Vance’s Stay-at-Home Parent Plan: Does It Solve America’s Family Crisis? 9|08|26

0:00politics without the soap opera with unfiltered constitutional conservative truth. The conservative review with Daniel Burns. And welcome back fellow American patriots and Minimum standing at the ready to fight a new for the issues that matter in the way and time they matter here on this Tuesday, September 8th, a late start to a busy, busy week. We got the kickoff of post labor day congressional recessioning, although they're not really going back into session because the House is leaving early. We got the GOP gay convention. We got the 25th anniversary of 9-11. But I want to focus today on this debate that broke out over labor day weekend over JD Vance announcing on behalf of the administration this plan for giving potentially $9,000 a year

1:00and family child care funds to married couples with stay at home mothers while other parent works. And this debate between sort of populist subsidizing your way into social conservatism and the rebirth of the American family versus more laissez-faire which is really a proxy debate for JD and Rubio, even though Rubio also even long before JD supported this sort of stuff. When of course I'm always going to take the third side of it, which is that nobody is looking holistically at what is responsible for our affordability crisis that then makes it particularly taxing to raise families. And then also what is the culprit for the lack of family formation really which is a cultural

2:01problem and that everyone, both the JD and Rubio side, both the based new right and the old right are really all part of the same problem that when it boils down to it all they care about is perpetuating what we talked about on Friday, this hamster on the spinning wheel of GOP politics, the only place where they bifurcate is every four years which top of the line guy they support but then after the primary, the all unite and then don't do anything and play the same game. So I'm always going to take a different view because as much as they're fighting with each other, they unify behind the proposition of the AGOP without doing anything different, one of which we spoke about Friday, which is where you actually have a third party candidate that's really a conservative that's viable in a state like Wyoming and is not going to split the vote.

3:01Just one of many examples of out of the box thinking that I give you that you're not going to hear elsewhere. The broad dynamics, the broad theme today is that the problem with birth rates and family life, family structure and formation is fundamentally a cultural problem. It's not a fiscal problem. The problem that we have fiscally in this country is driven by debt driven inflation and venture socialist monopolies created by the government with its tendentious policies, its regulatory capture, but also with the debt and low interest rates, easy money policies. Now fiscal policy does spill over into making family life unaffordable. There's no question about that. But the solution is fixing the cultural problems with culture and the fiscal problems with

4:02fiscal not throwing more debt driven inflation at the culture, which paradoxically will increase the inflation and the cost of living. And also it requires those who claim to support pro-family policies to recognize how we got here to begin with and how Trump is culpable more than anyone else with his debt driven policies beginning with COVID, obviously exacerbated by Biden, but then exacerbated now under Trump too, that everything he has done has been about the special interest has not been about the family, how he has squandered his budget reconciliation bills and both terms on policies that did not help this. So to come along and just throw one thing, oh, let's pay people to stay at home with their kids. I'm not opposed to it in a vacuum when done as part of a broader economic rebalancing that

5:07addresses the cause of the fiscal and cultural problems, obviously cultural is a lot harder to address in legislation. But I want to perpetuate the system and in fact support the broader things that have caused the unaffordability crisis and say, oh, here's some more money. Again, that's just more aristopopulism where you join with the aristocratic monopolies that created the problem and then come up with 1990s Democrat solutions. Oh, we care about families struggling. Here's some more subsidies, here's some more tax credits and things like that where again, all it's going to do is just create a new front. If you have a plan in front of me that's going to legitimately roll back the entitlements, roll back welfare, fundamentally reform our entire approach to health care and then say, hey, we're going to rebalance certain things to families that specifically stay at home

6:11where the mother stays at home. I'm all for that. I am not categorically against using government to steer certain policies, particularly decades into government doing it for other purposes and being a realist and a pragmatist in terms of where things politically stand and what is the best avenue to drive certain outcomes. But if you look at this proposal from JD and you look at the broader politics of what they have done until now and you look at the people cheering it on and the sorts of policies they cheer on. But then the times where they're dead silent when Trump and JD are against communities and families like with data centers, then I have no sympathy for it. So while overall it will look like opposed to sort of the old guard Republican rubio people, I'm just for lack of better term pollinate that on data centers and it looks like

7:13we're opposed to JD on this $9,000 entitlement program they want to create. They say they're rebalancing it but really will create a new one it has to. In reality, I'm against both of them and I am for what I've always been. And I think the fundamental problem we have on the one hand, I'm actually in a good mood. I'm happy that we're actually debating policy for once. What is it we believe? What is it should drive dealing with a critical issue of our time, which is what is very tough about family formulation as well as affording what one income, a one income family, which is I think should be our goal actually, that should be our message raising a family in a single income. But you got to get to the source of those problems and deal with the fundamental solutions, not with these little one-offs that when not done with anything else, we'll honestly

