UBI Will NOT Lead to More Innovation - Mike Baker and Joe Rogan

That was, it was, again, anybody get a chance to go see a show, because this one was... Or just go see my Netflix special. Yeah, I go, yeah. You can see that thing that I did. Now you have to pay more for Netflix now. Yeah, what is it, like 10 bucks? Yeah, 17% more I think they're gonna charge. Really? Yeah. They can. They're good. They have so much good shit though. Like if you wanna just waste your life and sit in front of the TV, it's crazy. Like when we were kids... Maybe that's your passion. So you get that universal basic income. And my following my passion means I gotta sit and watch every episode of Andy Griffith. Just fart under the sheets. There's a lot of people doing that right now. I don't know if that's bad. I mean, yes it is, but then doesn't that open the door for the people that aren't gonna be like that? Like, look, less people out there really actually trying to get ahead. I think the people that are gonna try to succeed are always gonna try to succeed. I think that's true. So I think that's, maybe that's an argument against it also, which is that like, I don't think it's gonna unlock a whole treasure trove of innovators, right? If suddenly you give people money and say, okay, you don't have to go pour coffee or flip burgers or clean up that road or whatever you're gonna do for a living, you can follow your passion. I don't think we're gonna find some exponential increase in the number of people inventing the wheel. I just think that it's just gonna be a lot more people farting under the blankets or something. I don't know. The only good that I think could come out of it is less people are in abject poverty and less people are desperate, so it might reduce crime. You might have lazy people, but you might also have less people that are inclined to steal things or do something that's illegal because their basic needs are taken care of. Yeah, that's a valid point. I read something that's stunned me. I was on the plane flying to LA and I read an article about this strike, right? The teacher strike. The teacher strike. Sorry, the teacher strike. Here in Los Angeles. Big strike, Los Angeles Unified School Authority or whatever it's called. And it was just before they went on strike, but it talked about the problems that the school district has. And I don't know whether this statistic is right. I read it numerous times because I was so surprised by it. The percent of the families that use the Los Angeles public school system are at the poverty level or below. And that means, of course, also that they rely on the free meal assistance that the schools provide, which is kind of what the point of the story was. The schools are closed right now and so kids aren't getting a chance to eat because that's their only chance to get to eat. But that number was stunning. That's crazy. So I meant to look into it and do more research to see whether the article was actually correct or not, but hey, it was in the newspaper, so it must be true, right? I don't know about that. Anyway, yeah. That's a disturbing number. It's a very disturbing number, but it also talked about how 12%, I think 12% of all kids that go to high school here in Los Angeles then go on to college, 12%. And it was a similar number that never get out of high school. It's even worse in a place like New York City, public schools. So I guess the point being is the public school system is... It's dog shit. Yeah. And in the larger urban centers, it's got some real problems. And I think a lot of those people that are... The really sad thing is a lot of those people that are at the poverty line or below work hard. It's not a lack of motivation. It's they just don't have opportunities. They don't know what to do. They're not doing it the right way. They don't have guidance. They never learned correctly when they were young. Single parent. They've worked two or three jobs. And no, but look, California's got all sorts of interesting issues. I mean, there's... I'm talking to some folks and they said a quarter of the nation's homeless people live here in California. 25% of the nation's homeless people live in California. Smart place to live. Yeah. It's raining the last few days, but most of the time... It's beautiful weather. Hey, you can't complain about the weather anyway, but it is crazy. And it also talked about how a lot of those people, they work, but they're homeless, right? At the cost of housing. And so you've got people that have a job, but they're living in their cars, right? Because they can't afford housing, whether it's in San Francisco or San Francisco. San Francisco's insanity. That place is insanity. So your point about the basic universal income, I take that point. I see what that... If it was possible to pay for it and again, kind of do this thing where you're monitoring this issue of motivation, so you're not creating another follow on generation of just complete slack asses, then I think that's a really valid point. My concern would be people that didn't appreciate it and people that felt entitled. They felt like someone owed them that money. And you're gonna have that. I mean, this is the biggest problem that people have with socialism and socialist attitudes that some of these kids that are coming up right now, they look at what they call income inequality. What they don't look at is effort inequality. Like some people put in more fucking work. And are smarter. They've figured their way through the game better than