The Dailey Edge Podcast
Join hosts Trent, TJ, and Todd Dailey as they explore the intersections of technology, culture, fitness, and personal growth. Through engaging discussions and personal anecdotes, the trio dives into topics ranging from childhood gaming nostalgia and cutting-edge fitness tech to the pursuit of happiness and lifestyle choices. Whether reminiscing about epic gaming marathons, sharing tips for staying on the forefront of fitness trends, or unraveling the complexities of modern life, The Dailey Edge delivers thoughtful insights, lively debates, and relatable stories for listeners of all walks of life.
The Dailey Edge Podcast
Episode 33: Inside The Stalemate: Shutdown, ACA Subsidies, And Who Pays
Paychecks are paused for hundreds of thousands of federal workers while Congress still gets paid—and the reason traces back to one deceptively small line item: enhanced ACA subsidies. We pull apart the shutdown’s core dispute, explain how advance premium tax credits actually work on healthcare.gov, and show why a fight over roughly $30–$35 billion a year became a proxy war over the size and role of the federal government.
We get specific about what’s at stake. Expanded subsidies up to 400% of the federal poverty level lowered premiums for families stuck between bare survival and stability. Rolling them back risks coverage losses, adverse selection, and higher downstream costs in ERs. Supporters see an investment in the middle class and the viability of the marketplace; critics see an entrenched entitlement that’s hard to unwind and symbolic of a ballooning federal footprint. We also highlight the perverse reality of misaligned incentives: members of Congress still receive pay while “essential” workers keep the lights on without a check.
From there, we zoom out. Is health care affordability best protected by federal guarantees, or can states and local communities deliver better outcomes with more transparency and less waste? We weigh the tradeoffs between uniform access and uneven competence, the problem of benefits cliffs for near‑poor families, and the larger question of who should level the playing field. Along the way, we examine rising medical costs, insurer incentives, and how AI and globalization could compress prices in some sectors while widening inequality in others—raising the specter of future safety nets like universal income and who might run them.
You’ll walk away with a clear map of the shutdown’s stakes, a plain‑English breakdown of ACA subsidies, and a nuanced look at federal vs. state responsibility, healthcare economics, and where compromise could emerge. If this sparked new questions or gave you a better lens on the stalemate, follow the show, share this episode with a friend, and leave a quick review telling us where you think the line should be drawn.
Welcome to the Daily Edge, where we bring you the latest insights, opinions, and thought-provoking conversations to give you that competitive edge in life, business, and beyond. Let's go. Welcome back to the Daily Edge. She's in here with my brothers, TJ and Todd, and we are going to talk today about the government shutdown. This is something that is impacting a lot of people, some very directly that aren't getting a paycheck. It seems to me that we have somewhat of a stalemate at the government between the Republicans and the Democrats. We are not experts. Let's just start there. We're going to be using our phones a little bit more today, relying heavily on some of our news feeds to give us information, some chat GPT and such. But it's just I guess where I'd like to start is like where I mean people are not being paid. We have some benefits. We have families that are potentially not getting um some assistance that they've been used to, which cause could cause food shortages. Where where are you guys at with all this? My my biggest issue before we get into the actual what's causing the shutdown and why, and who could be right or wrong, or what's right or wrong about both perspectives, is one of the most important things in 20 some years of business that I have found to be incredibly important is aligned incentives. So when incentives are aligned, and that's incentives between sales staff and what the company's trying to achieve, or operational team members and what the company's trying to achieve. And we have probably one of the worst examples of aligned incentives in the reality that the members of Congress, the Senate, and the House, as I understand it, continue to get paid while the government is shut down when you have hundreds of thousands of other government workers on the front lines not getting paid. I I I to me, if you want to solve this really quickly, that's how you solve it. That's where I'm at.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, I don't, and I don't think unfortunately given his historical precedence, that'll ever get solved. I mean, that's the unfortunate thing about this. You look at all of the I don't even know what to call it anymore, man. All of the all of the happenings over time that have placed those individuals in very profitable situations, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. And we talk about all of the happenings that have that occurred around different types of investments and insider trading and things like that. Um, you know, we've talked about limits on terms, and you can only be in the Senate or the House for X number of years. And while I understand both sides of that, you know, if you've devoted your career to something and then 12 or 16 years in, they tell you, sorry, you're done. I mean, you're kind of like a pro athlete, you've got to find another career. But yeah, it's tough because I think you're right. I don't I don't see that changing. I see that being a huge conflict of interest. And it is, it's really unfortunate, but it does seem that um it does seem that the type of person in that role um is worried about one person and it's essentially themselves versus their constituents, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_02:So this is just a little bit of an example. We talked about this in prior episodes about how to kind of seek to understand and look at different perspectives. So what I just did is I asked ChatGPT why government workers get paid or why, excuse me, why congressmen, Senate, and the House get paid during a shutdown. Um and there's a couple of things. Uh namely, it said the people who created the Constitution wanted to protect Congress's independence from manipulation by the executive branch. Now, I don't pretend to understand exactly like how that could manifest. It also talked about um just in general, there's a section six, article one of the constitution that talks about Senates and representatives are paid completely separately out of the Treasury of the United States versus tied to uh whatever the budget is for the particular year. Um, so I guess I asked that to challenge myself. I feel very frustrated that they're getting paid during this. And I guess those are the I guess I could see situations if they wouldn't get paid in a shutdown where the president or certain members of political party could manipulate uh the situation. Right. They could pull those strings because they know if uh the Congress has, you know, it's whether or not they're gonna eat or have food on the table, metaphorically speaking, um, that that that could be toxic. So I'm trying to understand why those incentives aren't aligned, but um that's a challenge. So let's let's talk briefly about the actually what's happening here. Just fundamentally, we're gonna do our best to be as objective as possible and not let uh any of our algorithms to the extent we can control our thoughts here. There will inevitably be some bias. But um, TJ, why don't you try and highlight like what the underlying issue is?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean I think the underlying issue stems back to the Affordable Care Act. And I mean that's been an inflection point. That's been that's been something that's been in the news for the better part of 20 years um since Obama's first term, I believe. And and so, you know, that every single election cycle, there's some mention of that, whether that be in a positive of neck positive and or negative light. Well, at the end of 2025, the ACA subsidies expire. And what those are essentially is there there is a there is a certain um the word I'm looking for, there is a percentage of people. So you have anywhere between 100% and 400% poverty level that get government subsidies when it comes to their premiums on their their uh insurance.
