RPF0628-Federal_Debt-The_Ticking_Bomb_that_No_One_is_Willing_to_Defuse
00:00:00.000 | Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best in premium seating at stadiums, arenas,
00:00:05.000 | and amphitheaters nationwide. With Sweet Hop's 100% ticket guarantee, no hidden fees, and
00:00:10.500 | the personal high-level service you expect with a premium purchase, you can relax knowing
00:00:15.000 | you'll receive the luxury experience you deserve. Visit SweetHop.com today to book your premium
00:00:20.340 | tickets to your favorite teams, artists, and all the must-see live events to Sweet Hop
00:00:25.000 | around LA. It's more than just a ticket.
00:00:30.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:34.000 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while
00:00:38.500 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:42.000 | My name is Joshua, and today we talk about the ticking bomb that no one is willing to
00:00:46.000 | defuse. Perhaps I should retitle that. The ticking bomb that no one is willing to talk
00:00:51.500 | about the possibility or desirability of defusing, namely the US federal debt, the growing federal
00:00:59.500 | debt, the current deficit, the amount of money we borrow each year to fund our collective
00:01:05.000 | promises, and the increasing federal debt.
00:01:10.000 | This is of course a common theme on Radical Personal Finance. I've discussed this many
00:01:13.000 | times over the last five years of the show, and today is no different. Nothing much has
00:01:19.000 | changed. However, I find it fascinating to look at what is not happening right now, which
00:01:25.500 | is why I'm reprising this topic, because I want to prove a point to you, namely that
00:01:30.500 | no one is willing to even talk about spending less money. And if that is true, then why
00:01:36.500 | should we expect the future to be anything different?
00:01:40.500 | I'm especially interested in this with discussions of the recent Green New Deal legislation,
00:01:45.500 | or proposed legislation, which has all the political power right now in the world of
00:01:53.000 | politics. It's quite the interesting conversation.
00:01:56.000 | I want to first deal with a couple of big questions. And there are two basic big questions
00:02:03.000 | that are really rebuttals or people saying, "Oh, they're objections." And I want to deal
00:02:11.500 | with two objections. Number one, objection number one, is federal borrowing, is governmental
00:02:18.000 | borrowing a problem? Frequently when I do these shows, I've received communication
00:02:24.000 | from listeners saying, "Joshua, listen, you are wrong about the fact that federal
00:02:29.000 | borrowing is a problem. It's not a problem. In fact, there's a healthy level of debt
00:02:33.500 | that is good for a government to be engaged in. And don't you know, after all, you can't
00:02:39.500 | compare, what might be tempting to compare the federal government with an individual
00:02:43.500 | household. You can't do that because the individual household doesn't have taxing
00:02:47.500 | ability. They don't have military ability to force that taxation upon their citizens,
00:02:52.500 | etc. So you just have to leave it how it is. It's not a problem."
00:02:58.500 | After a recent discussion of this, a listener of mine sent me a, I thought, particularly
00:03:03.000 | cogent question. And I share it with you as an interesting rebuttal to that objection.
00:03:09.000 | The question is this, "Since it is believed that debt has no negative consequences and
00:03:17.000 | we can print our way out of any problem, what's the logical objection to a 0% income tax?"
00:03:27.500 | I repeat, "Since it is believed that debt has no negative consequences and we can print
00:03:33.000 | our way out of any problem, what's the logical objection to a 0% income tax?"
00:03:41.000 | Here's why I thought that particular question was so remarkable in terms of its phrasing.
00:03:49.000 | There are only three sources of funds that a government has. There are only three sources
00:03:57.500 | of funds. And those three sources are, number one, taxation, create revenue for the government
00:04:04.000 | through taxation. Number two, borrowing, issuing of bonds or other debt instruments in order
00:04:12.500 | to borrow money from people who want to lend money to the government in exchange for interest.
00:04:17.500 | And number three, inflation, inflation of the money supply so that today's obligations
00:04:24.000 | can be paid back with larger, sorry, less, more dollars in the future that are worth
00:04:30.500 | less. Those are the only three sources of government funds, taxation, borrowing, and
00:04:34.500 | inflation. Those are the only three levers that a politician has to push on. Do they
00:04:40.500 | want to tax? Do they want to borrow? Or do they want to inflate? I can't think of a single
00:04:50.500 | additional source of government funds. I guess in theory we could make the argument fee for
00:04:56.500 | services, but whoever tries that. Taxation, borrowing, and inflation. So here's the question.
00:05:02.000 | "Since it is believed that debt has no negative consequences and we can print our way out
00:05:08.000 | of any problem, what's the logical objection to a 0% income tax?" Now, lest you think that
00:05:14.000 | we are fighting against a straw man here with a discussion of the idea that debt has no
00:05:19.000 | negative consequences or that we can print our way out of any problem, let me refer you
00:05:24.000 | to your newspaper where I watch day after day after day mainstream publicly acclaimed
00:05:32.000 | persons, including some with the title of economists and popular columns in large newspapers,
00:05:44.000 | say day after day, "Debt has no negative consequences and the government always has
00:05:48.000 | the ability to print their money, print their way out of any problem." So why is it that
00:05:52.000 | taxation is always attacked? Now consider that. Hopefully you find it interesting to
00:05:58.000 | consider in regard to your own situation. I'll give you some more specific examples
00:06:01.500 | in a moment. Objection number two is a little bit thornier. The second objection is this.
00:06:06.500 | "How do you know that this is the time that we'll be in crisis?" And here's where I think
00:06:14.000 | I'm very humble because I can trace back at least through the 1970s, the 1980s, the
00:06:22.000 | 1990s, the 2000s, and the 2010s, I can find article after article, prediction after prediction,
00:06:32.000 | prognostication after prognostication saying, "This is the end. The government now owes
00:06:37.500 | $1 trillion." Well, here we are $21 trillion later. Or, "Now we're running a trillion dollar
00:06:44.500 | deficit." Well, here we are with years of trillion dollar deficits coming up. So I think
00:06:49.500 | we should be very humble about our timing because just to say that there is a problem
00:06:54.000 | doesn't mean that we can know when the problem will manifest itself. In my mind, an engineering
00:07:01.000 | metaphor is appropriate. An engineer can go and inspect something like a bridge, a highway
00:07:07.000 | bridge, and the things that lead to bridges falling down are not unknown. They're not
00:07:16.500 | voodoo. It's not as though bridges all of a sudden fall for no reason. The vast majority
00:07:22.500 | of those things can be found with a proper and complete inspection. An engineer can find
00:07:30.000 | a crack in a bridge. An engineer can recognize that this particular equipment, this particular
00:07:38.500 | substance, this steel, this concrete is being stressed beyond its design parameters. Those
00:07:45.000 | things can be found. Recently, there was a devastating dam break in Brazil. What's usually
00:07:54.500 | so amazing about those massive catastrophes is the engineers knew it was going to happen.
