(Not So) Deep Sh*t with Chris & Steve
(Not So) Deep Sh*t with Chris & Steve
(Not So) Deep Sh*t on the Evolution of Education, Economics, and Everything
It's been a bit of a brief hiatus, but Chris and Steve are BACK!
And after such a break, we had a lot to talk about and we cover a lot of ground.
What if the relentless pursuit of higher education isn't the only pathway to success? We splash into the deep end of that pool, reminiscing about our own college experiences and how the landscape of learning has drastically shifted since.
Chris and Steve peel back the layers on the evolving economic paradigm, and we're thrown deep into the realm of question marks. Why is the gap between the CEO's earnings and the average worker's wage widening? How can the lowest paid employees not afford their company's health insurance, and where does the government fit into this jigsaw puzzle?
The story doesn't end there. We venture into the world of streaming service economics, wrestling with the dynamics of subscriber numbers, new content investment, and the ominous shadow of investor influence. The narrative then takes an unexpected turn, with a spotlight on McDonald's cost-cutting measures, the quality of their products, and the impact on their workers. It's a rollercoaster ride, punctuated with personal anecdotes - such as the secret wedding of Chris, and the intricacies of defining age groups.
Buckle up and join us for an enlightening adventure into the unknown!
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And we're back to talk about some more deep shit. Hey Steve, how is it going?
Speaker 2:today it's going great. Chris, I have to say something. I miss you.
Speaker 1:I know I missed you as well. It has been, as anyone following the show can see. It has been a little while since we've recorded. It has. Life gets busy. We've both had a lot of things going on, but so what do you even up to these months?
Speaker 2:Well, it just ended, but it's been about two or three months of just constant talk. My daughter is a senior in high school and a lot of talk about college and it's kind of ended only because she's got a ton of her applications in now Nice.
Speaker 1:So this is the period where you're just waiting to kind of figure out where exactly she's going.
Speaker 2:Yes, she has her thoughts of what she wish you would like to go, but we have to wait to see what kind of acceptance letter she receives.
Speaker 1:When do you know that by? I don't remember. It's been so long since that was a factor for me, like do you know people know where they're going to college before they finish up their current year high school right?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, so they have different phases. And my daughter, she took advantage of early application to some colleges and then in New Hampshire they had a thing last week here that if you apply on a certain day New Hampshire, all the colleges you apply to the application fees are waived. So she applied to a lot of them on that day, nice, so we'll wait to hear. They said generally you hear back when you do it at that early. You hear back by Christmas or January depending. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, I guess that doesn't make sense. You know it's been so long since I was in high school, but I guess I do remember people kind of knowing what they're doing. That's how little thought I gave to that back then.
Speaker 2:I gave very little thought to it. Okay, I mean, looking back, I wish I did give more thought to it, but the thought I gave wasn't enough. And you know, I came. I don't know about you, neither one of my parents went to college. So they really, you know, I love my parents, my parents. Looking back, I'm 51 now. I had my birthday. No, happy birthday, thank you. You know, they did the best they could, you know, but when you, when you have whatever your limitations I have limitations my daughter, when she gets older, she'll say my dad, we had this limitation, whatever it might be. That's just how you look back on things. Right, my parents didn't really talk about college with me. It wasn't as big of a deal when we were in high school. Now, if you don't go to college, you're kind of in trouble trying to get a job.
Speaker 1:I think that's changing, though I actually think that was always an illusion, and I think that illusion is breaking down now because you have a lot of people coming out of college who are not having any easier for time getting a job, and certainly not a job that pays enough to justify the cost that they spent going to cost.
Speaker 2:Oh well, there's that whole cost benefit analysis. You're right.
Speaker 1:The system's breaking, I think, but I don't. That doesn't mean it's broken.
Speaker 2:I did miss your negativity on that.
Speaker 1:Chris, sorry, sorry.
Speaker 2:If anything, if anything, everything I've seen lately, only reinforces that I've seen so many things recently where I've gone.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's another time, another notch in the things breaking down.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I agree, I see some things too, but sometimes I don't know why I see the same things you do and I generally think the same as you. When we look at maybe whatever situation it might be, I just always have that hope of humanity in my head that it's going to turn itself around.
Speaker 1:Well, well, there's an exact reason for that, and that is that is your daughter, that you have someone who actually, you know, I don't have kids, so that's not a foremost concern. But it's not like there are no people, younger people, that I'm just out of. Screw them Like I do have family.
Speaker 2:that get off my lawn. I want to see. You know, I don't want to see the world descend into flames for anyone.
Speaker 1:But I guess I can be more analytical about it because I don't have like any kind of air in the game. Yeah, you know. So I get that. But that's the thing it makes it so hard with. Like I don't always want to be like the negative one, going like the world's burning, because you want to talk about like positive aspects of going to school, like that's exciting going to college. I kind of wish, thinking back, I kind of wish I had gone away to school.
Speaker 2:I do too. I was a commuter, you know, you know again, my parents did what they could do, right, and it just wasn't a thing when I was growing up in my household it wasn't a.
Speaker 2:it's a bigger thing now, I think, for kids in high school than it might have been when you and I were graduating, in terms of, like, how many kids are into it, in terms of wanting to go away to college I do. I mean the kids I knew maybe half of them did. Now it's a lot of kids do it, you know.
Speaker 1:Right, it was a different world back then, even when I went to school. I mean you could we graduated together. You could realistically yeah, you could realistically work a job and pay for school. Like you could do that back in our day. I don't think you could no you can't do it.
Speaker 2:No, you can't. I mean unless you get a fantastic job right, you know yeah, it's not easy.
Speaker 1:I sympathize with any of the younger people who kind of feel like the world has kind of screwed them and they don't like getting lectured by people who lived in a different world telling them why they're just not working hard enough to make it happen. When the you know, the world was distinctly different even when you and I were in high school and college. That is a distinctly different world than what we live in right now. Like can it compare?
Speaker 2:There's so many and I really think we should sort of have a discussion. It's generally not the type of themes we have on this podcast, but I think it's an interesting discussion of all the different aspects that might have come in at the same time. I was talking about this with another friend of mine If you look at the 70s and the 80s and maybe into the early 90s, how the culture changed just like culture does, I mean. Nothing stays the same, but a lot of the changes that we went through could be the reason why things are the way they are now. You could make that argument Like what, like what's a good example? Well, I'll give you a really good example, and it sounds it's not meant to be a chauvinistic comment at all, but when women entered the job force, you basically doubled the job force after a while.
Speaker 2:When you look back, look back to the 80s, right, early 80s was when women started entering going back to work. Early 80s. It happened early than that, didn't it? People were doing it, women always worked. So let's just not make it out like it's something that is a new phenomenon. My mother certainly did, yeah, but there was a time right in the 60s at least, that a man could go. When I say a man because that's how it generally went.
Speaker 2:I'm not trying to be chauvinistic. A guy would graduate high school, right, that's it, maybe right. There's a lot of families that were like this the guy could get a job, and that's a job he'd stay at for 25, 30 years, right, and he could pay for a single family house, at least one car. The mom wouldn't have to work if she didn't want to. Right, that's over, Forget that.
Speaker 1:That's not happening Now.
Speaker 2:you have two parents that have okay jobs right, trying to figure out how to pay for college they probably can't. Right, trying to figure out just how to pay the bills they can't. Who's ahead? You know, you say to yourself who's ahead here? I think it's fantastic that everybody works, but I don't know if it works out perfectly all the time, because when you have that many people working, the people that are the employers they just lower the wages.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so the wages are not keeping up with everything else and they're not keeping up with the profits these companies are making. You know, don't tell me you can't pay somebody when you keep making record profits.
Speaker 1:I think our fundamental problem is is we think that all of our problems have different causes, when you can really all bring them back to like one thing and I've said this before, I don't know I say this all the time, people will probably stick to hearing me say it but basically the idea of that we're trying to squeeze more and more profit out of everything, and when you do that, everything else comes second or after, like that's, that's. You know, that's our whole system. Our whole system is predicated. The very fundamental thing of it is things must make money. Making money is priority number one. That is the priority.
Speaker 1:Everything else is dressing, but that is the priority. By logical extension. That means that everything else, besides making the maximum amount of money, comes number two, three, four or further down the line. Why are we ever surprised when that thing that we care about, that thing that we like, that thing that we think should matter, comes after making profit? We've designed the system to work this way. It is working this way it is. It is the inevitable conclusion of what we've been building up to for years.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting you say that because I was having a conversation with my law partner the other day and I don't know how it came up. We were talking oh, he's not talking about this that movie called Wolf of Wall Street, which which actually I still haven't seen.
Speaker 1:I haven't either, but I've heard good things about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:And I know enough about it. It's like it's one of those things you A lot of culture. You get the idea. I kind of know the movie even though I haven't seen it, and there's a lot of gaps I have like that, but go on.
Speaker 2:So remember the movie with Charlie Sheen and Wall Street Michael Douglas, right, and he was Gordon Gekko, I believe, right. So in that movie he was the bad guy, right.
Speaker 1:Great is good.
Speaker 2:Great is good. He was a bad guy. If you had that movie today, he'd be the good guy. He would be somebody other people would admire. Well, they even did they did.
Speaker 1:Back then, though, to be fair, he was the. He was the people loved to hate him. He was the villain of the movie, even though he got the same same way that in diehard. You know that Alan Rickman just like, like oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that thing. But you're right, he was the bad guy. So you say today he'd be the good guy.
Speaker 2:I don't know if he'd be the good guy, but he just wouldn't be as much of a bad guy. People, that's just the way businesses operate now. That's the way everything operates, Whereas, look, if you look back, Chris, to what? Why Forbes would pick their top businesses 30, 40 years ago. They would talk about how they treat their employees. They would talk about all these different aspects as well as profits. That's not how they gauge things anymore. It's profit, Right.
