SIO36: The New Version of Trumpcare Should Scare You

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 36 and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Wow, back from ReasonCon. Such a fun time. Sorry if you weren't able to go, don't live anywhere near it, that kind of thing, but let me just tell you guys that if you ever get a chance to go to a live show, especially like a GAM live show or a conference with, you know, podcasters and community and people that you know from Facebook or whatever, just take the opportunity and go because it was a ton of fun. I loved it. Everybody I know who went loved it, there were so many posts afterwards on Facebook, including my own, that were just like, ah, it was over so quickly and we're all so sad. So just, it's fun.

0:01:14 Thomas: So if that kind of thing comes up in the future and you can go and you're kind of on the fence, you should go. It's a tonne of fun! Oh and the GAM live episode was recorded, that was what I was doing there, I was their guest, and thanks again so much to Heath, Noah, and Eli for allowing me to guest on their show, that went up this week if you haven't heard it already, but it was great, I mean the crowd loved it, it was a good show, it's been exactly a year since I was on GAM doing the trilogy that I did last year, so it was cool to be able to do that. Be back. So check that out. If you haven't already, it was great. ReasonCon was great, everything's great. Now let's get to some depressing stuff.

0:02:04 Thomas: Well, It is almost the benchmark that Trump has simultaneously downplayed and said it doesn't really mean anything, but at the same time he's going to great lengths to ensure that he has something to show for himself. It is 100 days. It's almost up. It'll be up in a couple days here and as a result he is scrambling to get some sort of policy win. Win. Now, a lot of liberals like to say Trump hasn't done anything. He hasn't accomplished anything. And it is true that there are many things he hasn't established, but he has accomplished some stuff. I mean, Gorsuch is a big victory for Republicans. I means, that can't be undone. We can't undo Gorsuche. And while Trump certainly deserves almost no credit for it, it's not really anything that he did besides take some recommendations and nominate somebody that the Republican establishment loves.

0:02:54 Thomas: Beyond that, he didn't really do anything other than, I mean, he won the election to be fair. Trump somehow won the election. So that is ultimately his accomplishment. Gorsuch is ultimately Trump's accomplishment. He has done that. And he's done, he's rolled back a lot of Obama regulations and rules and stuff like stuff, anything that didn't, that wasn't bolted to the ground via legislation, he just kind of took. And that's something we've covered a lot more on Opening Arguments. It's kind of complicated, actually, how they're doing it, by the way. If you're not an Opening Arguments listener, I'm sure you are. But if you're not, you might want to go check out some of the episodes we've done on some of those more complex ways that Trump and Congress is able to roll back certain regulations without needing 60 votes, only needing 50 or 51 votes.

0:03:44 Thomas: So that's all interesting. That all sucks. But it's true that he has no real policy win. He has his health care bill has been garbage. He's got nothing done tax wise yet. And today, though, things are moving. And that's what I'm going to cover. There's a new version of the AHCA, not the ACA, the AHCA. Which will repeal the ACA. So I know it's a little confusing, but we'll go back to calling it Trumpcare just for sake of ease. I know we never really resolved that debate of what it should be called. I think it's it's more like Ryancare probably, but I want, I mean, Trump won and he's the reason why it is maybe happening. So I like Trumpcare plus it's easy to remember. So I'm gonna call it that.

0:04:29 Thomas: So Trumpcare, there's a new version now because if you remember, I covered this, the previous version could not even get Republicans to agree. It could not even get a vote. Trump tried to strong arm a vote Oh man, this was so great. He told Paul Ryan, no there's going to be a vote on this thing on Friday. Do it. And then Ryan explained to him if you do that, then it's going to lose. If we call it to a vote, there aren't enough Here's how government works. We kind of know who's voting for what over here in the house? Like we figured that out. You know, we, we whip up votes. We know who's going which way. And if something's going to lose, I'm not going to put it up for a vote because that's really bad. You don't publicity for me.

0:05:15 Thomas: That's if, if Paul Ryan backs something and puts it up and it loses when he's the speaker and he should have known how many votes it had. I mean, that's, that's just terrible. So he had to explain all that to Trump. And I think it was hilarious because then Trump was like, "Oh, okay, well, nevermind." But he did try to strong arm Republicans. He threatened to not repeal Obamacare at all if they didn't vote on this thing. Because, you know, he's the master negotiator, is Trump.

That's why he did all these things that had absolutely no effect and didn't help at all. But now there's a new version. There's a new version. And by now, I'm sure you've heard Trump's quote on it, which I can almost remember from memory because it's so stupid. It's easy to remember. He said something like, "The bill is getting better and better all the time. It's lots of people are liking it. It's getting better. It's good." That's essentially what it was, that's the quote, I didn't even have to look that up, look it up, it's, that's probably like 70% accurate, uh, just because it's nothing he just does, he very clearly has no idea what's in any of these bills, uh, but it's a new version and we should be very scared of it, and I'll tell you why we should be very scared of it, because previously, you may remember, the Freedom Caucus in the House was a big barrier.

Ryan and Trump couldn't win over the Freedom Caucus, and the Freedom Caucus is, of course, the nutcase caucus, the extreme Republican caucus, and they couldn't even win them over. Well, good slash bad news, I guess. Well, good news for Trump or whatever, maybe. This new version has won over the Freedom Caucus.

0:06:47 Thomas: Now that should scare the shit out of all of us. Because anything that's good enough for the Freedom Caucus to vote for, you can be sure is something that slashes, I don't know, government spending on any of us, that slashes government in general, that probably benefits wealthy people. I mean, they are in favor of no government, essentially. They just want to dismantle the government. They don't really vote for anything that doesn't in some way take down the government, and if you're into that sort of thing, cool. Cool. That's great for you. And sometimes this is not to say that reducing government spending is always wrong. It's not always wrong, but when it comes to healthcare, I think personally it is wrong. And especially given the details of the bill, which I'm going to go over.

0:07:34 Thomas: So, the important thing to remember is that, unless otherwise stated, all of this is just layered on top of the current form of the AHCA, which was garbage, so remember that this is all layered on top of Medicaid cuts, severe Medicaid cuts which, if you remember my explanation of the previous iteration of this bill, that was done to keep this bill revenue neutral so so that you only need 50 plus the tiebreaker vote to pass it. So that's the rules. We've said many times, I've mentioned it many times that it has to be revenue neutral. Otherwise, you need the 60 votes for now, unless they went nuclear on that. But I don't think the Republicans are going to. So for now you would need 60 votes on anything that's not budget neutral.

