'Worst economy I have ever experienced': Analyst calls out growing wealth gap

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Does it surprise you that more political leaders, specifically sort of MAGA Republicans, aren't talking about this or focused on it, right? Like, J.D. Vance wrote Hillbillyology. Like, I look at him now, I'm like, is the taste of caviar on these people's mega yachts so good that you forgot? Like, aren't they at major risk of losing their base voters if things continue? Like, I don't even hear from this group any sort of policy proposals of like, here's how we're going to address this. [00:00:28] Speaker 2: Well, they continue to mine resentment and grievance rather than aspiration. I mean, European sociologists used to come to America and say, like, why isn't there this more class struggle in America and more resentment of the rich? Because like in the 1940s and 50s, a guy who worked at a gas station would look at a rich guy and go, because I'm going to be a rich guy someday. I'm aspirational. I'm moving my social class. Our social classes don't move anymore. And the aspiration of like, I could be a millionaire is different than I can be a trillionaire or a hundred billionaire. I mean, because now the discrepancy is so wide that there's that aspirational aspect of it doesn't really exist anymore. [00:01:10] Speaker 1: Okay. But catering to grievance, right? Like, having grievance over youth sports or trans bathrooms is almost a luxury, right? People can't complain about that. They're not thinking about that when they can't pay their basic bills. Are lawmakers forgetting people need to live? They need to support their families. And many Americans are at risk of losing that, while a small portion of us are getting richer beyond belief. [00:01:34] Speaker 2: Well, of course. And the Democrats should be talking day in and day out about, which they do talk about is affordability, but talk about it in terms of a policy way that our party stands for the working class. [00:01:45] Speaker 3: I don't know that I believe and I don't know that the data or polling or voting has shown that grievance doesn't work yet, right? Oh, a hundred percent. There are plenty of people who will say, I hate these gas prices. I'm angry at this gas station. I can't pay for this. But if you say trans kids in a bathroom, that's actually what gets their blood flowing. That's what gets them getting on Facebook. That's what gets them yelling. And as long as those sort of visceral things drive people, and they always have, we are human beings. We can math this to no end. But at the end of the day, it's the stuff that makes people angry. It's the guy that turns on his TV and sees a black queer couple. It's like, oh my God, I'm mad about this. That's what he's yelling with his wife about. You know, he's still mad about the gas, right? But that plane, that anger can be distributed a bunch of different places. That's where you see places like, I use this perfect example, Pax and Tallarica, right? Texas has major, major structural issues, right? You have power outages every 18 months. No one is running as a technocrat. They're saying he's a Tallarico and he's in favor of trans kids and he's a vegan, right? They're not doing that for no reason. They're doing that because there is 36, 37 percent of the population who will say, well, the whole system is going to screw me over anyway, but at least I don't have any black neighbors. At least I don't have any Latinos that I'm competing with. So that still is going to work. But as I have said a whole long, I think you reach a point and I don't know if it'll be this fall, but sometime in the next 10 to 12 years, you're going to get people who realize I've gotten rid of all the brown people. We've stopped people at the border. The trans kids can't get married anymore. Hey, I'm still broke. And when that day happens, that's when the pitchforks come out. [00:03:16] Speaker 1: OK, there is a new NBC News poll that shows that 86 percent of those polled think the wealthy can avoid consequences that ordinary people would have to face. 86 percent? It could be 100 percent. They're right. And again, I just go back to these were the original arguments that Donald Trump was making when he ran for office back in 2015. Fast forward to 2026. Way more Americans believe this and are motivated by it. Who are the lawmakers who are saying, yeah, you're right. Let's address it. [00:03:49] Speaker 4: Well, I mean, it's easily intellectually dishonest or morally dishonest or or both or just they're just idiots. I mean, like, think about it. And it's probably like all of the above. And I think a lot of this resentment comes back to lawmakers. We've just never seen this sort of grift. Right. If you go back to 2015, this is a great way. But it's just it's just been normalized. And you and I have been talking about this for years. Like, nobody cares. Maybe until now they just didn't care. They ignored it. We had much bigger issues, whether social or economic, that sort of thing. And now it's just they flooded the zone with it. And the folks that are getting so wealthy, it's not just the people immediately around the White House. It's all these other sort of levers that are being pulled because they know there are no repercussions for it one way or another. [00:04:32] Speaker 1: And it's not just the administration. It's Democrats in Congress. Right. We have not talked about about banning stock trading for Congress in ages. I mean, Mike Johnson said recently, like, well, lawmakers don't make enough money. So they've got it. You know, they've got to trade stocks in their P.A. With what? And he didn't say this. But using inside information. So Dan always says, right, like people don't care. People don't care. The lawmakers aren't caring. But the American people are caring more and more and more. [00:04:59] Speaker 2: And by the way, that should be a pillar of the Democratic Party platform, that Congress people can't trade stocks while they're in office. The president of the United States shouldn't be able to trade stocks while in office. I mean, talk about corruption. Right. I mean, the incredible stock trading that that Donald Trump is doing. People see that and they think, you know, yes, there is a natural criminal class in America, the politicians. And Donald Trump is the is the mafia don of them all. [00:05:22] Speaker 1: But how do you take that position as someone running for office when you need to raise money? This goes back to the mega wealthy. Look at Thomas Massey's race. Right. The most expensive primary and the majority of people who gave to his opponent who won have never set foot in the state of Kentucky, nor do they plan to. [00:05:40] Speaker 3: Right. You the difficulty here is that you can complain about money and you need