00:08:01.500 | They knew it was going to happen. A couple of years ago, I watched another documentary
00:08:07.500 | on the space shuttle, I think it was Challenger, the one that blew up on liftoff. The engineers
00:08:15.000 | knew it was going to happen. It wasn't a shock to them. In fact, with the Challenger
00:08:23.000 | explosion, it was a massive issue of management where everyone said, "No, we've got to
00:08:30.000 | get this thing. We've got to take this thing off." In that particular situation, forgive
00:08:34.500 | me if I botch some of the details of this, but the liftoff weather was too cold. The
00:08:42.500 | O-rings that were supposed to be sealing the rocket fuel were not tested and were not certified
00:08:48.000 | to be functional as they should be at that level of cold weather on the morning of liftoff.
00:08:53.000 | There were warnings being sent to the NASA management team, "No, this is not certified."
00:08:59.000 | The engineers had said, "No, we shouldn't do this." But the NASA management team
00:09:03.000 | had to press forward and they bowled over the people who tried to stand in the way.
00:09:07.500 | They launched the shuttle and we all know the history, Challenger, everyone died. Of
00:09:12.000 | course, it was a massive loss. The same thing could be applied to bridges and space shuttles.
00:09:16.500 | If an engineer inspects a bridge and they can find a crack, they know that in time that
00:09:21.500 | bridge will fail. The problem is, what does it mean in time? And there are various things
00:09:29.500 | that could change. So the bridge, if you were trying to make an estimate, you could start
00:09:34.500 | with the severity of the crack, but then you also have to take into account other stresses.
00:09:39.000 | Is salt water weakening something in it or is it fresh water? What's the level of traffic
00:09:44.500 | going across the bridge, etc., etc., etc. I'm not an engineer. You engineers can come
00:09:48.000 | up with many other things that affect it. And so when you're trying to make predictions
00:09:53.000 | on things that have many, many factors involved, you can't necessarily always get it right.
00:09:59.000 | About the best that you could hope for is to be directionally right, to know this is
00:10:04.500 | a problem and to watch it and to see what happens.
00:10:08.000 | Now one of the books that I read last year that really helped me more than almost anything
00:10:16.000 | else to gain some historical perspective was a book called The Silk Road. And the author
00:10:22.000 | went through thousands of years of history of The Silk Road and talked about all the
00:10:26.500 | things that happened. One of the things I was so struck by was the level of economic
00:10:30.500 | analysis that was in that book. It's not an economics book. It's a history book.
00:10:34.500 | But there was a huge amount of discussion of what happened to bring down all of these
00:10:38.500 | different empires throughout history. And in my personal copy, all over the place, I've
00:10:43.000 | got dollar signs, I've got interest rates, I've got borrowing, I've got collapse.
00:10:47.500 | I see the threads throughout history in a way that's often hard to find. But the challenge
00:10:52.500 | is that's dealing with hundreds, literally in that book, thousands of years of history.
00:10:57.500 | And yet none of us have that perspective on our lifetime. We are constrained by the shortness
00:11:03.500 | of our own lives. I personally have never lived in difficult economic times. I have
00:11:14.000 | never lived in difficult economic times. The few times when the global economy has been
00:11:21.000 | in recession, I've personally always been even insulated from those things. Yes, I've
00:11:26.000 | lived through 2008. I was insulated from it. I wasn't in a financially vulnerable situation.
00:11:32.000 | I wasn't in a town that had a bad economy. I wasn't in a rural area. I wasn't in Detroit.
00:11:36.000 | Whatever. I was insulated from all of that. And so basically, my entire life, the economy
00:11:41.000 | has been fine. It's been good. So it's especially hard for me to believe those warnings.
00:11:47.000 | So I want to just move on now from these two questions. And I simply want to say, in response
00:11:51.500 | to number one, is government debt a problem? The answer has to be yes, or at least yes
00:11:56.500 | it can be. And we would look to certain factors to understand if it's a problem.
00:12:01.000 | A crack that's small and off to the side of the bridge doesn't necessarily mean that the
00:12:04.500 | whole bridge is going to collapse. A crack that's a hairline crack that's running right
00:12:08.500 | underneath the middle of the bridge is probably something we should pay attention to. I'm
00:12:12.500 | convinced, personally, that there's a hairline crack at the very least running right through
00:12:18.000 | the middle of the bridge. And I'm going to use some data in today's show to show that
00:12:21.000 | to you. Number two, with regard to timing, I want to be always very humble, very humble
00:12:26.500 | with any kind of timing. I will say this. I do not expect there to be any kind of imminent
00:12:32.000 | financial crisis that's caused by government borrowing within the coming years, perhaps
00:12:38.000 | decade. I don't expect that. I don't expect that. I want to be prepared in case it happens,
00:12:44.000 | but I don't expect that. Now, on the flip side, if I live a normal, long-lived lifespan,
00:12:50.500 | as I expect and hope to live, I will be shocked if it doesn't happen during my lifetime. But
00:12:57.000 | there's a whole lot of room in there. Now, we'll get to how to solve it. In fact, I've
00:13:03.000 | just finished a course on how to solve it with a minimal amount of cost because of this
00:13:07.500 | uncertainty. But today, I just want to talk about some of the problems. As I continue,
00:13:14.000 | thus far, I have tried to answer two common questions or objections. Now, the bulk of
00:13:19.500 | this show is going to be divided into two basic theses. Number one, thesis number one,
00:13:25.000 | no one in today's world is even willing to discuss the current problem. And that doesn't
00:13:30.500 | give me confidence for the future. If today we're not even willing to discuss it publicly,
00:13:36.500 | I don't have any confidence that things are going to change in the future. And then number
00:13:40.500 | two, I think the problems are only getting worse. We'll get to that. Let's start about
00:13:45.500 | discussion. For today, I'm going to read you a few excerpts from an interesting article
00:13:50.500 | that was published October 17, 2018. This particular article and its accompanying proposal
00:13:58.000 | or essay was from September 2018, almost six months ago. The title of the article is from
00:14:05.000 | Reason Magazine, Reason.com. "We've never had deficits like this during peace and prosperity
00:14:12.000 | before." Subheadline, "Brian Riedel has a plan to stabilize the national debt at 95%
00:14:18.000 | of GDP. He says trying it might be political suicide, but the alternative is much worse."
00:14:24.000 | Now, I repeat, this is from six months ago as I record this show. I want to read to you
00:14:30.500 | a few important paragraphs. "On Monday, the Treasury Department reported that fiscal year
00:14:36.000 | 2018's budget deficit was the largest since 2012, and it is increasingly likely that America
00:14:43.500 | will see the return of a $1 trillion deficit before the end of 2019. We've been here before,
00:14:49.000 | but this time it is different. When America ran a $1 trillion deficit in the years just
00:14:53.500 | after the 2008 economic collapse, the recovering economy quickly put a dent in the deficit.