8:19just add to the debt. And adding to the debt is not some fiscal wonky thing. That is what will just drive more inflation and harm families more. But the problem with too many people in this industry is that they're nothing but cloud chasers. A lot of the people that support JD in this base sort of, yeah, I'm sick of the old fiscal conservatives of the past. The problem with them is a lot of them, I remember, they were actually part of this when I was always, I hate the term, but just to use it a little bit more populist than they were to begin with. So I never found the need to over-correct. And basically just go all the way in direction of progressive populism. I was always like that to begin with. And I'm never cloud chasing the latest popular flavor online. My position is that my understanding of what conservatism is was and always was never

9:26got a true at bat at the plate was never really the incumbent power elements of it started under Reagan. But we went backwards rather than forwards with the bushes and everything. So we never got a real at bat. So I don't have this need to say, oh conservatism failed. Let me adopt something else. No. I don't need to. My contention has always been. What has failed is our dogmatic strategy of Republican politics of focusing on nothing but top line, presidential nominees or Republican leaders rather than building a movement based on issues bottom up, particularly in the red states. So because we've failed on strategy and because both sides of this debate actually, both the Rubio and JD proxy primary size want to dogmaticly double down on GOP politics.

10:27So everyone is looking to adopt what I believe are foreign policies to fit into this failed structure. Whereas to me, I know exactly what conservatism is. How to apply it nowadays because the application does change in the margins, what you need to do. But in order to get there, the problem is we have to change our political strategy and focus. And that's what people don't want to do. So we're going to unpack all of this as much as we can. If we have time, we'll get to Trump's range, uh, range or policy press conference that he had on Friday, uh, what's good, what's, what's bad. First, our sponsor today is trees.com. Those of you who remember them as fast growing trees.com. It's the same company, the same healthy, uh, top quality, uh, online nursery with over two million happy customers over six thousand trees, fruit and flowering trees, shrubs,

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12:32Okay. So conservative at trees.com means you get 20% off. We don't know what conservatism means now. Everything is a false choice and, um, let, let, let me just give the general proposition of what you're going to see breaking out between these two camps, those of you follow some of these online debates and, you know, versus what, what it should be. So on the one hand, you have a lot of people and again, it's not exactly Marco because Marco and JD, honestly, they don't really differ on much, but it's just their supporters. You have the people online that see no evil, hear no evil about what's going on. They think fundamentally just work hard, get a job and the economy will work for you.

13:32Most of them, just like the JD crowd, have defended Trump and haven't been bothered by most of what he's doing. Again, there's, depends who you're talking about. I'm talking about the majority of the loudest voices that have the biggest followings. They'll recognize that the debt is a problem. They'll talk about it a lot. They'll complain about it. They'll complain about the need for fiscal conservatism, but then they'll turn around and hallucinate to the fact that we have a free market and think, oh, no changes have to be made. So in other words, if we just had a government where we wouldn't intervene, you know, with any regulatory stuff, any antitrust stuff, just, you know, work hard and form families and it will be fine. And as we well, no, we don't have a free market. And you do need to revisit not conservative outcomes and broad philosophy, but certain

14:33inputs. What do you do to generations into anti market policies, both fiscal and monetary policies, federal reserve policies that created endless asset bubbles, distorted the market has driven capital towards certain industries and companies away from where it should have been. What do you do now? That needs to, that's a serious question that needs to be asked. That we're living at a point that because of a number of policies, but I want to address which ones, you know, we're not living in a time where, you know, where a lot of people could work hard, get ahead and afford a family home, a family, food, healthcare, you know, without subsidies, which we don't want subsidies, but I'm just telling you, that is a reality we have to deal with that is not a chink in the armor of free market conservative ideology, but actually affirms it precisely because of what conservatives of yesterday that weren't

15:38listened to whose policies were ignored by the bipartisan unaparty stagflation crowd that is for endless loose money policies that created monopolies that work against workers, that work against consumers, make it that you have very little choice in competition, has driven up prices, reduced quality, depending on the service or product we're talking about, and we have a major problem with that. So I think there's too many on this sort of traditional kind of status quo right that refuse to recognize that you need to do something different and that is not a revision or rejection of the core tenets of Reagan fiscal conservatism, but it actually reaffirms it. What happens two generations later when, you know, Reagan did a lot of things on the tax and regulatory side, but he admitted himself that he didn't get a chance to deal with the debt side,