0:08:20 Thomas: So the important thing about the changes is that it's not to anything that you would have cared about. I mean, that you would have wanted or that I would have wanted. What it does is just loosens parts of Obamacare that people actually like. And this is what I want to talk about, because not only do I not like this bill, and should any liberal hate this bill, because again, it just layers some additional crap onto an already terrible plan, not only that, virtually nobody likes this. I'm going to link this, this, in the show notes. There's a ABC News poll. Let's keep this in mind. Maybe I'll go over this first. ABC News poll says only 30% of voters, of any voters, not Republican, 30% of all voters say Trump should repeal and replace Obamacare.

0:09:10 Thomas: Only 37%. Do you remember how big of a change that was prior to the election and even a couple years ago when, when Obamacare support was at its lowest? It's much better now. 61% of voters say that Trump ought to improve and keep and improve Obamacare. 61%. In the meantime, so I guess the question is, in the meantime before that, what should Trump do? And the answer is 79% of voters say try to make it work. And 13% say try to make it fail. So that's really dangerous politically, I think. And I don't know that Trump cares, because he's an idiot, and I think he's pretty oblivious to any of that.

0:09:56 Thomas: I would, gosh, I would just eat my hat if he could explain what's in any of this legislation. I mean, I really would. He has no idea. Absolutely no idea, in my opinion. So, and then another interesting thing about this poll, poll, this ABC News poll, 62% of people want, of voters want minimum coverage required in all states versus 33 who think they should, that we should leave it up to the states. And that's going to be important because that's a lot of what this new bill does. It moves a lot of stuff to state control. And coverage for pre-existing conditions, very popular thing, 70% of voters think that this should be required in all states and 26% think you should leave it up to the state.

0:10:43 Thomas: So those are the numbers. So what's amazing about this, and what's, I mean, it's good, ultimately, it is a bit of an insult because it is too little too late, but ultimately now, after seeing what Obamacare does, people like it. They realize, "Oh wait, wait, I have coverage," you know, or "I'm being helped with some coverage." Now, it's not perfect, but people like it. "Oh, I can get covered if I have a pre-existing condition." Well, any of us could have a pre-existing condition. I mean, it is not hard for a human being to have a Prerexisting condition. So that's a very popular part of it. So that is the numbers we are looking at. It has a lot of support currently, not too much has changed in this bill, and that's not good so, remember, because the stuff that was in the old one, just to briefly go over, I'm not gonna, not gonna cover, but just to highlight, because I already covered, look back on my old episode if you, if you want to get a more detailed version, version.

0:11:39 Thomas: And that would be episode 22 if you'd like to go check that out. But just to hit the very brief highlights, Medicaid cuts, as I said, and it changed the range of subsidies you could get just to $2,000 to $4,000, like that's the range of subsidies you can get. They were lower. If you're older, if you're high risk kind of person, if your health insurance, if you're in one of those brackets where it costs more, you could up to $4,000, which was a drastic reduction. If I'm remembering right, the previous cap was something like nine, 10, 11, 12,000 at most that you could get if you were elderly or otherwise a high risk pool. So it capped that there. And what I pointed out at the time was that this leaves the people who would suffer the most would be the elderly people whose health care costs a lot.

0:12:28 Thomas: They're going to get less coverage because it's capped at 4000 instead of a much higher amount. And $4,000 is just not going to get you much, you know, and it's really going to hurt people. The people who will be best, as I always say, I'm an exhibition of privilege. And the people who would be best are probably someone like me, although, you know, having a baby, so definitely health care costs for sure. But someone like my younger, who's, you know, my health care doesn't cost that much. You know, those are the people we're benefiting, which is sort of the theme of all of what Trump is doing now, because I'm going to get to his tax plan as well, which is just, you know, money for people who already have money and everybody else, eh, whatever. It helps. There's a little bit of help for lower income people, a tiny, there's a Little bit, but it's there.

0:13:17 Thomas: The bulk of the cuts, as you'll see, I'll talk about in a minute are for rich people. And so that's, that's the theme of what this healthcare plan and the tax cuts do. I mean, they pretty much just help people who don't really need need help. So where did this new plan change? Well, under essential health benefits. Now that's something I referenced in the ABC News poll that I read. So currently, the benefit rules are established. There's like a floor for how much, for what kind of insurance products people can sell, that insurance companies can sell. So there's benchmarks, there's rules for how how much patients can pay, can have to pay, can be required to pay. And that has increased the cost of insurance. That's when people are complaining like, oh, Obamacare premiums went up.

0:14:03 Thomas: This is part of it, but it's for a good reason. I mean, it's to make sure that people aren't getting sold terrible plans because that happens. I mean people will get sold health coverage plans and they find out, oh wait, this doesn't cover anything or I have a huge deductible or there's a cap, things like that. So currently under Obamaca, there's rules for that. That. They don't, you're not, they're not allowed to screw you. You know, that's what a lot of these rules are. They're rules to prevent insurance companies from screwing us. And under the Republican's plan, so this is the theme of this bill. The theme is that for all of these things, for all these good Obamacare provisions, states could get waivers to be exempted. So, and it's not going to be hard. It's, they just have to apply and they have to show, and actually there's... there's even talk that the burden of proof will be on the federal government to deny it, which is important.

0:14:54 Thomas: So it's going to be important where the burden is. Like the state doesn't have to have the burden on them to prove that this is a good thing. It could be on, the other way, which could make a difference. So it could be just basically an easy thing where you just, you file some paperwork and, and you're, you're the burden proof is on your side. So... something that's pretty popular. If you go by the poll numbers that I referenced earlier, and again, links are always in the show notes, and it hands the power to the states and it has hands the states, the ability to get out of it. Same goes with what are, what's called a community rating. And this is the part of Obamacare that prevents health insurers from changing, from charging higher prices to customers with preexisting health conditions.

0:15:40 Thomas: So, pre-existing conditions, again, that was the most popular part of Obamacare, and this once again allows states to say, I want to appeal this, I wanna petition to not have to do this, and then they don't have to do it. Now, minor detail. They can't refuse. I don't think they can refuse to cover them, but they can charge a lot more. That's what the key will be. So the insurance companies can say, you have a preexisting condition. I'm going to, we're going to charge you a ton for this. And then effectively, if you can't afford it, then you don't have coverage. So that's, that's undermining the guarantee of coverage for people with preexisting conditions. That is going to be politically costly, I think, because that's not popular with anybody. Buddy. Finally, there's one more thing, which is the age rating. So when I talked about the range of subsidies you can get, remember how I said it was something like nine, 10, 11,000.