00:14:59.000 | And even though it's been more than 20 years since the last time the federal government
00:15:02.000 | ran a surplus, a sense of an impending disaster passed as annual deficits reached merely into
00:15:08.500 | the hundreds of billions of dollars. Now, after a decade of economic growth, the United
00:15:13.000 | States stands again at the edge of a $1 trillion deficit, not the result of a sudden economic
00:15:19.500 | downturn, but caused by the inexorable growth of entitlement programs, and exacerbated by
00:15:25.000 | the current Congress' decision to hike spending while also cutting taxes. Unlike a decade
00:15:31.000 | ago, this looming debt crisis won't be solved by a few years of economic growth. Even under
00:15:38.000 | the rosiest of scenarios, the federal deficit is on course to hit $2 trillion by the middle
00:15:44.500 | of the next decade. The national debt totals more than $20 trillion and continues to grow.
00:15:51.000 | On its current trajectory, it will surpass the size of the nation's economy, a level
00:15:57.000 | that has been seen only at the height of World War II before 2030. Social Security will go
00:16:05.000 | bankrupt a few years after that, and mandatory benefit cuts will be enacted. As America passes
00:16:12.000 | those various harbingers of fiscal doom, it's likely that the rest of the world will take
00:16:17.000 | notice and stop lending money to the United States or demand higher interest payments
00:16:22.500 | for future borrowing, compounding the problem. "Eventually you'll be left with two choices,"
00:16:29.000 | Brian Riedel, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, tells Reason. "Either significantly
00:16:34.000 | raise taxes on the middle class or significantly cut benefits to current seniors. If we do
00:16:40.000 | neither, you will have a major financial crisis."
00:16:44.000 | It goes on and we talk about a report that Brian Riedel published. I want to skip to
00:16:51.000 | a couple of important questions where he talks about basically his idea of talking about
00:17:00.500 | how he approaches his report, which is to say that if five years from now, that there
00:17:06.500 | are certain things that can be done now so that five years from now we can start to have
00:17:11.500 | a conversation about changing spending, changing taxes, changing something so that there will
00:17:18.500 | be some sanity restored to our fiscal situation.
00:17:22.500 | So the Reason reporter starts with the questions. "I want to start with the numbers in this
00:17:26.500 | report because there are some big, really scary numbers here, but also numbers that
00:17:29.500 | I think are very difficult for people to conceptualize. Within the next year, we will be running a
00:17:34.000 | trillion-dollar annual deficit. That's a huge number. How should we think about that?"
00:17:38.000 | Riedel. "We're about to be hit with a fiscal tsunami that we're not prepared for.
00:17:43.000 | The national debt right now is $20 trillion, and we're going to be hit with an $84 trillion
00:17:49.500 | shortfall over the next 30 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And that's
00:17:55.000 | the rosy scenario. One way to think about it is, in order to pay for all of this, your
00:18:01.000 | federal tax burden would have to double. As a percentage of the economy, federal spending
00:18:06.500 | is going to grow towards European levels." Reason writes this. "You write a lot in this
00:18:13.000 | study about 2023, five years from now, as being a significant threshold for addressing
00:18:17.500 | these problems. Why is that?" Riedel. "The proposals that I recommend to avert this debt
00:18:22.500 | crisis start five years from now, and it's not because we can afford to wait five years.
00:18:27.000 | As a matter of fact, waiting five years will make things a lot worse than if we do it now.
00:18:31.000 | It's an acknowledgment of the politics at play. Politically, we are not close to being
00:18:36.000 | ready for the kind of reforms we are going to need. Not only is the country in denial,
00:18:41.500 | the House is in denial, the Senate is in denial, the White House is in denial. I think we may
00:18:46.500 | need five years of trillion-dollar deficits just to lay the groundwork." Reason. "Baby
00:18:53.000 | Boomers retiring, as you said, is driving this huge expansion in the cost of two old-age
00:18:57.500 | entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare. How much of this entire deficit
00:19:02.500 | problem is the entitlement spending? Can't we cut in other areas to offset that?" Riedel.
00:19:07.000 | "Over the next 30 years, Social Security and Medicare will run a $100 trillion deficit.
00:19:13.000 | Social Security will run an $18 trillion deficit, Medicare $41 trillion, and the interest on
00:19:19.500 | that debt will be $41 trillion more. The rest of the budget is going to run a $16 trillion
00:19:25.500 | surplus over the next 30 years. In other words, our long-term deficit is 100% the result of
00:19:34.000 | Social Security and Medicare." Revenues, even if the tax cuts are extended, are going
00:19:41.000 | to continue rising above historical averages. Every other part of the budget is shrinking
00:19:46.000 | as a percentage of GDP. This is 100% Social Security and Medicare, and that is the result
00:19:52.500 | of two factors, 74 million retiring baby boomers and growing health care costs. In Medicare,
00:19:59.500 | the average couple retiring today will have paid $140,000 into the system over their lifetime
00:20:06.000 | and will get $420,000 back. When you throw 74 million baby boomers into a system that
00:20:12.500 | pays you back triple what you put in, it's going to blow up. The reason I fixate so much
00:20:19.000 | on Social Security and Medicare is because the hole is too big to be closed in any other
00:20:24.000 | part of the budget. Reason goes on. When it comes to tackling this problem, it's helpful
00:20:29.000 | to think about these costs as a percentage of GDP. Because $1 trillion is hard enough
00:20:33.500 | to understand, and $84 trillion over 30 years is a figure I can't really wrap my head around
00:20:38.000 | either. But in this paper, you're presenting a series of ideas for addressing the debt
00:20:41.500 | crisis, and they're all scored by how much revenue they would raise as a percentage of
00:20:45.000 | GDP. It's a little bit like a choose your own adventure here. But before we get into
00:20:49.500 | those proposals, explain why it's helpful to think in terms of percentage of GDP. Our
00:20:54.500 | debt to GDP ratio, for example, is almost higher than it's ever been.
00:20:58.500 | Riedel. Historically, the debt has been around 40% of GDP since the end of World War II,
00:21:04.000 | on average. In fact, when the Great Recession started in 2007, the debt was almost exactly
00:21:08.500 | 40% of GDP. If we just keep the current policies, it's going to be approximately 200% of GDP
00:21:16.500 | in 30 years. The danger is, as the debt gets bigger, interest rates go up. That means you
00:21:22.500 | have to borrow more money to pay the interest, but that just makes the debt bigger. So you
00:21:27.000 | have a vicious cycle of debt and interest rates. My plan is to stabilize the debt at
00:21:33.000 | 95% of GDP permanently. Now, let me interrupt here and just explain. This proposal and the
00:21:40.500 | numbers I'm about to go through with these ideas, quote unquote, don't pay off the
00:21:46.000 | debt. All it does is freeze it at 95% of GDP, which is more than double of what it was in
00:21:58.500 | 2007. So listen to how impossible these numbers are that I'm about to go to and recognize.