Speaker 1:That's it In fair, though, they never did gauge them like that. That was window dressing that was put on. We just paid more attention to it. Like we did pay attention to those window dressing things about how well the company did you know how well they treated their employees, what they did for the environment or whatever it is. It was always window dressing, we just paid more attention to it and it mattered. But in the big scheme of things, whether their stock went up or stock went down would be predicated solely on how much money that that, how well they did as a business Like doing doing nice things, even for employees, never made anyone's stock go up.
Speaker 1:In those cases, nice things are seen as costs and could make the stock. That's the that's. The problem is that all the positives are going to be seen as costs.
Speaker 2:Well, if you look back, Some things go back. No, I agree with you, but I think the largest indicator of why it's changed is if you look at over time how it's changed with the lowest paid employee of a company and the CEO and the gap in their difference of pay, it is astronomically different now than it was 30 years ago. Astronomically, you know, and that that seemed indicative the lowest paid employee. I have a problem. I have a problem with companies, let's say, like Wal-Mart, right, that has employees of frontline workers in the stores. Those are people, these are people that have full time jobs. You have a full time job. You should be able to afford a living. That's just how I feel Right, Not a controversial opinion. I don't think it shouldn't be Right, Shouldn't be. And here's, here's what I, what I have a problem with.
Speaker 2:I have a problem with somebody that works full time and cannot afford the health insurance that their company offers, so they have to go on government benefits. So what? How is that business benefiting the state If the employees have to be on government benefits while the executives are making record money? So that doesn't make it. So I always wondered why can't? Why can't a government just say listen. No, you're not going to do that. We're not paying this. You're going to pay it, but yeah, that's. I'm not a politician.
Speaker 1:Wow, it's you know, I mean, this is a little bit of what we talked about in our last episode. I was just actually thinking, the last time we we did release an episode, we talked about the changing economic paradigm, which is that you know how things were changing, and kind of that same conversation. Yeah, that's no easy answers, but connecting to that, look at this. So I just pulled up a stat.
Speaker 2:All right, what do you get? In 1978, it was a 15.3% between the top CEO and the typical workers compensation. Okay, what's it now? So that was 15.3%. I'm going to reiterate that 15.3% Now it's 1209.2% in 2022.
Speaker 1:Well, this kind of showed itself in the and I know this is something that you like. It's a topic you are near and dear to your heart is the UAW, the unions right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a union guy.
Speaker 1:That recent? You know they seem to be coming. The automakers seem. The UAW seems to be coming to a deal right With the. That. Is that over? Is that strike officially over? Is it still?
Speaker 2:I know it wasn't all the workers right, they were getting close to a deal, so that says that they're close.
Speaker 1:It hasn't struck, the deal has not been struck, yet they're closer than they have been, though, and I know a lot of people were talking about because they were shooting, for. They were saying we want all the pay raises that we didn't get what we gave back in 2008. There was a lot behind that. I heard a lot of people taking the opinion like, oh, they're asking for four-day work weeks, that nobody wants to work anymore. Oh, my God, I'm so tired of hearing that. They were making some pretty audacious bargaining positions, and you knew that some of those they weren't going to. They were just there to illustrate this is what we should be getting, but there's certain red lines that we're not going to.
Speaker 1:Let you talk below, and while a lot of people looked at that hey, we want a four-day work week and went they'll never get that. Yeah, that's true, they should. It's a bargaining chip. They should get it, but they're not going to. We're not there yet, but I'll tell you, more and more people looked at that and went, yeah, why couldn't that be? And I like it.
Speaker 2:I think it's something, chris, that should be offered myself. I don't think I would like it myself, but I think it's a personal thing, because I don't think I'd like to work that many hours in one day, because I think some people don't mind.
Speaker 1:No, no, no See, that's the misunderstanding. It wasn't 40 hours compressed into four days, because some places do that. Yeah, that's not.
Speaker 2:That's not what you're talking about. What are you talking about? I'm saying working less.
Speaker 1:I'm saying the work day should at the very least be reduced by one more day. It just should. It's just where we should have been all along for a long time, and that was predicted when we first got started. It was predicted that by the year such and such 2000,. Machines are going to be doing so much of the work that the average worker is only going to have to work about 20 hours a week. The idea was that the productivity would grow from those early days and, as we got more productive, that productivity would be essentially shared by all at all levels to some degree, where over time the workers would have to work less because there would be more and more of their job being done automatically. Now that didn't happen. What then happened?
Speaker 2:was we really I think it did happen, but I think what happened is they want more and more out of it instead of instead of.
Speaker 1:Well, we can get to this.
Speaker 2:How much can you squeeze that limit? So I think what happened, I think it did happen, I think it did. But we live in an economy, at least in the United States and much of the free world, that is a growth economy, that if the economy isn't growing it's collapsing. So if the whenever economy that is a quasi capitalistic which our economy really isn't totally capitalistic, it's quasi they call it actually modified capitalism, it's corporate socialism.
Speaker 1:It's really what it is, because companies get socialism. Individuals are told to pull themselves up by their bootstrap and be a man and go out there and you nothing's handed to. Anybody says the corporation against you know gets all these tax breaks for kind of just you know, like let's be real Well.
Speaker 2:I mean I think the way that the economists say it is, if you are a true capitalistic society, then there's not a lot of regulation right In businesses we'd be allowed to fail.
Speaker 1:but we keep seem to find businesses that are too big to fail or too important to fail, and at that point, are they really businesses? Well, if there's no chance of them failing, no matter how badly they run, how does that differ than what worry about when something's run by the government? Because that's what they worry about, like if the government took over, well, the government can be really bad and then you can't get rid of it. And you know, the telephone company that was run by the government was the you know like.
Speaker 2:well, I mean, I got to tell you, looking at that stat we just talked about right. We talk about regulation, right we. I'm not a political, I'm really not a political person.
Speaker 1:I don't know I don't follow it much.
Speaker 2:It actually kind of bothers me. It bothers me and it bores me in a way that they just back, bite each other and it's like come on, we all kind of want the same thing we do, but and stop trying to get me into a cultural war with other people, like I do not care what other people do. Nope, okay, can we? You know, if you put 12 people together on a basketball team, guess what? Not everybody's got the same personality.
Speaker 1:That's just life right, I care very little about what other people do, as long as it, as long as it stays wherever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if it doesn't affect me, I just don't care you and. I are doing a podcast together, right? Do I have? Do you have to like the same pizza? I do no, who cares Like it? Just like our personalities do not have to be exactly the same, it makes no sense. But when we say we have this society that wants to protect the average person, look at the stat. How do you, how do you allow this person to go from 15.3% more to 129% more?
Speaker 2:I wasn't even allowed and to say it's going to work, it's not going to work.
Speaker 1:We've somehow ascribed a greater value to what that leader, that CEO, does than like. What value do they really bring? Like your average CEO? Well, they have they. Obviously they're doing something. They are doing something, but are they? Is there value that they're bringing consummate to what they're making? I'd be, I don't know. It'd be hard press to find a CEO who does millions of dollars worth of work, like, literally, is personally responsible, like if they didn't show up to work, that business would lose millions of dollars, whereas I think a lot of CEOs, if you plucked them out yes, there are some things that wouldn't happen, but the business, generally speaking, the thing that it does, would roll on, because that's what businesses do. Businesses do, whatever they do, if they're so fragile that if you pluck that one person out of it, the whole thing's going to break down. So I'm good, but that's what I'm just saying is is find me a CEO who's worth the value that they get paid. It's a, it's a perceived value. We perceive that it's worth that. So we, they pay that.
Speaker 2:They perceive that the guy on the assembly line is only worse worth this so they pay them far far less Well to that end is where I would fall. More about.
Speaker 1:But if that person on the assembly line, if they didn't show up one day, ain't nothing going on that assembly line, right? So really their existence can stop the business, whereas you could probably take most of executive leadership and pluck them out and for some amount of time the business will run perfectly fine If there are major decisions that need to be made, obviously, at that point. But I'm just saying, if you, just as an experiment you know everybody from the top level of the company just stop for a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well, top level yeah.
Speaker 1:Cause everything beneath you would still work. The, the, you know the people on the floor. Like you know, I'm using manufacturing but they, like the general business, would do its thing. You notice no difference. So what I'm just saying is is that all this is this is not about real value. It's about perceived value.
Speaker 2:We saw that during the pandemic.
Speaker 1:What are the essential workers? Oh my God, they're so important. They're out there doing the thing. Yeah, they were often the ones with the shittiest hours, not paid the most, and you know. Just treat them like they're essential. But like you can't stay home because your guys are essentially going to get out there, can you pay us more? We can't, we can't justify that, like that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't necessarily disagree with you. I just think that the focus might be somewhere else. I don't know if they value the CEO more. I just think that over this period of time that we were looking at this staff from 1978 to 2022, there obviously culture shifts. Since that period of time I would say since from 1978 to 2022, I would say that the economy has become less union friendly. I would say that the economy has become less worker friendly. I would say the reason for that big decrease or however you want to phrase it decrease or increase right is because large companies, for the most part I don't know if they value the CEO more I think they devalue the average worker more.
Speaker 1:Well, both can be true.
Speaker 2:They don't, they don't value they don't value.
Speaker 1:They don't value and I'm saying they value the CEO themselves. They value that position. That position is valued because that's the position of a company.
Speaker 2:You're a very important person, and that's the position, though that meets with the board. That's the they might be on the board. That's the position that stockholders when they actually the people that go to the meetings that's the whole deal on the inside. You know that that's how it works. So they say well, you're the one that's bringing these profits and we're going to pay you. That's just how it goes.
Speaker 1:Right. But I also think that if somebody was like hey, I'm a CEO of a company and I make, I make 40 K a year, you know, a lot of people are looking what are you the CEO of? Like you make, you're the CEO and you make 40 K a year. Like like, there are people who would look at that and say, well, you're not really the CEO. All that means is that you know, chief executive officer, like you can be the CEO of a very small company, but in our mind, ceo is make a lot of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's an important job.
Speaker 1:We ascribe value to that job, even if we don't quite know what they do. What does the CEO really do? Well, they make all the big decisions. Okay, how often are big decisions needed? Oh, big decisions needed all the time.