SPEAKER_02:So breaking that down just a minute, so poverty level is an income level, right? And I'm assuming there's a federal level that's set there. So someone who makes or a household that makes 40,000. I'm just you guys could probably look it up while I'm talking, is forty thousand dollars a year is poverty level or household that makes thirty thousand dollars a year. What, Trent, do you have that? Yeah. So one person um household size poverty is fifteen thousand dollars a year. So what when some of these subsidies you're talking like four hundred percent of poverty, um, but poverty for one is fifteen, for two is twenty, for three household members, twenty-five, for four, thirty-one.
SPEAKER_00:So it's capped at fifty-eight thousand for an individual, that's four hundred percent, and a hundred and twenty thousand for a family.
SPEAKER_02:So okay, so we talk about so there's your poverty level. When we say four hundred percent of poverty, that means someone who makes within four times uh the that poverty level salary is eligible for some sort of benefit. Um so you were talking about if you go to the healthcare.gov marketplace, so this all stemmed when we so you go to healthcare.gov, and that's where most people buy their individual health insurance these days. I mean, it's all that's that was the whole point, is they wanted to drive everyone to those websites because you know at IMG we kind of stopped advising in that realm. So you go to healthcare.gov, you put in all your information and it automatically does the calculation in there.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let's let's let's take a quick aside. Why at IMG? Why did you guys stop? Like I I don't understand, I've never used that, so I don't understand it in depth. And you guys deal with insurance on a day-to-day basis. So let's explore this a little bit before we go deeper.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean it's a business decision. I'll be really transparent. You know, when we used to do individual insurance, we got paid um a commission. So I don't know what it was. It might have been like$15 a month or$20 a month per individual. So you enroll someone in a plan, you help educate them, you get them set up. Then let's say it's let's say it was$20 a month. So then you would make$240 throughout the course of the year when uh healthcare.gov and ACA rolled out um the carrier stopped paying commissions. So for us, um, there's been a few different times where where that's happened, and that was a tough decision for us because we're we're not all about commissions. Um, we we do value services to our community, but our we felt like our hand was forced there and and that wasn't something that we could continue to offer. So kind of going back to the foundation here of what's happening. So people within 400%, and I think it wasn't that initially, I think it was increased to 400% at a at a period of time.
SPEAKER_00:It was 100 to 150 initially.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, 150%. So one to one and a half times that poverty level salary, depending on if you're a single or or family or or whatever. Um, so then there were tax credits that helped people pay their health insurance premium. So basically that meant if your health insurance premium was a thousand dollars a month for your family or five hundred dollars a month, you got tax credits uh back. I'm assuming that came with your tax part of your taxes. So if you were paying six grand a year, you might get credited 50% of that back, essentially. I mean, I don't know exactly what the percentages are, but that's what the these that's what we're dealing with. So those are set to expire, I believe, at the end of the year. End of the year. End of the year. And so the Democratic Party wants those to extend um for, I think, obvious reasons to continue to promote the viability of the healthcare marketplace, I would imagine. I think TJ, you kind of touched on if with these tax credits, it makes it much more feasible for people to probably buy insurance through ACA. Um, and if those were set to expire, I'm guessing in some fashion that could threaten the success of the ACA. Can I make one clarification? Yeah, most people, it's not a tax credit, it comes off up front. It's like it's a shared premium. Okay, like if you get a thousand dollar payment and you have a subsidy, you may pay$400 instead of a thousand. So um that's the APTC advanced premium tax credit. It's how most people use their ACA subsidy.
SPEAKER_00:Um so it would be interesting to know if you guys want to kind of while I say this, research it. You can do both, though. Because you you get, well, at a surface level, you understand the democratic perspective, right? You you're I would love to get the angle from the other side of the, you know. I mean, I guess at the service level you understand both, right? The service level on the democratic side, it's like we want to make sure that everybody has health care. It aligns with that kind of ethos. Everybody's got health care, everybody's taken care of. If there is a an issue, uh serious issue that they have recourse outside of the emergency room and and and and piling up uh medical bills. On the flip side, again, at the surface level, it's a budget thing, seemingly, right? It's costing Americans X healthcare is really, really tough.
SPEAKER_02:Billions of dollars. And so speaking of billions of dollars, it looks like the um enhanced subsidies would cost roughly 300 to 350 billion dollars over the next 10 years, according to a committee for a responsible federal budget. Um, that is ChatGPT. I'm I hopefully it's not hallucinating, but that is what I'm understanding. So I just asked the question why are Republicans against P extending these subsidies? Uh, I think what I just read is that actually not all Republicans are against the subsidies. I think their challenge is the enhanced subsidy. So the 400%, uh, it seems like that is where they have some fundamental challenge. They want to kind of reformulate this from scratch, um, which I think the Democrats don't want to go through with that. They would rather smooth sailing on what's currently in place. So there's certainly a budgetary implication uh to your point.
SPEAKER_00:Do we know, again, kind of a question while I'm talking, what it would look like from a time lapse perspective, right? So I don't know if there's proposals out on the floor now uh for what the new thing could, the new structure of ACA could look like, or if the concern is, hey, if this doesn't happen, we're going to have a potential lengthy lapse in subsidies for these people. And there could be a six to 12 month to 18 month period where um all of this falls apart while they restructure everything from the ground up. I'm not quite sure there.