00:22:07.000 | This is not about paying off the debt. This is not about reducing the debt. This is about
00:22:13.000 | stabilizing the debt at 95% of GDP. Reason. Let's go through some of your ideas. On the
00:22:19.500 | left, we often hear the idea that we can raise taxes on the rich to fund entitlements. Riedel.
00:22:25.000 | The tax the rich argument is pretty common. It's not even close to sufficient. If you
00:22:29.500 | just look at an extreme example, let's have the government sees all income earned over
00:22:34.000 | $500,000 per year, you would raise 5% of GDP. Even if you seized every dollar over $500,000
00:22:43.000 | per year, you still wouldn't close the gap. Another example, the two top tax brackets
00:22:49.500 | right now are 35% and 37%. If you double them to 70 and 74%, you get maybe 1.5% of GDP out
00:22:59.000 | of the 6% you need. And that's with a doubling of federal tax rates on the rich. It is mathematically
00:23:07.000 | impossible to close this gap by tax hikes for the rich. Reason. That gets you maybe
00:23:13.500 | a quarter of the way there. Riedel. Yeah, you're a quarter of the way there, but that's
00:23:17.000 | before you take into account any economic feedback effects for tax evasion or tax avoidance.
00:23:23.000 | Reason. Our friends on the left also like to talk about a value-added tax, which is
00:23:27.500 | basically a more robust sales tax. This is something that's quite common in Europe,
00:23:31.500 | and on some level, this makes sense to me. If we're going to have a welfare state that's
00:23:35.000 | as expensive as the ones across Europe, we'd probably have to tax like Europe to pay for
00:23:39.000 | it. Riedel. Realistically, if you're going to close this gap with tax, you're going to
00:23:44.500 | have to do what Europe does and tax the middle class. The United States would need a 34%
00:23:51.000 | national sales tax just to pay for the current spending that has been promised in the pipeline
00:23:58.000 | and stabilize the debt at 95%. Alternatively, we could raise the payroll tax. That would
00:24:04.500 | have to be raised to 33% to pay for all the spending. And importantly, you're not adding
00:24:11.500 | any new benefits. You're not adding any of Bernie Sanders' wish list here. This is just
00:24:16.000 | to pay for the benefits of senior citizens. Do middle class families want to pay a 34%
00:24:22.000 | value-added tax for benefits they may never see? For benefits that flow exclusively to
00:24:26.500 | senior citizens? And let's remember that senior citizens today are the wealthiest age group
00:24:31.000 | in the wealthiest country in world history. We're going to raise $80 trillion over 30
00:24:36.000 | years and give it to the wealthiest group in the country rather than using it on any
00:24:40.000 | of our other national interests? Reason. So we can't tax the rich to solve this. Let's
00:24:47.000 | talk about some of the other options. On the right, we usually hear about closing tax loopholes
00:24:51.000 | or doing away with tax credit programs, the earned income tax credit, the mortgage deduction.
00:24:57.000 | Those ideas bring in more revenue, but how does that measure up against what we need?
00:25:02.000 | Riedel, there is a policy case for closing tax loopholes, but in terms of the 6% of GDP
00:25:07.000 | that has to be raised, they are not even a rounding error. Those add up to approximately
00:25:12.000 | 0.1% of GDP. It's okay to advocate those policies, but let's not kid ourselves. It
00:25:18.000 | is pennies compared to what is needed. Reason. What about economic growth? The tax cuts were
00:25:23.000 | going to pay for themselves, we were told, because of the economic growth they would
00:25:26.000 | unleash. That didn't happen, of course, but the economy is doing well right now. Can
00:25:30.000 | we roll the dice and hope this just continues forever? Riedel. If we had a historic surge
00:25:35.000 | of economic growth, in theory, that could close 40% of the long-term gap, until you
00:25:41.000 | realize that social security benefits are tied to the economy. The faster the economy
00:25:46.000 | grows, the more incomes rise, and therefore the higher social security benefits you automatically
00:25:52.000 | qualify for. Even if the growth comes, a lot of the money goes right back out in automatically
00:25:58.000 | higher benefits. Reason. That might be worse than the feedback loop with the debt. Even
00:26:04.000 | if the times are good, we can't get out of this hole. Riedel. If there were an easy
00:26:09.000 | solution, we would have solved this decades ago. Reason. We've danced around this for
00:26:14.000 | a while, but you really can't get away from it. The politics of what you are proposing,
00:26:18.000 | of what you are saying is necessary, just seem completely impossible to surmount. You're
00:26:24.000 | pretty up front about the fact that this is going to take a combination of difficult choices
00:26:28.000 | from both parties, but where is the appetite for that going to come from? Riedel. There
00:26:33.000 | is no appetite for that in Washington. None. Republicans are cutting taxes, and Democrats
00:26:39.000 | are proposing $42 trillion in new spending over 10 years. No one is taking this even
00:26:44.000 | remotely seriously. The challenge right now is that when you talk to people about how
00:26:48.000 | to solve the long-term debt crisis, everyone has their pet theory that is simplistic, easy
00:26:55.000 | to understand, and completely wrong. As long as everyone has their pet theory on how to
00:27:00.000 | fix this, no one is going to be willing to endure the real pain it is going to take.
00:27:06.000 | Reason. Best case scenario probably is that a group of Democrats and a group of Republicans
00:27:12.000 | get together after the midterms, look at that looming $1 trillion deficit, read your report,
00:27:17.000 | and decide to pursue some of the options you've outlined here. Even if that were to happen,
00:27:22.000 | whoever proposes these huge tax increases or new taxes, I imagine, would be immediately
00:27:27.000 | run out of office. Even if there were a centrist coalition in Washington that could make this
00:27:32.000 | happen, would voters allow it? Listen carefully to Riedel's response.
00:27:37.000 | "My plan, as written, is political suicide. And this is probably the most politically
00:27:45.000 | plausible plan that could probably solve the long-term problem, and even this would be
00:27:52.000 | political suicide. It raises taxes across the board, it restrains Social Security and
00:27:59.000 | Medicare, it allows defense to continue falling as a percentage of GDP. The argument that
00:28:04.000 | I am making is that the status quo or any alternative solution is even worse."