0:16:33 Thomas: I don't have it in front of me, but it went up that high instead of just 4,000 well, that the reason it went up higher for elderly people in States where insurance costs a lot. The reason it went up so high is because there was rules. There's an age rating so that insurance companies can can only charge, they can still charge more, by the way, they can still charge up to three times more for high cost individuals.

This new plan, this new bill would change that to five times more. Keep in mind, that's five times more with the subsidies being lower. So I mean, that that's going to greatly increase the cost for elderly people for high cost people in states where coverage is expensive. Those are the people who are really going to suffer again, the people who need our help the most are the ones who are going to suffer the most under this bill. Do have to say full disclosure. This only gives states the ability to opt out of this. I mean, so theoretically, maybe no state would, maybe it would be so unpopular that that no state, would do it and then it would leave this part of it unchanged. However, even if that's true, by the way, even if that that's, true we're still left with a pile of crap that is the original AHCA, the American Healthcare Act. So that still has the Medicaid cuts.

It still has all the stuff I talked about that's crap. It's less money for high risk, you know, high cost individuals. It's still bad. But theoretically, it is true. I just want to, in full honesty, I want to be as fair as I can here. In full honesty. If no states opted out of any of these things, then this new bill is the same bill, like effectively, which is interesting.

0:18:12 Thomas: Thing. So there's a weird dynamic here where... 'Cause you might think to yourself, why is the Freedom Caucus now supporting this? And to be honest with you, I don't really know, other than the best guess that I've seen is they've been bearing a lot of the brunt of blame for no healthcare thing being passed. I mean, every single person, every single Republican congressman or woman who went home, you know, and had a bunch of complaints from their Republican constituents saying, why, why haven't you repealed Obamacare? They're kind of to blame because they didn't accept Trump's last bill. So I think, based on what I'm reading, that they're trying to shift the blame. So they've gotten some concessions with these states being able to opt out, and maybe that's a good selling point to them.

0:18:59 Thomas: Maybe states' rights, I guess, is something that appeals to their Freedom Caucus morals. I don't know. But it's enough for them to say, okay, we'll accept this, and then then that way the blame is going to be more on the moderate Republicans. They're going to shift the blame. So if this bill has Freedom Caucus support and doesn't pass, it's not their fault. It's moderate Republicans' fault. So that's what I'm seeing, and it kind of takes them off the hot seat a little bit. But it is true that it's mostly the same bill, so it's mostly the same bill except with the potential to be much, much, much worse depending on how many states opt out of this. So that's garbage, you should very much be worried. Now here's the good news, is I have found this website that somebody set up, that it's set up by the Center for American Progress, and it's really cool, it's, it's called TrumpCareToolkit.org.

0:19:53 Thomas: TrumpCareToolkit.org. Now, they're not a sponsor. I'm going to link it in the show notes. This is a place where there's these targeted representatives who, I guess, representatives they have identified as potentially in danger of losing their seat if things don't go well, you know, targets, people that they think would be, they'd be able to influence, and it gives you all the links to tweet at them.

It gives you links to call them, to post a message to their Facebook, and to let it be known that this plan is crap and there's going to be political consequences for them if they pass it. So TrumpCareToolkit.org, really cool. Take a look at it. And I think you can just click through, hit every one of these people, and it's important, it's working.

You know, that's what's been the only upside of this whole mess is that we're seeing Democrats rally, we're seen liberals fight for what they believe in, we're see them get activated, go to town halls, you know, all the stuff we should have been doing the whole time but you know we got lazy. Let's face it, we got crazy. We got lazy and there's consequences to getting lazy and conservatives didn't get lazy. They got less lazy than we did, and now it's time to realize that. It's a hard-learned lesson, but this is part of making up for it.

0:21:16 Thomas: The other major piece of legislation that we got to keep our eyes on here is Trump's Tax Reform. Now, I want to say this, tax reform in general, not a bad issue. I mean, that's kind of a neutral term, tax reform, you know, really, the details are what matter. There are certain tax reforms that are bipartisan, you You know, but both parties agree the tax code is really complicated. It's really hard. It's sloppy.

There's a whole industry of, you know, interpreting it correctly and paying your taxes and all that. I mean, so there's, there's tax reform that's, that could be good. It's all I'm trying to say here is in all fairness, the word tax reform does not necessarily mean bad. You know? Could have been good. It could have been a good bill. Could have Been something that I would support if it, if it were properly done. Now, when we look at the details, it's not exactly how it to is. Increase the deficit by $7 trillion, up to $7 trillion in, I think, the next 10 years.

This is the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, allegedly nonpartisan group that advocates fiscal restraint. So, we'll see what the CBO comes up with or well, we will see. I don't know if we'll that before the bills pass. But for now, because the CBO takes time, they can't do things instantly. There's a committee, as I said, for responsible federal budget that projects three to seven $7 trillion in increase in debt over a decade. So that's a lot of money. And here's the thing that pisses me off the most about this. This is under our theme of Republicans are simply more partisan and bigger hypocrites than Democrats.

0:22:59 Thomas: And I'm doing my best to make sure I'm not a hypocrite. I don't want you to be a hypocrite. I want to make we're being reasonable at all times. But Republicans are not doing us that favor. Because all of the sudden deficits don't matter. Remember how much Trump hit Obama on the debt? Oh, the debt's increasing, the national debt's increasing. And it was a misleading stat because Obama had reduced the deficit a ton. He was started, Bush handed him a gigantic budget deficit. He reduced that deficit. However, a deficit is still a deficit. So it was technically true, but very misleading to say the debt, which is different than deficit. So debt's obviously the total amount that we owe. Deficit is the difference in spending versus revenue in each year's budget.

0:23:47 Thomas: The total debt was increasing, of course, because we're still in a deficit, but Obama reduced that deficit. And now all of a sudden, and by the way, so that was already misleading. Trump was already hitting Obama on just a totally misleading thing. And now we come to find out, doesn't matter. Matter. Doesn't matter. Deficits don't matter, the debt doesn't matter or it were right back to trickle-down economics everybody. We're right back down to if you reduce taxes then magically there will be all this revenue. There will be always revenue will make up for three to seven trillion over a decade. Well that's you know people debate about this. I wouldn't be surprised if it increases some revenue if you reduced taxes. Sure revenue might go up. I don't think it's going up that much. From what I'm reading, I mean, I just don't believe that the economy is going to respond that quickly.