SPEAKER_02:You know, before ACA, not everyone had health insurance. Right. Uh so like one of the things that that happened is that now all of a sudden it was people who had health insurance, the generally the ones that needed it, and younger kids weren't buying health insurance, and so you have adverse selection and you have this, so you're having to charge more for these people because these people aren't actually taking health insurance. So it would be really interesting because the truth is, is if you go to any emergency room, they have to stabilize you, right? Whether you have insurance or not. That's part of like um, I don't know if that's a law, but that's what I've always been told. So I don't know, you may be missing out on some monthly appointments. There might be some other things involved there, but there was a good part of the population that didn't have insurance before. Um and so it would be interesting to like it feels to me it's like you're you're taking a pill and not solving the problem. And the greater problem we have is the health of America, the cost of medicine. You have all these things that RFK is trying to focus on, which isn't the I mean, it's that's way down the rabbit hole for what we're talking about today, but the increased cost of health care, it continues, it's our second highest cost in our company outside of payroll. It continues to grow 15-20% every single year. And it's kind of a double-edged sword because if you go to some type of socialized medicine, the quality is probably gonna go down. Um, but right now you're you already see it in Medicare and Medicaid. The government pretty much mandates what they're gonna pay for certain services. So the cost containment of healthcare is the real problem. Um and getting people the health care they need is a problem, but there are several things that uh lifestyle-wise that I think we do where um we don't help the problem.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's interesting because on the other side of it, you're also seeing this, and I think you see it more in the dental world where dentists are just like, we're not good. We're not, we're not, you know. My dentist is a good example. Um, we have good health care, but the uh we don't have the dental side of it. And so I pay a subscription fee to my dentist, which is a yearly fee, and it covers all of my because they make their money on elective, not on elective, but on necessary things. They don't make money on cleanings. That right. So, like, I mean, a good buddy of a friend of mine was a is a dentist down in our area, and he hasn't taken he hasn't taken insurance for a decade.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, you know, because it's just so much of a hassle. Because a lot of times they're fronting costs, they take your insurance information down, and then it's a 60-day battle with insurance on whether or not they're gonna cover whatever procedure it was or whatever, whatever else it was. They don't know what the copay is. So a lot of them have just said forget it. Um which is it which is interesting to see it from both sides. Carrier's taking 20%.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Like that's like the that was the whole thing with ACA, is they had to they had to at least pay out 80% of each dollar towards claims. So that that's one of the other things that happened with ACA. I don't know if that was the the old one or the new one, but it was like they could make 20%, so they're negotiating rates, and you have that same thing where you're negotiating with a hospital to try to get the best rates, the favorable rates, and are you gonna send everybody here? And there's just there's a lot of stuff that goes into healthcare, but I think the point of Obamacare was to make sure everyone had health care, right? So that everyone had an opportunity at health care. Um and so yeah, I I don't know again how many people are actually missing out right now from being able to go to the hospital or how many people are still uninsured or that because there are a good part of I'm in another company that has a lot of blue-collar employees. We offer health insurance and nobody takes it, and I know that they're not taking it anywhere else, and so uh I don't know how big the impact is gonna be, but there are gonna be some people in there in the middle that definitely get get hit. So I was just doing the math in my head and thinking this is like 30 to 35 billion dollars a year, okay, that we're talking about. What is the overall federal budget? It's six trillion dollars. Okay, now I'm over I'm oversimplifying because there's a lot that goes into the the the overall budget, and it's not like it's a free fund of six trillion, like things are very diced up, right? And there's um, and so my question to that is like, is this the is this why is this such a big deal? We're talking about 30 billion dollars 300 billion or is that a 10 yeah 300 over 10 years, yeah. So 30 to 35 billion a year. Um, and I just I guess struggle a little bit with why that's an issue. So I asked, why do Republicans care so much? And um I did double check the six trillion dollar budget across a couple of different AI models, Jim and I as well. Um, but basically, the way Chat GPT explains this is it's a sim, it's a it's symbolism. So it it's less than 0.5% of total federal spending, right? 0.3%, which you obviously can't as running a business, I know that's a toxic mindset. Well, it's only 0.3%, you're right, it doesn't matter. And then the next thing you know, that's 3% or 5%. And when it gets into there's very probably limited discretionary spending in that six trillion, a lot of that is probably fixed type stuff. So not to to demean, but I'm just teasing out both sides here, right? Um, you know, I think it's basically points from a Republican perspective. The issue here is uh the the way this is specifically stated to fiscal conservatives, extending these subsidiaries cements another open-ended federal benefit that is very difficult to pull back later. So I think Republicans seemingly are cautious to implement kind of or cementing uh permanent gifts to people under probably the premise that they will begin to rely on them and it will be a demotivator in some senses, right? That's the whole kind of Republican-democratic and the Democratic Party is looking at this as investing in the middle class. You have millions of people in this middle class that are struggling to get by every single day. Let's give them these tax credits, so invest in them and stabilize their lives so that we can kind of grow that middle class and have success there. So this is essentially a philosophical pissing match. And there are hundreds of thousands of people that are working, have to work.
SPEAKER_00:I think you said 750,000 people have to work without pay that are considered essential employees. Essential employees, yes, air traffic controllers, all that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So aren't they trying to look at the broader picture? Because I think it's six trillion dollar budget, four trillion in revenue, one point six trillion deficit, and one trillion of of interest or nine hundred and seventy million of, and I don't know if that's included in the six or if it's the six plus the one. So technically six point eight actually is the budget budget. So those numbers, I was just using average numbers. Six point eight. Does that include the nine the nine hundred and seventy uh billion? I think so. You have the you have the um one you have the four million of revenue plus a one point six million dollar deficit is five point six plus the million in interest, six point six, close enough. So yeah, I think it includes the interest. Four trillion of income foreign change, six trillion, six point eight trillion budget, so you're running at a two point eight trillion dollar deficit. Technically the deficit's only one point six trillion, but then you have the interest payments that so you're which are gonna continue to grow, right? So could it be that they're looking at that and saying, okay, well, we're running two point six trillion in the negative, we gotta look at everything. And I'm not saying it's the program we should cut, shouldn't cut, like people gotta uh you know, eat, people have to have good health care. Um, I don't know the answer to this. These are the hard questions because I think empathy is the emotion that weaponized empathy, yeah. It's like weaponized empathy is is real because nobody's gonna say, well, I don't want someone to eat, or I don't want, like, if my family or I don't want to not be able to take my kid to the doctor, like I think everyone would be empathetic to not want that to happen to themselves or anyone that they cared about. And that's what we're talking about. I think it's it gets really interesting because I'm just gonna hit this head on because a lot of people are talking about this as like, okay, um, I think the storyline on the Democratic side, understandably, would be okay, all you Republicans that call yourselves Christians, would Jesus, you know, not be providing for these people? Uh and it gets to be a really um contentious debate, right? I think that comes into play. And then Republicans obviously are looking from their perspective at maybe long-term, you know, setting up a system that incentivizes the right behaviors. And um I'm gonna do a little more research on exactly what that philosophical position is, but well, it seems to align with what you know.
SPEAKER_00:If you look at this the early part of this presidential term and that massive ex the massive excitement, I mean, there was a period of probably 90 days when Elon was deep in the White House and his team was there where the excitement around Doge was off the charts, right? The storyline, the major underlying storyline was waste and fraud. Look at all of this, hundreds of millions of dollars. And that's when you got this two-headed monster kind of kind of coming out of the muck, where one side was like, oh, look at their spending money on this crazy research on transgender monkeys, when in all reality, there sometimes some of that stuff was real. Sometimes there was like they were taking words and and and conveying it in a way that was completely disingenuous to what the actual scientific project was. Um, but you know, if if you're gonna align with that undercurrent, then this we're gonna go through every program with the fine-toothed comb so that we don't end up 40 years down the road with all of these, again, quote unquote handouts. Um, you could see how politically people would potentially use that to align with the the the bigger picture on that side of the house. And then on, of course, like we we've talked about again on the on the other side of the house, logically, it's the it's the empathy thing where we want to make sure everybody's taken care of, everybody has what they need, and and that's because that's becoming more and more difficult uh with the continued disparity um between the haves and have nots.