Speaker 2:I would imagine it's a high pressure job, though, because if you make the wrong decision, you fire it. That's the end of it.
Speaker 1:You're not arguing that it's not a high pressure job. I would say that you're very adequately compensated, no matter how much pressure it is. In most cases and I'm talking about the big CEOs I'm talking about, like Bob Iger, of Disney you know, disney is running into some problems. Turns out that streaming is not a viable business model. No, it never was. We just tricked ourselves into thinking it was Well in Disney.
Speaker 2:I think they were throwing a lot of money at it because it makes money. How many, how many subscribers do they have Right?
Speaker 1:but here's my issue. You subscribe to a service like, let's say, netflix. How much new programming keeps you subscribing to Netflix? Do you know what I'm saying? Like? Is it the?
Speaker 2:new program. I don't know how it works. I think it's just laziness.
Speaker 1:You subscribe to Netflix and every month you're going to subscribe to Netflix because there's enough on there that are worth it for you, right? How do they decide how much money to spend on new programming and how do they decide how each of those things brought on new subscribers? Because new subscribers are really all that matter, right? Like, if you are a subscription business and you have X number of people paying you each month, you don't want to lose them and you want to gain more. But how do you know that's what I'm saying how does any streaming service know that, okay, we need to spend this much money on new shows to bring in people?
Speaker 2:You don't realize how much money does it cost? Because now it says they have 150 million subscribers. It's $5 a month to get Disney Plus.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's more than that Well, well it's not $5 a month, are you sure? Oh, yeah, I think the baseline subscription is like yeah, maybe it was $5 when they first launched it to get you in there.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, wait a minute, it's $13.99. Yeah, that's like the baseline too. Oh, okay, so $14 a month, grandpa, what year is it? All right, so 150 million subscribers.
Speaker 1:I remember when my streaming service was only $5 a month. See what I had to pay attention to.
Speaker 2:I actually have it and I bundle it with Hulu and something else, so it's like something. $14 or something. So 150 million times $14 is $2.1 billion a month. How much money does it cost to run an app if it's illusory money? So what is that? That's 24. That's almost $25 billion a year in revenue.
Speaker 1:Will it tell you how much? I don't know if you can get the stats. How much did Netflix spend on new programming? You mean Disney Plus, Disney Plus, right? So Disney spent on new programming for the streaming service, because that matters too.
Speaker 2:Let's see, I'll look for that.
Speaker 1:I doubt that that information is actually out there. I doubt that that's a because that'd be proprietary knowledge, I would imagine. But my point is is that how would you know I get it? You have subscribers. They pay you X amount per month. It should be a no brainer. So why aren't the streaming services making any money?
Speaker 2:I don't know. It says here that since 2019, they've lost $11 billion. The heck, somebody, I don't know. But whatever it's figure, a lot of the, a lot of their content has already been made. I mean, so they, I know they make new content, but there's a lot on the other. You know it's been around since you know forever. When you they throw on Fox and the Hound, I mean they already had it, but I know they make new shows. I watch the shows. I don't know if the shows cost $2 billion a month to make, but but there's also the operating costs, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Infrastructure costs and all that. So you know, I have not looked into the streaming service. It always seemed to me like it was one of those things. Like anything, everything works on a certain scale. These things, when it gets beyond a certain scale, cannot support itself anymore. We've seen this time and time again with retail stores. Right, how many great retail stores of old do we know? You know ones that no longer exist anymore, like Child World or, most recently, actually, the Christmas tree shops? Right, here's something that what, like what the Christmas tree shops? Like. That place was always packed. That place did good business. You'd have a niche.
Speaker 2:Older women. Why did it fail Cats? What's?
Speaker 1:that. Well, why did it? I'm joking, no, but I'm saying why did it fail? The reason why it failed is because everything gets too big. It gets to a point where it can't support the weight of itself anymore, and I think it's mostly because there's this.
Speaker 1:There's this class of people in business, the investor class, and I understand investors are very important for certain things. But if you really think about most businesses, those investors are not doing anything to make the product or make the service. They're not really participating in that aspect of it and in many cases they're not even customers of that product or service, but they're there to to take a portion of the money that is generated, that money that you know, if a business just had to exist for itself, if a business just had to exist in a world where, hey, this business has to do its thing, taking enough money to pay its employees and pay its owners, and and that's it, and that's that's it, and grow, you know, and do whatever a business does. Most businesses can do that really well, but they'll always scale up to a point where it's harder to do that. But then you have this class of investors who that at a certain point, they're just they're taking.
Speaker 1:You made $100 this month. Well, we're taking our 50. And so you have the rest of the 50s to do with what you. You know, you're just. You know what I'm saying. So. And then there's that need for ever escalating profits. Like you got to make more because the investors expect more out of their investment. They only made X percent this month or this year. They want it needs to be going up. So that idea that you're taking off more and more, where does that?
Speaker 2:come from? Well, it comes from growth right. So if you operate a business and let's just say you have a Starbucks right, I just whatever right and the Starbucks generates $100 a month in profit I'm just using numbers right it better make a lot more money than that Right.
Speaker 2:So you can either lower the cost of your product, right, although whatever your costs are the cost of workers, the cost of the product, the cost of the rent or the mortgage, however it is you can lower those costs, or you can expand. There's no other way to make money, right? So they try to cut the costs, but they're finding they can't right now, especially this economy with trying to lower. You can't lower food costs, right. You can't lower a human costs, right, so what's the only thing they can do is expand. So when you try to expand, the problem there I think that's happening is every market we live in is being oversaturated, right?
Speaker 1:Whereas can only expand so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you and I live in I would say generally, certainly we don't live in cities, right, you or me? So there isn't this constant influx of population, right you have. Generally, all communities grow usually, but they don't grow on astronomical rates generally. So if you have five coffee shops in a year and one year later you have 10, well, yeah, you're going to draw some people from other communities because it's brand new, but after that fades away, you're dealing with the same amount of people that now have 10 places to go to instead of five.
Speaker 1:So it's just what you can only support so much of a thing in any marketplace, right, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:So, and then that fails, the investors don't care, because then they just they'll just file bankruptcy and they'll cover their costs, but it's all the other people that invested in it that don't have that same. All the workers then knows their jobs, right.
Speaker 1:And what you're saying is that a lot of these are big companies needing to again. Just, they need to expand, so they need to break into a new market. They need to do a new thing, they need to have some getting to some business that they weren't in previously. Actually, a good example of this is airlines. Actually, do you know? Most people don't realize that airlines the major airlines do not make the bulk of their money flying people around the world. The bulk of the airlines, the airlines, make the bulk of their money by the credit cards and financial tools that they use, which is why, when you're on certain flights I think JetBlue being one of them you have to you're subjected to this huge credit card commercial before the. You know, like that you're captured, right? I mean, we've all been, you've flown recently, right? You know when you have, even if you're on their system all of a sudden, they'll do how about the credit card?
Speaker 1:That credit card is how they that's how they make the bulk of their money. They don't actually make it, so think about how scary that is. The airlines don't make most of their money. They make some money from flying people around, but it's really a loss Like it's not a great business model because we've come to expect lower cost flights and all that. But yeah, isn't that kind of scary, though, that your airline doesn't know that.
Speaker 1:So, again, if our system is predicated on making money is the most important thing, how safe do you feel when the industry is meant to fly you around, getting you there safely and stuff? That's not where they make now, that's not where they make the bulk of their money. Now, if planes start crashing, you know airlines go out. But I'm just saying that we should be more bothered by the profit motivation in some things than we are. And I think it's weird because we all realize it, we all know joke about how. You know making money is number one. You know companies will screw us over. If they can make a little more money from us, we'll all joke about it. And when, but when, we won't really admit that's what happens, because it really would bother us if, like, where, you're just getting screwed constantly.
Speaker 1:But we are getting screwed constantly, like, I always think about how like more comfortable things should be and they're not because it's not cost effective and we're fooled into thinking that we're not worth that because it doesn't make money, like, like, why isn't flying more comfortable? Well, you know can't. Well, if you could afford to buy, you know, if you can afford to buy private planes and stuff, you can fly comfortably. But if you're flying commercial like flying, you know, like most people fly yeah, it's not going to be a comfortable experience. It's going to be varying levels of discomfort If you have a flight where you're only a little uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:That was a good flight We've. When we say we, I want to say the royal we because. But I would say, chris, there's a large amount of people that fall into this camp. I do not, and somehow sometimes I just keep my mouth shut generally around other people and this kind of things comes up. Right, let's say McDonald's. Right, we all love McDonald's. I don't really go there that much anymore, but I did it one time.
Speaker 1:I just went there on my way here today.
Speaker 2:You did.
Speaker 1:What'd you get? Two cheeseburgers, fries and a Coke, and it was wholly unsatisfying. The fries, the Coke wasn't good. The Coke was always good.
Speaker 2:Coke's the best at McDonald's. Mcdonald's has their own. My daughter talks about the Sprite. I'm like, come on, I'm sure the Sprite's fantastic, but if I go to McDonald's I'm going to Coke.
Speaker 1:McDonald's has their own.
Speaker 2:they get a proprietary blend of Coca-Cola and it comes in, it still comes in the metal tank, whereas a lot of restaurants it's the plastic yeah.
Speaker 1:But I will say that we're going on a Coke rant, coke, coca-cola. I will say that the food was completely like- which one did you go to?
Speaker 2:The last Allspur, the one on the way out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on the way out. But you know what I went at lunch time Like if there's ever a time you should expect-.
Speaker 2:Should get hot fries at lunch time.
Speaker 1:No, far from it, and I noticed that now it's like it's just not as good, everything's just not as good.