0:24:37 Thomas: And as somebody pointed out, actually, it's the same group, the Committee for Responsible Budget. It is said that in order for the economy to make up for this debt, in order to make it up, it has to make a lot of money. For the sort of trickle-down theory where you cut taxes for businesses and then they spend more money and then therefore the government gets more money. In order for that to work, the economy would need to grow at a rate of 4.5%. And that is more than double its projected rate. More than double it's projected rate, so odds are no. I mean, as I said, I mean, maybe it'll increase it somewhat. You know, it's not, it's as though in decreasing taxes does nothing. You know, it can increase revenue a little bit. It's going to increase tax revenue from business spending more a little, but I don't think it'll do it enough to make up for the fact that you're cutting a crapload of tax revenue.

0:25:28 Thomas: Now, here's the question. How does this get passed? Because remember the thing we always have to keep in mind, if you're going to pass something on a budget reconciliation, it can't increase the debt 10 years out. So they have a few options. They can do like Bush did, which is he just simply did some tax cuts in 2001 and they expired in 10 years. So that's how they got around the budget reconciliation. They still passed it under budget reconciliation now, mind you, you know, everybody hates Bush. I get it. But he did so. When he cut taxes, the budget was projected to be a huge surplus because, I mean, it was the dot-com boom. It was a different time. I mean we were really in a good time economically for a little while there. And that might be a time where, you know, maybe cutting taxes makes sense.

0:26:15 Thomas: Who knows? I don't know. It's a different type. Those tax cuts only lasted 10 years. So that's the option they have. They can make these only last for 10 years, which, by the way, I think will do all kinds of harm. We're not we're not in a position to make these tax cuts. I don't think economically it's a good time. And doing it for 10 years is a way that they can pass it.

And I think it'll still do incredible harm, even though it's not permanent, you know. So that's or again, what they can do is try to find some way for it to be revenue neutral. I don't see how they're doing that. I mean, three to seven trillion, that's a lot to make up.

Now, here's the good parts of this bill, because there are good parts, but my theory is that they put a couple tiny little benefits for poor people, for people not as well off, so what they did was they doubled the standard deduction, so that would mean that the first $24,000 of a couple's earnings, or I guess $12,000 if you're single, that's free, so I think that's a good thing.

0:27:14 Thomas: I honestly, personally, my, my view is find a revenue neutral way to make taxes be free for like the first, for a couple first, like 50,000, 60,000. I mean, that's still, that's not a lot for a couple, for two people working potentially or one person working one person raising the kids. You know what I mean? I think that would be a good, if you could find a, a revenue neutral way of doing that, which would mean, you know, increasing taxes on the wealthy by a little bit that I would, I would support that. That. So that in itself is good, right? Doubling the standard deduction. That's a good thing in my book. However, it is so overwhelmed by the just nonsense rich guy tax policy with two crucial things, guys.

0:27:59 Thomas: The estate tax, getting rid of the frigging estate tax. This is the stupidest issue, you, because the estate tax only applies to people who die, and couples, whose individuals whose estates is 5.5 million, or couples who's 11 million, it's it's only applies to people who die and have massive estates, very large estates, and it's not even that big of a tax on them so who who wants this, well, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, and like Paul Ryan and just a couple of people. Like this is, that is a non, it's a nonsensical thing to do. It is, there's, I don't know what you're thinking there. I mean, it is such a minor tax on such a wealthy group in this country.

0:28:46 Thomas: It's just bad policy to want to reverse that. And the alternative minimum tax, which also really benefits Trump, that would be repealed. So there would be no alternative minimum taxes. That would mean effectively Trump could pay zero taxes forever because he has all those losses. Currently, you have to pay an alternative minimum, so you can't deduct down to nothing forever, but that, that's another thing that, you know, it directly goes into Trump's pocket. That's, that's something that he needs to be hit on.

We need to pin that on him politically, because that is just a clear-cut case of someone doing something directly for their benefit and their other rich guy friends' benefits. Here's another disaster, and another thing that would absolutely just benefit Trump and his friends, that is a business tax. It would reduce, so the top reducing, there's also a high income earner one where it reduces the 39.6% top level tax to 35%, that's not huge, I mean, that's, I don't believe in it, but that's, it's not the worst in the world. What's really bad is there's a 15% business tax rate.

And so that could open a huge chance for people to just, if they're able to, if they have creative accounting or if they have business entities, if they're unable to do so, they can just funnel all their income through their business and then magically they receive a huge, huge tax cut. And it just doesn't make sense to me. And that's going to be abused so much. It's probably what's going to reduce a ton of the revenue in those projections. Oh, and also, it eliminates the 3.8% tax that applies to investment income over $250,000. 3.8% tax,

0:30:32 Thomas: Not much, that was used to help fund Obamacare, that's getting rid of that. So this is again, it's trickled down, it's cut taxes on the rich, it it tosses a tiny little morsel to to the poor, or well, to anybody, I guess. And the first $24,000 of anybody's income, any couple, or $12,000 individual, I mean, that, I mean, it toss is a little morse, and then it gets rid of a ton of taxes on the wealthy. Now, I've said often that I am fiscally more conservative minded, and in keeping with that, I want to stay true to what I've set in the past, which is I would support tax reform that, A, as I said before, maybe eliminated taxes on the first, like, $50,000 of income, because I just, what are we taxing people who make like $15,000 a year?

0:31:18 Thomas: Like, what do we do? Why are we taxing those people? I mean, we just shouldn't be. And up to 50,000 for a couple. I mean I think that would be reasonable if two people are making $25,000 a year, you know, I mean, that's poverty. I mean some places in California, you could not survive on that. It depends on the state, I suppose, but a lot of places, I mean, it's going to be right on the poverty line, $25,000 a year. Why would we want those people to pay taxes? They just shouldn't in my opinion. And if you found some budget neutral way, so you would have to maybe increase the tax on the top people a little bit, maybe increase, I don't know, investment income. That would be a place that you could at a capital gains, maybe make up for it. I'd support that. Also here's what else I would support. If we were slashing taxes on the wealthy, but we were saying, Hey, here's where we're going to cut the military.