00:28:14.000 | That, my friends, is not a bright picture. Remember again that Riedel's plan here is
00:28:21.000 | to stabilize federal borrowing and the federal deficit at 95% of GDP. And as he writes there,
00:28:31.000 | it is political suicide. Now that particular interview was from six months ago. And I ask
00:28:38.000 | you this question, what has happened since the publication of that interview in October
00:28:43.000 | of 2018 to March of 2019? Have we suddenly had a massive cadre of fiscally conservative
00:28:56.000 | Republicans and Democrats start to come together and say, "Let's tackle this problem
00:29:00.000 | seriously. Let's start to talk about some solutions that we could engage in and think
00:29:05.000 | about how we could solve our problem." Has that happened in the last six months?
00:29:09.000 | Can you point me to a single person who is vigorously, repeatedly advocating for fiscal
00:29:21.000 | restraint, who's dealing with reality? I can't point to anybody. Rather what we see
00:29:32.000 | is a massive press with a lot of energy going in exactly the other way. Which brings me
00:29:39.000 | to the Green New Deal. Now I was fascinated, I have been fascinated over the last weeks
00:29:45.000 | to watch the conversation as it relates to the so-called Green New Deal. And I was
00:29:51.000 | fortunate enough to bumble into this story in real time. I try to minimally pay attention
00:30:01.000 | to politics. I have a disease, an addiction that I can't quite overcome. So unfortunately
00:30:09.000 | I pay more attention than I probably should. But I try to at least keep it modest and moderate
00:30:15.000 | in terms of the amount of time that I spend on it. But a couple of weeks ago I happened
00:30:19.000 | to bumble into the Green New Deal on the very day that it was starting to be published.
00:30:23.000 | Where the various representatives started to publish all of their documents, etc. It's
00:30:28.000 | fascinating for me to watch it develop in real time. Now the most important thing to
00:30:35.000 | me has been to watch the way that public perception of documents is handled based upon putting
00:30:43.000 | things out and not putting things out. My personal summary of what happened was the
00:30:48.000 | proponents of the Green New Deal, sponsor in the House, in the US House, sponsor in
00:30:53.000 | the Senate, started to put all the documents out. And then they started to receive massive
00:30:57.000 | pushback on the silliness of their proposals. And then they started to take things back.
00:31:05.000 | And then they tried to say, "Well listen, a bunch of stuff got out early that wasn't
00:31:08.000 | supposed to get out." That's still the case of what is said. Now I took the original documents
00:31:14.000 | as basically the opening gambit in negotiation. You go to a local bazaar and they say you're
00:31:20.000 | going to buy something and you ask how much it is. It's $100. And you counter by saying
00:31:24.000 | I'll give you $5. And you both know you're making stupid offers and you're going to meet
00:31:29.000 | somewhere around the middle but that's how the game is played. So that's how I took it.
00:31:33.000 | But what's happened is I've watched the proponents of the Green New Deal dramatically even pull
00:31:37.000 | back and not even be willing to say that rather to say, "Oh, well some stuff leaked out there."
00:31:42.000 | I don't buy that for an instant because I was watching it in real time. I carefully
00:31:45.000 | sourced my data. I was having various documents and things on mainstream websites. And now
00:31:54.000 | the idea is that the Frequently Asked Questions document, the Green New Deal fact, which is
00:31:59.000 | not the same as legislation that was submitted, was released accidentally, which is nonsense
00:32:04.000 | because somehow it was sent publicly to all of the mainstream news websites and published
00:32:11.000 | on a US House of Representatives official website as a valuable document.
00:32:17.000 | But what I found in this particular document to be so fascinating, and if you're not familiar
00:32:21.000 | with it, it calls for dramatic change. The idea that we have to make a massive investment
00:32:27.000 | in our society by basically a laundry list of almost every single thing that the left
00:32:36.000 | wing kind of dream list of everything that would be happening. So here's from the reading
00:32:40.000 | directly from the Frequently Asked Questions that was published. It says this, "This is
00:32:45.000 | a massive transformation of our society with clear goals and a timeline. The Green New
00:32:50.000 | Deal resolution, a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale
00:32:56.000 | not seen since World War II to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions and create economic
00:33:02.000 | prosperity for all." It will move America to 100% clean and renewable energy, create
00:33:09.000 | millions of family-supporting wage union jobs, ensure a just transition for all communities
00:33:17.000 | and workers to ensure economic security for peoples and communities that have historically
00:33:22.000 | relied on fossil fuel industries, ensure justice and equity for frontline communities by prioritizing
00:33:28.000 | investment, training, climate, and community resiliency, economic and environmental benefits
00:33:32.000 | in these communities, build on FDR's second bill of rights by guaranteeing a job with
00:33:38.000 | family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations and retirement security,
00:33:43.000 | high-quality education including higher education and trade schools, clean air and water and
00:33:48.000 | access to nature, healthy food, high-quality healthcare, safe, affordable, adequate housing,
00:33:53.000 | economic environment free of monopolies, economic security for all who are unable or unwilling
00:33:59.000 | to work." Now I'm reading directly from the Green New Deal Frequently Asked Questions
00:34:04.000 | which was, according to the top of it, was scheduled to be launched on Thursday, February
00:34:09.000 | 7th at 8.30am. And it was a little bit later on February 7th when I pulled that document
00:34:14.000 | from the official website after reading about it on an NPR story. Now today that document
00:34:19.000 | is disputed. It's said that that document is not, that's not the official legislation
00:34:23.000 | etc. You can dig into that. It's all lies. Now let's move on to here's what's most important
00:34:28.000 | for you to hear from this particular document. Listen carefully to this Frequently Asked
00:34:35.000 | Question quoting from the document. "How will you pay for it? "The same way we paid
00:34:43.000 | for the New Deal, the 2008 Bank Bailout and extended quantitative easing programs. The
00:34:53.000 | same way we paid for World War II and all our current wars. The Federal Reserve can
00:35:01.000 | extend credit to power these projects and investments and new public banks can be created
00:35:08.000 | to extend credit. There is also space for the government to take an equity stake in
00:35:14.000 | projects to get a return on investment. At the end of the day, this is an investment
00:35:21.000 | in our economy that should grow our wealth as a nation. So the question isn't how we
00:35:27.000 | will pay for it, but what will we do with our new shared prosperity." Now think back
00:35:36.000 | to the three methods that the government has of creating money or revenue. Taxation, borrowing
00:35:47.000 | or inflation. Think back to our discussion on taxation and notice what is missing from
00:35:56.000 | here, from this Frequently Asked Question. Now I continue reading with the very next
00:36:00.000 | Frequently Asked Question. "Why do we need a sweeping Green New Deal investment program?
