controlled.

48:55Caleb Hammer:But but it's brutal. It's an absolute brutal system. It's performative. And there's also this weird thing that goes on in New York City with really expensive apartments where people buy them and never live in them because it's just a place to put your money. Which we do, too. We do that overseas in Europe. Oh, do we? Yeah. Yeah. American billion. I mean, billionaires all over the world do that because real estate is just a good protective asset. It's a good way to preserve. But no, I mean, it makes sense. And places like Texas have banned people from China doing that. But it makes sense from a wealth preservation standpoint.

49:29Caleb Hammer:But it's shitty for the residents of the city. So, I mean, I think it would be fair for them to outlaw that if they wanted to. Kevin O 'Leary's counter perspective, though. Have you heard his? So on that, and I don't know if I agree with it, but it's worth considering, is that, okay, but they're there. They buy it. They don't go there, so they're not using any public services. Right. But they pay the property taxes into the public services, so they're just a net contributor. That does make sense. Yeah, but it is also a place that someone could live that no one is living. Right, but when you're talking about these$100 million apartments, like the Ken Griffith spot, guess what?

50:01You're never going to live there.

50:03Caleb Hammer:Yeah, and they wouldn't have built it if they couldn't sell it to people like him anyway. Exactly. That's the whole reason why they invested in the property in the first place. There's that one that I was looking at. they built this kooky fucking tower that's like a popsicle stick. Have you ever seen that one? And it's waving in the wind now and it makes weird noises and no one wants to live in it. I think some glass falls from it too, right? Really? I think so. The one right off Central Park. Glass falls? I don't know. That's happened a few times. I don't know. I watched a video on it. The video was essentially talking about the engineering that was involved in making sure this thing anchors to the ground.

50:36And you would think you have to worry about this big thing that's really... And you would worry about sinking, right? Well, actually, they worry about it lifting because the wind is slowly rocking it back and forth.

50:48Caleb Hammer:So it's fucking coming out of the ground. And then the people just buy there and not even live there. Wealth preservation. So it works. I think they're having a hard time selling spots because I think people were probably – I would look at that. I'd go, I'm not going to be able to sell this. So if you do buy into it, you might be stuck with it. No, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm, again, down to pay more in taxes. But like you said, there is the fear of like, where's the money going? What scares me? I want to have Mr. Marco Rubio, if he ever sees this and runs for president on my show, the Pentagon hasn't passed an audit in years.

51:22Caleb Hammer:Even that alone. They're working on it. They're working on it for years, for going up to a decade. They've never passed a budget. Never passed an audit. It's crazy. Like that alone. I mean, that alone. And I know military is still it's what is it? 10 to 20 percent of the federal budget. So it's a smaller percentage. But the fastest growing category of the federal budget is interest payments on our debt. That's the fastest growing category in the federal budget. If that's the case, why are we allowing the Pentagon to not pass an audit? We're going to raise defense spending to a trillion dollars a year, but it can't pass an audit.

51:56Caleb Hammer:I want good defense. I want broad defense. I want a lot of benefits for our soldiers. Yeah. It has to pass an audit. Yeah. Well, this is the thing. I mean, exactly what we're talking about. Like, we're in favor of paying taxes. It'd be great if everything was nice. The schools were great. The streets were clean. But when you know that there's so much waste and there's so much fraud, and then all they're saying is we need to make people pay their share. To pay it to where? Where's it going? Who's benefiting from it? You know, when you see the like the 24 billion dollars that was spent on the homeless in California, it's like you don't have any knowledge of where that money went.

52:35You can't audit it. This is bananas. That's so much fucking money. And not only is it not been effective, it's been the opposite of effective. The homelessness increased during that time. Yeah. So you spent all that money and more people are homeless now than when you started. It's performative. It sounds good.

52:53Caleb Hammer:It sounds good. It's all performative. It's also jobs. It's jobs. There's so many people that have jobs in nonprofits, and they make an extraordinary amount of money. Well, that's why they should look to Houston. Instead of nonprofits, it's one central city-run organization, and they've actually decreased homelessness. Really? With like a 10 % of the budget per homeless person than L.A. But L.A. has a network for every little corner of the homeless services. It's a network of different nonprofits and organizations. So it doesn't work. The city program, one central city program, did it in Houston, and it's actually been working.

53:29Caleb Hammer:How do they do it? What are they doing differently? Well, instead of these different organizations that all have these different incentives to maintain the jobs, like you said, and not even report certain data, this is a city organization actually held responsible by the people, by the voters, by the city council. This is one place where the money goes. It's not these endless nonprofit jobs. The incentives are just misaligned across the board. Yeah. It's interesting that there are examples of cities that have done it well. And Austin had a real problem in 2020, and they did a great job in cleaning it up a little bit.

54:08But it's a small city, you know, relatively.

54:11Caleb Hammer:It's still pretty rough downtown, though. It gets rough. Listen, man, I have a club on 6th Street. I know. I go there all the time, and I almost get shanked. It's scary. It's wild. I think, though, that once you get in, it's kind of exciting. Like, ooh, we made it. Adds to the show. I put my parents in a hotel. We went to the rooftop patio, and it overlooked the alley right behind 6th Street. I don't know if it was the other side of the road or not, but the alleys are scary. Oh, yeah. It's brutal. It looks something out of a Batman movie from the 90s or 80s. I can't believe it's actually allowed.

54:45Caleb Hammer:And they say it's sympathetic. They say it's sympathetic and nice to all. I don't know how that's considered any more nice than any kind of, gosh, forced rehabilitation seems brutal, but the mental health places. I know they weren't great before Reagan tanked that. It's better than a fucking alley. Exactly. It's better than an alley. Yeah. It's better than an alley. And there's another weird thing about 6th Street is that 6th Street is like this booming, like bars and music and comedy. It's crazy and it's loud and everybody's drinking. One block over is a homeless shelter. Yeah. So you've got all these people that are drug addicts and trying to stay clean.

55:25Drinker. Like, that's the other thing. You can't do drugs and stay there. So people will just surround it. They surround the outside area and they have their tents laid out there. Not anymore. They kind of pull the tents up. But you see those people there all the time. But imagine you're trying to stay clean and you're a block away from madness. It's crazy. It's the dumbest place to put them. Put them in the fucking country. You see squirrels and hear birds chirp. Why are you putting them right there?

55:47Caleb Hammer:That's where I park when I go to a show. When I go to a show at the mothership, I park right next to the Ark. It's scary. It's apocalyptic. It really is. Even the police station just right down the street, they surround that as well. Yeah. It's a police station and they're doing drugs. I know. It's fucking nuts. It's kind of crazy. It's nuts. Well, they're trying to do some things with 6th Street. And one of the things they're doing, they're investing a lot of money and trying to open up high-end places and restaurants and businesses. But, you know, it's going to be a slow slog to try to clean it up.

56:17Caleb Hammer:I mean, I'm sympathetic. They actually, the people do need help. But when homelessness is like at minimum 25%, this is reported from polling done via homeless people, so can't 100 % trust it, but 25 % mental health issues. Like, what are you going to do? You're just going to let them forever be wherever they want and do whatever they want, endanger themselves and others? There's a dude constantly wielding a machete down there that's always just twirling it. When I had friends visiting other big podcasters, I took them downtown. The first thing I saw on 6-3 was a guy spinning a machete. It's like we're just allowing that?

56:52Caleb Hammer:That's the sympathetic thing to do. That doesn't make any sense to me. 25 % forever. We're just going to allow them. That's a very low number. Yes, I think so. Being very kind by saying 25%, I would say it's probably 80. Listen, just by definition, if you're a drug addict, you have a mental health problem. just by definition. You have an addiction. That's a mental health issue. There's a physical aspect to it, but there's clearly a mental aspect to it. It sucks. It sucks that there's so many competing philosophies on how to make a society run correctly, and a lot of them just completely ignore reality.

57:30And we deal with the consequences of it. And then you have people saying, oh, the billionaires aren't paying their fair share. That's what's wrong. That's not what's wrong. What's wrong is you have a completely captured government and there's also this weird aspect to it where there's people that are working for nonprofits to make things better that don't make anything better. They don't do a good job at all because they're not beholden to all the pressures that you would have if you were an independent business. If you're an actual private business that was assigned a task of cleaning up the homeless issue, you wouldn't make any money if you didn't do a good job.

58:10You would lose your business. Like if you had – if homelessness – cleaning up the homelessness was an actual business and you started a private business to clean up the homeless and you got all this money, nobody would invest in your company. Your company would fall apart. It wouldn't work. but because it's a non-profit you can have a seven hundred thousand dollar a year salary and do a fucking terrible job and have no fear whatsoever of being unemployed yeah exactly

58:35Caleb Hammer:and another difference between houston and la uh that i forgot to mention earlier i mean a part of it is the cost of labor cost of housing but a uh a place a shelter or a room to put a homeless person that is starting to get clean in houston costs a few hundred thousand dollars it costs a million or more in California. That's just, you can't compete against that. It's impossible. Now, oftentimes that's California's own fault. Their laws and permitting issues and red tape and environmental codes are crazy for building. And the labor unions that they use for their building contracts are very, they like to extort.