16:43which was infinitesimal to what it is now, and he felt that if you look at his speeches later on, that we were supposed to build on that, instead we went backwards, and then obviously crystallizing with really a little bit around the 9-11, you know, 2001 recession, and then obviously further solidifying with 2007, 2008, GFC, and then culminating with the COVID economy, with the fiscal and monetary policies that were created, we literally steered capital towards monopolies. Okay, so you don't have that now. Okay, so on the other, but then on the other hand, you have this JD Vance crowd, which is like, okay, let's just throw money at people, you know, the left has used money as a powerful political tool to create dependency on their constituencies. Well, we should do it for our constituencies. They do it for blacks, we should do it for working whites. They do it, you know, for, for, you know, licences causes, and the girl boss, you know, culture, and the daycare

17:53culture, let's go and subsidize instead, or at least in addition to state home mothers. So this all came out that JD Vance announced on behalf of the administration that they're going to come out with some sort of executive order. Again, I don't know how you could do that executively, um, and that's why part of this is just posturing for presidential politics, for him running, and there's nothing to do with Trump even because he's, it's not going to wind up going through, and they're not going to codify it. So whether you agree with it or not, it's just another, you know, chase the squirrel. But again, I think it's a legitimate debate to be had, and I'm glad we're actually debating policy, and what it is, what it is that we want and believe. So that they're drafting a plan to basically give federal childcare funds to married couples with a state-home spouse while the other parent works. Um, near times their reporting could be 9,000 a year for these families.

18:54Okay, so while I broadly oppose what they're doing, where they're coming from, where they're headed, in a vacuum, it's not that I can never get behind such a policy. There are times where it's like, and we do this with healthcare, I proposed things like this with healthcare all the time, where you have inevitable subsidies, you're having a hard time repealing for this, you're like, hey, let's even up the score. Like we say, you know, you subsidize insurance, let's subsidize at a pocket, you know, alternatives to it. The best thing would be to get rid of all of it. And in a vacuum, I'm not opposed to that. The problem is, the problem is this, you can, all these programs, when they talk about this, quadrupling the child tax credit, which is not part of this discussion, but you know, Marco Rubio supported that. Josh Hawley, Mike Lee, I have supported that. Again, I agree with what you're trying to do. But the two points I want to make today is

19:56that what is causing the lack of family formation and the lack of state-home moms fundamentally is not a fiscal issue. As much as the fiscal part does tax it, it's a cultural problem. So this is not really going to help. And then all it will wind up doing is creating a new entitlement that the Democrats always bid up. I know a lot of them are saying, well, no, we'll just reorient it, or it's just like, push it away. Again, first off, if you're reorienting, you're going to get law suits and they'll rule against you and you'll have to codify into law, which he doesn't have a plan to do and isn't doing for other things. But more over, of course, it's going to to the debt because of course, they're like, well, Daniel, we can't repeal. Okay, so then it's going to add to the debt. Meaning if you're not rebalancing, if you're not repealing what's there for other things, so then it will add it in addition. Well, Daniel, well, they did the child care cartel gets it. So, you know, stay at home, families should get it. Again, I'm actually sympathetic

21:01to the thought behind it. The problem, I think populist need to understand is I am a lot more favorable towards using the power of government in a vacuum seemingly divorced from our traditional beliefs of laissez-faire on the regulatory antitrust side of things. We talked about this a lot during COVID, again, making rules that you can't, you know, put on vaccine mandates or mass mandates, even though it's a supposed private company, or obviously, you know, regulating land use and different things like that. I don't mind doing that with limiting principles that we're not for government just doing anything again, but with another standing that government already created an imbalance and we're going to rebalance it. I'm much more favorable to doing that with legal and regulatory structures than doing it with

22:02subsidies and appropriations. Like, oh, well, we throw money at this. So, let's throw money at that. The reason simply is, it's not even that I theoretically oppose it, but in a practical sense, what is causing the unaffordability is the debt. That's what's causing the inflation. So, it's like, it's kind of like you're all in a ship and some people are saying, well, screw it. You know, they have the hole under us. I'll dig the hole under them. Well, you could dig the hole anywhere you want in the boat, but more money goes out that door, more debt servicing, requires more money printing, which creates more inflation, which harms all of us. So, it's like, you know, this is the thing. This is why I am much more in favor of undoing the advantages that the monopolies have been given to rebalance our economy in a way that works with the people rather than spending more money. Like, again, you can make the argument.