00:36:06.000 | Why can't we just rely on regulations and taxes and the private sector to invest a loan
00:36:13.000 | such as a carbon tax or a ban on fossil fuels?" Continuing verbatim quoting, "The level
00:36:20.000 | of investment required is massive. Even if every billionaire and company came together
00:36:29.000 | and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the
00:36:35.000 | aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient. The speed of
00:36:41.000 | investment required will be massive. Even if all the billionaires and companies could
00:36:46.000 | make the investments required, they would not be able to pull together a coordinated
00:36:51.000 | response in the narrow window of time required to jumpstart major new projects and major
00:36:58.000 | new economic sectors. Also, private companies are wary of making massive investments in
00:37:04.000 | unproven research and technologies. The government, however, has the time horizon to be able to
00:37:09.000 | patiently make investments in new tech and R&D without necessarily having a commercial
00:37:14.000 | outcome or application in mind at the time the investment is made." Skipping down a little bit.
00:37:19.000 | Dropping down a few paragraphs. "Once again, we're not saying there isn't a role for private
00:37:26.000 | sector investments. We're just saying the level of investment required will need every
00:37:30.000 | actor to pitch in and that the government is best placed to be the prime driver."
00:37:37.000 | Back to the sentence I said before. "Even if all the billionaires and companies could
00:37:42.000 | make the investments required," or different sentence, "Even if every billionaire and
00:37:48.000 | company came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into
00:37:53.000 | this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient."
00:37:58.000 | Now, the document is very poorly written. And when I first read it, I laughed. I thought
00:38:05.000 | it was a joke. And then I started looking at it and I said, "Wait a second." I said,
00:38:11.000 | "This has got to be a joke. I'm being trolled here. I'm being fooled. This is a joke."
00:38:16.000 | "No, mainstream news site, mainstream news site." So I checked all my documents.
00:38:20.000 | Now, here are the public statements about this particular document referencing some
00:38:26.000 | of these mainstream news articles, etc. You have Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a current
00:38:33.000 | declared presidential candidate. "A Green New Deal is ambitious, it's bold, and I'm
00:38:38.000 | co-sponsoring this resolution with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey
00:38:44.000 | because it's exactly the kind of action it will take to conquer the biggest threat of
00:38:47.000 | our lifetime." Senator Cory Booker signs on, officially endorses it. Senator Kamala Harris,
00:38:54.000 | "I'm proud to co-sponsor this document with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
00:38:59.000 | and Senator Ed Markey. It's a Green New Deal. We must aggressively tackle climate
00:39:03.000 | change which poses an existential threat to our nation." Senator Elizabeth Warren,
00:39:08.000 | declared candidate for leading, all these, by the way, these four leading candidates
00:39:12.000 | for the Democratic presidential nomination. "If we want to live in a world with clean
00:39:16.000 | air and water, we have to take real action to combat climate change now. I'm proud to
00:39:21.000 | join Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey on a Green New Deal
00:39:26.000 | resolution to fight for our planet and our kids' futures." So, in the United States
00:39:33.000 | of America, we have one political party that is content with running trillion dollar deficits
00:39:41.000 | in a time of economic prosperity where nobody wishes to show any fiscal constraint,
00:39:48.000 | at least that I can find, and we have another political party that wishes to completely
00:39:55.000 | transform the U.S. American economy. Now, I appreciate realism in political leaders.
00:40:02.000 | I really do. I appreciate that there are political leaders in the Democratic Party
00:40:07.000 | that are somewhat dismissive of this particular type of approach. But when you have
00:40:14.000 | major, when you have all of the energy is focused on this particular set of legislation,
00:40:20.000 | these particular ideas, it's very worrying in terms of our ability in the next five years
00:40:27.000 | to get to the point of freezing the U.S. debt at 95% of GDP. I count that as impossible.
00:40:35.000 | Now, here's what I would ask of you. Don't believe or disbelieve me. Don't necessarily
00:40:43.000 | argue with me on these particular points. Rather, watch what's happening over the next
00:40:49.000 | six months, over the next year, over the next couple of years. Recognize the absolute impossibility
00:40:58.000 | as that as Riedel talked about in the article reference, the political suicide of anybody
00:41:05.000 | getting involved just simply to try to freeze things in a bad situation. Recognize that,
00:41:12.000 | as Riedel wrote, I repeat, my plan as written is political suicide. And this is probably
00:41:19.000 | the most politically plausible plan that could probably solve, could probably solve,
00:41:24.000 | the long term problem. And even this would be political suicide. It raises taxes across
00:41:30.000 | the board. It restrains Social Security and Medicare. It allows defense to continue falling
00:41:35.000 | as a percentage of GDP. And yet it's political suicide. I want to read back to the Reason
00:41:42.000 | article. I want to read the next question from, the next two questions from the interview.
00:41:50.000 | Reason asks this, "By the mid 2030s, there are going to be benefit cuts in Social Security.
00:41:56.000 | That's not 2023, but maybe there's some sort of a political trigger there that can push
00:42:01.000 | things?" Riedel, "In 2034, the Social Security Trust Fund goes bankrupt and will require
00:42:07.000 | an automatic 20% benefit cut. That's written in the law. The danger is, if we wait until
00:42:13.000 | 2034 to fix Social Security, we're dead. By that point, we will have already had a
00:42:18.000 | substantial debt crisis." Reason, "How do you expect that debt crisis to unfold?"
00:42:25.000 | Riedel, "The danger is that if the debt keeps growing, at a certain point investors
00:42:29.000 | will stop lending us money at reasonable interest rates. They will be reasonably concerned
00:42:34.000 | that the debt is growing beyond our ability to finance it. They will demand higher interest
00:42:39.000 | rates, and every one percentage point increase in interest rates will add $13 trillion in
00:42:47.000 | interest costs over 30 years. As interest rates go up, we will have to borrow even more
00:42:54.000 | to make the interest payments, which causes the debt to go even higher. At a certain point,
00:43:00.000 | the investors will demand that we get our fiscal house in order. It will likely start
00:43:05.000 | with low-hanging fruit, tax hikes for the rich for example, but those won't be enough.
00:43:11.000 | Eventually, you'll be left with two choices, either significantly raise taxes on the middle
00:43:16.000 | class, or significantly cut benefits to current seniors. If we do neither, you will have a
00:43:22.000 | major financial crisis. What that looks like remains to be seen, because we've never seen
00:43:28.000 | an international power with such a huge economy go through what we are about to go through."
00:43:37.000 | In the years that I have been paying attention to finances, years as a financial advisor,
00:43:42.000 | and now years doing radical personal finance, I have never wanted, ever wanted to be an
00:43:48.000 | extremist on issues like this. I have resisted it, I have rejected it, I have never wanted
00:43:55.000 | to be lumped in with all of the other extremists. I've never wanted it. But at some point
00:44:01.000 | in time, you've got to look at the data. And I would invite you to look at the data
00:44:05.000 | for yourself, and to watch what happens in the coming six months, or year, etc.