59:14Caleb Hammer:So there's a lot of issues there. Houston's able to build it on the cheap, which means more people are able to get in housing. But California is very set on the housing first, which again is the moral thing. It sounds moral. And it really started to take off a couple decades ago where, okay, let's get someone into housing first and then try to get them clean because no one's going to get clean then housing. But Houston's been trying to, and Texas cities have been trying to do the opposite. And it's been working where we try to get people clean first and then get into that housing and get their life set up because people have been going into these places in LA that are multi-millions of dollars and trashing it.

59:49Caleb Hammer:And they get like lore and stories off of them. Like a dude that was like building like chairs or something and then burned down his apartment. He was named like chair guy. Like everyone knew him. It's just crazy that we allow that. People that are not getting the help and support they need because it's housing first. Because it sounds good. But it hasn't been working. And I don't know why. I don't know. It's the political capture again. I don't know why we're willing to do something for 5, 10, 15 years, see it doesn't work and then just say we have to keep doing it and put more money towards it.

1:00:22Well, I think, again, what you're saying earlier about social media and these echo chambers is really important because in their world, this is the only thing to do. And that all just gets this feedback loop where it's the right thing to do, the only thing to do. And they come up with reasons why it's not working and then call everybody Nazis.

1:00:41Caleb Hammer:Yeah. And that's why also those echo chambers are why when polled, younger people are more OK with violence against people on the other side of the political aisle for them, which is a very scary place to go. So it's very scary, especially when I see death threats all the time in my inbox and doxing and shit like that. They call me a fascist for saying don't spend more money than you make. Okay, so I'm a fascist. Now I'm afraid for my life and I have to get security and all this stuff. It's crazy. So you get threats for – like what specifically do they get upset at? It's literally just saying don't spend your money?

1:01:13Caleb Hammer:It's everything. They don't like that I do roasts. Consensual, consensual roasts. Like I call a fat bitch a fat bitch. but I had the conversation with her before and if she didn't want me to I wouldn't have done that because we have a no-no list where people get to say what they don't want us to talk about and then I just won't talk about that that's very nice of you it is very nice that's because we try to run a moral consensual show all that good stuff but I love to roast people and just call out their features and just dumb shit like that so people get offended by that offended on behalf of someone who's not offended in the first place and then they get very angry I got a death threat on Twitter yesterday for saying Americans spend too much money on cars.

1:01:53Wow.

1:01:54Caleb Hammer:He said I should – that it's crazy that Caleb Hammer is still breathing air and that he should come up from San Antonio and kill me or something. I don't remember. Something like that. It's kind of crazy because Americans spend too much money on cars. Maybe he sells cars. Maybe. But objectively, we do. Did you check his profile? Is it a real person? It said San Antonio. That's all I know. That's all I know. I'm sure it was like a second profile. He was responding to it. He was excited. He got his attention. He could be a crazy person. Yeah. Yeah. And we get emails all the time. No, people think I'm evil because they say, I don't talk about the issues that led us here in the first place.

1:02:33Caleb Hammer:But it's a personal responsibility show because more people have agency than they're willing to acknowledge. We're in the highest disposable income society in the history of human existence. Not everything's perfect. cost of housing's gone up, cost of school's gone up, cost of healthcare's gone up. We can acknowledge those realities. But people have agency. People have agency. The amount of going out to eat among the Generation Z is insane compared to any other generation. And not only that, but now for 25 % of their going out to eat multiple times a week is getting food delivered. And that has a 90 % markup.

1:03:12Caleb Hammer:90%. And then they're complaining that they can't afford to pretty much do anything, get a nice apartment or whatnot. But if we're spending like$1 ,000 a month, which is very normal for a person on my show, going out to eat, you're right. You can't get an apartment of your dreams when$1 ,000 a month is going to McDonald's and other places. Cooking at homes become like a burden, become a victim complex now. Well, actually, that was another thing that triggered the Internet. I kind of agreed with Kevin O 'Leary when I said, oh, young people are broke because they spent$28 going out to eat. Well, it's not that specifically only, but it's the death of a thousand cuts.

1:03:51Caleb Hammer:And yes, just$28 three times a week becomes an actual halfway decent retirement fund if you put it in the S &P 500 for a few times a week. That does put off future goals that you have. And the Internet went crazy against me. They hated me for suggesting that, that they shouldn't be able to. They're like, well, how do we eat? Groceries, meal prep, meal plan. This is what everyone's done since forever. We live in the best period ever for humans. Best period ever. Our jobs are better. Everything's better. Even when you think of like buying the starter home in the 50s and whatever, you know, they were like the size of this room that we're in right now, mass produced.

1:04:32Caleb Hammer:Okay, that's still a home that's great you could buy. but you were going to a job that you hated, that you were sweating, that had no AC where you're working with your hands all day, and it was miserable. They didn't like the jobs. They liked that they had a good paying job. But now people go to the office and they think they're a victim for not being able to meal prep before going to the office, the AC'd office. Like, it's hard for me to sympathize with that, especially when I film three of them a week, all 100 % real people, mostly Gen Z and millennials, who are absolute victims in everything.

1:05:04Caleb Hammer:They are victims in everything. They think if they don't get a 2027 brand new car instead of a 2025 car, that they're going to die. That all of a sudden cars two years ago were the most dangerous things. They have to get a 60 ,000 to 70 ,000 hour car loan at a 20 % interest rate or else their kids will die. You've actually had that conversation? Every time. That they're going to die? No, because the excuses they use is that I wanted a safe car for my kids. That's fine. But it's the insinuation that 2024, 2023, 2022 cars would literally go on the highway and blow up. Like, I don't understand. They insist if they don't get a brand new car, that is not a safe car.

1:05:49Caleb Hammer:That is an argument every time with Americans. The$1.6 trillion or$1.5 trillion in car loan debt. So do you think that's just a lack of education? Because a car from 2020 is just as safe as a car from 2026. There's no difference. Absolutely. There's no difference in airbags, no difference in anti-lock brakes. There's very few differences in any of the technology involved. In fact, I tell people, especially people that want a nice car, one of the best investments you can get is get an electric car that's about two years old. that like electric Porsches and electric Audis in particular, fucking nobody wants them, man.

1:06:24Nobody wants to use ones. And they're still great. Oh, yeah. And like, okay, let's look up an Audi e-tron. Look up a 2023 Audi e-tron. How much does it cost now to buy? And what was it new? I think it's like less than 50%. Yeah. So there's certain cars where you buy them and they're worth as much a couple years later, like a nice BMW or a Porsche. Like, you could get an M5, a BMW M5, and then sell it a year or two later and lose very little money, if any. You get a fucking electric car and you try to sell that bitch in a couple years, like an electric Porsche? Okay, look at this. 2022 Audi e-tron,$25 ,000.

1:07:112023 Audi e-tron $27 ,000 Do you know how fucking crazy that is? That is a 2023 amazing car Those cars are fucking incredible It's a technological tour de force They're fast as shit It's all wheel drive It's an SUV A premium plus quattro $27 ,000 It only has 37 ,000 miles on it Those things don't have engines like a combustion engine. They don't have nearly the kind of maintenance that a regular car does. You don't have to change the oil. You just plug that bitch in. You have a fucking amazing car. The battery range is not the longest.

1:07:54Caleb Hammer:That's the excuse they use. There it is. 226 miles is plenty for you to get to work and get home. Thank you. And go out to dinner and you can plug that bitch in. I have a Tesla and it has like, it's a Model S. What does the Model S have? Three, four? I can understand this argument that this person might not have anywhere then to charge it. That's an issue. That's so easy to get in your house now. But if you have an apartment, that's totally fair. Yeah, and if you go to one of those charging stations, you're very vulnerable. If I was a chick, I'd never get an electric car if I didn't have a house.

1:08:28You have to do it every single day. Every day. Fair enough. For a gas station once every 10 days or something. And how long does it take to charge up one of those bitches? 30 to 45 minutes. So you'd have 30, 40 minutes every day. Oh, yeah. That's fair enough. That's fair.

1:08:42Caleb Hammer:But you're getting a fucking bitching car for 27 grand. And more apartment complexes are installing those charging stations anyway that you can just leave your car in overnight. I live in one and you can never actually get to the thing. Why is it? Because someone's always in there? People get to it and they never move their fucking car. Oh, they keep it plugged in. And I don't know whose it is. You can't go call them. Flatten their tires. Don't do that. I'm just kidding. But I try to think of options, right? And they're broken, too. Because there's even the options of the place you work might have one.

1:09:09Caleb Hammer:Right outside my building, where we film, is multiple car charging places. Park in, you go to work. So I'm not saying everyone can do it, but there's options. If you can do it, it's a great option. But even still, you can get used gas cars for relatively similar, but they will defend to the death on my show having to get a$60 ,000 large SUV at an insane interest rate for an eight-year loan, eight-year term. Crazy. But you asked me, why are they doing it? It's American, baby. That's American. That's freedom. You need a car to get to your job, and you need a job to get to your car. And our culture is built around the house and car.