23:07I might surprise some of you. You can make the argument that screw it. The government has harmed consumers, has harmed families, harmed workers with all of the policies that I think we all agree harm them. And more not free market conservatism. They were the antithesis of that. So, you know what? Call it reparations. We're going to write everyone $100,000 reparation check for all the anti-market things government has done. Intellectually, I could get behind that. But again, here's the problem. You go and do that. You're going to get the exact opposite result. I mean, it's like these people didn't live for March 2020. Trump did that with COVID. And it created irretractable statulation. That's why life is unaffordable. That's the reality. So, any effective way of doing this will have to necessarily create a new entitlement,

24:11create more debt, and therefore create more inflation, and therefore it's circular logic. Okay. That's criticism number one. Number two, and this is more of a political point. But a lot of these pro JD talkers, they never had anything to say. And indeed, most still don't about Trump constantly pimping the golden economy. The aristopopulism that he gets in bed with big tech, even the ones and it's kind of mixed, but even the ones that claim to oppose data centers. But they won't take the fight to Trump and JD for supporting it. And they're like, yeah, this is based helping families. Yeah, but how about we first reverse engineer Trump's croniest modern monetary theory, MMT policies of spending more debt, loose money, near zero interest rates that caused all this. And then just the so-called BBB,

25:15they never were with me pushing Trump to use budget reconciliation to address the core factors in the economy that harm the consumer, harm families, and create monopolies. They never had a problem. In fact, in fact, Trump's whole thing was just these, it's funny. Remember we talked about the paradox. A lot of these guys are like, we need to move away from tax cuts for the rich, but then that's all Trump actually did. So forgive me for not really sympathizing with these people when they're like, yeah, I support JD and his pro family thing. Yeah, but then JD's pimping data centers. And they still won't take the fight to Trump on any of his issues that he's harming these people. So what Trump does, and I might not have time to get to this, but he's doing this with ranching policy too. We're on the big, big, big macro policies that immediately and directly harm that constituency and harm Americans at large,

26:19he's horrible on any executes it. And then he'll come back and hear the outrage. He'll throw some small bone policies at you, many of which won't even come to fruition. That's been the cycle. So again, if you want to get into this, I'm done with the Paul Ryan version of the Republican party, and we need, yeah, but Trump is the ultimate cronious corporatist side of the party, except then he'll just come in with more debt and hand out some people. Oh, Trump accounts. Let's give every child born $1,000. It's the worst of both. This is what I always said. The criticism of the Paul Ryan's of the world is not that they were too fiscally conservative. It's that they were frauds. They never fulfilled their promise of cutting spending, cutting entitlements. In fact, Trump, Paul Ryan and Patty Murray, who is the

27:21Senate, either budget or appropriations chair at the time, they signed the famous Ryan Murray deal, which undid the Tea Party era sequestration cuts. That's the problem with Paul. It's that they never followed through. They always waved this flag. So these guys are like, well, you're never officially so fiscally conservative. So we're just going to officially not be. But I mean, the solution is to be a real fiscal conservative, but again, to balance it out with understanding where the economy is today. So I'm sympathetic to looking at a new approach, which I think we need, but at the same time, these guys were never there for that. Meaning there's one thing if Donald Trump and his presidency and JD is a part of that would be like Josh Holly. Josh Holly is straight up um for the little guy. Um for the little guy. See, we're for the free market, but we have no

28:25problem using populist rhetoric when anti market policies have actually harmed the little guy and to reverse engineer that. I'm very much for that. But that's what we're for. So you have the corpus wing of the party. Then you have the sort of the little guy wing of the party, like no matter what, meaning just throw money at the little guy. Basically nothing different than what the Democrats have always been. Albeit to his credit, Holly does have real social conservatism mixed in with it. So he'll reoriented towards families and he's also good on things like data centers, foreign workers, things like that. Trump when it boils down to it, promoted foreign workers, promoted big tech like like there's no tomorrow, promote status centers. And by the way on that front, JD is the same thing. Oh, oh, but now we have to give to families. So here's some money. That's a risk of populism. That's bull crap. And I don't think that's anything that we should be

29:28defending, but but these guys had no problem with that. That's what I'm saying. There is a difference between the JD Trump, um, Griff network and like a Josh Holly style populism. Now again, I'm not I'm for reverse engineering, the anti market policies that harmed, you know, that that that harms average Americans. But just to, you know, but just to align yourself with the theme of the day, that that's that's nothing more than Bush's compassionate conservatism. That's what Bush was. Bush was a social conservative. I mean, at least he pretended to be and then okay, a line, you know, we had great bigger government for families. Now again, if you have a way of rebalancing certain things towards that, that's that's revenue, that's deficit neutral. I don't think it's the ultimate policy. I think it's treating the