0:32:06 Thomas: We're going to cut our military spending because we spend way too damn much on it. Or we're gonna, or, or some other service that's a little bloated. I don't know what it would be, that nothing beyond the military jumps out at me, because that, that's where I think we're spending so much that we don't need. Uh, but if there was some way that that they said, here, we're doing some responsible cuts to spending and it'll even out, so because we're cutting spending, we can reduce taxes a little bit. That's what I would have in mind. But that's a very modest thing. And that's not this. So those are the two major bits of legislation that we have to keep our eyes on this very day that you're listening to this and Friday as well. Keep an eye on what happens if they pass, because Trump wants an accomplishment for his first hundred days. I hope they don't. My prediction is, I, I would think that the, well, it's hard to say, because there should be still some Republicans, you would hope, who care about the deficit, who cared about debt, I-I would hope.

0:32:58 Thomas: But, maybe not, in the House, these might pass the House and die in the Senate, which, that wouldn't be the worst, but, it may be a, a way to, for Trump to say he has a victory and then, you know, hope people don't realize that both these bills died in the senate. It. But I don't know, I mean, it, this is something where some Republicans may worry about the deficit, but maybe they'll just abandon all their scruples, because a Republican is in the White House, so they don't care, and maybe they will even, in the Senate, this could pass the Senate if they, if they cap them at 10 years, if have them expire in 10 years. I mean that's a possibility, and I think that would be really, really bad for our country. I think it would be bad for out economy, I think would be, I I think it would be a mess. I mean, I should correct that. It might not be necessarily bad for our economy, but it'll be really bad for a deficit and really bad for the government.

0:33:45 Thomas: And more cuts to crucial programs would be incoming in order to make up for it. Or we just accumulate massive, massive amounts of debt, which eventually is really going to come back to haunt us. We're paying interest on this debt and it's just getting worse. So eventually it will come to haunt us. So that's what to keep an eye on. Again, go to TrumpCareToolkit.org. That's someplace where we can maybe affect change. Keep being vocal to anyone who has, to anyone who's out there going to town halls, calling their representatives. I mean, congratulations to you, really. I mean truly, you're doing what we all should be doing. You're being civically engaged. You're a great citizen. You're participating in the system. Really, a pat on the back to you.

0:34:31 Thomas: Seriously, I think that's great. Great. There's probably a bunch of you who've been always been doing this and you're wondering why we're all just catching up with you now. And that's awesome. I mean, seriously, hats off to you. So keep that up the good work. And with that, I've got a great voicemail segment where I've Got four really interesting comments to talk about questions to talk About. Thanks for those voicemails. As always, let's hear them now.

0:34:55 Thomas: It's time to check the voicemail. And of course, if you'd like to leave a message, that's 916-750-4SIO. That's 917504746. Let's check out this week's messages.

0:35:10 Voicemail: Hey Thomas, this is Adam, and I was just listening to your episode on why we ignore facts with Sara Gorman. And it's a really good, good episode. I was a minister for 22 years and just kind of getting out of all of that the last year. And anyway, I was listening to your show. And right before then, I had listened to an episode from the Cognitive Business guys about street epistemology and the idea of basically winning somebody over to your side and how you do that, with Anthony Magnabosco, and I thought perhaps what they were talking about and what you were talking about with Sarah could perhaps kind of meld into a good idea in two ways. One of them is, at the end, you were talking about this idea of trying to win Trump supporters or anti-vaxxers over to your side, and obviously that's difficult to do.

0:36:11 Voicemail: With street epistemology, one of the things that you do is you, uh, you basically just ask questions. You get them to to think about, what are their biases, what what, where do they get their information, why do they believe what they believe, and then, you know, basically Socratically asking those questions could perhaps plant something in their head, uh, as to, you know, maybe the fact that what they're, what they're getting from, you know, the information they're getting from their friends or from somebody that they trust to be a truth teller, who may not actually, or maybe from a new site that's not entirely accurate or maybe biased, that perhaps that changes their mind a little bit. And then the other thing that they talked about was the idea of basically not winning somebody over to your side completely, but perhaps just, as Christians like to say, planting a seed.

0:37:03 Voicemail: Or maybe, as Anthony Magnabosco said, you know, just a pebble in somebody's shoe that perhaps you don't completely entirely win somebody over to your side. But maybe it's just that first step. And then maybe something else that somebody else says maybe leads them towards, you Know, the light side versus the dark side, if you will. So anyway, love your show. I've been listening to all of the episodes trying to catch up. And thanks. Have a great day.

0:37:28 Thomas: Hey, Adam, thanks so much for the call. Yeah, I talked a little bit about stuff related to this. I specifically with Dr. Price did try to stick to more asking questions and prodding points where I could, not necessarily trying to debate everything or get too angry or upset. It seems to have had somewhat of a good effect.

0:37:51 Thomas: Like, people liked that I did that, I think because people were maybe shocked to just hear somebody describe why they support Trump. But I don't know if it made any difference in terms of changing Price's mind. I think that it depends on who you're talking to. I Think there could be a lot of people of a more marginal set of opinions that, you know, maybe aren't quite so far away that you could reach using that method. But one thing that I think is an interesting dynamic with Trump supporters that I've talked about before is, in my opinion, in order to support Trump, you have to believe such a web of lies, like so many, so much of your reality has to look different, that just by definition, mission, you're going to be more unreachable because we're trying to communicate from two totally different sets of realities.

0:38:45 Thomas: Whereas somebody like Nenar and I, like that debate, where we both, I mean, we both have our beliefs, certainly, and to this day, Nenar still believes what he believes and I still believe what I went in to believe. But I think that we could have convinced each other and I think, and I heard from people who were convinced either way. And And I think that's because that's a set of beliefs where they're not as rigid. It doesn't require like changing our whole background set of facts.

And that's the big thing with Trump supporters that in my opinion, like Trump is so awful and he tells so many lies so quickly that in order to keep up there, I think his supporters have to just have a whole different epistemology of facts and trying to do battle from two hugely different backgrounds. Is just very difficult to do, trying to crack that either way. And same would go for him trying to convince me, for example. I mean, we're just, we're coming from such a different web of beliefs. But I do think overall, that could be a good strategy.