1:09:49Caleb Hammer:You're a failure if you don't get a house. You're a failure if you don't get a car. Yeah. It is American as it gets. That is true. And it is true that people want a new one. They want a new one. That's part of the status of owning a vehicle. You want to be able to say it's 2026. Look, it has these new features. It's fun. Apple CarPlay. And people actually care what the person next to them thinks is the stoplight for some reason. I don't know why. Yeah, that's a weird one. It's a weird one, but we do. And we especially do when we're not doing that well. So you want like every single sign that shows that you're doing well.

1:10:20You know, a nice watch, a nice this, a nice that, a bag, whatever it is. Whatever it is that you need like a reward for this job that sucks.

1:10:30Caleb Hammer:Yeah. Oftentimes the poorest people I know are the ones that have more souped up, nicer cars. And then they have a shitty place to live. But they prioritize that because it's a wealth symbol. It looks good. Yeah. They get the expensive clothes, the flashy items. That is true. But if you have money, a car is one of the few things that you put money into that you actually enjoy. You actually feel it when you drive it around in it every day. It's exciting. It's fun. I just got my Model X. It goes fast. So I'm happy. Those are great. That's it. They stopped making them. I know. It's really sad. They stopped making the S, too.

1:11:01Caleb Hammer:I was actually sad that day. Me, too. That was a weird thing to get sad about, but I was actually sad that day. Also, I was sad because I knew it was the rise of the robots because they're using it to make these fucking Optimus Prime robots, and they're going to be flooding the streets everywhere. Yeah. I honestly think the Model X is one of the best cars ever made. It's a phenomenal car. I love that thing. It dances. Tiffany Haddish has one, and she was in the parking lot of the comedy store, and the wings go up, and it starts dancing. It moves around. I'm like, this is crazy. Like it actually moves to music.

1:11:30Caleb Hammer:Now that I have one of the last ones ever made, I honestly – fuck, man. I really don't know. I don't want another car. It's actually really sad. Well, he told me – Elon told me it's super overengineered. He's like the car is incredible. It's like one of the safest cars you could ever drive. Well, I guess it's the last one I'll ever get. It's a bummer. So when you are explaining to these people that a car that's just a few years old is just as good as a car that's now – Yeah. Does anybody go, hey, you're right. Or did is it like a natural inclination? Like, is this just this thing that they want, a status symbol that's in their head that they need a 2026?

1:12:08Caleb Hammer:People are very defensive on the show. I can convince them of smaller things. Getting rid of a car in our culture is usually a big thing to overcome. But I'll see weeks later that they sat on it. They thought about it. Then the video went uploaded and millions of people shit all over them in the comments. And they're like, OK, you know, maybe I should get rid of this car. So some people actually, many people do change their perspective on cars. But that's a hard one to overcome. Telling them to close a credit card, it's kind of easy. Car's a big one. I've told people to not get a house, and they're really close to getting a house.

1:12:42Caleb Hammer:That's something they will not give up because that's another obsession that we have in our country. So would you say not get a house today because of interest rates? Just interest rates. The overall marketplace, S &P 500, it just beats real estate. Commercial real estate is good to get for tax advantages, but the American dream isn't owning a home anymore. It's the freedom of renting because you can live wherever you want. You can move for a job like that. Getting in a house, you're stuck in a house. It requires a massive amount of money for a down payment. And it's just a lack of flexibility in a generation and age where people want to be more flexible and travel and explore and take new jobs everywhere.

1:13:19Caleb Hammer:But it also just doesn't make sense as an investment anymore. It doesn't. It used to be the defining trade of the middle class and one of the largest wealth creating things for the middle class. But now with the incredible stock market that we've had over the past 50 years or so, it beats it every time. If you rent and just put in your money into the stock market instead of that down payment on a house with a little extra for a mortgage, you'll win every time. And then you get stuck. Let's say you got the good interest rate. Everyone with a good interest rate is stuck right now because they're not willing to trade up for a house they actually want but with a higher interest rate.

1:13:55Caleb Hammer:So homes become like these people's prisons. You can buy a home. That's great. If you know you're going to stay somewhere and it's what you've ever always wanted, there's nothing wrong with doing it. But it is not that actually incredible financial thing that has defined America. That being said, Americans suck at investing. So if the only way for you to invest is put your money in a house that you literally cannot touch, maybe it makes sense. Because if instead you need to put an extra 20 % to the market if you rent, but Americans just want to go spend that on a vacation, then maybe you're better off in a house because you need that forced investing.

1:14:33Yeah. Well, a lot of people don't feel secure unless they own the home. They don't feel like settled. This is not really my place. I'm just renting it.

1:14:42Caleb Hammer:Yeah, which is true. But, I mean, I just tell them to fuck off. That's your feelings. I mean, that is just their feelings. Like, I don't know. Math is math in the end. Like, I own, but that's because it was very affordable for me. It made sense for me. But it doesn't have to for everyone. And that's okay. In renting, you don't have to do maintenance. You don't have to get a new roof. You don't have to deal with the AC going out and all this stuff. If you're renting for, especially even larger corporations, they're actually even better to rent for than a mom and pa because they'll have someone on standby that'll fix your shit overnight.

1:15:14Caleb Hammer:Or a mom-and-pop landlord, you know, it kind of sucks. It might take a couple weeks. Right, if they're not good. Yeah. What do you think when you're talking to these young people that are talking about their future? What do you think about what's happening with AI and the potential for AI to displace jobs and these people that are investing their future and going to school and getting this job that might not even exist? Yeah, totally fair. It's a big fear. So I'm going to start this part by saying I don't 100 % want to listen to anyone that says they know what's going to happen. Because how can – there's the doom and gloom that says everyone's job is going to go away.

1:15:53Caleb Hammer:And then there's those that say it's going to create a shit ton of new jobs. I don't listen to any of them. No one knows what's on the other side of the hill of AI. But we do know AI is coming. So there is the best things to prepare for it. Trades, very smart. They've been smart for a while, but they're very smart with AI because it's probably not coming for an electrician job. Probably not. Degrees in general, what degree you get in school, has been one of the largest and most consequential decisions that people have been messing up for the past few years. And it's actually one of the leading causes for that gender wealth divide that is always talked about.

1:16:29Caleb Hammer:Now, when compared for the same job, same person, same experience, which is never compared in that study, it's actually 99 percent very similar. But what we see oftentimes, and I feel bad for the women my age with this, is statistically them, they've gone and got lower paying degrees and now degrees that are very susceptible to AI, which is going to be very damaging for a large group of people that are going to push them to become even more radical. but women have gone and borrowed a lot more money for degrees that provide a lot less return on investment like sociology psychology the arts things like that where you can't maybe even get a job you're going to be a barista or if you are going to get a job it's usually a lower paying job where men have gone um just we've fallen this thing in our society where men have always tried to go to that higher income side and give up a job they like for it so they'll go into engineering the maths, the sciences, even if they don't like it, or the trades, very labor intensive.

1:17:35Caleb Hammer:And even though AI, you know, they're susceptible to some things in tech there, it's always been higher pain. And that's what's made that gender wealth gap so heavy. That and then women post-birth is the second highest leading cause. But when it comes to AI, people are already making the mistakes in the degrees they've been getting over the last 10 years. And now this is just going to accelerate that even further. When it comes to data entry jobs, things that are super easy, even unfortunately, who knows if we'll allow for therapists, but it's getting there pretty quick. People are willing to trust AI way more than we thought in these psychology degrees and whatnot, writing degrees, things that unfortunately that large sector has gotten.

1:18:20Caleb Hammer:They're much more susceptible to AI. And it's going to lead to – I think it's going to lead to a lot more political radicalization, and that's what scares me more than anything. The – was it the UN? A reputable source said 40 percent of global jobs are susceptible to being replaced by AI. Now, the more developed countries were a little better. It's a little easier. But we're talking about those that are doing like customer service jobs in India and things like that. That's – they're going to be damaged heavily. We're going to be a little better in Europe, in the United States, in Canada, Australia.

1:18:56But it's scary. And people need to prepare themselves by trying to borrow the least amount possible when they get their degree.

1:19:04Caleb Hammer:Go to community college if they can. And go into something that's more AI resistant. Which to me is, again, things like trades. Things that need that extra creative edge where AI doesn't seem to be able to get there yet. But maybe it'll be able to at some point right now. They're really good at going through numbers and stuff. But that true creative edge actually coming up with something new, that's what I think people should be going towards in college right now. Yeah, I completely agree. Hold that thought. I have to take a leak. Yeah, you're good. So one question that I have for you is because you got a degree that's not really a good degree financially.

1:19:40I dropped out. Yeah, well. But close. But going to school for something that's not viable financially. Why do you think, and particularly women, why do you think so many of them get these degrees in sociology, get these degrees in gender studies, get these degrees in things where you're just not going to be able to make a living in what you're going to school for?

1:20:00Caleb Hammer:Yeah, I think you can do a lot of good in a lot of them. So if you're doing social work like that. And nursing actually does pretty well. But in that lower paid part of medical, you know, you're doing a lot of good. We spent a lot of decades trying to really fix the percentage of college. We were having like men, men, men, men. It was only men going to college. And we put a lot of effort into women going to college a bit more to catch up, which is fair. That was good. I am for that. But once they got there, just, fuck, why they're doing it, it's harder to say. But they definitely do more gravitate as a cohort towards those lower paying degrees like psychology and whatnot.