Speaker 2:Well, let me tell you how I feel about when someone will talk about McDonald's, right, let's say, not so much the food which we're talking about, but paying people. So that's the thing now. Well, you know, if they want more money, we're just going to get robots in here, and if I hear that you're going to like it when you lose your job, You're asking for more. If you ask for more money per hour, I'm going to have to pay more for my cheeseburger. Why have we become that? Why have we become this group of people that argues with each other about someone else trying to make a few bucks in it for a living, Whereas the easiest thing to say is well, instead of making whatever you made in profit last year, how can it just can't be a little bit less? And everybody, everybody makes a living. Why is that not an option? Why is the only option that we accept that our price of our product will go up? We never demand that the business makes less money.
Speaker 1:We've come to expect so little that we talk about things that could easily be otherwise as if they're carved in stone and cannot be changed.
Speaker 2:And then, but somebody will say, well, that's you know, that's that's. Uh, that's socialism. You want to? You want to regulate a business? Well, you want to write. It's not you you're pointing at you, but it could be anybody. Well, don't you want a business regulated so that it doesn't fraud, defraud you? Yes, you want this regular. Do you want a business that it can't dump toxic sewage into the river? Yes, well, that's a regulation. So we allow regulations, but when it comes to that specific thing, everyone gets mad about it.
Speaker 1:And it's such an illusion, illusionary argument Like it's. I'm so tired of hearing things like you know that socialism, as if what we have is distinctly different. It is in some ways, but, like I said, companies never seem to worry about getting money from getting propped out by the government. Like you know, the banks banks got something's wrong. We got to put money into the banks. The airlines we got to put money into the airlines, like so they're not really businesses if they don't have to succeed on their own, if they can go under. But you know, it's been said by others much better. But it's like that the gains are taken by the investors and the laws is kind of spread to everybody.
Speaker 2:Right. So this is McDonald's now, which is just because we're talking about McDonald's. The McDonald's annual gross profit was $13.2 billion, which was an increase of just about 5% from 2021. And in 2023, it's expected to increase another 6.5% to $13.9 billion. So the company made $13.9 billion. It has increased its wages, yet it's still making more money, right? So it couldn't make just $13 billion and take out $900 million and disperse that amongst their workers. That's not possible. No, that's nothing we can't regulate. That. Forget that, you know. But it's so obvious that like, and now somebody's going to say hey, that's Steve Blair, he's a socialist. I was going to say something else.
Speaker 2:He's a socialist. I don't say I don't think so. I'm just a person that thinks people should be able to make a living. People shouldn't have to go sleep in their car after they worked eight hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, we have it all. We have it all wrong. I don't know if we're ever going to figure it out, but it's. It's not our fault. We've been fooled into thinking that this is the way it is. I hear people talking about the economy, economics like they would gravity, Like it's just something that can't change, it's a force of nature that can't change. What is it? What is it Like? Like that's the way the system is Like. That's the way it is, that's the way that, that's the way I got, that's the way our economy works, you know. And it's like we. We made it all up, we created the system.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, but you know, it's my law partner, right?
Speaker 1:We can fix it.
Speaker 2:He's, he's a really good guy. And he said, as professor told us, he said this to him in law school. He said you know they were. They were out to eat, I think, or they were all together. He said see that guy over there. He's angry all the time. You want to know why he's angry, why he thinks the world's on the level right? It's not. I don't know, that's just the way it is. So I think sometimes people get discouraged. I think I think that might be some of it when, say, they say that's just the system. I think that might be another way of just saying they discovered that there's nothing they can do about it.
Speaker 1:Right and in a very real way. There there is very little that an individual can do about it, but it's also there's very little that collectively we can do about it too, because a lot of us agree on stuff which still isn't, and we all go. Why isn't it like that? You know it's, it's um.
Speaker 1:I don't know we just we should accept, we should expect more. I think we should just expect more in general, and when people start actually being like, hey, I expect a little bit more, I don't know, we turn on them pretty quick and say you know, what are you asking for?
Speaker 1:the four day work week for you, lazy bum. You don't want to work Like, is it that weird? I don't know. It's I, in having discussions with older siblings, and I have some, some of my older siblings who are, you know, you know, definitely um of that generation of you know, uh, they again, they grew up in a different world and they don't understand why, like why people would want to ask for, you know, four day work weeks. So back in my day we worked 40 hour weeks.
Speaker 2:Well, like in part of it is, they were rewarded for that. Yeah, that's part of it. Part of it is it worked because they worked and they might have worked hard. The harder they worked they they received, more it worked.
Speaker 1:Right, but we've been on an exponential curve. That thing.
Speaker 2:We looked at the 15% difference right. So the CEO wasn't making a, it wasn't like a generational shift in wealth and difference between the CEO and the and the average paid worker. Right, there was a relief you could relate to the guy that was making the decisions. Right. When you make, when you have that kind of percentage difference, now there's no relationship between the lowest paid worker or the average paid worker and the CEO. There's there's none. It's almost like. It's almost like Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, Whereas before it was what kind of all in this together?
Speaker 1:It's such an illusion, because you know what I'm trying to say. No, I do, because when you think about rich people right, and we all think, we know about rich people and we all know people we consider to be rich.
Speaker 2:Well, some people have different standards, right.
Speaker 1:And, but what I'm saying is that none of us really understand the super rich, and this is something that I didn't know that the super rich had, because I never even considered it was a thing. A lot of super rich families have something called the home office, yeah, which is just that office that runs the family wealth Right, and that office is comprised of some number of people who are paid employees, who get a salary, who get health insurance, who are an ecosystem onto themselves, and they might occupy an office building in your, in, you know, in the big city.
Speaker 1:They have a bigger office than I do Right and their home office and all they do every day is manage the wealth of that particular rich person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just recently found out about that.
Speaker 1:That idea of having that home office is like, like we wouldn't even consider it right, like we have a person.
Speaker 2:No, it's not an office in their home. It's an office to run their home their, whatever you want to call it their home right, their empire, their home fortune. Yes.
Speaker 1:That's what they call it the home offices, because their home fortune is run. Yeah, it's an office building somewhere. Well, it might not be a whole building. Again, it depends on the size of the fortune. But there are some super rich people who do have, because it requires right, not just a handful of people. Like a regular sized, like wealthy person has, you know, a guy or maybe a firm that handles their money.
Speaker 2:Like when you're a rich person, you might have a yeah, but that firm might handle more than one.
Speaker 1:Right, you have a firm that handles it, but no, you don't have a office that is just comprised the entire and, in some cases, fortune. It does require, like a, a building, like a small building of of or some number of floors of. That's it. They just, they are the wealth management for this, but, like, that is just mind blowing and it's. It's the kind of wealth that when people start to lose the idea between million, billion, trillion it's that I've used that before where we jump from million to billion to trillion as if it's just the next thing, without really taking into grip the exponential growth between a million and a billion and a billion and a trillion, like it's not just like the next one up.
Speaker 1:And so when we think of somebody being a millionaire and we talk about somebody else being a billionaire, we kind of put them right next to each other, right? Whereas if you're a millionaire, you know the difference. Like you, you don't have billionaire, you can't do what a billionaire can do, right, um, which, interestingly enough, that maybe think of of, of, of Jeffrey Epstein and his island, because you know he, he wasn't a he. You know he, I don't. He wasn't a billionaire. He was a rich guy, but he wasn't a. I don't know if he was considered a billionaire, but even people with his kind of wealth didn't usually have islands, Because islands are very costly to maintain. Well, there's a whole question of where is all.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the thing. He had, the. He had the big island apartment in.
Speaker 1:New York city. He was a. He was right. Well, I've heard this said by others, but that he was. He wasn't a real person. He was cast into the role of Jeffrey Epstein financing. I haven't heard that. Yeah, everything about him was fake. Really, yeah, he's he, he. Um, yeah, I've heard it described as like he was. He was gold plated foil spread out to make it look wealthier. On the surface You're very wealthy, but if you look like they talk about him as a, as a disgraced financier and nobody can really tell tell how he really invested, or like he didn't. He didn't do anything to earn the title of I'm an investor, like, oh, really, yeah, it's more just like.
Speaker 1:That's the illusion that you know, who do you ever handle money for? I really can't answer that question. What kind of trades do they do? They can't really answer that, but like those.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:And there's a whole thing about him is he was a cut out of of some intelligence agency, that he was a. He was there to do a purpose and he was there to do um, basically to lure powerful people into compromising positions where they could then, you know, have something held over them, Interesting and um. But what's interesting is that it's the kind of scam that started when it started and then got harder to maintain, and got harder to maintain in the internet age, when people could look up information, Because think about it back in the day, right, you could just you could wander to another town and you could change your name.
Speaker 1:There was no way of people checking and then, as our technology got better, there was more and more ways of checking. But you know, you go back to the, to the, to the olden days, like the old west. You literally can walk to the next town and be like I would change my identity and hope that nobody made the track across, right?
Speaker 2:I mean you think about how much boring party conversations must be. I think that's not now what must be?
Speaker 1:I don't really go to like party parties, right Do?
Speaker 2:you remember when you were younger, you could spend an hour trying to figure out something. No, no, no. I think it was this. You're wrong. It was this. No, no, no, no. It was that right now, Someone just looks on their phone at two seconds. You're all wrong. It's this yeah, it kind of kills that kind of vibe, yeah.
Speaker 1:Too easy to look up stuff, but anyway it's.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that I'm going to look that stuff up later on, Although I don't know if I'll. Well, I get flagged if I'm looking up Jeffrey Jeffrey Epstein. I don't know Someone's going, I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating because I've heard, I've referred to as a, as a what they say, anti-interesting story. Everyone will tell you that they don't like, they don't want to do stories on it because nobody's interested in it. But every story that gets published on it gets a lot of views. Same with UFO stuff too, is that some places they'll be like oh, we don't cover UFOs, nobody wants to hear about that stuff. But then any UFO stories that are published get the most views on the channel. And so if nobody wants to hear it, but yet everybody watches it, what does that say? And it says it's not that we don't want to hear it, it's that you guys don't want to talk about it, and that's. There's a difference, right, and it's the same thing with the, with the Epstein thing is you should be hearing more about that.
Speaker 2:No, that's just gone. Well, actually, not actually In terms of mainstream media.