One final point I'll make is a lot of my consideration during this whole period of kind of looking at talking to Trump supporters and potentially changing minds, one of my considerations has been, I don't know that that it's going to be a better tactic to try to change Trump supporters' minds or to simply try to motivate liberals. Because if you look at the people who voted for Trump, he didn't get that many voters. He really didn't get that many votes. He got enough to win. But he, by no means, he didn't even beat like McCain's vote total by all that much.

0:40:24 Thomas: And McCain got stomped by Obama in 2008. So I think it may be more a case of motivating liberals. And that's a sad state of affairs. I wish it were true that what actually needs to happen is both sides convince each other. I wish that were true. But because we don't have mandatory voting, which I kind of think we should have, because of that, the large pool of voters who stay at home are always going to look like the easiest, most attractive way to win votes to your side. Because after all, a lot of those people already support Democrats. They're already halfway there or maybe 80% of the way there. You just need to motivate them. And I almost wonder if putting on a show of hotly and emotionally debating a Trump supporter would better motivate liberals.

0:41:13 Thomas: I actually don't know. It's a totally open question, but it would not be that surprising to me if that were true. So that's an interesting thing I've had to think a lot about. Overall, if I had to talk to Price again, which I would certainly do, maybe I would want to get a different Trump supporter just for diversity's sake. But if I did, for safety's purposes, I would probably approach it a very similar way. I probably wouldn't want to go too crazy. I think I want to try to ask questions and poke holes where I can. I like that approach because overall, the odds of changing someone's mind are still, they're grim, but that prospect is attractive to me in a certain way. It seems to be a good ideal to shoot for, even if it's impossible. So that's my thoughts on that. Thank you so much for the call.

0:42:12 Voicemail: Hi, Thomas. This is Mike from Pittsburgh calling to talk about the Syria strike. I started out kind of where you do, where I think something needs to be done to combat this genuine humanitarian crisis, and I like that it's a proportional strike, but ultimately I'm against it because I don't think there's a lot of thought behind the response. Normally proportional responses should lead to diplomacy that allow a ratcheting down of tension, but I haven't seen any indication that that is the intention of Trump's administration. And on the off chance that this sort of strike did lead to war, it would have been great if we had coordinated with our our allies a little more, so at least we had a paper trail of support from them, and we might not have to go in on our own. I also think that maybe it would be a more effective strategy to actually get information about where these chemical weapons are being held and target those facilities instead of the delivery facilities, even though this information would take longer to get.

0:43:08 Voicemail: I really enjoy your show and your commentary. Thanks.

0:43:10 Thomas: Hey, Mike, thanks so much for the call. Yeah, ultimately, I don't think I agree with what you're saying there. So to try to take your points, I think, in reverse order. So something like destroying the sites of the chemical weapons facility versus the delivery system, that just seems to me to be virtually impossible to do. I mean, imagine trying to find a specific, possibly underground facility where they're making chemical weapons, that's going to be way more difficult to find than to find the delivery system, which is aircraft and, you know, an airfield and something where it can't be hidden underground, it can't be, like, moved all the time very easily. So, I mean that seems to me is pretty impractical.

0:43:54 Thomas: And if it were easy, I really think Obama would have done that back in 2013. And we would have been able to, and not even saying easy, like if it were not, not easy, but also, as you said, like hard, but doable. I don't think it is doable. I think that it's too easy to hide something like that. And as evidence of what I'm saying, he did hide it because all the chemical weapons were supposedly destroyed in the deal that Obama reached with the help of Russia was on the table, and it was sort of done through with the idea that Russia, being a known Syria ally, was going to ensure, to broker the deal and kind of ensure that they followed it. And they destroyed tons and tons and tons of chemical weapons, but not all of them.

0:44:43 Thomas: If it were easy to have just discovered and known where these remaining chemical weapons would have been, we never would have signed off on the deal knowing they existed, and we never would've accepted that they were all destroyed. So, I just think the general problem with your critiques of the strike, in my opinion, with all due respect, is that I just don't see an an alternative that makes too much sense. I mean, we did have allies, by the way. And also, when we're just doing a strike as a deterrent to say, don't use chemical weapons anymore, we have the firepower. We don't really need allies to do that. And then the problem with waiting for the international community, as I highlighted last time, was that Russia has veto powers in the UN. So, there's nothing, nothing's ever going to happen.

0:45:30 Thomas: Like, if you're waiting for rest of the world to do this for us, it's either going to be another country kind of acting on their own or something. It's not going to beat the UN because Russia will just veto it, like any actual action. So I don't, I mean, I just don't necessarily mind doing this strike, which for the most part just took out some aircraft and sent a message, more an economic message almost of like, we destroyed millions of dollars of your equipment using probably, by the way, more money in weapons, but who cares? Cause we're a prosperous country. Like that's, that's essentially what the message was. And I don't necessarily mind it. Now, again, there's, there, there're all kinds of caveats I put on that. And one of them is that we just need to be doing more for Syria in general.

0:46:16 Thomas: Like I do think we should be accepting refugees. I do you think we be sending money, help sending, uh, humanitarian help, all that kind of stuff. Um, and, and in general pursuing diplomacy to end, and it, of course, like all that stuff is included in that, but just the strike itself, I don't think was a bad idea. One more thing to look at, I guess, before I close these thoughts is just, I wonder if you would be thinking the same thing if a liberal, if Hillary or Obama or somebody, I know I'm assuming you're a liberal Mike and maybe that's wrong, I donno, but if somebody on your political side had done it, I dont know that you would nitpicking these particular points. Because Obama did propose that, like, strikes just like this and bigger strikes.

0:47:05 Thomas: And it was, it didn't get congressional approval, because, again, I talked about already, but Republicans are huge hypocrites, and they didn't support it because Obama wanted it. And then once the exact same facts happened, pretty much, but Trump wanted it, it was like, oh, this is great. Went from like 30% to 80 something percent approval with Republicans. So, I mean, that's one thing to think about. I mean, would you be saying these same things if it was Obama? I don't know. Something to ask yourself. Maybe you would. I don't know. But that's how I think of it, and I honestly, in my best evaluation of myself, honestly, I think that that's what's led me to think that this is a pretty reasonable course of action, and there's a lot of complaints, but but they're kind of nitpicking, and I don't think they're that huge of complaints.