30:29symptoms, but I'm not going to stand your way. I'll support it. I'm just telling you, there's no way that will happen. It either won't happen or it will add to the day. I think it's more likely. It's just not happening. It's just this is just posturing. But what I'm trying to tell you in my second point is that a lot of these guys are just cloud chasing. They just they just latch on to whatever popular theme of the day. Again, I know a ton of these guys that were more corporatists, conservative than and less populist than I am. And now they're like all the way at the other end because they're just cloud chasing. And the proof is that the pudding because a lot of what Trump has done in both terms has actually been on the other side of this way of thinking that you need to use government to steer away from the corporate monopolies towards the little guy. He's actually been on the opposite side of that and still is on numerous fronts and they have zero to say about it. So I just I can't take you serious that oh, you genuinely want to rebuild

31:30American families and social conservatism because you're never bothered by any time Trump comes out on the other side of that. You're never bothered by the Aristos. You'll just parachute in when he comes in at second base after getting to first base with our aristocrats. Oh, here's the populism. Here, let's let's throw stuff at families. Oh, Trump accounts. Oh, that's so based because it's going to help family formulation. Point number three is and this is related. These people also had nothing to say when Trump expanded paid family leave. So this was Ivanka Trump's whole thing of girl boss like trying to subsidize and facilitate women, trying to work full time during the child bearing and raising years. Oh, so they just need paid leave of six to eight weeks or whatever to go and make that bridge and then get back to working full time. So mandatory paid leave and subsidies and and we had that federal program. That was one of the few things Trump did and

32:32accomplished in his presidency in his first term that was codified into law, which Democrats had no problem supporting. So that empowers the working mother paradigm over the state at home mother paradigm. So this is this is the point like I have no problem if you're rowing in one direction consistently. But in many respects, this proposal about throwing $9,000 at state home moms sort of reminds me of Trump with the tariffs. It's like, same thing with tariffs. I said to you before, I generally oppose them, but I'm not categorically opposed them for all goods, for all periods of time in all ways. But what I am opposed to doing is not addressing anything that fundamentally recognizes what is going wrong with our manufacturing and our broad economic output. And then just saying,

33:33okay, we're just going to tear our way into creating manufacturing, which of course, we actually wound up with the worst of both manufacturing jobs are in the toilet more than ever. And we just have the the pain from the tariffs to show for it. So this is the same thing here. Okay, we're going to subsidize state home moms our way into family family formulation family formation and and you know, we're going to we're going to reengineer it with that. But the world doesn't work that way. That's the problem. If you're not addressing the core economic and cultural issues and use fiscal policy for fiscal and it will spill over into culture and then use cultural for culture, which leads me to point number four. Okay, the main reason why we have a problem, bitzgully, not getting to culture,

34:37that's going to be point number five in a minute. The main reason we have a fiscal problem in this country, which certainly affects everyone, including families and those who want to get by in one income, is not because we're not subsidizing people to do it enough. It's a number of things. It's foreign labor driving down wages. It's Obamacare and all the healthcare being a dumpster, via healthcare is a is the largest single largest expense for a family, particularly a big family with kids. It's endless federal reserve policies, the zero money, the farm bills that created monopolies, the housing bubbles that the federal reserve created. And then yes, all of that represented through the debt, which requires servicing, which requires requires money printing, which drives inflation and makes life broadly unaffordable. The solution is sound money, the solution of gold

35:46accounts, gold is the solution, gold is the best family policy you could have, but it's not just families, it's everyone. You have to understand and this is a point a lot of people forget what government did beginning around 2000, 2001, and then again, in the GFC, and pretty much remaining that way, except for a small period of time, and told COVID, and then since COVID, until they had to raise rates, near zero interest rates incentivized speculation and malinvestment rather than sound investment in the economy. It sent the message to the incumbent powers in the economy that all we care about is the stock market, and we will come in Dex Makina, anti-market policies, and speculate for those who have the capital to get even more capital on the cheap. So this allowed companies to take on far more risk and debt, and that's why they were able to

36:50do things that didn't empower and better the lives of their workers and consumers because they knew that the Fed would always save them with more zero interest rates, operation twist, quantitative easing, buying 2.6 trillion MBSs, creating asset bubbles for those who have assets, the stock market, housing, meaning we talked a lot about too big to fail in the official bailouts of certain industries during the GFC, but what was even broader is the broad-based market bailout of, oh my gosh, I can't allow certain investments to fail, I can't allow the stock market to go down, so we have to constantly do pumping. More than anything, that is the biggest anti-market tool that broke the free market and really harms consumers. And then it's just the totality of healthcare, welfare entitlements, and everything else we do that both creates monopolies like in the farm