00:44:13.000 | For me, I have decided that this entire realm of risk has to be moved from possible risks
00:44:22.000 | to probable risks. Now, I don't know the extent of the risk, I don't know the extent
00:44:27.000 | of the crack in the bridge, but when you look at this stuff and you say, an open, careful
00:44:35.000 | analysis looks at it and says, "The numbers, everything is wrong in the numbers," and
00:44:41.000 | a finger in the wind, to dope the wind to find out what's happening in the political
00:44:45.000 | environment says, "All of the pressure in the political environment is wrong."
00:44:51.000 | I sure hope I'm wrong, but as far as I'm concerned, this is a ticking bomb that will
00:44:57.000 | likely go off during my lifetime. Now, that's a big scant van of time, and I don't know.
00:45:02.000 | But I do know this, there are solutions. There are ways to protect yourself against
00:45:07.000 | this, and I consider the risks efficient to not sit around and waste time, and not sit
00:45:13.000 | around and not take action. I'm responsible for protecting those in my household, and
00:45:19.000 | for caring for them. And let me tell you this, I have studied this subject, and the reality
00:45:25.000 | of life in this kind of world is not pretty. Just last week, I was talking with a family
00:45:34.000 | who was on vacation from Argentina, and there are a couple of current, basically ongoing
00:45:42.000 | collapses that I have watched. It's all well and good for me to read about the Weimar Republic,
00:45:47.000 | but that was decades and decades and decades ago, and it's just not current. I can't
00:45:52.000 | look at that on the internet, I have to read classical books and historically written books.
00:45:57.000 | But the ones that I have watched have been Argentina and Venezuela, what is currently
00:46:02.000 | happening in both of those countries. And I was recently speaking with an Argentinian
00:46:05.000 | family, and we were just talking about what's actually happening, and what's actually
00:46:09.000 | happened in Argentina. And I won't share too much, but just put it this way, it is
00:46:16.000 | awful. Living in Argentina right now is terrible. It is absolutely terrible, and you fear for
00:46:23.000 | your life on a daily basis. Living in Venezuela right now is terrible. You fear for your life
00:46:29.000 | on a daily basis. I've had a couple of friends from Venezuela who sought refuge in
00:46:35.000 | the United States, and you hear some of the stories from their family and whatnot who
00:46:38.000 | is still stuck in Venezuela. It is absolutely terrible. And as difficult as it is for me
00:46:44.000 | to believe that the United States of America can go down the same path as a Venezuela
00:46:50.000 | or an Argentina, the cold, logical side of me says, "These are not the Weimar Republic."
00:46:56.000 | Most especially and importantly, Argentina. Argentina is an incredible country, massive
00:47:01.000 | country with huge wealth, and yet look at where things have been for the last almost
00:47:06.000 | two decades now in Argentina. So, in coming days, I will share with you more on solutions
00:47:12.000 | for it. But here's what you need to be prepared for. You need to be prepared for
00:47:16.000 | higher taxes. What is your plan to escape those higher taxes, lest they ruin your wealth?
00:47:22.000 | Number two, you need to be prepared for loss of programs, loss of benefits. If you are
00:47:28.000 | counting on Medicare, if you are counting on Social Security, if you're counting on
00:47:32.000 | those things to prop you up, read the math. I would say read the tea leaves, but tea leaves
00:47:37.000 | are not nearly as reliable as math. Read the math. You can't count on it. It absolutely
00:47:44.000 | will change. The benefits will change. They have to change. And in fact, one of the things
00:47:49.000 | that I've been fascinated by is I watch reproduction rates. And in the United States
00:47:54.000 | as well as in much of the world, birth rates have fallen so much that in many ways the
00:47:59.000 | disaster could be even worse. And when you compound that with problems of immigration,
00:48:06.000 | anyway, read the math. So don't count on government programs. You have to have a plan
00:48:11.000 | to provide for yourself. And you have to have a plan to get out and provide for yourself
00:48:16.000 | and your family should we face a worst case scenario of currency mass inflation and/or
00:48:22.000 | hyperinflation because that is what destroys a society.
00:48:27.000 | I have finished the outline for the course, the next course that I am launching. The outline,
00:48:33.000 | this particular course is called How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Collapse,
00:48:41.000 | a Rational Modern Approach. Again, it's How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic
00:48:49.000 | Collapse, a Rational Modern Approach. In just a minute, I'll give you a coupon code if you'd
00:48:56.000 | like to get in early and buy the course and save some money. I'll tell you how to do that
00:49:02.000 | in just a moment. But let me tell you why I wrote this course. I consider at this point
00:49:07.000 | in time, it's my analysis, that the problems that we discussed won't be solved by the political
00:49:16.000 | regime that we currently have. I don't see how it's possible that they could be solved.
00:49:21.000 | The people proposing solutions, the most optimistic of them don't actually solve much and I don't
00:49:27.000 | see any discussion of actual solutions. So I don't see how it's possible that they be
00:49:33.000 | solved. But the problem is, when do the problems start to reveal themselves? And that's a maddening
00:49:41.000 | problem. If I thought that tomorrow, my neighbors were going to start shooting me for food,
00:49:52.000 | then I would probably do things a little bit differently. I've interviewed a lot of people
00:49:57.000 | on this show, many of whom come from that perspective. One of the questions, Jim Rawls,
00:50:03.000 | James Wesley Rawls has been on the show a couple of times. One of the things I've always
00:50:06.000 | posed to him is, "Jim, how do you have such certainty about the certainty of collapse?"
00:50:13.000 | He's very strong on his level of certainty scale. I'm generally uncomfortable with those
00:50:19.000 | kinds of levels of certainty. But if I thought that, then maybe I would be willing to move
00:50:24.000 | to the boonies and live in a cabin with my family. But at this point in time, it's hard.
00:50:30.000 | It's very hard for me in the life that I want to live to conceive that it's right for me
00:50:36.000 | to move to the mountains and live in a cabin or to build a nuclear bunker under the world.
00:50:42.000 | I respect those who do, but it's hard for me to fit that into my optimism for life and
00:50:47.000 | to figure out how does this actually integrate. And so the problem that you face is, number
00:50:52.000 | one, what do you do? And number two, how much money do you spend? Do you take all your money
00:50:56.000 | out of the stock market and say, "Well, I'm going to go and buy food and guns so I can
00:51:00.000 | live during the coming economic collapse?" Some people do. I have a hard time giving
00:51:06.000 | that advice to people because I consider the timing to be so uncertain on these kinds of
00:51:11.000 | affairs that it's just very uncertain. So in many ways, I'd rather have an insurance
00:51:17.000 | policy if it were possible to have an insurance policy. And I'd rather have a plan that could
00:51:23.000 | develop in time rather than my freaking out and moving to the top of a mountain or buying
00:51:29.000 | a missile silo in Montana and moving into it, a decommissioned missile silo. I think
00:51:34.000 | those things are cool, but that's not right for me right now. And so what I've outlined
00:51:39.000 | in this particular course is my best solution, which is basically run away from problems.