1:20:47Caleb Hammer:And I don't know. Men just go to the higher paying degrees. I don't know if it's something in our culture where men feel like they need to be a breadwinner or whatnot. Yeah, that's what I'm wondering if that's what it is, the need to be a provider and the thinking like these low paying jobs are not going to be able to give me any money. Yeah. How am I going to provide? How am I going to have a family? How am I going to pay the bills? Yeah. Now men are starting to kind of fall off that platform, though. I don't know if you've been watching the trends, but now it's closer to like 60%, 65 % of new degree holders are women.

1:21:20Caleb Hammer:And men are just not going to college anymore. 65 % really? It's pretty crazy. It's like 60 % or 65%. Wow. It's getting pretty intense. Well, what are men doing instead? There's a lot of losers. There are a lot of losers. where they're not getting any education. They're not looking for any kind of job. They're not even collecting unemployment. They're literally just sitting on their ass. That is a big cohort of people right now. What's causing that? Fuck. There is a lot of the red pill victim mentality. I don't know if I want to fully enable it, but maybe there's some justification a little bit, but they think that everything's against them.

1:22:03Caleb Hammer:They think that DEI specifically was preventing them from going to work and preventing them from going to school, that schools politically captured. There's a survey done of people that were choosing not to go to college. 30 % said that it's because – 30 or 40 % said it was because college was becoming too politically captured. So there is that. Then they don't have jobs. They don't have skills. They don't have experience, so it's harder to get a job. It's easier to just kind of sit at mom's home, play video games, do drugs. Jesus. That's bleak. It's bleak. And the gender wars are horrendous right now.

1:22:44Caleb Hammer:I don't know if you see any of it online, but the gender wars are horrible. The gender wars. Oh, yeah. Young women just being so anti-men and young men being so anti-women and cheering against each other. It's horrible. It is horrible. Like uniquely new? Like this is a - Much more than ever before. What do you think is causing that? A lot of it started 2016 election. They got, a lot of women got very angry that Trump was elected and they followed something that happened in South Korea as well, where the women said, no men, no dating, no sex. There was a term for it, but they were just, they cut off everything.

1:23:25Caleb Hammer:And there was a little bit of that movement after the 2016 election here in the United States as well. It didn't gain as much traction, but this is very divisive. And it goes back to the algorithm that we were talking about earlier as well. A lot of people get put in those echo chambers where you need to have a villain, and the men are the villain or the women are the villain. The women are the reason men aren't doing well. The men are the reason women aren't doing well. The men have been holding us back forever. They've been keeping us in the kitchen and everything like that. The 4B movement.

1:24:00Yes. Women boycotting men. Anti-men movement. 4B movement is a radical feminist rebellion that emerged around 2015. It's named after four Korean terms starting with BI, meaning no. B-hone, no heterosexual marriage. B-chol-sen, no childbirth. B-yone, no dating men. Bisecu no sexual relations with men. Okay. Participants argue this is not about misandry, but rather a drastic method to opt out of an intensely patriarchal society and protect themselves from gender-based violence, such as digital sex crimes, spy cams, and workplace discrimination.

1:24:42Caleb Hammer:So it picked up some pretty big steam here in the United States after 2016. But I got to think that everyone who's saying no dating men and no sexual relationships with men isn't attractive probably not but sexlessness among young people is so high compared to any other generation very high very high virgin rate which is really odd we're finding a lot of people and a lot of them like identify as christian and that's the reason why they're saying or catholic is the reason why they're saying they're virgin and i'm like what's happening you don't get horny what are you doing it's interesting You don't like people?

1:25:16Caleb Hammer:I've had a lot of people on my show say they want to have sex but can't have sex. So I guess they haven't used that cope, the religious cope, but I don't know. But that's another example of the radicalization. So they just – they blame each other. Like, OK, Trump got elected. Many of the women in this country that lean to the left didn't like it, so they got very upset. They blamed the men for electing him. Men blame women, DEI policies, which, yeah, there are things to complain about. I do get it, like on both sides probably, but they've just gone so extreme. So there's a gender war right now where it's just trying to nuke the other side.

1:25:50Is this spillover into real life as much or is this a lot of people that spend way too much time on the Internet already?

1:25:56Caleb Hammer:Definitely more that than anything. Definitely more that. But the unfortunate real life consequences lead to that loneliness online because the real life consequences that people are staying inside and on screens and more lonely than ever. So that's the real life impact. You know, they're not going out and talking about the 4B movement on the corner of the street. But instead of going out like they used to and having more friends, they're sitting inside and complaining about it on Reddit. So that is the real life consequences. It becomes online. Yeah. It's just so strange that these people don't recognize that you have a finite time to exist.

1:26:36and you're spending all your time like captured in these like fucking stupid echo chambers.

1:26:41Caleb Hammer:Feels good to be a victim though because everyone online that is in your little ecosystem, they give you the thumbs up. They make you feel reassured. Feels good. Complaining is exciting. People do love to complain. Yeah. It excites you. It gets you going. Fucking me. Whether this is accurate, I think this gives a little insight into the Korean 4B movement. This is a post on Reddit from two years ago, but this paragraph here is... Oh, about Korea? Yeah. Yeah, so we're talking about a country where a woman's career can be jeopardized for something as innocuous as wearing a t-shirt that reads, girls don't need a prince, or for liking a Women's March post on Twitter, even if it was seven years ago.

1:27:22I'm not exaggerating. Incidents like this have occurred, and as recently as last year, we're talking about literal termination of a contract due to a heart made on a post regarding women's safety issues. issues on Twitter dating back to seven or more years ago due to incel gamers throwing a fit. So they have an incel problem in Korea, too. A lot of, also low replacement rate. Worse in the world, yeah. Korea is really bad. Is it the worst? It's worse than Japan? Worse in the world.

1:27:51Caleb Hammer:Cultural collapse within a few decades, yeah. By the end of the century. Oy. Yeah. South Korea is done. But, no, it's true. And like I said, there are valid logics to it. I'm not saying like everyone's just doing it inherently to be evil. Right. But if your outcome is to become radicalized into something like the 4B movement, no one should be fired from wearing a dresser like in a post. Right. You know? It's crazy. But to become radicalized and start this thing where it divides the genders, because we have more political division in the Gen Z gender than any other generation, more religious division.

1:28:28Caleb Hammer:It's crazy. And to fuel that, because things have been not perfect. So when you say political division, so is it that young men are going to the right and young women are going to the left? Is that what it is? Yeah, when you do – when they've done tracking and polling of post-election results and how people have voted, age groups and gender groups, they've seen that men have moved to the right a little bit. But women dramatically since 2016 have moved to the pretty far left, young women, not millennial or Gen X or boomer women especially, but Gen Z women have moved very far to the left. I wonder what changes, if anything, in that when women have children.

1:29:10Because one of the things that I found is that my friends who wound up having children, my female friends, they almost all started moving to the right. They almost started all recognizing that there's real safety issues, there's real crime issues. They're wondering where their tax money goes. They see corruption and fraud. Things that they never really talked about at all when they were single and didn't have a child. But as soon as they get married, as soon as they have children, then they start going, hey, fuck this place. You know, like so many of them wound up moving out of L.A. right after they had children.

1:29:43And so many of them started moving into a different sort of ideology.

1:29:49Caleb Hammer:But people have to get married and have kids for that to happen. And we just hit our lowest birth rate in the United States. Is it the lowest ever replacement rate? Yeah, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, it was before the last time we had actual replacement rate was before the Great Recession. And ever since then, this has gone off a cliff. That's why we need immigrants. Well, I mean, actually, yes. Open the border, women, we. Well, we do need some immigration. Of course. We always do. Because we need a growing population because you don't want to be like South Korea or Japan. Right. You can't have a collapsing population because you use the argument – sorry, not you.

1:30:25Caleb Hammer:But people could use the argument they'll destroy our culture if we let in all these immigrants. And, yes, of course that would happen if you just let anyone in no matter what uncontrolled. Sure. South Korea is also going to lose their culture because their population will not exist by the end of the century. So there's multiple ways to lose a culture. But I'm a big proponent of selective, high skilled, good proportional immigration. And I think honestly, I think that's the more bipartisan issue. That's where like Bill Clinton was in the 90s and whatnot. So I think that's fair. Open borders is fucking crazy.

1:30:58Caleb Hammer:I don't know what was going on. I didn't even realize what was going on. It's nuts. I have friends that were down there that went to the border and then say, you have to come to understand it. You have to see it. It's fucking insane. Like you see the numbers of people coming across like, how is this real? Yeah. And there's no vetting right into the country. Whee. Yeah. So I'm on an economic issue because I always go back to economics. I don't get as fired up about the social stuff. But I do like some kind of immigration for sure. Some people are like completely anti-immigration, but I like some kind of immigration because we do need a growing job pool specifically to maintaining the economy so that people my age can retire.

1:31:39Caleb Hammer:If the dependency ratio of every person not working for every working person is getting close to one for one in South Korea. In the United States, when we implemented Social Security, it was closer to like 60 to one. Now the United States is like five or ten to one. It's going in the wrong direction. And if for every one working person you have one person not working, the whole system breaks. And that's what we're starting to see in places like South Korea. So we can't become that. So if people aren't fucking, people aren't making babies, you got to bring some people in. But selective, high skilled.