Speaker 1:There's some movement the other day, actually some Senator, I think some Senator somebody in government has asked for basically demanding the list of people who visit.
Speaker 2:I know. I know he made a demand. I don't know if he's ever going to get it. I think it was a woman.
Speaker 1:It was a woman, I think it made the demand.
Speaker 2:It's one thing to make a demand. Again, it could be just grandstanding, but is anything ever going to happen?
Speaker 1:That's when I it's out there a little bit that you can actually get some of the lists out there. They're out there to be found, it's just.
Speaker 2:you know it shouldn't, it should just be, you know, part of whatever record there is. It just shouldn't be this whole you know, I'm just saying again.
Speaker 2:That's me thinking things were on the level. Nothing's on the level. So we taught, we started with Steve, what's going on with you? And here we are, yeah Right, 52 minutes later. No, really, but there's an old movie. It's a joke in my family Well, maybe it's just a joke to me. It's an old movie. It's called the one-armed assassin and I'm not going to go any further into it. But tell them a little bit about you. That's the lead in You're the one-armed assassin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had rotator cuff surgery. Yeah, so I tore my left rotator cuff 50% and, um, yeah, I had to have that, have that patched up.
Speaker 2:So I've been kind of, I just got Get to go to physical therapy and all that Go to physical therapy, trying to get my arm back into, into.
Speaker 1:So I'm like on week six or seven or something like that. I think week six, so like it was.
Speaker 2:I was a pain, and what's the recovery? Three months, six months, um, I don't even know. Well, you should know, man, you had the surgery.
Speaker 1:In the middle of it. I don't know I'm, I'm, I'm six, seven weeks in. And then this point I can like move my left arm. It's finally out of the sling, so I'm not the one-armed bandit anymore. Um, I can drive and stuff like that. It's just a pain. Everybody I've talked to, oh, rotator cuff Like you meet so many people when you have a sling, cause everyone wants to tell you their, their rotator cuff story. If they ever had kind of income, shoulder injury. Everyone wants to tell you about it Cause it's a shared experience and, yeah, it sucks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never heard anybody tell me it was fun yeah.
Speaker 1:Like I hear varying degrees of what's the worst thing ever. And I get it. I get it. Um, because you like I, I can't. For the longest time I couldn't even move my arm. It was in a sling. Uh, it still hurts. I can't lift it on its own. I mean I can. You know I have limited use of my Do they have to go into your bicep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they went in up in the shoulder area and went into the biceps and so it was a 50% tear and they were. They were just like why should have bothered you far more than it did? And I was just like, ah, I just ignored it. It did bother me, but it's very good, I'm good at just going. I don't know It'll go away if I leave it alone. Yeah, 50% tear doesn't go away.
Speaker 2:No, I would imagine it's not going to.
Speaker 1:No, no, but it's fixed now. So I'm I'm slowly getting back on the mend, which is nice, you know, it's nice to. I learned, interesting I I have greater respect for, you know, for people who, like, are able to do things with limited, like limited use of their hands and arms and stuff. Cause, like I had to like learn how to do certain things with like just simple things like tucking in your shirt you don't have the use of one of your hands, like it's a whole other balancing act and things like that, just stupid things, and just you know I realized, oh, actually, this was interesting. I was of the age. Did they try to correct Are you left handed or right handed, right handed? Okay, so I'm left handed. So when we went to school in the very early days, they were trying to fix that.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they didn't do it very long and they didn't. They dropped it pretty quick. But we were on the tail end of that idea of like they did it a lot in in in Catholic schools. But I didn't go to any kind of Catholic school but, uh, they used to think oops.
Speaker 2:They used to think people that rolled their left hand were closer to the devil.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, which is probably true, but anyway, but because of that there's there's a. It was an interesting mix of like figuring out what things that I did left handed, since I am left handed, and some things that you would think I would do left handed, that I would do right handed, and just whether, just noticing when, I favored you really should have played baseball, Chris.
Speaker 1:And it was interesting because then I would just kind of like could have made a lot of money. I would know now probably not, cause I couldn't stick to anything like that. Um, but it was just interesting cause I I got to learn, cause having the lack of one arm quickly it's like, is doing this particular thing, is it comfortable? Okay, then I always use my right arm or did I use my left and shit. Now I'm going to learn how to like juggle things and like just eating, but it's been a pain in the ass, so I'm glad to have it back. I still can't write, though. Writing is very hard.
Speaker 2:Is it? Yeah, it's interesting. Do they give you stretches to do?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I got all sorts of exercises I get to do and and it's painful- After the we're done recording, uh, I'll show you.
Speaker 2:It's a little weird to watch, but I'm going to show you a rotated a cuff stretch that I learned in the last five or six months. It is fantastic. Yeah, if, if. I don't know if they'll tell you you can do it, but you run up by them. It's awesome, anyway, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, I like. So it's totally getting patched into into space, but it's just uh is it like a dull pain?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, speaking of dull, constant pains um, you also got married.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm joking yeah.
Speaker 2:Exactly I.
Speaker 1:it's like going to show it spent a time got married and had my shoulder ripped apart. Yeah, which was worse.
Speaker 2:I'm joking. I'm joking. Wow, how did? How did she land this prize? That is you. I know how does it happen, it's just some people are this lucky.
Speaker 1:You know I always said I was not going to get married. I was one of those rare unicorns that made it to like 51 years old, never married.
Speaker 2:Well, as we said here today, he still won't give it up. He's got his Hugh Hefner um smoking jacket on. I wear this everywhere since in my license picture.
Speaker 1:No, I just. But I mean I just, I was not in my intent ever to do that, but um it it, congratulations. Thank you, thank you, we, and we did it the great way and you have a wonderful bride, Wonderful bride Rosie, and we also didn't tell anyone, didn't tell a soul, we just um.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I saw you, uh, the day before, I think.
Speaker 1:You did, yeah, yes, and we saw a lot of people that day and, um, we, we, we just didn't tell anybody, we just did it. And then a couple of days later we went, we told everybody we were going away, uh, to Aruba. And a lot of people said, oh, you know what? I went there on my honeymoon and we would just look at each other and go, yeah, well, we're just going there on vacation. And then we just got married quietly and then went to Aruba. So you got married before you went.
Speaker 2:I couldn't tell when I saw the photographs because it looked like you were on a beach. I was like, are they in Aruba?
Speaker 1:No, you know what it's. It's expensive to get married out of the country because you have to pay in addition to whatever costs you spend as additional legal costs with. With having a marriage that's done on foreign soil recognized in the United States, there's a it's there's there's shit to that you know there's stuff you have to do, so it just didn't seem worth it.
Speaker 1:And we live in a beach so we wanted to get married near where we were. So we found a nice little place that overlooking the next town of the water, newburyport. Just a nice little town. We're in Salisbury and overlooking there, and had a justice of the piece and and and a photographer slash witness. So that's how you have the witness to the to the event and and also the photographer taking good pictures, and so nobody had to be there and everybody could see pictures of it later.
Speaker 1:Very nice, and then we just quietly did that and jumped into the, jumped on the plane and told everybody on our way out hey, yeah, we did something and and that was it. So it was the way. You know it's funny, we joke about it, but she and I we don't like to be the center of attention Although even though we'll do karaoke sometimes we'll, we'll put ourselves out there, but both of us don't like to be the center of it. Like the idea of having any kind of event where, like it's a celebrate, I like that makes both of us kind of uncomfortable, and so that's why we just wanted to just do this quietly, with nobody's. That way you can't get into a thing about why did this person get invited? And and I didn't like there's no hierarchy of of who. Nope, nobody knew.
Speaker 1:Not a single person and I thought that was that was generally, when it comes to that stuff, most people say why did I get invited? Why do I have to go to this thing? I'm joking. I love a good wedding. The older.
Speaker 2:well, I'm in the I'm at this stage. Now you might be, I don't know, but it seems like I don't go to weddings right now. I'm fifth. I just turned 51 at my birthday a couple of weeks ago, can I? I can hear the applause in the background, but I really don't go to weddings right now because it's this low kind of where none of my friends have kids that are old enough to get married.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean, once in a while there's a relative or something, but generally speaking it's a low. There was a lot of it until I was maybe 35. Then it's now. It's probably the weddings I'll start going to again. A friend's kids, relatives, kids, you know, nieces and things, not nephews. See, I've had, I had some.
Speaker 1:I've had some you have older brothers though. Right. So I have nieces who have gotten married and an effort.
Speaker 2:You have an older sister too, right? Yes, so I have. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I have had had. I'm the oldest, but no, nobody from my peer group is getting married.
Speaker 2:Right, 51 as well, yeah, and there's none of your, none of your friends kids getting married because most of them aren't old enough. Right, most of them, I mean maybe, but generally speaking it's not like I'd say. Within the next five to 10 years it'll start happening.
Speaker 1:Although it's funny when I run into people who are my age and how old their their kids can be.
Speaker 2:Well, even like you know, like I mean, you know you're and she's, I'm on the younger side of some kids, some people Right.
Speaker 1:So like there are people of my age group who have kids, who have kids, I mean it's, you know, it's not impossible.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no. Scientifically and physically it can happen.
Speaker 1:There are people from our peer group who are grandparents, oh yeah, and not just like recent grandparents, like there are people who have been grandparents for quite a while. I daresay this is probably even a great grandparent out there.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. I don't know how confident that is 51 year old great grandparent. I don't know. I guess it could happen.
Speaker 1:It's theoretically possible. It is but. But it's weird because it's like, as we get old, like it's. I don't know, when I see someone my age, I forget. Like I am old, now 51. Like, not old, but like.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Well, we're firmly middle aged, firmly.
Speaker 1:I think that's wishful thinking. I would assume that we would live to 102.
Speaker 2:No no, no, I'm just saying generally. I think a lot we were actually talking about this, because somebody I know is almost 65 and he thinks he's still middle aged and I said I don't know Right. I said I always think middle age is like 40 to 60. That's just where I place it and after 60, I consider you're kind of elderly and even 60s pushing.