SPEAKER_02:So what so what do you guys think? Um the Republican stance is smaller government, less involvement, uh less redistribution of income, you know, what whatever is uh the and so what what is your guys' if we just kind of go to that core, um is smaller government better, or what are some pros and cons of a smaller federal government specifically? I want to distinguish federal government and state government because I think the goal there is I I I think that's an important distinction. I think there is probably on the conservative side or Republican side more support for state programs. But what are your guys' thoughts? Is a smaller federal government better? I think a smaller government's better across the board. I'll be the I'll just say it, I think less government the better for a lot of different reasons. Um I'm gonna I'm gonna quote a podcast, so forgive me because when you do that, you're not always sure the accuracy. But Elon made a who was on Joe Rogan just recently and said something about the Department of Education at the federal level and talked about the budget for it and said that the our um education, the grade of how the education in the United States has continued to go down, yet we're spending all this money, and you know, he would cut the department of education and push it back to the states at the state level. What I feel like and what what I've seen, when there is um when there's capital, uh, when there's free free business, there's competition, you seem to get to a better product at a better price. Anytime in capitalism, you have competition, it seems to drive that. When you get into things that are run by the government, and they're doing better now, but I think it used to be, it's like if it's government run, it didn't have to be good because it it is what it is, and you don't have a you don't have a choice, right? So like um the BMV is a great example, they actually do pretty good, especially in Great Grant County. You go in there and you get a good service, they ask you, you know, did you like your service or didn't you like it? And I think they're they've put a pretty good system in there, but I know over the years when the government is in control, it appears to be the the in the user-consumer. If they don't have any other choice, that you eventually get to a spot where you're not delivering as much value. Um, and if you don't allow competition in there, you're just gonna like some of the government contracts and the things that that they do uh cost way more than if you had someone else uh come competing for the same business. So they're there uh I think your point is government's inefficient uh in a sense, and they they don't have any standards, like because if if you don't have any other options, then they don't have to be good. Sure. If if they have kind of a monopoly on whatever service they're providing, um which is everything. Well, not necessarily like USPS, you can ship things you UPS or FedEx or whatever.
SPEAKER_00:There are different services that are you're gonna No, I don't want to be all doom and gloom about it, but I don't think I think it's really difficult, right? Because on the governmental side, you have some of the issues that we've seen. Um, whether that's you know, people that have relationships that get awarded government contracts that don't have any competition and they can be a little bit more relaxed with their budgeting, and and you have NGOs that are getting funneled money that again have certain relationships. And but on the flip side of it, on the capitalistic side, I think you're right as it relates to optimizing products and values and things like that. But you look at you look at capitalism and the greed that's within capitalism, and you see, and we were just talking a second ago that there are, and you may know more about this, but there are some proposals on the board or within the board of Tesla that could make Elon a trillionaire. Yeah, yeah, just and so like that's wild to me. Um, again, like I'm not saying it's wild because he's a trillionaire. I mean, we talked about this years and years ago. I remember asking you a question, it's probably been over a decade, like you have these CEOs making all this money. Well, look at the value that they are bringing to the company. Like, if you look at it, it's there. And then, but but what you see happening is you get these particular people who get to a point in life where, um, and we'll call it the 1%, where they are investing in the stock market. So they do become those shareholders, and the profitability of these companies do benefit those specific people. But it it isn't again, the disparity is growing and growing and growing and growing and growing. I think we talked the other day, there was another study that came out that showed like for a family of four in the state of Indiana to live comfortably, and again, we don't know what the comfortable, comfortable definition is, is$220,000. I mean, when you know, and we're talking about when we grew up, call it late 90s, early 2000s, if you made six figures, you were like sit and pretty. Um, and so again, kind of looking in that disparity on either side on the capitalism side, it just seems to be shifting higher. And and and so on both sides of it, I think uh, you know, the underlying greed becomes an issue.
SPEAKER_02:Why does the income of like an employee change, whether it's the government or capitalism?
SPEAKER_00:What do you mean?
SPEAKER_02:Well, like what I hear you saying is like, well, as capitalism grows, you know, there's there's like this, they keep going and the profitability, but like I'm just talking about from a sheer service standpoint. Yeah, companies can grow and be more profitable, but like as a consumer, if we're consuming the same product, we don't really care if we're consuming something like televisions, right? We used to be super expensive and have these big things. Now flat screens are the cheapest thing. You can buy these flat screens. There's a lot of different providers, they're six, seven hundred bucks. No one's making really any money on flat screens anymore. So, regardless if it was Panasonic or it was Samsung, or if it was the government making the TV, the TV has cost. What it costs. So the success of the company or the government, like how does that correlate in your look at it this way?
SPEAKER_00:Like, let's say, for instance, the TVs were made by the government, and that there was a, and I'm saying this is wrong, right, or indifferent, and there was a set price, and there was a set um there was a set operational structure, and and there were these different vendors that provided these components. Um, there's some security there, but again, over time, without without competition, you're right, like the quality of the product probably wouldn't get to where it's gotten today, but that's impacted us directly. RCA. That was a major part of employment here in the city of Marion.
SPEAKER_02:So you're talking about like unionized work, like unions in general, because I think that's what I I mean, you know, like no, not necessarily unions in general.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just saying that I don't know, because I I I think it's it's maybe aligned with the uh the um continued uh growth from a technological perspective. I mean, you made a comment like there's a bunch of manufacturing there aren't. Like, you know, we're in the we're in the data cable space, right? The most pro the most proliferated device in the world is the cell phone. In the United States, there are call it five brands of cables that matter, right? That aren't like your fly by night Amazon brand. Five. And you're talking about devices that have over a hundred percent penetration in US households, just meaning every household has more than one. Um, televisions are probably the only other thing, and even then you don't see homeless people rolling around with televisions, you see them rolling around with cell phones. So as it continues and there there's constant acquisition, right? Um so it's interesting. I I think the funny thing is it ends you know if you if you play it forward capitalistically, eventually you come to that scenario where you're looking at having to divide up monopolies because it just continues to to um people continue to get acquired, things continue to get optimized, money continues to funnel to stockholders and or um people within those organizations, and then I mean again, we're resilient bunch, we'll figure it out.