0:48:02 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas, this is Anthony from Minnesota. I have two related questions. So, given that we think Russia is colluding with Syria, do you think that the Russians might have told Syria about the attack, giving Syria some time to move some equipment and or personnel? And secondly, again, given that we think Russia is colluding with Syria, why wouldn't it be better to not tell the Russians and then send them, uh, the same message, so, you know, not tell Russia's that we're going to bomb, if we are saying that these actions have consequences, and they are at the base that launched these chemical attacks, then wouldn't that be evidence that they were involved in the attacks and therefore should face the same consequences, lenses. Thank you for your opinion. Bye.

0:48:50 Thomas: Hey, Anthony. So I just want to correct you a little bit. It's not like we're assuming or we know from intelligence that Russia backs Syria. Russia just openly backs Assad. I mean, there's no secret about it. They're just an Assad ally. They support the regime. They have inflicted military action in favor of the regime, so they openly support support them. As far as warning Russia, yes, we did warn Russia. And yeah, I think it would be reasonable to assume that Russia passed it along to Syria. And I even think with Russians sharing the same base, like sharing the same literal space as Syrians, the Syrian army, it would be tough to imagine Russians evacuating a base and not telling Syrians why, or Syrians not knowing something was up.

0:49:39 Thomas: I mean, who knows? I don't know the exact specifics of how everything is set up, But to me, it would be reasonable to assume that they knew that. But I think this was all part of the calculation for the American military. Again, visualize this. Basically, here's how I think of this. And I think personally, I think THIS is how it's going. Because Trump is pretty hands-off. He's been... And it's not a secret. This is not a conspiracy theory. Trump is hands-offs when it comes to the military. His policy has been, I'm going to let the generals do whatever. I think he approved the strike. Because this is a pretty aggressive big action. It's something he did approve, unlike some of the other action taken against ISIS. I don't think he approved, for example, the mother of all bombs. I don't know if he knew much about that. I think that he's just letting the generals do what they want, which is what he stated that he wants to do.

0:50:28 Thomas: But for this, yeah, he approved it, but I doubt he had that much hand in it. So imagine, try not to think of it as Trump is doing this, you know, Like that's why I don't think there's too much to say about any sort of Putin collusion in this or any, I mean, maybe it could have been part of the calculus, but I honestly don't Think it was that big of a part of it. I think that our military establishment that's been there this whole time and the advisors, McMaster, Mattis, I think they had these options already formulated from the Obama era. It could have, it could Have been literally like a plan that still existed from then. And when the chemical weapons attack happened, they just said, here's some options. And Trump probably said, yeah, okay, let's do that. I think it was part of the plan to warn the Russians, because again, picture what would have happened if he hadn't.

0:51:17 Thomas: So let's say the headline comes up, Trump strikes at Syria, 10 Russians dead, you know, in a strike. Wouldn't right now every liberal be saying, oh my God, Trump is an idiot starting World War III. He just did a strike on maybe the second biggest power in the world, you know, nuclear power, a rival, somebody that certainly could threaten the US or at least threaten mass casualties in the, you know, wouldn't we be saying all that? Wouldn't we Be saying like, what a foolish warmonger who allowed a strike that killed Russians? Like, why inflame Putin? Why inflame Russia? You know, I really think that's what we would have been saying. I don't think it was a better alternative to kill Russians. I think likely the calculus was we're going to give Russia some heads up and they're probably going to tell Syria, but not so much.

0:52:11 Thomas: I mean, 90 minutes, not so Much to move out all of their equipment. And there's no way they're going To be able to clear an entire airfield. So that was probably the calculation they made. And who knows, maybe they could have given them less time, maybe 40 minutes, maybe whatever. Whatever, who knows? I, I, you know, you would need specific military intelligence to, to make that call. But I think that's what they were thinking. They, they probably did a calculation of this isn't quite enough time to completely rid the airfield of all targets. It'll be enough to get people, Russians and maybe, and maybe some Syrians to safety so that there's not too many casualties, but this will, it's more of an equipment attack. Like they just wanted to take out a lot of expensive equipment, a lot of aircraft, and send, like I said a minute ago, sort of an economic message.

0:52:58 Thomas: And at least send the message that, hey, this has consequences. And I don't think it was that bad of an idea. But also, so for Anthony's question here, I mean, yes, I think it's not suspected that they're colluding with Assad. Russia openly supports Assad, so that's no secret. I mean, I just think that was part of the calculation.

0:53:18 Voicemail: Hey Thomas, how's it going? My name's John, big fan of the show. As this budget deadline is coming up and the wall is going to be an issue, one thing about the wall that I haven't heard too many people talk about in regards to its practicality, other than it not being effective and what its goal is, a big piece of infrastructure like that is going need constant funding throughout. As long as the wall isn't up, it's going to need siphoning money. You can't just build it, pay for it, build it and just leave it. You know, that thing is going to cost a lot of money to upkeep, you know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the road. And I mean, what's the reality? And this is what I hear talking about. What's the realty when the balance of power shifts in the government and the Democrats are kind of in control of things or in control more than they are now, that any type of funding to up keep the wall would ever get passed?

0:54:19 Voicemail: I see it, if it is, if the, if it does get built, it's, you know, getting built under the Trump term and there's just kind of rotting away for the next 50 years until it has to be torn down. So I just thought that was very interesting. No one's really talking about the wall and the money it's going to take to keep it functional, quote unquote, for years and years down the road. All right, thanks.

0:54:38 Thomas: Hey, John, thanks for the call. Yeah, great point. I'm looking up some stuff here, some numbers to give us an idea. There is an estimate that suggests it could cost as much as $750 million a year to maintain the wall. That's a huge cost. You know, this whole wall thing is, it's really pathetic and it's really sad. You know? I think that even at times maybe I haven't appreciated how pathetic and sad this is.

0:55:06 Thomas: The idea that we're cutting science, we're cuttin' art, we're cuttin', gosh, health care, we're cuttin'... We're cutting so many things that makes, that make life worthwhile, while that make a country great, truly. And then as many people have noted, but I'm going to repeat as corny as it sounds, we're cutting all that to build a wall when really those are the things that make you need a wall. Like those are things that make people even want to come to your country. And we're cuttign them in favor of a wall that, by the way, if it were 100% going to work and stop all illegal immigration, it would be something to consider as an option. It'd be like, okay, okay, is it worth doing this? Probably still no, because it costs a lot of money. It's just illegal immigration isn't that big of a problem.