Speaker 1:Oh, it is pushing it, but I'm just saying today's society unless you're going to live to 120.
Speaker 2:I think, if you start, calling somebody elderly before they're 60, they're going to get angry with you. Just go try it.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, because elderly is, is a. You know, I think they call it pejorative. I mean, elderly implies decrepit.
Speaker 2:But how will you classify age after middle age? What's the next step? Seniors? Okay, so if you try to go, do I find it a 57 year old woman calling her a senior. See what she says to you. Oh yeah, I wouldn't do that.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:I'd advise against it. I wouldn't do it. But technically I don't know if I'd call and I don't know if I'd like it, Although I did get an AARP application right around my 51st birthday. I don't know the significance of my 51st birthday but is that when you're eligible to join AARP? I didn't even open the fucking envelope. I said well, I don't like this.
Speaker 1:I didn't look at it. You know I I would depend on the discounts. If they had good discounts.
Speaker 2:Like I didn't even think of that.
Speaker 1:I thought they just wanted an application fee, yeah Well, yeah, I'm not necessarily going to join them, but like I just I don't care what you call me now at this point, it's just, it is what it is.
Speaker 2:Well, but oh, here's what it says on carecom. What age is considered elderly? It just, and it's not. It's a thing called carecom, so it can't be that bad, okay. 65 or older right Cuz that's retirement elderly Well and according to the social well, according United States Social Security Administration right.
Speaker 1:But the reason for that is that you can retire at 65. Well, you're, you're Medicare eligible, right? You're eligible to retire.
Speaker 2:I think you can. You can receive so scared, it's not sorry regular social security Benefits earlier than retirement benefits at 62 and a half and you get less of it, right, or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but what I'm saying is is that, so that's all the fiction of you retire at 65? That's the general thought. Yeah, a lot of people don't, but I'm just saying that's a general thought there for when you retire Now you're elderly. That doesn't quite apply anymore when people are working to their 70s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just yeah, but the name it's. It's on different websites that are not. They don't use the word in a Derogatory fashion. There's, but I think when you call someone, that they feel that way, but there's no real distinction.
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously, when you say somebody's in their 20s or in their 30s or in their 40s, it's very clear what you mean, although it can get gray on the on the unlike, like if you're in your 20s, in your 29, does that make you that different from the person who is 30? Who did someone say well, they're in their 20s and they're in their 30s. Well, they're 29 and they're 31.
Speaker 2:They're not that far apart.
Speaker 1:So obviously there are levels to everything, but there's no clear demarcation where someone is like no, an elderly person.
Speaker 2:But we have to, as we humans, we have to classify things. That's just the way it goes Simple class for kids, and it has to be, and there are bright lines and that's it and that's stop trying to trap. Stop trying to mess around the lines. See, I hate that because I can. This is it.
Speaker 1:You can't have new ones discussions when they were like this it Like on or off, it's like, but it's both. Man, I want to dim in here. I don't want it on or off. I want a dimmer switch where I can kind of have it in between. But I mean okay.
Speaker 2:So if 65s considered elderly elderly by the Social Security Administration by the time we get to 67, 68, you there's a point that it's not you the argument starts going away. I think I would say, especially when she hits 70, it's over, like you're not gonna go. I'm still middle-aged, like all right, how long you think you're living?
Speaker 1:And again, middle-aged is just what does that mean? Middle-aged, that means I'm. Was that mean, I'm halfway to where?
Speaker 2:I'm good at being. What do they say? What does middle mean? Yeah, I mean we could kind of figure it out. Hey, cyclopedia Britannica. What do they say? 40 to 60?
Speaker 1:You know great, great minds the more that you're afraid of that inevitable end, the more that you're gonna try to justify and make Levels of like, to build up to it and also try to figure out how to put yourself as far down the levels as possible. Like like nobody wants to be, like I'm one foot close, I'm one foot away from death. They want to be as far away. For how far away? A middle-aged? Because that implies without saying, if you say I'm middle-aged, that implies in a very broad sense that you're halfway between living and dying. You're about midway through. Now we know for most people who say they're middle-aged, they are well beyond midway, they are close to the end of the line and they are the front.
Speaker 2:Any measure I think the middle, like, if you're really gonna get into it, I think the middle is a larger thing, because, if you right, and how many Classifications out there, I usually I'd say, like, if you wanted to say three young, middle-aged and old Right, you'd, you'd slice it into thirds, right, and they don't necessarily all have to be the same length of time, true, right, because between 40 and 60, those are usually the years that, yeah, if you have kids, they get a little older, they're not little kids. You're trying to make as much money as you can, like that, like there's a lot happening in those years that most people have a commonality with. And then, once 60 and all in all, once you hit 60, most people start quote unquote slowing down. They're not.
Speaker 2:You wouldn't hire a 62 year old, probably, and think he's gonna be. You know, burn the midnight oil, let's say, you know, I mean like it's not gonna be working as hard. Maybe it's just a general. I'm not saying specifically to a person, but generally speaking. Someone doesn't say, well, that 65 year old guy, you know he's gonna be, he'd be out working. This 25 year old out in the field, that's not happening, you know.
Speaker 1:I mean generally.
Speaker 2:I mean, there could be exceptions.
Speaker 1:You're right about that but in the same breath Will switch and say, well, that's 65 year old guy. We well, of course you can't retire yet. He can't. He had afford to slow down, you know. Like he doesn't earn enough, he hasn't put enough away for retirement, da-da-da, well, I guess he has to keep working. So like, at the same thing we'll say that that's 65 year old person, still has to live and produce and and and you know, pay the same amount of money because they still have to have an apartment, have all this stuff. Like then we'll turn on the other side and say but we don't want them working for us because they're not gonna work quite as hard. Like we put them in almost an impossible situation with, with that 65 year old who isn't on firm financial footing of which there are a lot of them, way more than we we would be comfortable with if we really knew how many 65 year old, yeah, are just like.
Speaker 1:The only thing they're gonna have to depend on is their social security check, which is not gonna be enough. Which is why I see like older people bagging groceries at market basket. I'm under no illusion that people are there.
Speaker 2:I honestly think I might want to do that when I get older but I don't think those people are there because they want to get.
Speaker 1:No, I know you're saying they don't have to be that that I don't like and that's what I'm saying is is it will say like oh you know, and you're not wrong about it Like there are people who say I wouldn't hire a 65 year old guy.
Speaker 2:I want a young go-go.
Speaker 1:No, it's a thing, it's of course it's a thing, but then we expect them. Well, sorry, you're not making as much money. I guess you can't get that job. Like it's weird that we'll have those two thoughts and we'll just. We'll just have them Simultaneously without realizing how they impact upon each other, or how one affects the other and how, if we could just adjust our thinking on one, maybe we could fix the other but we don't.
Speaker 2:Is why, chris? The same reason, why what? The same tone of our discussion right now. Right, it's easy to just look at something and say it's this, right. So we're just looking and I go, hey, you middle-aged from 40 to 60, right, and I would say, on Large-scale, many people would agree with most people would agree, right, they would say exactly middle-aged 40, 60, yep, yeah, I agree with you until you're in the room with someone that's 59 or 61 and you go.
Speaker 2:I don't really think they are elderly, right? So when you just like anything in life, when you look at things in a grand scale, look, if you look at things different than if you look at something individually. Right, that's just how it always is, and the question is is our?
Speaker 1:is the thing you're looking at? Does it need to be? Because some things do Need to be looked at in the grand scale to get the scope of them. Other things, you do need to drill down to get them exact, but I think we we make wrong decisions. There are a lot of things that we should be zooming into more and we give it that grand sweep and we go that's good enough. And then there's a lot of you know, like, yeah, it all connects it. I think. I think it all wraps around. To wrap this around, you know, to a closing off point, I guess we should probably wrap this up right is? Um? We just got to rethink the whole thing, like just the way that that we interact with the world around us We've become, we built this system that is supposed to make life better for us, but it doesn't anymore. We feed the system, we live, we exist For the system. The system doesn't exist for us. The system is its own separate thing that we must obey, and it's like we created it.
Speaker 2:We created the system get a little more light. What are you saying? You get like no, no, no, like you're getting, like you're getting heavy, like what are you saying? What?
Speaker 1:I'm saying is is that when our Comfort and our well-being Conflicts with the way the system is designed, we always lose and the system always wins, like it's always. It's like, that's the way it is. The system was built this way. Sorry, it doesn't measure up in this regard, but that's the system. Sorry, we can't do anything about it, it just is.
Speaker 1:And we all just kind of go yep, guess, just is how that sucks. Wish we could change it, wish we could vote, we should get that, whatever it is, whatever the method of fixing it. But in the end, we all kind of shrug our shoulders and just accept it. We take a backseat to the system, the system that we built for us, but it doesn't serve us anymore. We serve it when, like I said, whenever a decision comes to whether it's the system that wins or the individual, it's the system that always wins. It's just the way of things. It's just so funny that we all just accept this and we all agree that it sucks. None of us like it, we all wish it could be different. And and then, when it comes time to go, why don't we change it? We all just go, huh, what can you do? Fuck it. And it's just so sad because Technologically life and I'll just be better.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you why I think in a nutshell because we talk about concepts, let's say politically. Whatever arena you're in, right, you talk. We talk about grand scale things, right, so you could talk about Again, I'm not here to make this a political discussion but you could. You could get into, excuse me, healthcare right, or the way people punish crimes or whatever. You want a big scale things, taxes right, and we vote on it or we discuss it. But when you experience it, everyone experiences at their own individual level.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:So when they really have to make a decision, it's on there. They make I don't want to call it a selfish decision, but they make a self Thinking decision. Yeah, of course right, but when you talk about it, it's talked about in a grand scale, right? So if there was ever a way to make your decision Equal that grand scale, things might be different. But when, let's say, just taxes, right Again, I'll just talk political, because I'm trying to think of an analogy easy way to illustrate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's say, a Democrat wants X and a and a Republican wants Y, right if, if the Republican wins on their Discussion, on their debate or whatever, and it gets voted for what they want, there are a lot of people that will do better tax wise if the Republican wins, but society itself does not do better. Let's say let's say your taxes get cut right. So here's an example right, when Donald Trump was the president, right, I Made more money, yeah, okay, but Maybe there was a program that didn't get enough money that would have made society better, right, so that's just so. You say so I'm doing better. So that's all I care about. So I'm not saying I think that I know, but I'm saying like that's that, that's what happens to people.