1:32:13Caleb Hammer:What gets scary is if you start fucking up an economy enough with really bad policies, you get brain drain and then immigration. So you see what happens in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom. Brain drain. Yeah. Educated people. They're born there typically or they even emigrate there and they become very educated. They're the ones that are going to contribute to the tax base, create jobs, do higher skilled jobs, great doctors, everything's like that. But they look around them. The economic policies have failed. So they come to the United States. and then there's only the immigrants that have come in that aren't able to replace that brain because they come from somewhere where no fault of their own is just less educated so they aren't able to contribute to that tax base we're actually starting to see something similar in la right now with the wealth flight and brain drain though the net migration la is not looking the absolute worst People that were contributing there, moving away and providing to the tax base versus people that are coming in and aren't being true net contributors is becoming horrendous.

1:33:22Caleb Hammer:And they're looking at like a billion dollar deficit coming up pretty soon for the city of L.A. It becomes very scary. So that's why I rail against performative policies, because I don't want to end up like a place like the U.K. We would rank 51st out of all 50 states, by the way, in terms of GDP per capita, which is absolutely crazy, worse than Mississippi.

1:33:46Caleb Hammer:And then if you're having immigration while that's happening, all you have left is just that, just that. And all your high-skilled people went somewhere else. Same thing is happening in Canada. They become educated in Canada and they go down to Silicon Valley for a high-paying job because they don't pay as well in Canada. But if we start reversing that with bad policies, you start looking a little more like L.A. and their budget's not looking really good. It's interesting how pragmatic financial discussions are problematic. Like people don't like it and they look at it and like you're just – you're not talking really even about politics.

1:34:21You're just talking about pragmatic decisions in terms of like how do you invest your money, how to save your money, how to do that. That becomes right wing. Oh, yeah. That becomes somehow or another cruel. It's like categorized in that way as heartless.

1:34:36Caleb Hammer:Yeah. People will clip that last moment and say I'm anti-immigrants. Like that's going to happen. But it's not. It's this literal economic theory that we're seeing in the real world right now that's tracked and trackable. The Labor Party acknowledges – the left-wing Labor Party in the United Kingdom acknowledges the wealth, flight, and brain drain. This isn't a right-wing position. This is just reality. It's interesting, though, that people, like, in general, don't think of it that way. People in general think of it like someone who discusses finances, someone who's, like, very financially astute, gives pragmatic advice.

1:35:11That's a conservative person. That's a bad person.

1:35:14Caleb Hammer:They do think so. They say I'm right-wing coded. That's something I see a lot. White-wing coded or my vibe is off because personal responsibility. Yeah. But what do you think – why do you think personal responsibility is thought of that way? Is it because people cherish this idea that they're a victim and they hold on to it that's part of their identity? And if you challenge that and say, no, some of this is your fault, then you're being cruel. You're a sociopath. You're a fascist. There's a large group of people that want people like me or Dave Ramsey to just give them a hug and then complain about the systemic issues that got there in the first place.

1:35:55Caleb Hammer:Right. You can vote. That's great. Go vote for a policy change. Wonderful. But you do have a little bit of agency. And I'm not going to talk to you about what policy you should vote for, because that's going to require millions of people to overdo a system that you don't like. What you do have control on right now is whether or not you swipe the card somewhere, whether or not you get a high interest rate credit card or get a bullshit degree from a private institution out of state. You have those controls right now. and they don't like that i the one of the biggest complaints that people like me and dave ramsey get is why aren't you talking about the system they got you there but that's not the conversation it isn't it's a one-on-one personal financial conversation let those people fix their lives budget but that's why i made a budgeting app dollar wise by the way is for that kind of thing i made a budgeting app called dollar wise with my team it's called dollar wise dollar wise yeah Yeah.

1:36:51Caleb Hammer:So the average person can actually budget and take some personal responsibility instead of just falling on the victim mindset. So this app, what do you do? You put in your income, you put in your bills. Yeah. Yeah. It's that automatic account connections through multiple different services. So you get your accounts connected and you get to immediate insights that show where your money is going, what you can do to actually improve your life and the steps you need to take. It fully guides you in that process. So were you motivated to do this just based on these conversations you've had with people that don't know what the fuck to do?

1:37:26Caleb Hammer:That and to make a shit ton of money. Both have worked pretty well. Which is funny. You're making a shit ton of money by people that can't figure out how to save money. Yeah, but hey, if they make more money because they save money and I make more money, that's capitalism. It's a value. Yeah, exactly. You're providing a value. No, I mean that's the point. I used – did you ever use Mint? No. You remember Mint? Okay, so it was a big budgeting app a long time ago. But for some reason, the service that bought it shut it down. And that's what everyone was using. But even then, I remember stopped using it.

1:37:56Caleb Hammer:Like many people, most people fall off of budgeting apps because they're just burdensome. It takes a long time to figure out the systems, and they're just over-engineered for the personal finance nerd that loves every little detail. So the average person doesn't do it. So we just built something simple that just shows people immediately where their money is going and what they need to do to change. So that's what we focused on when we engineered this thing. And so when you're having all these conversations with all these different people that have these terrible budgets, doing a terrible job of taking care of themselves, do you ever get this feeling like that you're not helping?

1:38:33Like this is like an insurmountable problem. You're sticking your finger in a dam and there's a fucking million leaks and this is not going to work?

1:38:41Caleb Hammer:To a certain extent, yes. Luckily, in the United States, we have some tools that help. So if someone's in that situation where the dam's about to burst, everything's about to just blow up, they can go through bankruptcy. But bankruptcy does not make sense. And this is what a lot of people mess up. Bankruptcy doesn't make sense unless you actually change the behavior that got you there in the first place. Because we've had people that have come on my show that have been through bankruptcy twice and now we're there again. It makes no sense. You can get rid of the dam. You can get rid of it by bankruptcy.

1:39:12Caleb Hammer:But you're going to build up that thing to explode again if you don't actually fix the behavior. So people take shortcuts through credit card consolidation, debt consolidation, personal loans, all that good stuff. Those are good tools. But if people don't actually fix their behavior first, they're going to fuck it up. So Dave Ramsey is vehemently against debt consolidation for a reason that is fair. I don't like being anti something 100 percent because personal finances is personal. But this is his argument. And it's kind of fair. You build up this much in credit card debt from here to here. And then you can consolidate it into this new debt.

1:39:48Caleb Hammer:So this is one new debt that consolidated this down to zero. But now what happens is the credit card limit is still all the way up there. So people now have this debt and then without changing their behavior, they build the credit cards back to here. So now you have double the debt. That's the issue with debt consolidations and not changing the behavior. So his philosophy is correct. But what we try to teach people on my show is that change the behavior that got you in that first stack in the first place. And if you can prove that you can follow a budget for a few months, then you can take that shortcut by consolidating.

1:40:18Caleb Hammer:And then probably just close those cards so you can't use them. But the same thing applies for bankruptcy. So that's why our show is Simple Stuff. You just fix the spending. You get it under control. You live in even Elizabeth Warren's 50-30-20. She's the one that pioneered 50-30-20, which is 50 % on needs, 30 % on wants, 20 % on savings. That's Elizabeth Warren's rule, and she's relatively correct on that. Doesn't apply to everywhere like L.A., New York, of course. But if you can follow that and prove you do it for a few months, then you can go through bankruptcy. You can use a personal loan, and that solves the damn issue.

1:40:56Caleb Hammer:It solves the bigger issue. Yeah, the changing your behavior thing is very hard for people. It is. And it's also very hard for people when that spending of the money is the only reward you get for a job you hate. Yeah, it is. And I'm the one talking to them and I'm a fat fuck. So, like, I get it. Like, I haven't, you know, fully taken control of my health behaviors and eating behaviors. So I know that it's hard to fix it. But oftentimes the people on my show, I've been in the exact same situation. I was when I was 20, 21. And I've seen what it's like on the other side. just like many people in your position have seen what it's like on the health, the health on the other side, you know how good it is.

1:41:38Caleb Hammer:So you want other people to do it. And since I've been through that personal finance side and gone through the work, I can at least help hold people's hands and show them what it's like to go to the other side of that tunnel, to put in the work, the temporary sacrifice of a few years and really live the rest of your life in such a better way. Yeah. It's just changing behavior requires a change in perspective, and it requires something. And for some people, they have to hit rock bottom or they have to have some – they have the birth of a child. Like something rocks them into reality, and they go, whatever the fuck I'm doing right now, it's not the right path.

1:42:17But it's just so hard for people when they're playing this blame game and they're looking at successful wealthy people as being the – we'll get Jeff Bezos in his fucking yacht. That has nothing to do with you. Yeah. It's not why you're broke. And you should look at him and go, how the fuck did he do that? How can I do that? I want a yacht. Fuck it. Let's go. But no one's doing that. They're instead deciding that they're a victim, deciding that the game is rigged, deciding that there's a cap on their ability. But meanwhile, this is if there's any place on earth where you have the ability to rise from the bottom to the top, this is it.