37:54bills that drives debt, but it also creates monopolies, less quality product, less healthy food options, not obviously more expensive, but also it's just the totality of the debt that is it. A lot of people like, I'm for social conservatism and families, I'm not for or I don't care about that, a lot of people like fiscal stuff. I theoretically don't care about it either, but Trump kind of let that ship sail when he spent trillions of dollars and now we do have to care about it because now everything we do on that front triggers inflation. It's not like it was less generation where the level of debt was enough that the metabolism of our economy, what I was going to say was able to handle it or at least kick the can down the road. Now it doesn't. You feel it immediately. So this is the message. If you're like Daniel, well, everything

38:57you're saying it gets not feasible to repeal the farm bills and Obamacare and what the Federal Reserve does and letting the stock market go to fine, then shut up. Then don't lie to me and tell me that you have policies that are going to help families. They're not. And in fact, everything you're going to do is going to drive more inflation, which does what increases the cost of living. So don't lie to me about that. And again, again, it depends who you're talking about, but most of the JD defenders and the Trump defenders, they had nothing to say about Trump's anti-family policies. And you know, whether it's the homosexual stuff he was into the log cabin Republicans changing the GOP platform, obviously fighting conservatives in court on Mifapristone, the abortion drug, which is dangerous. I mean, all this stuff, like, you know, give me a break. I mean, you want to talk about anti-family policies, his policies on drugs and marijuana and all sorts of addictive things. I mean, again, like if you're me, then you have the right to support policies that are like, I think,

40:02giving money towards stay at home moms is good family policy. Again, through the mix of things we're doing, I don't think it is, but I could sympathize with it. But just politically, these people, they never criticize him for being on the opposite side for causing this stuff. They don't understand the core causes of it. See what I'm saying? Well, Daniel, we can't do the big things, so you just have to do small things. Yeah, but then it won't do anything. We'll just add to the dead and add to inflation. So that's with that. Oh, and I just want to put some numbers on this. Trump, with more than two years left to go, has accrued under his watch roughly 11.7 trillion and grows federal debt. Okay? You understand that's like, what is that like 28% of all accrued

41:05debt from our founding until now was under one man's six year tenure. Less than six years. Five and two thirds. So if you're bothered by the affordability crisis, we had struggles for the last while in our economy, but a decade ago, the cost of living was nothing like this. If you want to know what cause this particular blip that just put us over the edge made housing unaffordable, made food unaffordable, you know, that is Trump and his spending. And obviously, healthcare is Obamacare that Trump had an opportunity to repeal it and he supported it. And then he endorsed the rhinos for sending in Congress that wouldn't want to get rid of it. So this is what is so dishonest about these guys. There are like, and there are a lot of friends of mine. They're like, we're the

42:07base conservatism. We're sick of these guys, but you're not. Because if you refuse to recognize that Trump is not just part and parcel, but one of the biggest inducers of the affordability crisis. So then if you're not starting with that level of honesty, you're just about cloud chasing. You're a joke. And if you're not joining me with my red state projects and not joining me with, you know, what we did on Friday that we have an opportunity to elect a conservative over the Democrat null, but name only Republican nominee and Wyoming for governor and many other similar ideas. And you're not joining me in taking the fight to Trump on data centers. So then shut up. Like, you know, again, that's what I'm saying. I'm not frothing at the mouth opposed to what J.D. said in a vacuum, but you take the broader elements of what he stands for. You won't wind up with any of the benefits. You'll just wind up with the liabilities. This is what these guys refuse to understand. I told you guys this guys this, I was starting to come to this position before COVID.

43:14I was like, you know, nobody seems to want to cut spending, screw it. Let's just focus on social cultural issues, you know, and and and I still largely do that. But you have to understand what has changed. And I don't mean like ancient history, but over this generation. September 2001, I picked 9-11 just because, you know, that we triggered a recession then. Gross federal debt was about 5.77 trillion. In other words, the gross debt around 9-11 was half of the total tab that Trump accrued during his five and a half years so far. That was roughly 55% of GDP or debt to GDP was 55%. We lived in a different world then. Even as late as 2007 before the GFC, it was about 8.84 trillion, 63% of GDP. So it went up,

44:24but not much, 55 to 63. Today our debt exceeds 40 trillion and is 123% of GDP. So in terms of the relevant, you know, measure of our economy, it's double what it was when we entered the GFC. So this stuff doesn't work anymore. You know, well, well, let's throw money at that. You could do that all you want. Trump did throw some money at people with the tax cuts and the BBB. And it's off to the races. We accrued nearly 4 trillion in debt. In his first year and two thirds, when he ran on Biden inflation and you wonder why inflation continues to accelerate. That's why. And despite a very, very, very, very, very weak job market that most months is not creating enough jobs to even break even with population growth.