SPEAKER_02:Um what I hear you saying is capitalism is better for consumers, but maybe not better for employees. Is that well, yeah, I think that's that's obvious. That that's what unions do. They just they kind of cut into profitability of the companies to try and let me ask you guys this question. Um, you talked about disparity. So we talked about the role of the government's efficiency in terms of kind of doing performing services for the general public, right? Let's talk for a second about the redistribution of wealth, whether that should happen at the federal government level, the state government level, or that's really not the government's responsibility. That is a community's own responsibility for people to step up and provide, right? Because the disparity is growing massively. What is your take on the government's role in redistributing wealth to help make those who aren't don't have the income to survive or you know, or live a reasonable life to try and close those gaps?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I think it's I think it gets difficult. I think it gets difficult. Um I think there's good and bad, right? I think it gets difficult because as a as a let's say you're on the upper side of the disparity tranche or or or chasm. Um you, you know, it's very hard for people to come to grips with I, you know, I I have done this. I guess I guess it goes back to prior podcasts where we've talked about fulfillment. If your self-worth is aligned with with the man, that's hard. If your self-worth is aligned with your monetary value and somebody comes to you and says, nah, like you busted your ass, you've done this, that, and the other thing. And again, we can sit here and split hairs about starting points and about all of the other things. But even if somebody comes from the gutter, which you do see success there a lot of times, you know, the single mother raising the the child in complete poverty who becomes LeBron James. Um you know, all the hours and time and effort in dealing with public scrutiny and exposure, only to have somebody come to you and say, hey, guess what? We're taking 80% of this and we're giving it to other people. I'm sure. I mean, for me, you know, that would that would be difficult. So, you know, um it's tough because you unfortunately, given the way our political uh environment is structured, you can't really affect that structure.
SPEAKER_02:There's not much accountability. I think it I don't I don't love government's involvement and redistribution of wealth. What if you weren't sure where your next meal was going to come from? Would you feel that same way? Well, I I mean, if you think about like this is gonna be an extreme, but like look at Hunger Games or you look at some other societies to where this has played out differently, where it has the government has all the control, it never plays out to where people are in a better spot because there's not accountability. I don't think it improves. Well, now that the government has all the money, they're gonna they've shown us how great they can manage a budget and manage money. Like none of us can run our households the way that the Congress runs the government with people that are full-time politicians. I don't think the accountability's there. And frankly, you get a place where the government is has all the power and all the money and all the control. I think it oppresses people, it doesn't free them. So if we have if we're talking about people that are struggling to find where their next meal is coming from, sure. There's uh even that premise that you state there, there still has to be a if we say smaller government, stop redistributing wealth. We, you know, think about redistributing wealth right now. Let's just call it what it is. I mean, they this some of their functions are. I mean, welfare, uh, so Social Security is kind of a version of that. Some of it's more of, you know, you're you're borrowing from your early days and paying later, but that welfare, some of these tax credits, subsidies, those sorts of things, those there are quite a bit of that that does ultimately fall under that umbrella of redistributing wealth. So if we were to pull back on that, at a minimum, there would be a short-term implication on people's ability to potentially survive. But what you're the case you are making is people will are. I mean, are you making people will find a way to to survive, or that just in the long term, the we'll have a better structure and system and less people will be suffering in the future if we pull the plug on some of the handouts, I think is the the maybe the premise of the Republican stance. I think where where I'm at with it is and what I understood your question to be is that if we in if the government drastically increased taxation to redistribute wealth versus where it is today, I think programs are necessary to help people in tough situations. We should all contribute to that. We all have a responsibility to take care of our fellow brother and sister. So I think there is a level of that. Where that percentage is and where that line is, I don't know. And how to drive the trends that are better for the people, I don't know. I don't know how to do that. But what I do want to avoid is the government becoming a place where they're holding all the carts. I don't think that's good for anybody. Yeah, I think the reason I ask about the redistributive redistribution of wealth, because that is why the government is shut down, is there is a redistribution of wealth essentially happening with these tax credits that everyone is kind of stuck on. And it's interesting because I I can see where I think most conservatives would probably agree with you in supporting people who are struggling. I think most of them would prefer to see that at the state level where there's maybe more knowledge awareness and less of a massive institution. The challenge is then you're relying on the competency and the cycle of a state government to adequately address that need, right? And if you get states that don't necessarily do that very well, then you're leaving people a little bit, so it's a little bit of a risk reward. Would you guys agree with that premise or no? I would, I mean, right now, if you have a couple of states that are erratic, they're they're imploding the whole pool, anyways. So, like being where we live, um, I would love to have the state of Indiana to have control, and I don't love the fact that we're having to fund and probably contribute to other states that are that have rules and laws and protocols that don't um that probably that could lead to more fraud and other things. So to me, I love if you if you're gonna push it anywhere, I would push it to the states because the states are dealing with different each state has a different problem. They have different problems that they're trying to address. And I believe if you get it closer to home, if you give it to the state, to the county, to the city, to the town, they're gonna have a better understanding of what the need is in that community and what problem they're trying to solve for. Do you think the competency is gonna be there in some of those small communities to do that well? Is it there at the federal level? I don't know. Look at the results. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:I just think the bigger problem is transparency and that I think the perception is the closer to home it lives, the more transparency you have because the more likely you are to have a degree of separation or two to the people that are making the decisions for that program. But I think a lot of what has been problematic is just a complete lack of transparency. And at the federal level, there's never, you know, there's never been a need to deliver that. I wish, you know, you look at what it would look like if all of these programs were again on the capitalistic side of things. Um, you know, I know that those of us that have donated to certain organizations are much more passionate about it, like with what you've done in the Dominican um and all of the stuff that you've done around Grant County. It's like there's there's more of a passion to it. You have because you have direct transparency as to where it's going, you can see the benefits that it's giving people. Um and I think that's that's what's important. But it is it is vital to have competency there, um, you know, to to ensure that yeah, that that empathy that we all we all have is um addressed. Like the yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:When you go to donate, whether your time or your money, do you give it to national organizations or do you give it to local organizations? Um I try to do mostly local, um, because of what TJ said, I have better visibility to the impact. Yeah, because I think that stands tall.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, I I agree with you. Um, but at the same time, I still sometimes question it. Last night.