1:42:55This is the spot. There's no place better. You can say it's not fair, but it it what does that mean? It's possible like you could do it people have done it You just have to figure it out and like you have to spend less time playing video games less time smoking weed Less time doing nonsense and more time plotting your fucking future figure out what it is I think there's also a problem in a lot of people have something that they really want to do that they're not doing and and they they're not pursuing that and so then they're even more bitter because they're spending time doing this job that they hate which sucks they think it's taking away from their ability to do this other thing which sucks and then they come up with all sorts of rationalizations for

1:43:35Caleb Hammer:why they're not doing it yeah no but what you said is 100 correct but let me let me phrase it back yeah it's not fair the world isn't fair now what right it is what it is like it is okay so accept that are you gonna sit on it and cry like that's the only option right is that or do something you're denying people's feelings caleb i am you're denying people's feelings and that's very right coded yeah that is right that's the argument it is it is like i i don't know man um right code is fun if people just if they're getting the bullshit degree and they borrowed a shit ton of money for it that's not my fault i didn't do that yeah the system bezos didn't do that either they say well sociology and stuff should pay more okay the market's determined it didn't so now what you still get to choose what you do what business you start you might fail a thousand times but you have so much more agency than people right now are willing to accept and that's all i really care about telling people in the end that's all you have agency take some personal responsibility You are not the disabled person that actually does not have agency.

1:44:45Caleb Hammer:Right. Because there are people that don't. Right. You're not that. Right. Yeah, it's so important to say. And I think as much as it's probably frustrating when I brought it up that you're putting your finger in this dam and there's 100 holes, I really do think that you have a positive impact. Because I really do think there's a lot of people – I mean you get millions of views. There's a lot of people that are watching these conversations and it resonates. and they go, this is me. He's talking to me and he's right. Fuck, what do I do? And at least it puts them in this mindset that a change needs to take place.

1:45:21Yeah, exactly. And then you give them tools. You give them, like you explain to them what the steps that they can take. You know, and that's, the fucking crazy thing is they're not getting this from school. School's not teaching you how to organize your future, which is fucking a critical skill, a critical piece of knowledge, like having a path that you can actually follow.

1:45:45Caleb Hammer:I think it's a lot of the time it's the student counselors there because I remember being in school, in high school, and the student counselor I met with her once a year, and the only conversation is, what do you want to study in college? That's all they cared about. And it's fair for most people. College does still have like a 60 % premium on those without a degree on average. But that's the only conversation, and it is becoming less and less valuable as every year goes on. And if that's all school cares about, they don't care to even show you how to – okay, I mean, full admission here, and I'm going to look like the most beta pussy in the world, but I don't know how to do a fucking oil change.

1:46:23Caleb Hammer:I don't. Why didn't school teach me that? Why? Why wasn't there any life skills? Now, I have the personal responsibility. I can go teach myself that right now, but I have a Tesla, so I don't need to. But why wasn't there anything about actual life? The only thing there was to do was go to college, nothing else. That was the only conversation. When I went to high school, we had auto shop. Yeah. So I did learn. I think they got rid of it the year before I went. Really? Yeah. Oh, my God. When I went to high school, I went to Newton South High School. And there was this guy who ran the auto shop that was a Mustang enthusiast.

1:47:01That's what he loved, old Mustangs. and he would like fix them. And he would take his cars and teach kids how to fix his old Mustangs. He had like 1960s, early 60s, like 65, 66. He liked the small Mustangs. He was a fucking very interesting guy. And he would explain to you like how spark plugs work. Like this is your carburetor. This is why it's jammed. This is how the internal combustion engine works. He would explain it to you. He would like teach you things, teach you like general maintenance stuff on cars. And it was very valuable. Teach you how to jack up a car, how to do it safely. Where's the jacking point?

1:47:38Where's the lift points on the bottom of a frame?

1:47:40Caleb Hammer:Yeah, and home ec classes, too. Yeah. It used to be a big thing. Teach you how to cook. It's falling away. And now, of course, now that we don't teach people how to cook, they're complaining about not eating out. So disappearance of traditional shop classes did not happen overnight. It happened in distinct phases, 70s and 80s budget cuts. Major tax revolts such as California's Proposition 13 in 1978 decimated public school budgets because maintaining workshops, buying heavy machinery, and securing liability insurance were expensive. Shop programs became easy targets for elimination. 1990s college prep push.

1:48:14High schools shifted their focus to standardized testing and four-year university preparation, marginalizing vocational training. Which meanwhile, which is really crazy, what you're saying earlier today or earlier on the show is very important. It's like trades might be the only secure pathway. Becoming a carpenter, becoming an electrician, heating and ventilation. Like people are going to have to have those systems installed and maintained. And we're going to need people for that. And that's a job. You start your own HVAC company. Like you can make some real fucking money.

1:48:46Caleb Hammer:Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And even things like apprenticeships. if you get an apprenticeship you have a 90 chance of being retained to a full-time position get into apprenticeships yeah like i know just like a little fat dude with some soft hands but it's okay to do you know those are good jobs they're good paying jobs they're good career position jobs they are and if you want a good job and it's also it's like there's a weird thing with degrees like degrees means your value as an intellect as a person who can think you're you're a smart person you went to school and you got a degree but if you have a degree and you're fucking poor and you know i'm saying and you're you're depressed and this guy is a tradesman and he's wealthy and he's making money people with degrees still will look down Oh, he's a plumber?

1:49:41Caleb Hammer:What the fuck does he know about how this country works? I'm sorry. Some of the wealthiest people in our country that have built the largest companies are college dropouts. That's true. Bill Gates. I can't just fully respect the college degree only, especially when you can get the most bullshit degrees now, and especially where the average GPA and passing tests have gone substantially higher because our standards are so much lower in universities now. It's pathetic. It's becoming harder and harder to respect a degree. There's good degrees. There really are, but it's getting harder and harder to just respect it as a blanket statement.

1:50:15Yeah. No, you're absolutely making sense. And it's also education is so readily available. If you want to educate yourself, there's just YouTube alone. You could kind of learn anything. You can learn anything about anything. And if you're really interested in actually doing the work and actually trying to absorb the information, you can get a high-quality education without ever stepping into a university. Yeah. Just with audio books, just with YouTube, just with – I mean it's – there's so much knowledge, much more than any other time in human history. So the idea that the only way to get an education is to go to these socially captured, these politically captured environments and be force-fed this indoctrination of horse shit by communists who have never had a real job.

1:51:04and also be in debt an insane amount of money because you're spending more money for that education than you're going to spend on anything else when you're fucking 18 years old. There's nothing even remotely close to a year and a university degree unless you're buying a new car every year. What the fuck are you spending that kind of... What's Harvard a year right now? How much per year is Harvard? What is it? 50? 60? Way more than that? It depends if you're in state and out of state, too. I don't think it's a state school.

1:51:36Caleb Hammer:But student loan balances people borrow, on average, ranges from$25 ,000 to$40 ,000 for just an 18-year-old to sign away. Nuts. Well, through their four-year degree. It's crazy. It's crazy. And it's all administrative bloat now, too. Yeah. It's not even going to anything. It's also subsidized. Like, the whole thing is gross. $62 ,000 for undergrads. $62 ,000 a year. What else are you spending$62 ,000 a year on? Now, imagine. What's that, Jimmy? It's without fees. Including housing, health fees, and student services. I'll tell you. Oh, including housing, health fees, and student services coming to approximately$86 ,000 to$95 ,000 before financial aid.

1:52:15So with housing, health fees, and human services, it could get to$95 ,000 a year. That's fucking crazy. And if you go through that and you get a degree in gender studies, that's wild.

1:52:29Caleb Hammer:Now, for a fact, there's a$62 ,000 car out there, but for a fact, they will not lend that car amount to an 18-year-old. I don't know why they would do it for a college degree. It is kind of nuts. New York Times, 1983, it's titled, 1980s grads, baby boom to job bust. This sounds a lot like right now, but it doesn't mention anything about debt or AI. Yeah. Yeah. So more than 900 ,000 of them in the 1980s have discovered that they must put aside college daydreams and settle for jobs that do not require a degree if they want to work at all. So this was when? 1983. Whoa. Yeah, they're all going in for jobs and none of the jobs that they want are available.

1:53:13Yeah. So they don't have to, you know.

1:53:14Caleb Hammer:They're getting bullshit degrees. Go back to that. It says, yeah, the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics has long predicted that the number of college graduates would exceed the number of technical, managerial, and professional jobs available to them, a result in part of a decade-and-a-half-long influx of well-educated baby boom generation into the labor market.

1:53:34the problem is like young kids if you ask kids the vast majority of them what they want to do i think i i know this is in california they it was like overwhelmingly they wanted to be famous

1:53:48Caleb Hammer:yeah i mean we're in the world of influencers it makes sense everyone's trying to be a tiktoker well everyone's also wanting to do what you're doing yeah you're an entertainer now you're You're giving financial advice, but you're also an entertainer. Yeah, it's very cool, and I wish everyone could do it. Most of us aren't lucky. I got lucky. I don't know. I mean, this is not a realistic thing, right? We've got to be realistic. But what does that mean? If someone can do it, you can do it. The numbers aren't good in terms of the amount of people that are going to make it, but what are those factors that are keeping people from figuring out how to do it?