45:30And most of them, of course, are healthcare and things like that. So that's the point. There are no shortcuts. Well, Daniel, we have no choice. Okay, that's fine. But then just don't lie to me that you're solving a problem. You're not. And then finally, and I wanted to really spend more time on this. I can't believe it's taking me this long. But the biggest thing is, and I'm maybe bearing the lead here, that the source of the decline in things like kids and homeownership more than a financial issue is a cultural issue. In other words, I'm going to say, oh my gosh, housing is on, you know, you see people aren't buying houses, housing formation is so low because of the housing bubble. Well, the housing bubble is a housing bubble because of federal reserve policies. And that's a problem. But fundamentally, the reason why we have fewer homes is because we have fewer

46:33marriages. And the reason we have fewer marriages is not because we don't have enough pro-family fiscal policy. You could debate it, but fundamentally, it's a cultural problem. The reason people aren't having kids fundamentally again, we need to solve our fiscal problems. But we're not because that has to do with the debt that's due to Obamacare, to do with the federal reserve policies, venture socialism, the arbitrary monopolies we've created. That's the fiscal problem, which certainly is a strain on families. But at its core, keep in mind, most of the inflation that we suffer was created after COVID, relatively recent. The trends of the collapse of marriage, and therefore the collapse of the birth rate was long before that, when in fact, you know, my wife and I, we got married in February 2009. We talk about how little we lived on. And it's like, oh my gosh, like that was amazing time. Other things in the

47:37economy weren't great, but we didn't have stagnation. We had, you know, the weak economy from the GFC, but we did not have inflation. Cost of living was much, much lower back then. Yet, if you look at the statistics in 2009, we were well into the breakdown of the family. That's a cultural problem. That's a lack of God problem, not a lack of government subsidies problem. You know, I said this before, but American enterprise, in an institute scholar, Scott Winshub, analyzed census data for the institute for family studies, and found that most of the generational decline in young home ownership tracks the collapse in marriage rates. Because this is important. We're debating about the cost of having kids. But that would only be the culprit if marriage rates were roughly where they were historically. Oh, but the birth rate is down. But no, the birth rate is down because marriage has collapsed. Okay. And for the most part, marriage is not more costly.

48:44If anything, you're pulling more together. Kids are costly, but marriage itself, just just the spouse is not, is not the issue. The reason people aren't getting married is because we have a Godless culture. So while overall home ownership among Americans under 35 sits at 35%, which is abysmal. And everyone's talking about that. But the rate for young married couples remains about 63%. Winshub writes that is recently as 223, 63% of young married couples were homeowners. That was the same as in 1983 and only 3% to point points lower than at the height of the 2000s housing bubble. The 2023 rate was also higher than in any year through 1970 and any year from 1985 to 1999. So 2023 was actually a pretty high rate of home ownership among young married couples, despite the problem with housing prices. Now again, if the federal reserve policies and fiscal policies

49:50continue creating asset bubbles, it is going to eat into that over time. It does spill over. I'm not going to deny that, but fundamentally married couples own homes. So why is the macro data so bad on young homeownership because no one's married? Very few people are married. The problem is the collapse of marriage itself. The share of Americans aged 25 to 34 who are married fell from 67% in 1980 to about 37%. About a year ago, it's a 30 point drop. That right there is the hole in the bucket. That's the culprit for everything. That's the culprit for lack of homeownership. That's a culprit for lack of kids. You understand? We're like, oh my gosh, how do we get people to have more kids? But then it's hard because then they have to go to work and they can't afford it. So let's give people money. And again, I think it's probably a good message

50:55to run on. We need to make one income homes great again and being able to afford that. That's an affordability problem. And it spills over into family formation. But at the same time, you can't deny the fact that if you're wondering, hmm, why is the birth rate in the toilet? Well, marriage rates were like, have since 1980. And again, most of that drop was before the big inflation. Right. And anyway, inflation is not really going to affect marriage for the most part. It's going to affect it would theoretically affect having kids. So what I'm trying to tell you is that let me just exaggerate to prove a point. Let's say marriage is at 1%, only 1% of people get no one's going to marry anymore. I'll be like, man, is you so expensive to have kids? Let's pay stay at home months. There's no relationships. We have a society of porn and lesbianism and

52:00get homosexuality and whatever. And people aren't getting married. That's the issue. It's all about a lack of God and values, which leads to a lack of marriage, which leads to a lack of families. Here's some interesting stuff from Institute for Family Studies. Brad Wilcox has article, and this is from a little while ago, that the birth rate for religiously oriented people has never fallen below replacement rate. I have four kids. A large Harvard study found that frequent religious service attendance correlates with a 50% lower divorce rate compared to those who never attend. Strong marriages obviously create conditions for stable families and having kids and homeownership. So anyway, my point is that among religious married people, believe me,