the money to get people to understand that you're complaining about money. Right. Now, that's not new. Right. But I think what's been happening in some of this is sort of the overall cynicism. It is people are frustrated because they don't think anyone's going to do anything. Right. I think even if you're a Democrat who has a good message, they're not convinced that you're going to do anything when you have the power. They know they may not trust the Republicans, but it's like, well, at least the Republicans will stop this or stop that. That is the frustration. I think what you see and you can see in a city like New York. Right. With some of the things that Mom Donnie has done. Hey, we're going to tax people who have a house here who don't live here on a regular basis. The fact that Washington, D.C. might get a Democratic Socialist as their mayor this fall. I think you're seeing people say, all right, I don't know if I even trust either of these two parties. But if you have someone who says, look, we're going to do some far left stuff, but you're going to be able to tangibly understand it. That's where this is going to have to go. That's why you have independence running right now in Nebraska. That's why you have people thinking that they're going to vote for Graham Plattner, because they're like, I don't think either side is going to do it. So let me take the crazy outsider, because maybe they'll be the person who makes a difference. [00:06:44] Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, the stock trading thing is really interesting. And you've been talking about this for years. I mean, the amount of folks here in America who own stocks is an inching higher. I think it's a little more than 60 percent. I think if you're not in that group of people, you look at some of the stuff that goes on, whether it's, you know, Congress people trading stock or the president trading stock 3,700 times in a month or a quarter, whatever that was. And it maybe doesn't resonate with you that much. Right. And so when you think about this, I think a lot of the folks, if you are, you know, the upper K of the K shaped economy, you know, we're all getting rich. We got this wealth effect going on. Right. Even though mortgage rates are high, I still have a 3 percent mortgage. Right. Even though that the economy feels bad for a lot of people around me, I have, you know, a stock portfolio that's basically at all time highs because that's where we are, you know. And so I think that disconnect is the swing. I mean, that's it. If you look at where the Republicans or President Trump in particular are losing a lot of interest, it's among young men. It's among minorities who thought they were going to fix the economy. I don't think they're that focused on the grift. I just think you have to broaden it out a little bit and see how, you know, there is two classes here and there's the class that owns stuff and has that wealth effect. And they're the ones who don't. And that's probably what swings this thing. [00:07:52] Speaker 1: But do you see something different? Right. So so I in my adult professional life, I've been around a lot of rich people for a long time, but they have never, ever been as rich or disconnected as they are right now. Right. Their kids don't go to your school. They have private. They go to concierge doctors. They don't ever go to airports. So they don't even experience like the American, the American condition. [00:08:15] Speaker 4: I guess that is, you know, the one percent of the one percent. Right. So if you have more influence than they ever have. But I think New York City is really interesting because and it feels like a bit of a bubble. Right. There was a lot of they used to call them, you know, you know, Wall Street Republicans. Right. They were fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. And what happened? I noticed this. You live here. Over the last couple of years or so, a lot of folks became one issue voters. Maybe it was backing of Israel, you know, that sort of thing. And they didn't really care. They just kind of did away with the social sort of stuff. And I think that is sort of abating right now. [00:08:46] Speaker 3: So another thing goes with this. This is the absolute worst economy I have ever experienced in my adult life. And maybe I'm the only person who says this here. I have more friends out of work who have been out of work over the last two years than at any other time in my life. And it is across various professions. I'm talking about friends who are engineers. I'm talking about friends who work in environmental policy. I'm talking about all of my friends in Hollywood and journalism and everything else like that. Sometimes I hear these conversations and I laugh because I get the text. They're like, yo, who are these people talking to? I was just on the phone with a friend of mine who was a producer who worked on a commercial for the Super Bowl six months ago. She's like, I've been out of work for six months. I've been working since I was 16 when I got hired at MTV and have never been out of work this long. That is the Americans right now who are furious. And that's before I get to my students, many of whom, as you said, they can get jobs, but they don't have move out of the house jobs. And that's what you want. Everybody can go get a job. Everybody can go work at Chipotle, even if you're in management. But if I can't pay the three months that I need to get an apartment in Baltimore, let alone New York City or Atlanta or Los Angeles, I am furious. The degree to which Republicans and Democrats have failed to address any of these issues is why you have so many people angry right now. And when you have a president who is completely detached from these people and you have politicians who keep pretending that an AI data center or a trans kid in the bathroom is going to fix your situation, that's why people are so angry. It can be fixed. We have examples in this city. We have examples in D.C. But as long as people want to pretend that the problems can be fixed by by cultural issues, instead of addressing the real fact, I'm talking 45, 50 something year old people who have worked their entire lives, who have seen who survived COVID and they are out of work right now. And no one's talking to those people. It's infuriating to me politically. [00:10:26] Speaker 1: This may be one country, but we are certainly living two worlds apart. [00:10:39] Speaker ?: This may be one country, but we are certainly living two worlds apart. This may be one country, but we are certainly living two worlds apart. This may be one country, but we are certainly living two worlds apart. This may be one country, but we are certainly living two worlds apart, but we are certainly living two worlds apart, but we are still living two worlds apart.