SPEAKER_02:So I yeah. Well, I think that the trick is, and the and the question is I think in a perfect world, yes. It I think it's like this complex, I think we're getting at the core of like this this political divide. Um, that if we could find a way, so I think the reason the federal government puts things in place is because they want to make sure they happen. They're so important that they want to make sure they happen and they're willing to sacrifice efficiency for the sake that it makes sure it happens no matter what, versus the the more you decentralize or delegate downward into a state or a county or a community, you leave yourself exposed to certain communities or towns, or that might get someone that's calling the shots or manipulating or some sort of corruption that maybe there's racism or there's other um uh minority, uh you know, not um I don't know what the the word I'm looking for is, but there is some systemic issues that don't allow that redistribution to actually happen. But uh so I guess that I mean that's that's the that's the crux of this.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's it it it's interesting because you're right. When you get when you when you get it down to that level of smaller government, there's just less vetting, right? The mayor of a small town does not have the net necessarily get the visibility or get the scrutiny that somebody does at that next level and that next level and that next level. So there is more of a uh potential for those scenarios to occur.
SPEAKER_02:Especially if you have large sums of money coming down, you know, to be uh distributed. It's a well, and you you you just wonder, right? Like there's gotta be qualifications for state level programming too, because you look at Hamilton County and Grant County, and we're 92 of like 93 counties on poverty, and Hamilton's probably one in the state, you know. So there's still got to be qualifications for stuff handled at the state level to distribute the state money, um, where I think the state can still govern to some extent. Um, and people are going to continue to realign themselves with the states that are making decisions that align with their with their family. It's not that one state's better or worse. You may want to be in a liberal state versus a conservative, and that's okay based on your beliefs and values. But I don't I haven't seen a situation where like I don't give to national organizations very often because I don't know where it's going. I don't know what it's doing. We're helping out locally with SNAP, you know, with the we're we're donating to a local organization to help people that haven't been able to give those. So like I I'm I'm all for helping people, but I'm not giving to like the National Red Cross program because I'm trying to help the people in this community. I'm trying to do things that are going to have a direct impact on the people that I call my neighbors that I live in. And so from there are things that probably like the roads and I mean there are things that make sense to be at the Fed level. There's probably some things that make like we all have to contribute to the federal infrastructure. We just have to. We've got we've got the the Department of Defense, we've got things that military, we have the military, we have things that we all need to contribute to at the Fed level. We have things we should all contribute to at the state level, and then I think it's the local level. The things we're contributing to now and what we probably should be are vastly different. There's probably a lot of waste, and I think you said it earlier. Once you started a program, in any if once someone gets something and you go to take it away later, wheels are coming off. Everyone's losing their mind. It's hard hard to take things away, certainly. I mean, I think the core of this question is is I think we're all acknowledging, correct me if I'm wrong, the the playing field needs to be leveled to some extent that we know where we were born and our likelihood to make something out of that is probably different than someone else. There are a lot of people that you know have had a more difficult path and have had odds stacked much more against them. And so the question is, how much should the playing field be leveled? You know, to what extent and by who? I mean, essentially that is, in my opinion, the core that differentiates today's version of Republicans versus Democrats.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm glad that we're, I think it's a society kind of regressing to the mean in terms of understanding that, you know, because I think that again, rewind a number of generations. Everybody, not everybody, but the majority of people came from what you would consider poverty. I mean, you you talk to again, at least we'll speak about our area, right? You may have to rewind more further generations to um get to that. But you you look at, again, we've talked about our great-great-grandfather, they did, they dug ditches. Our great-grandfather was a farmer and then worked at a factory. Our grandfather worked two jobs at two different factories before he became a CPA and then kind of worked his way out of that. And then our dad, through just again, uh a better starting point. Again, his dad was still working two factory jobs, um, was able to uh develop a chip on his shoulder and bust his ass for 50 years and get into a position where we started at a much higher level. So I think, you know, you go back to those different generations, and then again, you you take their perspective based on the amount of media they consumed, and there was a there was much more of a, I don't want to hear your shit. I came from nothing, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get to where I'm at. Whereas now, uh, you know, with the advent of technology, with the um, you know, industrial revolution and some of the things that have happened over the last hundred years, it's it's all rising tides have lifted all ships. And I think the people that were left behind, there's a much more awareness, especially again, with with more media shining a light on those scenarios, that there are some programs that need to be in play for some of those people versus, again, the attitude, even the generation prior, which is like, I don't want to, I don't want to hear you crying and whining. I worked hard, you should work hard and get to where I got. So I like that we're regressing to the mean in that sense, and that everybody kind of is starting to understand that these things are required. It will be interesting to see um how these these play out and at what level a lot of these do get implemented. But again, back to what I said being a little bit redundant, transparency is just so paramount nowadays in any capacity. Because the other thing too is, you know, one of the one of the biggest industries that has uh come to the forefront the last couple years is just fraud and scams in general, right? So we're we're we're having these experiences as consumers and as individuals where we're getting scammed out of X or scammed out of Y or frauded. Um and so the skepticism that arises because of that as it relates to everything and anything you engage with, especially things you can't see behind the curtain on, um, is heightened. So it'll be interesting to see how it shakes out.
SPEAKER_02:You bring up a very fascinating point about poverty that I have um been reflecting on for quite some time. And there's there's two levels here there's poverty, and then there's another level that we actually have talked a lot about, and I'm trying to think of the name of it. We've talked a lot about in the United Way because sometimes there are more pro more federal programs available for those in poverty, but there's those above the poverty line that are still not anywhere near uh what is it? When other stuck because yeah, they get to here, and it's like, oh, if you make$200 more, you're gonna lose all these subsidies and you're gonna be back here. It's really hard to get out of that. Yeah, it's I forget what it's called. It's almost a worse place to be. But um, one of the things I want to talk about is poverty in general. And um I think there are some common denominators in poverty over the last, I'm gonna call it 500 years, maybe 1000 years. And then there are potentially, and I want to get your guys' take on this, some relative versions of poverty. I've got a hot take I want to throw out there. So certainly when it comes to food security and health uh security, that is kind of uh to me, particularly food, water, that sort of thing. Shelter. Shelter to an extent, um that I think sustains. And when you don't know where food's coming from, like that that's that's a problem. That's a huge problem. What I am what I find interesting, and my hot take is that the lives we are living right now in 500 years will be considered poverty. I I think I think And I don't just mean we, but like like us three, but general society, and and let me just throw a couple of things out there before that. We talk about the conveniences that we have relative to um John D. Rockefeller, yeah. Right, who is the richest man in the world, and the some of the things that we have from air conditioning to cell phone access to even some of those in poverty have some of these conveniences. And if we fast forward 500 years, I know it's tough to do, and that's why I'm going out quite a bit. Where this is kind of um manifested is poverty relative to any extent as technology advances, as maybe people have to stop working, right? And like there's a universal income. And potentially, let's go back to the abortion conversation just for a second, because the abortion conversation, a lot of that around is around someone having to be born into poverty and live a very difficult life. Someone says, gosh, they're gonna have to be born into the world we live in today where you have to work to make money, and they're like, I'm just not gonna do that to that person. That the abortion makes more sense. So I'm I'm intentionally saying some pretty uh uh controversial things right now, just to get your take.