0:55:52 Thomas: But it's not even as though that's the case. This wouldn't stop illegal immigration. It is terribly impractical. Most illegal immigrants are here other ways. They don't just wander over. I mean, some do, but that's not the majority of it. And it's just not feasible. I mean, so many studies have shown, as they built a part of a wall under Bush, they built part of the wall and they said, boy, this was really a stupid idea. Like, what we really need is other methods of keeping track of this, like other sources of enforcement. I mean, I've toyed with the idea of doing a bunch of research and looking into all the ways the wall is a stupid idea. Maybe I will. I mean, that would be a good, maybe like a good internet video too, to make of just all the reasons why this wall is a bad idea, and then highlight all the other things we could be spending this money on.

0:56:44 Thomas: But one thing I saw that came up was there's a portion of the wall that makes sense. And they said the wall works in populated areas. So in heavily populated areas, the wall makes sense, like that's the reason why the wall around Israel works. And that's why the Berlin Wall works, because it's densely populated areas that you can patrol and the wall slows people down and you can respond and catch them. So when they try to hop the wall, you're on it, you can catch them, it's not going to happen. But most of this area, the border where the wall would go, where the rest of this wall would Go, most of it is just desert. Like it's just, there's nobody there. So what they're saying is when somebody is already already taking days and days to travel over remote mountains and deserts and stuff.

0:57:35 Thomas: A wall that slows them down by a few minutes doesn't do anything. That just doesn't change. I have a quote here. There's a reason people don't build fences in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't change the enforcement profile in the Middle of Nowhere. The migration expert said, the existing fence has worked because of where it is near populated areas. Both Democrats and Republicans have testified that they have the fencing they need. So that I can link this article is on cnbc.com. Feel free to look it over. It's got a good, it's where I got the $750 million estimate, as well as a lot of facts about why the wall is impractical. And it's really depressing because we need that funding elsewhere. Same goes for Trump staying at Mar-a-Lago all the time and costing taxpayers millions and millions of dollars.

0:58:21 Thomas: It''s money that certainly could be better spent. If we had all the money in the world and we weren't cutting things like science, healthcare, art, PBS, we had all the Money in the World and we were cutting all these things, maybe it'd be a different story. I don't know. But when we've just been told by Trump's budget experts that we need to cut all this stuff that we can't, you know, Americans can't afford, a wall and Trump living at Mar-a-Lago are not high priorities for me at all. And a wall, I mean, the Mar-a-Lago thing is an amount of money. It certainly is a significant amount of money. It's not insignificant, but it's not wall money. Wall money is even more. I mean, billions and billions instead of mere millions. So the wall is a huge waste of resources.

0:59:07 Thomas: Really depressing. And you're right, the upkeep would be terribly expensive too. Now, I think that it would probably become a political thing where eventually, if we let it start to crumble, Republicans would be able to say, look, look at the Democrats allowing this. They could use like the sunk cost fallacy to good effect because the sunk costs fallacy works on people. They can say, look, we spent all this money on this wall and Democrats are allowing it to crumble. So we need to fix it. I could see that sort of thing maybe happening. But yeah, it's definitely a concern. So thank you so much for the call. I do want to say once again to everybody, these calls are great. I had some good good ones, but you're going to need to keep it a little short. I had several that were good, but they maxed out the three minutes and then carried over into the next call.

0:59:55 Thomas: You got to keep it about a minute, maybe two at most. Maybe jot down some notes or just be ready to give some concise thoughts. Don't try to cover everything because it's just not going to work to have a long, rambly message that bleeds over into a second call. And hey, some people have to take a couple tries at it, I don't mind that at all. If you mess up, if you get caught off, feel free to just call again and try again. That's not a big deal. But overall, thank you guys so much for the voicemails. It's my favorite part of the show, to interact with your opinions and try my best to answer your questions. So thanks.

1:00:37 Thomas: And that's it for the show today. I want to thank my listeners so much. I wanna thank callers especially, and most especially, patrons. New patrons this week include Jim Kitchen, thank you Tracy McFadin, Vincent Iula, Jenica Crail, and Danilo Tepsa. Hopefully I pronounced those right. Thank you guys so much for being my new patrons over at patreon.com/seriouspod. Very important, makes the show happen. The show will go away as soon as people decide it's not worth supporting anymore.

So thank you for doing so and most especially thank you to my all-time patrons, my Hall of Famers, the best. And they are, Travis Peterson, Matt Garrett, Dale, Brian Garefort, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Adrian Borschoff, Roger Metcalf, Matthew Maxson, Andrew Waddington, Zabby, Matthew Statton, John Bodley Esquire, Ian Ryan, Matthew Vernon, Ray Loves Jenny, Ian Rosano, Jonathan Moyet, Sakashite Fukasumi, Michael Rops, Michael Schaefer, and that's of Reason Real Estate. A little plug there. You're, of course, totally free to make a plug out of your Patreon name. That's no problem. You've earned it. So, yeah, thanks, Michael Schaefer, Reason Real Estate. Check that out. Hunter Ash, and Kayleigh Riser, thank you so much for being my top patrons, making the show happen. Hey, and definitely thank you to everyone I met at ReasonCon. That was a ton of fun.

As I mentioned earlier, I just was so cool to meet people. Any time I get to actually put faces to names and, more importantly, put names or faces where really in my mind I just talk into a microphone and nothing happens, so that's that's what it feels like, but to actually

1:02:22 Thomas: Meet people who listen, it's really cool, and it never be, people are like, you know, worried to come and talk to me, and never worry about that, I don't, I never get tired of talking to you guys, it's really cool, it's the least I can do, especially for people, you know, who've listened and supported me for so long. You're entitled to come say hi if you want. I have no hard feelings about that whatsoever. So thank you to everyone who has. And hopefully there will be another one of those in my future. We'll see. Next thing on the horizon for me is the 100th episode special for the Inciting Incident podcast. It's going to be a live show, Riz McCool, of course, who does that show. There's going be some really cool people there. There is going to the scathing crew, there is going be Callie Wright, Ari Stillman, Andrew is going there.

1:03:12 Thomas: Oh man, lots of people. Oh, the headliner being Chris Cluey. So that's going to be July 14th, coming up pretty soon. And I'll put a link in the show notes for tickets. I hope you'll come out and say hi. And that should be a lot of fun. So that is the next little one of these that I have planned. And it's always fun to actually meet people. So come on out and do it. It seems like it's going be a really good time. All that said, thank you for listening again and I will see you next week.