Speaker 1:Well, that's because, if you really think about it, very few acts. You can't say no acts, but very few acts are very few. Things are either all bad or all good. Right, most things are good for some, bad for others, that's just. That's just true of of most things right. Something happens. Even the worst of things happen a war, an earthquake, a flood, a fire, you name it. Can be the worst of things, but somewhere on down the line that event was good for someone in some capacity. It, you know it enabled some good to come for it somewhere, but the overall thing could be really bad. You know, the one I often think about is, you know, the pandemic we went through. There was a lot of bad and it was a hell of a lot of bad. We're still still dealing with some of that bad.
Speaker 2:What do they say? Show me a tragedy, I'll show you an opportunity.
Speaker 1:But there was also just the way it goes. There was also some good, though. One of the main things I think about is QR codes. Pre-pandemic, very few people understood what you do with the QR code. When they encountered a QR code, they just didn't have any idea what to do, so they just moved on. The the pandemic made people have to, you know, interact with QR codes for menus. I hate that. I don't like it. I get it. I get it. I don't. I don't. You know what I like the ability to have it all not in the restaurant. If I'm in the restaurant, the menu, but we usually don't. We usually know what we're gonna have before we get there, like so.
Speaker 1:I don't know you that because we look at the menu online. I don't want to go into a place I don't want to sit, but anyway, that being said, I just what I like about the QR codes.
Speaker 2:I like the surprise.
Speaker 1:QR codes. You can use them now and a lot more businesses are using them. A lot more people are using them for Interesting things. I'm just saying that's a good thing that came pre-pandemic it now, if you said, hey, could you know how about the pandemic never happened and people go back to not knowing how to use QR codes, I'm not gonna say no, we must keep this right to QQ, I'm, but I'm just saying that you're right. There were some People who did better during the pandemic. Suddenly they could work from home. Suddenly they were getting paid the same amount but not having commuting costs anymore.
Speaker 1:So I'm just saying that if most things, some people benefit, some people don't. That is true of everything, so that's why it gets really hard to talk about something. Is it? Is this thing that this particular political party wants to pass? Is it good or is it bad? That's the discussion we have. Is it a good thing or is it a bad thing? Well, that's a stupid discussion to have. For anything. You can't argue whether something is good or bad, because you have to define Good for whom.
Speaker 2:Well, here's what I'm saying. Has any bad, let's say this is great, I like talking like this. But let's say Whatever issue, it might be right. And generally speaking, let's say I'm gonna make something up. Let's say there was an issue that said we want to make sure there are more public beaches, right.
Speaker 2:And everyone in the country says yeah well, let's say a state or a state of Massachusetts, yeah, that does sound better for everyone and we're gonna make them public and everyone can come and this is what. That sounds great for everybody, right? And then, individually, there might be one group of people that end up paying higher tax than another group, right? Well then maybe it never gets off the ground. But then there could have been another thing that comes out down the road that the people that are gonna pay more taxes in Problem a and a paying less taxes and get a benefit.
Speaker 2:People aren't generally willing to Take a hit for the greater good, even though they could happen in their favor on the next one, right? So no one is in favor of that, everyone is just says it's about me, and I get it. I mean that we're all human beings, so we have some selfishness to us, right? But Most of the time it only works society only works when people are weak, willing to take hits for the greater good, and I think we're getting more and more away from that.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that is very true, I think. What I think, though, is I feel like that thing that's set up about having to take the hit or not is False, and it's constructed that way to make certain people, because there's a lot of things that nobody would take listen, I've been married long enough.
Speaker 2:If you don't think you have to take a hit for the great, nobody take. But there are some things where nobody has to take the hit, right for the greater good.
Speaker 1:There is no hit. The reason why they want you to think there's a hit is because that stupid thing of we have. How do you pay for this?
Speaker 2:No, no, I'm not saying that they, Chris. I'm saying, let's say, you put 20 people in a room. That's all I meant.
Speaker 1:Oh, I know, and you can.
Speaker 2:There's a decision to make some people that, whatever happens, some people might get get a benefit that's better than others. Right, that's just the way it works. Sometimes you you could be on a on a baseball team and Something happens.
Speaker 1:Nobody likes to see somebody getting benefits, that they're not right.
Speaker 2:But my point is if you just let it, let it go, it'll come around your way eventually, and if you're all in it together. But you know that's the problem.
Speaker 1:So, but most of these people who, who, like you're setting up the thing that they're not in it together. That's, that's a fake construct. That's in order to create the very friction that prevents the progress. That's what I'm saying is, is it? Oh no, I agree.
Speaker 1:There are some things you're right that people are just nobody wants to to feel like they're getting less than somebody else. Nobody wants to feel like somebody else is getting a benefit that they're not, which is why you get a lot of resistance to student loan Forgiveness. Right, because there are people who did go to school and did pay for their, their school, and they're upset that other people in their mind are gonna get it for free, right. I mean, a lot of that is ridiculous, because some of these people like went to school in a different time and the cost structure and like it's.
Speaker 2:I will say probably would have been more Widely accepted if they said listen, we're gonna retroback that back, but whatever period of time, so that if somebody did pay, let's say they paid and they they ended up paying their student loans off Two or three years ago. Right, there should have been some retroactive benefit for somebody that did that In terms of getting more people on board with it. But that's that's. That's a political discussion.
Speaker 1:But why aren't those loans interest free?
Speaker 2:There's no reason to charge interest, because the government doesn't get money for free.
Speaker 1:That's why but what I'm saying is is the government, doesn't they sell those loans off to private, to private, like it's not like the government? The the whole student loan thing is just stupid. You were basically giving to companies. Hey, you want a new way to exploit these kids? Here you go. We're gonna tell them that they get a loan for any money because they're using it for school, I mean borrowing money is cost money since before Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:But could any 18 year old qualify to buy a hundred thousand dollar? Put hundred thousand dollar for car, no, most 18. You know I'm saying but yeah, we let him sign a hundred thousand dollar loan because it's you can't absolve it with bankruptcy.
Speaker 2:That's why. That's why they don't care.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying. But the whole thing was structured to it wasn't structured to give kids education, was structured to put them in debt so they would be indentured. Servitude to the, to the. That's the general vibe.
Speaker 2:That might be a little dark way of looking at it. It could be looked at as a way of giving an opportunity to somebody that can't afford it. I, I'm just saying I mean.
Speaker 1:Again, if the system is built on the main goal to make money that is gonna be the reason of everything, that's the premise you're saying that's the premise of that's capitalism.
Speaker 2:That's not the premise of the government. That's not. You might think it and it might be actually true, I don't know, but I don't think it's the model of a government.
Speaker 1:But even they pay attention to that same, that same calculus of like does this make money?
Speaker 2:Is this, is this good, I think, as long as it breaks even like the government is supposed to break even. Now I don't disagree with you that things are designed to profit, but I don't think anyone's ever any government official has ever come out and said that.
Speaker 1:No, but business is like it's all built on profit. It's all built on cost and profit. Just the whole thing that we've constructed is built on that. How can we deny that? That is the fundamental force of everything we do. We talk about movies now, the success of movies, we, the viewing public in how much money it made.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of tired of it. I don't really like that?
Speaker 1:Why do we give two craps what X movie made in box? Why?
Speaker 2:does that. You know what I'd like to see? Because movies aren't cheap to go to right, so I'd actually like to see instead of showing me. But again, it's because you're right, our society is very hung up on money, so we, why the view of?
Speaker 1:public care of what a movie made that has no impact on what good, but you know it doesn't matter. Judging the quality of a movie, as opposed to the quality of other movies, based on how much money it made in the box office, rather than how good the movie is.
Speaker 2:That's tiring to me. I actually I'm interested in seeing ticket sales because sometimes when they'll show like a movie that's making a lot of money, I'm like I wonder how that stacked up against Star Wars or something like that?
Speaker 2:right, and it's hard to find that information. You can, but it's not easy. But I'd love to know how many tickets would you sell? Because I mean, if you wanted to go to a 3D IMAX, this one was $20, right, so that, versus whatever a ticket cost when you go see ET right, of course it's gonna make more money, but they don't always give you that ticket sales.
Speaker 1:No, but they do judge it, they do inflate it, they do make the account for inflation and so forth, and you can get those stats if you Google it. If you good to work AI on that, because a lot of the AI now have access to to the web browsing, so that makes it makes it that much powerful. You know what, though I think we're going on an hour and a half here, I think this is probably a good place to wrap it up.
Speaker 2:Well, I wanted to what's the highest movie.
Speaker 1:We're gonna close off with this, the highest movie. Listen to this, all right.
Speaker 2:S the number of tickets sold. You wouldn't all right, I'm gonna give you two guesses. The number of tickets sold number one all time. What's that Gone with the wind? Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:I actually Can you?
Speaker 2:imagine. So that right. So it's a service. And the number two style was the what would be. It's four now, but it was number one, you know. The first one, new hope. Three, sound of music. Four is ET, so none of the more contemporary ones, but-.
Speaker 1:I'll bet you gone with the wind is there, because everybody probably saw that that's what it is.
Speaker 2:Like that was a probably a phenomenon, Just like style was was a phenomenon.
Speaker 1:What percentage of the public saw Gone with the Wind? What percentage of the public saw the Next Nun?
Speaker 2:What was the Style was?
Speaker 1:What percentage of the public? Because that would be the interesting question is what percentage of the public saw that movie? And I bet you'll see a drop as we go, because now the biggest movies it's not movies that everyone saw, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think the most recent one I could think of that was one that was kind of like that, but it's probably nowhere near was then the latest Top Gun movie kind of brought people back to the movies and like my dad went to go see it, Like a lot of people are going to see it Like Oppenheimer did too. Yes, my mother went to go see that. Quite a different kind so right, but they're nowhere near. There's 202 million tickets sold, if it Gone with the Wind.