SPEAKER_00:No, I mean, we have talked about that a lot. You know, we've talked about the that John D. Rockefeller conversation. I do think in 500 years there's a high probability that that it is. I I think you guys saw maybe it was last week or two weeks ago. I can't remember the name of it, uh, but it's that um the first AI home robot, right, that they're selling. Now, granted, they were a little bit disingenuous with their first uh trailer on this particular robot, but essentially what it is promised to do, and I think the the initial down payment's 20 grand or something like that. And you know, it's promised to be this at-home assistant that does the laundry, folds the laundry, does the dishes, sweeps, cleans, picks things up, whatever, whatever. Now, the funny thing is they did show the behind behind the scenes, so they were a little bit transparent. The way the robot was engaging today was through a VR headset and somebody with controllers. So somebody was doing that, but the promise is that it will learn these processes through, you know, some type of learning algorithm and become capable of this. And if if the if the price is$20,000,$30,000,$50,000, again, you think about what some of these households spend in as it relates to um uh help around the house or what that kind of time means to you if you no longer have to do those menial tasks, then you think about how that scales, especially over 500 years. Those become a dime a dozen. You know, your home assistant is the price of a TV. Uh and so then you talk, and the next tier of that is being able to do general contracting uh types of activities where you can build shelters for, again, next to nothing. And we have plenty of space available in the United States as it relates to space to accommodate individuals. Now, how that look looks economically, because a lot of that, a lot of that land is held by like singular entities. Um, but I do think there will be things like that, especially in 500 years. I mean, I think that will be commonplace in 75 years, in 50 years. So in 500 years, again, depending on what we continually put out there from a societal perspective, uh as it relates to what the the goal is, like will it look like Wally in 500 years? I mean, it could. Hope I'm still here.
SPEAKER_02:I think it's gonna start moving a lot faster than we think.
SPEAKER_00:If poverty is not living on a spaceship on your way to Mars, sitting in a recliner that does everything for you. I again, I don't know what we're gonna define in that regard. Um, but by then, you know, I think we'll have figured out you look at a lot of the initiatives already as it relates to like um vertical farming, like farming in skyscrapers and things like that. It's gonna be really interesting.
SPEAKER_02:Food, water, shelter. If you solve those three problems, then I think poverty becomes more objective. If there is a subjective, yeah. Can I can I even go a step further though to say a thousand years ago, most people didn't know where their next meal was coming from? Oh, for sure. Or like 2,000, they had to go out and kill it, and that was like the norm. But now, if you don't have that, you know, you can't pull up to a fast food, right? That is poverty. And I don't say that insensitively, like I need to really qualify this because I'm saying some things to insinuate, like desensitize to like what these people are going through, because I think a lot that I mean, the psychology, the community, the relativeness of not having what everyone around you has or many around you have, I think that's a huge, huge problem. That's it. I think the comparison of that creates because if you had food, water, and shelter, arguably, um, but like now it's like there is a discrepancy. Are you going to, you know, Starbucks five times a week and spending seven, eight dollars on a coffee? Are you like you can, but I think there is such a discrepancy in food costs and food that's available that there is a lot of money that gets tied up in food, and then having a safe place to stay for your family and the utilities for your home and those types of things. So there are some things that I think um I would associate that you would need to have that basic level, but yeah, I'll there was a point in time, probably within the last five years, where I would say that in certain circles, fast food was viewed as poverty.
SPEAKER_00:Like if you were getting all of your sustenance from the dollar menu, like you know, you didn't have the resources now with fast food costing a hundred dollars every time you go through the drive-thru, I think it's a different story, but it is it is conducive to your surrounding because you said something earlier, you saw a study where it said$220,000 for someone to live comfortably for a family of four.
SPEAKER_02:I'd maybe believe that in Hamilton County. You made$220,000 in Grant County, you're easily taking care of family of four. I mean, so like you do your comparisons, like you're going out, you can easily go spend$150 on a dinner for a family of four, and that's not extravagant. That's maybe a little bit nicer than a Texas roadhouse.
SPEAKER_00:Casual, if you will. Yeah, something like that.
SPEAKER_02:And and you're down in those areas, you're so I think there is some environmental side to it. Um, but man, 100, 200, 300 years, it'd be hard to even tell, like what that is gonna look like. And going back to your point of how do we solve this problem? Because the the way you articulated it was really interesting. I wish I could remember how you just said it, but it was like a the the government, it really just boils back to how how did you say that? It was like you framed up the whole conversation in like one sentence. It was how much and and who levels the playing field. How much and who. So yeah, like you think that there's I mean, you see your people like your Gates' and the Buffets and them all donating billions of dollars and they're redistributing it to the things that they're passionate about. And so there's like where they got all those billionaires together to to give away. There, there's a hundred people that control majority of the wealth in the world, right? And then what they said, there's like that are these multi-billionaires that control all the decisions, and you get enough money, you get to be one of those people that kind of control where some of that flow goes. Do you want it to go there? Do you want the government to be in control? Are people's conscious and goodwills able to come to play to give back to, and I mean, some will say yes, if you gave a 20% reduction on taxes, would every business take that and use it to help other people? No. Well, this is gonna get even more interesting because at the point that there is a universal income because companies get so efficient and the AI gets so developed that you don't need people working. There's a fraction of the number of people working as there is today. Let's say the workforce cuts in half at some point. Who is stepping up to coordinate universal income?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and what is universal, what is income by at that point? Again, like if we figure out vertical farming, if we figure out desalinization, right? If we can take salt out of the ocean, water is we're we're good.