you have. And they've been doing it for 50 years or whatever they've been doing. I couldn't agree with it more in the sense that I'd never begrudge anybody. I never got pissed off with a rich person because they were rich. I'm thinking, hey, that's good. I'd like to be rich. So I might want to talk and find out, hey, how'd you do it? How'd you do it? Is the system sometimes set up so that once you have some money, you can get more money? Well, of course the fuck it is. If I have some money, I can invest that money and make more money if I'm smart about it. If you do it right. Yeah, if you do it right. But absolutely, I don't begrudge the idea. So that's part of it is also, I'm fairly steeped in the idea that we're living in a very unique country. And I do worry sometimes that people don't, even family, and I've got some friends and others who are just constantly pissing and moaning about this place. And I'm thinking, I spent almost all my life over in shitholes around the world. And there is no other place I would rather be as a country. And I know that's jingoistic or whatever, but honest to God, I still believe, and if you go someplace and you talk to somebody in some fifth world, they will also, my experience has been anyway. Maybe you're listening and your experience is different, but that's the way it works, is that they'll think, if I go to America, if I can get to America and I work hard, I can be successful. And that I think is still true. And that's what I worry about with entitlements and things that may kill that belief. And you're right, income and inequality. But you're right, you work harder. Now, it doesn't always happen, but life's not supposed to be fair. Well, maybe it's supposed to be fair, but it's not fair. So life is just supposed to be life. Life's definitely not fair. Yeah. Yeah. I completely see your point, and I agree with it. I think that the real concern is that people don't appreciate already how great they have and what incredible opportunity they have. And if we give them more benefits with less effort, then you're going to develop more of this attitude that we find disturbing, which is people that don't have an appreciation. For literally the greatest experiment in self-government the world has ever known. Yeah. But I think also that there's parts of it that need to be looked at. There's an interesting study about college and graduation rates from college for disadvantaged folks. And that was, again, why they made it easier for tuition assistance. So the idea was we want to expand the college ability for everybody, which is a great idea. But what they found was they expanded the college opportunity for everybody. But over the past decade, decade and a half, fewer people from the lower income categories have been graduating. So what you've done is you said, come on in. It's like special operators. If you lower the bar, and this is where I'm going to get in trouble probably. I'll talk about the Marines and allowing women into combat elements. I know, oh my God. Well, what do they do? You lower the bar. You make it, okay, well, not enough of them could get through the course. So I'm going to change the regulations. And so if you change the regulations, what they found with the college was if you increase that pool of people going, it doesn't mean that they're going to be successful. And now what you've done is you've kind of saddled them with some college debt, and they didn't graduate. So they're still earning what a high school graduate earns, and the system doesn't work. And so I think sometimes just the idea of throwing money at the problem, it's not helpful if we don't think it through and then assess the results. But yeah, that whole Marine experiment. I think they're catching it late in the chain. And I think it's good to give people the opportunity to succeed and to advance themselves. But if you really want to address it as a systemic problem, you got to get to the root of it, which is these unbelievably horrible neighborhoods and these toxic environments these kids are growing up and being abused and being scared and bullied and terrible piss poor education, first through all the way up to high school. That's really where you have to address it. Addressing it just at the college level and giving them the opportunity to get into college and making it easier for them, it doesn't negate the terrible foundation that's been laid by their life. Right. Yeah. And I think we had this idea that college should be for everybody. And that's okay. That's great. And I think that's where the people like Cortez and Bernie Sanders and others with their idea of free tuition, they're thinking, okay, well, look at Europe. Some countries in Europe have free tuition and hey, it's relatively prosperous and there's nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, I think we don't assess the cost and the overall efficiency of an idea sometimes. And so we just assume and open it up, let everybody go and somehow this is going to work to our advantage. And the honest-got answer is no. I think somebody is better off sometimes going to becoming a plumber. Yeah. It's an honorable living. It's a great living. Great trades. It's a great living. One of the happiest guys I know is my plumber in Boise. That guy is... I mean, he's got it knocked, right? He's always out for hunting season. And he'll call... I'll say, look, I got a leak, right? My ceiling's about to cave in. He goes, well, I'm going hunting. Sorry. He's just got his own schedule.