1:54:21Caleb Hammer:Well, you know what, though? I wasn't fucking retarded about it. I had a full-time job and I only allowed myself to go full-time on this thing once I proved I had enough income to replace it for a few months consistent. Most people, they're like, let me just quit my job, borrow some money and start recording some videos. Like you're a moron. You're going to fail at that. I was strategic. If I didn't work or if this didn't work for me, I would still have that job because I didn't quit that job. What were you doing? I was a product manager at a tech company. Did you hate it? um kind of actually yeah that's why i started applying for other jobs and a youtuber almost hired me then he didn't so i did it myself this is kind of the path so what was the job that you were gonna get hired for the youtuber uh do you know tyler alivara no oh you've probably seen his clips he runs around and like records like oh look at all these indians in frisco that kind of stuff either way uh i was gonna be like a production manager for him good guy but i just didn't get the job so yeah but i wanted to be you decided i'm gonna just go into it myself yeah i just recorded a uh ordered a bunch of equipment and set up something and started recording financial audit because it was a show i wanted to see but it didn't exist yet so i decided to make it myself really so no background at all in entertainment nothing no i was like making stuff like making music that's why i went to college making youtube videos with friends in high school but in an ideal world would you be making music no i'm way richer than but is that what you like better than the actual music no this is so much more fun because it impacts more people's lives it really does like that's fucking cool i i mean there there's a lot of youtubers but being able to leave a legacy and actually say that you've helped tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people actually fix their lives that's actually something special yeah that's something special that not a lot of people get to say so i i don't want to give that up that is cool but do you still do music at all not really it was like concert band composition and i'll be honest i don't think they would let me into the world because i'm right wing coded and i like i it sounds like a joke but it's actually real like they're if you go on the music side of facebook where they all are different band directors and different things like that they're all very very uh woke which is cool i'm down I'm down to hang out with them, grab a beer with them, but they kick you out.

1:56:52Caleb Hammer:Wow. Yeah. It's pretty toxic. But, no, I mean, for fun, I write a little on the side, but my passion is this thing. Do you perform music or you just write it? I used to play trombone, but it was mostly writing it. That was the passion. But my passion is building my business now. I have 40 people that work for me here in Austin. It's really cool. You have 40 employees? Yeah. We're doing a lot of different things. We have over 100 ,000 people to our paid membership on YouTube. So that's an entire business on its own. It's crazy huge. So what is the paid membership? What's the difference between the paid membership and the free membership?

1:57:29Caleb Hammer:It's$10 a month, and they get access to – we put on three premium shows that me and my production staff make daily. So we have a whole almost like network for them to consume behind the paywall. And what are these shows about? It's a variety of things. It's breaking down financial audit episodes. We have a show called Fat and Fatter where me and one of my talent people or whatever, we test food from different restaurants and rank them based on finances. They're all finance-based shows. So there's just these really cool, fun things that engage with the community, and they love supporting it. So almost 110 ,000 people a month subscribe to that, which is really cool.

1:58:08Caleb Hammer:That's amazing. Yeah. And then the budgeting app DollarWise that we're building, financial audit. And then we have these personal services on our own website as well so people can apply for personal loans and things like that. So we're trying to really scale something. And that's much more of a passion than writing music ever was. So it's much more fun. That's very interesting. So you're doing that. You've got the DollarWise app. You have this YouTube thing where people can subscribe. but you seem like you've got some plans to build out and to take this even further. Oh yeah, we want to scale this budgeting app a lot.

1:58:43Caleb Hammer:We want to really make it one of the top dogs out there and really provide a value that isn't being met in the marketplace. I'd love to build up some other YouTubers at some point. We have figured out the algorithm. We've figured out what people like and I want to help other people that want to create different finance content because finance content is boring like you said. And we found a way to make it interesting and entertaining. I'd love to help some other people launch their stuff. And then like the personal financial tools, similar to like what Ramsey has, Dave Ramsey. They connect people with mortgages and stuff.

1:59:16Caleb Hammer:We want to make sure we can provide that but in a way that isn't so limited and stringent to a strict ideology. So there's a lot in the market that's not being met that I really want to build out. And for young people, like to have a resource like that where there's someone who doesn't have a boring, stale sort of perspective that could teach you how to budget yourself and how to like take your money and invest it. And then I'm sure there's a ton of online platforms that show you how to cook, that can show you how to shop, how to – how you can save money by going to a grocery store and what's cost effective and getting your nutrition in but also saving some money.

1:59:57Yeah. What's the question? I'm sorry. No, it's like it's a beautiful time for young people if they access these things. I'm just saying that like for young people that are listening to you and like, I don't know what to do. Oh, you're right. Oh, I do spend like let me look at the amount of money I spend just getting DoorDash. Holy shit. That's that's actually a large percentage of my check. And how much would it be if I just went to the grocery store once a week and I got all my food for the week? Jesus Christ, I'd save$300.

2:00:27Caleb Hammer:Here's the reality. You don't get to have fun if you don't have a fully funded emergency fund. That's a basic reality. Only 60 % of Americans can cover a$400 emergency, meaning 40 % can't. That's$400. So when you say emergency fund, what do you consider an emergency fund? So there's a debate between three months to six months of everything you need to live for a month. I'm on that six month side because things like the pandemic and shutdowns, We're in that kind of world now. So you may as well go that full way, get a six-month emergency fund that protects you in case of layoffs or just losing money or a medical emergency, whatever it may be.

2:01:04Caleb Hammer:You got a lifeline. But that's basic. That is so critical to life for a sick pet or a broken car that if you don't have that, I don't want to see you in a drive-through. That can't be acceptable. Going on a vacation is not acceptable if you can't protect you and your family at the basic level. I'll give you a little bit of grace if you're not fully investing. Okay. But this is like basic survival shit. It needs to be just as critical as having like a first aid kit in the house because it's that serious. And that's what causes Americans to just fuck up their houses financially. An emergency happens.

2:01:41Caleb Hammer:A layoff happens and they're not ready. It's scary and people are not ready. I know. It's like that. The problem is hearing that with young people. It's like that's boring. It is. They don't want to think that way. They just want to go have fun. They want to play video games. They want to go to the bar. Which is fair. But a six-month emergency fund isn't that crazy. It's not saving millions for retirement. Do that, then have some fun. Get to three months, then have a little bit of fun while you're saving to six. Just that. Or at least, at a minimum, be able to cover your highest insurance deductible.

2:02:14Caleb Hammer:Or like a one-month emergency fund. Have something. The fact that 40 % don't have$400 set aside, not for a rainy day, for an actual emergency, is terrifying. Yeah. So now what are your thoughts on crypto? I like crypto. I have a small amount of Bitcoin in my portfolio. It's pretty good. 10 % of Americans use it as an investment tool. So it's still pretty small for the overall American public. But I mean, I like it in general. Have we hit the full bubble and pullback? I wonder. Well, the crypto outside of Bitcoin gets very odd, like meme coins. And I'm heavily invested in Melania coin. I don't know about you.

2:02:59No, not personally.

2:03:00Caleb Hammer:I'm kidding. Not in my portfolio. There's things like that where like, what's going on? Like who's putting their money into the Haktoa coin? Yes. You know what I mean? It's like this is – it's a very weird gambling thing we're doing. It's like a legal pyramid scheme. Yes, exactly. And it's mostly just used by people for a get rich quick real quick. I don't even know she made money I think she got fucked and her reputation got destroyed like people hated her They're angry at her afterwards and yeah, she gets like 5 ,000 views a video now. It's pretty brutal I think she got sucked into this idea You know somehow or another that was gonna be okay.

2:03:36They're like the people that got sucked into the nft thing I mean man, how many conversations did we have about emma nfts where I was trying to get someone to explain it to me? like no one can explain this to me in a way that makes sense why i can get that same picture and put it on my phone and it's free but you have that picture on your phone and you own it yeah and then it died in six months right so but that was one where i was like what are they trying to sell and how are so many people buying it yeah where if you can't explain to me what you're selling but yet millions of dollars i know a guy made over a million dollars in art nfts Yeah.

2:04:14Caleb Hammer:No, it's an actual thing. And I think what every single person that gets in every pump and dump thinks they're going to do is get the pump but not the dump. They think they're going to be that exception. They're not going to be. It's like day trading. Day trading is even better, and that's still only 85 % or 15 % win. Only 15 % win day trading. Really? Which is higher than you'd think, yeah. Wait a minute. So 85 % lose at day trading? Yes. Actual day trading, like interday trading. It's brutal. Holy shit. Those pump and dumps are even worse. But everyone's a special little snowflake. They think they're going to be the one.

2:04:50Caleb Hammer:They're going to beat the system. Yeah. It doesn't work. But I think there's some good value in like Ethereum or Bitcoin. It's actually being utilized. Aren't these meme coins also a good way to launder money? Oh, well, launder actually. That's interesting. I bet. I wouldn't be surprised. Certainly distribute money to people. Sure. Like if you made a Caleb coin and I said, what do you think? I got an idea. Well, you and I collaborate. I'll finance your Caleb coin and you dump out early and you get all this money from it and fuck all these other people that thought they were going to make money and they're not going to anyway.

2:05:25And now you've got that money and now we're going to work together to do something else. Yeah. No, it's crazy. It's a way to move money around in a way that's not directly financially compensating someone, but yet you are.