53:06they feel the fiscal strain. I'm not denying that. Just the opposite. I'm not the one who's been yelping golden economy like my colleagues that are pimping JD and drum. They were doing that. I recognize the problem, but at the same time, let's be honest, the core of this happened before inflation and it correlated with the decline of marriage. Okay. In other words, what the data show is that generally speaking, you're not seeing a decline among religious married people, a decline in the number of kids they have. You're not finding that. It's just a decline in marriage, and we have a decline in marriage because we have a decline in values and a decline in God and belief in God. A few research poll I said it this last year showed that religious practice is dropping in every region and the South only 51% say they pray daily, and that's the most religious

54:07is the South, but it's down 14 points from a decade ago. The share of religiously unaffiliated southerners rose to about a quarter of the population. In the West, 35% report no religious affiliation. That's the problem. That's the problem. It's a cultural issue. You can't, you can't, you can't fiscally will it. The Nordic countries, they had this decline before we did because they were irreligious before we were because they broke up gender norms before we did. So they've long had the most family friendly welfare states, expensive pay, lease, subsidized child care, cash support. Now I get it. They didn't do what JD is talking about prioritizing stay-in-home moms, but their fertility has fallen sharply since the last 15, 17 years, especially in Finland. Rates drop below the EU average in several cases when they

55:12throw the most money at paying people to have kids. Everyone talked about Orban and this hungry model. What's interesting is it showed an initial bump. There was a bump. Last decade. But then now, total births in 2024 were about 77,500 in Hungary, the fewest on record. So what it seems like happened is that the cash subsidies accelerated the births that would have otherwise occurred anyway rather than raising the total number. It had a pull forward effect, which is what seems to have happened in Hungary. The point is it doesn't work. Israel is similar to the Nordic countries. They throw some, they have some of these like child friendly programs, but in Norway and Finland it failed. In Israel it didn't.

56:16Israel is like one of the only western countries that is maintaining a replacement fertility rate. And the reason that anyone will tell you who's familiar with them is that even the secular, so they have religious Jews, they have secular ones, but even the secular ones, they value children. So this is not so much a Jewish versus Christian thing. It's Israeli culture versus other countries. So like, for example, if you take secular, your average secular Jew in America, their birth rate is zero. I mean, it's zero zero. It's as low as the most secular Christians or anyone else in America. But secular Israelis, like it's very normal that they'll have three or four kids. Get married young. It's part of their culture. It's a very interesting thing.

57:18It's a cultural thing. You either have it or you don't. And they value it there. This is a whole nother story, but perhaps this is what all these based guys are becoming hateful and jealous of Israel because Israel is what they're not. But rather than being hateful of it, why don't you emulate it? But you don't emulate it by emulating Israel's stupid fiscal policies, which I don't like. That's not the thing. It's a cultural thing. So I know it took us a full hour to get it out. But again, this is the thoughtful discussion I think we need to have. I'm not against people that are sympathetic to this plan of, hey, you know, why don't we focus more on subsidized and stay at home moms in a vacuum? But if you don't look at the broader cultural problem and the broader fiscal problems that cause unaffordability, and in fact, you double down on all of them. Oh, but here's $9,000 for a stay at home mom. It's not going to solve the problem. It's going to

58:20exacerbate it. If you want that as part of a broader problem, you get rid of the welfare state or seriously diminish it, fix healthcare, fix the federal reserve policies, fix the farm bills, break the monopolies. Oh, and then, you know, now let's now that we have extra cash we say from that, you know what, let's use it to steer our things like they do theirs. I have no problem with that just with understanding that primarily it's a marriage problem, not a financial cost of kid problem. And the marriage problem is primarily a decline in belief and practice of God. And that gets to another thing that a lot of these guys, not all them, a lot of them that are cheering on based conservatism are a bunch of degenerates themselves that often aren't married, are engaging in all sorts of adultery and whatever. So if you are going to operate in the space, make sure you actually model that behavior. Again, I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I got married at 23,

59:23married to the same woman will be married to the same woman until death do us part and I four kids. You know what I'm saying? That's what we need to see that needs to be the rule among conservative influencers, not the exception. And let's model that behavior rather than trying to subsidize debt and inflation in a circular, circuitous cycle of failure. So anyway, let me know what you think of the plan. Daniel Harowitz at startmail.com is the email will get too much more to Marvrenneve doctor on who is still being persecuted for COVID related offenses, even under Trump's DOJ.