SPEAKER_02:If we can manufacture food at a at a very low cost, like you're saying, like the cost is in if you don't have to pay someone to get food and water and you've got very efficient shelter, like man, arguably desalinization at an at a at a uh cost efficient. So if it it potentially it could go back to the family kind of doing it, right? But like ultimately it could be something where companies are just making absorbent amounts of money uh through extremely efficient operations and the government has to tax them very heavily, or just the current tax rates uh allow for them to redistribute that because the government hypothetically is gonna get significantly more efficient as well, at least relative to what they are today with all of this stuff, but someone's gonna have to coordinate that because the disparity is only gonna get worse. If you can make a cheeseburger and a French fry meal for 15 cents, and everyone else was selling it, and they were it was costing them three dollars and everyone was selling it for six. Are you selling it at 15 cents or are you selling it for six? Well, it depends. I mean, that that is a big I was listening to someone yesterday on an AI webinar that predicts deflation, that predicts deflation is coming, and it's a very I mean, and it's uh a little further out, a little further horizon, and a lot of people are all over him, but he is predicting that there's gonna be a meaningful amount of deflation coming because of that. Now, I don't know if if other companies are gonna let that happen. Typically, what happens is you know, in business, they find out because we do this too, when we're looking at uh introducing automation, they know how much it costs a person to do that, and then they back into the cost to build that automation to just be just less than that person, right? And so you wonder as technology improves. Now, the good news is that like the stuff that's happening, like the costs are dropping technologically, like it used to cost. Someone said$60 for a million tokens of in Chat GPT, and now it's like 15 cents if you're using the API. If you're on the front end, it's like a dollar and something. Um, and so the the costs are getting cheaper, and if that's the case, you could see some deflation, but that could be decades out.
SPEAKER_00:We're seeing a little bit of it already in our industry. Um, you know, we're we're based on competitiveness, especially in I think we're probably in the most saturated product industry in the world. Um, and what we're seeing is is wild. Um just you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Some brand has to drive that, right? So we've seen it in a couple brands. You have gooder sunglasses where they came in and said, Well, we know you can make these lenses for a heck of a lot cheaper. And Maui Jim and all of them charge$300, we're gonna charge$30, right? The first somewhat decent. Now they're not as great, but they're just as good. You had the Razor people like paying$15 for a razor, no, do the dollar shape glove, right? So I think in order to get deflation, if someone's gonna have to figure that out, and then they're gonna have to go to market in a way that pushes because there's no capitalist that's gonna leave money on the table if they if they're not gonna just without getting yeah, if as long as they're gonna get murdered by lobbyists, yeah, they're just gonna lose market share. Right?
SPEAKER_00:You look at you look at Amazon. Here's a great example. Um, our cables retail in Walmart used to retail for 988. Um, the the big three. So we're we're the fourth largest, third largest actual recognizable brand in the country in terms of um power products at retail. And we we uh the other two anchor and balancers, we all dropped our prices a dollar. It's uh or maybe even two, call it eight bucks now for a cable. You go on Amazon to the brand again, back to globalization and the brands coming out of China for nine dollars. You can get two 20 watt chargers and two six-foot cables in a bundle. Right? So, like and and with, you know, I I I get I had the privilege of seeing a lot of that data firsthand with you know 43% of people shopping on Amazon exclusively and only, um, and or you see them in retail environments, price comparing right there. Like I think globalization is driving the will eventually drive. I mean, I know I'm kind of jumping all over the place, but we've all seen this and it brings the thought back. We've seen the Asian uh like the Chinese um EVs. Like if those ever get over here, look out without the crazy tariffs around, it's a wrap. Like all of a sudden, you know, your eighty thousand dollar EV in America is is now 30 grand with 3x the features. It's I I think globalization could drive deflation in a major way. I mean, we're seeing it, and you know, our retailers are hyper aware of what the digital uh environment looks like. And I mean, a lot of the buyers out there are like, I just want to know what's selling on Amazon, and you guys pitch me the products that are selling it, you know, we have insight to what's doing the best, and uh, we're gonna try to stay competitive, stay within a dollar or two, find out whatever the consumer's value is to have it immediately right there on the spot, whether that's a dollar, two bucks, and we're gonna try to get within there. And then we as the manufacturer and anybody else, it's within our company or the distributors distributing our product or the retailers retailing it, we're all taking the hit.
SPEAKER_02:That's uh that's fascinating. Um, to pull this back, we've got a government shutdown. We have hundreds of thousands of people that are not getting paid right now, over a$30 billion a year political fight. I I think both parties, I I I understand what they're doing. They're they're trying to undergo a short-term pain. I think Democrats, I was just a couple other things on here, are more um likely to let this go on because they see the public is seemingly blaming the Republicans more for this. And so they are seeing a benefit of this continuing to go on to uh kind of undermine the Republican popular vote. Um, the Republicans obviously are holding steady on their perspective of federal government being involved in in the redistribution of wealth. Um, it's a sad situation. Hopefully, we can we can uh get this resolved very soon. How do you guys see this resolving? What who do you think is gonna fold or what do you think is gonna happen? I mean, I think you're gonna see people get in the middle. They already talked about it, they're very, very close if it's not done already and we just don't know about it. Um they're very, very close. I think you just could continue to have to meet in the middle. I'm assuming what's gonna happen is I mean so so the Republicans, the only thing we didn't touch on, the Republicans have 53 uh people in the Senate. You need 60 to get something like this passed out of the hundred and whatever. So they need to find seven Democrats who will vote with them on this. And so I think what what happens is maybe it's not 400%, maybe it's 300% of poverty. Like you're gonna see some concessions on both sides. Those will probably be extended to some degree. And then um, you know, otherwise, I think the Democrats are probably they're not incentivized to come too far because they're just gonna let the Republicans burn themselves to the ground if that's how the public is perceiving it. That because technically the Republic the Republican Party has the presidency, has the Senate, and has the House, I believe. They own all three. And so it's a pretty acceptable storyline for the public to think this is on the Republicans for the shutdown, no matter what the intricacies of the details are.
SPEAKER_00:So um, you know, we've seen a reduction in uh flights already because of some of the TSA stuff, and we're about to enter the busiest travel season of the year.
SPEAKER_02:I was gonna say if there's any point of leverage that is gonna come that's gonna push them, it's gonna be travel season. Yeah. We shall see. Well, hopefully those uh wonderful politicians of ours will um do what's in the best interest of the whole country. Uh whichever side you sit on doesn't really matter. So um would love to see people getting paid, would love to see people getting their benefits and us as a society continuing to help one another. So uh great, great discussion. And hopefully by the time this airs, uh everything's back in force. Thanks.