00:51:45.000 | But here's how you run away from the problems in a thoughtful, intelligent way. And that's
00:51:50.000 | what it is, how to survive and thrive during the coming economic collapse. So what I am
00:51:55.000 | doing right now is putting in place all of the infrastructure necessary in order for
00:52:01.000 | my family and me to survive and thrive during the coming economic collapse. And to me, this
00:52:08.000 | seems to be the most rational perspective to take, is to say, "I think that there can
00:52:13.000 | be problems. I acknowledge that the problems are probable. I don't know the timing of
00:52:18.000 | those problems. So let me have a plan that I can adjust and adapt over time that allows
00:52:24.000 | me to live well if everything goes wrong or live well if nothing goes wrong." Because
00:52:30.000 | when we put things into historical perspective and you recognize that since the 1970s and
00:52:34.000 | since the 1980s and since the 1990s and since before that, people have been preaching gloom
00:52:39.000 | and doom from the mountaintop and yet it hasn't happened, I think it should give us today
00:52:44.000 | a little bit more caution to preach gloom and doom and say, "By the end of this year,
00:52:48.000 | it's all going to fall apart." I don't think that's the case. So I would invite you at
00:52:53.000 | this point in time, if this is interesting to you, to come by radicalpersonalfinance.com,
00:52:56.000 | click on "Store" and follow the link for my newest course called "How to Survive
00:53:01.000 | and Thrive During the Coming Economic Collapse." I am launching that course on – well, you
00:53:07.000 | can purchase it now at a presale and I am launching it on March 15. Just to give you
00:53:12.000 | a little bit of insight, my working outline which you will download, my just simple outline
00:53:17.000 | for that course is 82 pages in Microsoft Word right now, 82 pages. So this course is packed
00:53:24.000 | with basically everything that I know of and can think of to share with you, to help you
00:53:29.000 | put in place a robust and vigorous plan. And I think you'll find it to be a tremendous,
00:53:35.000 | tremendous value. I've worked very hard on it. I have recorded – I finished recording
00:53:39.000 | about two-thirds of the content right now for the course videos. Within the next couple
00:53:45.000 | of weeks, at least the first several of those videos will be launched by March 15. They'll
00:53:50.000 | be edited and uploaded so they'll be ready to go for you. So if you would like to buy
00:53:56.000 | during the prelaunch sale, I would invite you to come by radicalpersonalfinance.com,
00:54:01.000 | click on store, buy the How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Collapse.
00:54:06.000 | And here is the coupon code which will save you 25% off the retail price. This is only
00:54:11.000 | good until March 15 but the coupon code is prelaunchdiscount. Again, it's prelaunchdiscount,
00:54:19.000 | all together, no spaces, prelaunchdiscount, no hyphen, prelaunchdiscount. That'll save
00:54:29.000 | you 25% on the cost of the course. And again, the course will go live on March 15. One of
00:54:36.000 | the things that I – reasons that I'm doing this is I would like to have a bunch of you
00:54:39.000 | lined up to start that on March 15 because I'm going to be very active in answering
00:54:43.000 | the questions and discussing with you during the first couple of months of this particular
00:54:48.000 | course because although this is my plan and this is what I'm doing, I want to help you
00:54:54.000 | also put in place practical plans for you. And one of the things you'll appreciate about
00:54:58.000 | the course is everything in it is very scalable. You don't have to have a million bucks.
00:55:02.000 | You got to have at least a few thousand bucks. If you don't have a few thousand bucks,
00:55:04.000 | that's your first thing. Don't worry about economic collapse if you're worried about
00:55:08.000 | being kicked out of your house. Go and do something else and fix that problem and then
00:55:13.000 | come. But you don't have to have a million bucks to be prepared for this. So go to radicalpersonfinance.com,
00:55:19.000 | click on the store and join me for the prelaunch. Again, prelaunchdiscount is the coupon code
00:55:23.000 | that will save you 25% off and expect us to talk about this more in coming years. I will
00:55:28.000 | tell you this. First, my plan doesn't involve spending money that I would regret. And that's
00:55:34.000 | one of the things I've tried very hard to do is to not let doom and gloom thinking cause
00:55:39.000 | me to have regret. I think sometimes that can happen to people. If you don't want to
00:55:43.000 | live out in the country in a missile bunker, then don't. But if you want to live in a
00:55:48.000 | missile bunker, then you can do it without regret. So the point is, I don't want to spend
00:55:53.000 | a bunch of money or a bunch of problems on something that I might regret. I've got to
00:55:56.000 | have a plan that works if history of the future turns out to be much the way it has been for
00:56:02.000 | past decades. If everything goes well during my life, I can't have a very expensive plan
00:56:07.000 | that all falls apart. But on the other hand, I can't sit around with my head in the sand.
00:56:11.000 | And at this point, you can see that in the last six months since that particular article
00:56:16.000 | and study was published, nothing good has come of it. No, no, no, no. National public
00:56:21.000 | conversation between centrist Republicans and Democrats is happening. Nobody's talking
00:56:25.000 | about fiscal restraint. If anything, it's getting worse. So the data is indicating yellow
00:56:31.000 | and red lights all across the board. Now is time for you to provide for yourself. And
00:56:36.000 | I need to say one last caveat as I close the show. This should factor into your investment
00:56:42.000 | plans, but you always have to remember that the government is not the market. Companies
00:56:49.000 | and governments are different. Now, how that works out varies depending on the actual circumstances
00:56:56.000 | involved in. But I always try to be very careful. I'm not talking about the stocks or stock
00:57:01.000 | market. I'm talking about the federal budget. And that is a key distinction. So talk with
00:57:07.000 | your financial advisor about your stocks. I'm not here to do that today. Here today,
00:57:12.000 | I'm just simply here to say it's time, mom. If you see people talking about how to defuse
00:57:17.000 | it, let's be very optimistic because I don't want to go through an economic collapse. But
00:57:22.000 | at this point, I think prudence indicates it's time to prepare so that we survive and
00:57:28.000 | thrive during what by all accounts seems to be a future economic collapse. Go to radical
00:57:37.000 | personifies dot com, click store and use the coupon code prelaunch discount to get 25%
00:57:43.000 | off from today until March 15. Thank you so much. Don't just dream about paradise. Live
00:57:50.000 | it with Fiji Airways. Escape the ordinary with Fiji Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale. Immerse
00:57:57.000 | yourself in white sandy beaches or dive deep into coral reefs. Fiji Airways has flights
00:58:03.000 | tonight starting at just seven hundred and forty eight dollars for light and just seven
00:58:07.000 | hundred ninety eight dollars for value. Discover your tropical dreams at Fiji Airways dot com.
00:58:12.000 | That's Fiji Airways dot com. From here to happy flying direct with Fiji Airways.
00:58:17.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]