2:05:37Caleb Hammer:And there's entire websites dedicated to the pump funds. I think it's like pump.fund. Really? Pump.fund, something like that. You can make a coin. You can invest in a coin. It's all for pumps. But they just – everyone thinks they're going to be a part of the pump, not the dump. It's crazy. But it's – this is the Wild West of unregulated currency. Yeah. And my fear is people are going to eventually wind up being stuck in a centralized digital currency that the government controls. that's attached to a social credit score system and, you know. Okay. That's scary. That's a scary thought. Further down a scary path.

2:06:14Well, people have actually proposed that, saying that we need this to compete with China. I've heard this. Really? Yeah, I've heard this being proposed by politicians. It's quite terrifying because if they can turn your money off or on, if they have it, and turn your ability off or on to buy things, whether you can buy plane tickets or if you're problematic, you've done something that's crazy but that's where all this control goes to it definitely goes to what's the best way to control people completely eliminate their ability to spend money lock their money up

2:06:47Caleb Hammer:people smoke meth on the trains you know we have a racist system Caleb and all of these people have been victimized from the time they're young it's you know I've always said that if you want to make America great really what you've got to do is have less losers. So figure out what's going on, like why there's so many people that are homeless, why there's so many people that are locked into these crime-infested neighborhoods and gang-infested neighborhoods, and this cycle completes itself over and over again, decade after decade. Like, invest money in that. You want to make the world a better place?

2:07:23Fix all that. But there's no effort to do that whatsoever, and no politicians ever bring it up. It's never a discussion.

2:07:29Caleb Hammer:Yeah, and it's good to set up incentives. in the system as well. So California is moral on a lot of things with their social programs. But because a lot of their social programs and everything they've set up and safety nets, they're 49th in unemployment. Like, it's not great. The incentive isn't there for people to go out. Is that really what they are, 49th? I think they were 50th until recently. Oh, God. Yeah. No, it's not great. But an incredible tech boom and whatnot. But when the incentives are, you know, easy to manipulate, and take advantage of. What percentage of people in California are unemployed?

2:08:05I don't know. Let's find that out. It's 48 now. 48. Moving up. California is moving on up. 5.3%. But that's also 5.3 % of people that are actively looking for jobs.

2:08:18Caleb Hammer:Exactly. They drop off as soon as they stop looking for a job. Which many of the young men are not. They're not doing anything. And how are they making money? I don't know. Parents? I don't know. It's pretty pathetic, I'll be honest. Can you imagine if you're a fucking parent in your 60s and your 40-year-old son is living at home with you? No, I was pulling up some nerd stats before coming on here. And I was reading through Bureau of Labor Statistics or Gallup poll that 40 % of people aged 18 to 29 regularly receive help from family and relatives. Wow. Which is incredible. percentage of that age group that's scary yeah again the incentive is like i don't i don't know when i was 18 i'm not i'm not even that old i'm 31 but when i was 18 i was so excited to go out there and be independent and be on my own that was everything i was so excited to make my way in this world right i wouldn't want to leech i wouldn't want to leech on any system i'd want to but maybe that's why i'm successful i don't know maybe i am that definitely has a fact it's a part of it it's a factor but there's a lot of people that just do nothing and they're not looking for anything else.

2:09:31And it's, I don't think we should, we should support those who need help.

2:09:35Caleb Hammer:I'm for robust social safety systems, people that become unemployed, people that need help getting food on the table for the family. That stuff is important. But if we are enabling bad behavior, it doesn't work. And then we have a failed society because people aren't going and creating things. Luckily, we're not there yet, but I just don't want to head there. Yeah. And the recognition of human nature is not cruelty. It's just, you really can't help people all the time. They have to be able to help themselves. And one of the best motivating factors for helping yourself is desperation. Yeah. People don't like to hear that, but that's true.

2:10:09If you bail people out every time, they're never going to bail themselves out. And that's just a fact. This doesn't mean that a family that's on hard times, that's down on their luck, shouldn't get social safety nets. Of course they should. That's a big part of a community. A community should help its vulnerable people. It's a part of it. But you also have to teach people how to not be vulnerable. I think that's a great part of what you provide. How does this make any sense? What does it say? I mean it's a – California holds contrasting unemployment rankings depending on the metric. It ties for the highest unemployment rate in the nation but places second overall for the best states to work due to strong wage policies and worker rights.

2:10:49But that's also probably why a lot of people are unemployed.

2:10:51Caleb Hammer:Yeah. It means those that get a job have it great. I mean, same thing happens in places like France where they have aggressive unemployment. But if you get a job there with the vacation policies and worker rights, it's like the best thing in the world. It's incredible. Like even in Poland, which is one of the more capitalistic countries in the EU, if you get fired, they still got to let you work for them for a month or two. Oh, really? Yeah. Like you have to let the employee you fired work for you for a couple of months still. It's pretty brutal. So they have to still show up? Yeah, they still have to show up.

2:11:24So when you get fired, you have a two-month grace period? Basically. Basically. Wow. You get paid, you got to do the work. Imagine how bad that guy is going to perform when he has to get paid and he's there for two months and you have to deal with this disgruntled asshole kicking around the office.

2:11:39Caleb Hammer:Yeah. So that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about performative policies. It's nice. It sounds good. I don't morally disagree with most of anything California does. All I care about is outcomes. But politicians don't get elected based on outcomes. They get elected based on what sounds good in an election cycle, what they can promise, the performative things they promise. Outcomes are never tracked. They're not what matters. That outcome is 48th in unemployment. That's the actual outcome. You were a little anti-California when I see clips, and you didn't even know it was 48th. Like that is crazy.

2:12:13Caleb Hammer:Like we should know that. But outcomes is not what's tracked here. We don't track that. It's not in our nature. It's not in the politician's nature either. Well, it's just such a problem with people that finance and talking about money and talking about jobs is just not sexy. They just don't enjoy it. Yeah, for sure. You know, and it's part of the reason why so many people are on these bad paths is that they don't have these thoughts in their head. They don't really understand. And I think that's one of the more important things about these conversations that you're having is that people do need to hear what the consequences are for fucking up, what the consequences are, and that there's a path forward that you can actually fix your fucking situation.

2:12:50Caleb Hammer:For everyone. We are so lenient in this country with our bankruptcy protection laws. It's crazy. We are – if there is a place to escape a bad financial situation you're in, the United States is pretty damn good. Except for student loans. Except for student loans. 11 percent of current federal student loans are under default. That's the biggest of any kind of debt category in the country. It's bad. And people don't understand the consequences. And you know what's so stupid? But this is what pisses me off because I have people talk to me about it all the time. They say the student loan system is fucked and relatively it is.

2:13:23Caleb Hammer:But they get why wrong. They say this is too expensive. I can't pay it. And if I don't pay it, then they're going to garnish my wages because of winity default. Brother, Republican Donald Trump signed in the big, beautiful bill, the repayment assistance program, which is different than the previous program. But that allows as little as 1 % of your income, depending on your income situation, to qualify as the minimum monthly payment. 1%. You won't default. Do 1%. But they're complaining that it's too expensive. They're just not willing to look into the actual reality and just say, hey, get me on the repayment assistance program.

2:14:03Caleb Hammer:They just want to be victims. Say it's all bad. It's all evil. It's not perfect. But they don't understand why. They complain about the wrong thing. What's wrong is we'll let you borrow whatever you want to get whatever bullshit degree at whatever college you want to go to. That's what's wrong. Every time we raise how much you can borrow for school, schools conveniently raise how much it costs to go to school. When it was cheap to go to school, when everyone was like, back in my day, it was cheap to go to school. It didn't, you couldn't borrow money to go to school. It's set in line. Right, right.

2:14:35Caleb Hammer:Why wouldn't they charge more for administrative blow in creating like southern schools have, I think in Alabama, a freaking lazy river on their campus? It's a recruitment tool. They do that. If you can borrow more money, they will charge more money. What does it say, Jimmy? You can technically get your student loans discharged via bankruptcy. There's just a few different ways to do it. But it's not automatic and takes extra steps and proof of undue hardship. How do they define undue hardship? Well, you've got to go to a judge. So, like, maybe if you got paralyzed? Honestly, it's going to be case by case, but I've looked it up a couple times, and it's not— It's just difficult.

2:15:18Yeah, it's just impossible. It's just a trudge.

2:15:21Caleb Hammer:It's pretty rare as far as I know. Yeah, as far as I know as well. Listen, Caleb, I think what you provide is very valuable. I really do. And you've found, like, this new avenue where you're entertaining, but you're talking about finances. and giving people like really good advice, like sound advice. And if you don't follow your advice, like people are going to continue down the same fucking shitty road and their life will be ruined. And I think it's awesome that you do that. And it's awesome that you figured out a way to do it and make it entertaining and fun. Thank you. I appreciate that. So my pleasure.

2:15:53Thank you. Thanks for being here. And one more time, your app. Tell everybody. Dollar Wise. Download it on the App Store. Dollar Wise from the App Store, Android as well. Oh, yeah. and your YouTube channel is? Caleb Hammer. Just straight up and then Instagram all that stuff. All that good stuff. All right. Thank you sir. That's fine. Bye everybody.