Speaker 1:So, like, actually, let's look at the most recent. The most recent thing they were all trumpeting was the fact that a Barbie and Oppenheimer brought people back out to the movies Cause those two movies dropped. And that was a big deal because like that was. But it would be interesting to see what percentage of the public saw those movies and compare that to what percentage of the public saw like Gone with the Wind Cause.
Speaker 2:I'll bet you back again. I would never have guessed that.
Speaker 1:Everybody probably saw them.
Speaker 2:Cause if you were.
Speaker 1:I did know that.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't have guessed it but it makes sense to me when I hear it Cause I like, I remember, I think about my grandmother talking about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause that was a huge, huge deal that that movies aren't the spectacle anymore. You know, what's funny is they're not an event, the thing they're trying to make the spectacle now. Is that sphere in Las Vegas, I guess?
Speaker 2:What is that?
Speaker 1:It's like a 360 theater basically where, like their stuff happening, like right above you, like they control the whole sky, basically. Remember Truman Show. Yeah. Kind of that idea of that bubble, that instead you go to a show and I guess you know Angus is losing money on an Epic scale Cause it's too big of a spectacle. Oh, really, Well, you know we talked about Disney earlier, right? Yeah, Disney already had to close that Star.
Speaker 2:Wars hotel. Right, yeah, it was kind of a ridiculous thing and the cost was just ridiculous. And the I love the idea To getting people to keep coming back, right, well, and because if you've experienced a story now, people say, well, you can experience a different branch of the story, but that's just not what an average person will do.
Speaker 1:But you know what the person? People would probably do it more if it didn't cost an average.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, the cost was so prohibitive. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1:That it wasn't the sort of thing that only like you could afford to do. Hey, let's hear, let's go back and overspend on that Star Wars hotel. But the idea of it For a weekend.
Speaker 2:It was like $3,000 to stay there for two nights. It was insane. I mean that's, you're pushing out a lot of people. That could you know.
Speaker 1:Listen at the risk of sounding like a broken record. I wish I lived in a world where cool shit like that could exist, could be used and didn't have to fucking make all the money and we could enjoy that, because I feel like there are technological marvels that are possible that we don't get because they're just not quote unquote cost effective, and that's too bad.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're right.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of cool things that we could be doing and seeing with our technology and like there's just we're missing the point of living, where all the fun of enjoying stuff is just is held up to this weird standard that I don't know man, and I know people are gonna like, oh you're crazy, you're crazy communist, you want everybody to have it, but I don't know, it's just, it's so sad Cause I feel like it's just it's miss potential, it's just we could have so much fun stuff.
Speaker 1:And instead oh it doesn't make enough money.
Speaker 2:We gotta shut it down. I have to swing back just for a second, cause I find these movie things interesting. I don't know why I love movies, but this episode is all over the place.
Speaker 2:It's all over the place, it's almost like my brain. So, top 10, adjusted for inflation, okay, which it's the same ones I was saying, but I didn't say the top four I gave you before the most recent movie, chris, and we'll wrap it up where I say this I know you wanna, but 19 is 1997. So that's what 26 years ago was the most recent one? That was Titanic. Right, so here they are, number one, I'll go from number one to number 10. Gone with the wind, 1939. Star Wars, 1977. Sound and Music, 1965. Et82, titanic, 97. The 10 Commandments at number six, 1956. Jaws, number seven, in 1975. Dr Chavago, number eight, in 1965. The Exorcist, 1973. And number 10, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, 1937. So the most recent one was Titanic. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of crazy.
Speaker 2:Cause when they talk about month the way all biggest sales of all time. So exactly what we're talking about it's really not. It's kind of a false kind it is. I mean, it's true they made the most money, but they certainly didn't sell the most tickets by any stretch. Now what?
Speaker 1:is that labeled US? Is that US only, or is that worldwide?
Speaker 2:This one does not tell me. It just says top light. This is on IMBD. It says top lifetime adjusted grosses. That's all it says.
Speaker 1:But I would venture to guess that movies like Gone with the Wind and such did not get a wide international release.
Speaker 2:Well, again in 1939, a lot of the countries weren't built up as they are now.
Speaker 1:But what I'm saying is is my guess is is that that is US?
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe, but I mean, let's compare apples to apples.
Speaker 1:What I'm just saying is that that has to be US, because you know that the older movies didn't get a worldwide release and so they wouldn't. Titanic did, but they have to be comparing it. I don't know, I'm just guessing. So it does make a difference now because worldwide that's where a lot like a lot more of my like there's markets that are now like Asia and stuff has opened up to our Hollywood. That makes all the difference in the world, and that's the other calculus is now that movies are made.
Speaker 2:It's tough to gauge it, though, because it's not apples to apples, because that opportunity wasn't available for the movies back then. Right, it just wasn't there.
Speaker 1:No, that's true, right, but what I'm saying, one of the things I keep thinking of, is like how the desire for like to make money, how it kind of ruins things, and like movies is another thing, where now movies are opening to more markets. And so you think about a movie like ET and the way that movie was made. And that movie was made for an American audience. Right, it was geared to an American audience and that was the audience it was aiming for and that was the audience it was trying to please. Now you think of movies. They have to keep in the back of their mind. Well, we also get a portion of our profits from Asia and in, like other continents, other cultures, so we gotta kind of make sure that the movie doesn't have things that would upset them, because then it will do bad. Like Disney actually had some problems where they put some things in and China did not embrace some of the movies for various reasons.
Speaker 2:Right, did you hear that? There was a bit by Dave Chappelle about that? It's kind of funny. I think I may be. He says why we're never gonna beat China. He says he goes there's too much racism in the United States. He says all these different groups hate each other. He goes you know why China is always better? He goes everybody there's Chinese.
Speaker 1:No, but so. But it's just because of that. Now the art is gonna change. You're gonna make artistic decisions to wanna appeal to as many markets as possible, so you're not gonna make it distinctly, I know, I just like it's just the age old thing of that. If art is gonna be affected by commerce, it's always gonna have a negative effect, and we recognize that. We recognize that when there's a choice between making something better and making something cost effective, usually they go in two opposite directions.
Speaker 2:Well, to that point. When you look at this list and I'll go down, even like number 22,. Ray is a lost doc these are all like what people would say these are all good movies, right, like they were popular movies. But you go through the list Avatar, jurassic Park, lion King, the Sting like they're just good movies, right?
Speaker 1:Popcorn movies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but they're good, like you know, if you talked about it, say like who didn't see Jaws right, and who didn't enjoy it on varying levels? But most people like these movies right, but like they could be. Like fast from the furious 17 comes out right and it makes a ton of money but it's not that good. You know what I mean. But you could look at this list and you'd say there's almost every movie on this list is a movie that you'd say you tell somebody, oh, you kind of have to see that If you like.
Speaker 2:Let's say sci-fi you kind of have to see Star Wars.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know, these are all kind of like maybe foundational movies, but whatever.
Speaker 1:We're going on a tangent, yeah, going on a tangent. You know what the last thing to kind of wrap it up is the movies feel the special effects are so good, but they're almost to the point where the movies feel fake. They don't feel real anymore because, you know, most of the effects are CGI as opposed to practical. That's why I really appreciate movies that are made today that have practical effects or a good mix of practical effects along with CGI.
Speaker 2:Very little in Oppenheimer, you can see right.
Speaker 1:Did you know that?
Speaker 2:Did you see Oppenheimer I?
Speaker 1:did not, but I heard that it was all practical effects Very little. I read about it very little, like the explosions. I will let you know on my list of things he did the explosion.
Speaker 2:He used a balloon and an aquarium tank.
Speaker 1:He did all these crazy things but, yeah, very little CGI and there's some filmmakers who are going back and doing that now I think of the most recent that the Dungeons and Dragons movie, which was a lot of practical effects. But, like I appreciate practical effects, because now it's so easy to go into a thing where you're just CGI and everything looks CGI and it just looks fake. It looks too good Cause you know that we can't do those things. So if you see those things and they look good, your mind goes oh, that looks too good.
Speaker 1:That's the other thing that annoys me is when people look at movies and they just can't get lost in the movie and they have to like, oh the CGI, and look for the, look for the flaw. And I do the same thing and it's just, it's too bad, because we used to be able to watch movies and kind of get into it and get absorbed into it. Now we're kind of like looking from the outside and looking at the CGI and trying to find the, you know, the weakness of the CGI. It's just, it's not the same anymore.
Speaker 2:And I don't know. I still go to the movies like I'm 15. I just sit there and I get into it.
Speaker 1:I like it when I can get into a movie and just lose myself and just like take me. You know it's hard and harder to do nowadays, but when you can do it it's fun. Well, I'll wrap it up with this.
Speaker 2:At the movies. You know what really takes me out of being in the zone of being a movie. The person next to me is just scrolling Facebook. Yeah, like, what are you doing? What?
Speaker 1:are you doing? Are you going out in the world if you just get in there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then they get mad when I ask them to put the phone down.
Speaker 1:But anyway, we're all guilty, all right. So this this has been a different episode, because we've kind of like caught up on stuff and just went off and all sorts of tangents.
Speaker 2:This is what happens with Steven you get into the mind of Chris and Steve.
Speaker 1:It's scattered. This is what happens when we don't talk for a while. So so we're going to work on getting more episodes out on a timely basis, and and we're putting out, putting out some solo.
Speaker 2:Either it's been out or it's coming out. I did a solo one. Yeah, kind of fun you might see, the quality isn't as good. I'm not as good as Chris, but I'm not, you're a very good at it. And then Chris is going to do some, we'll do some together. More content, hopefully, hopefully. If you like us, you like more content.
Speaker 1:If you don't, then that's fine. Why are you listening for her? Yeah, yes, hopefully. If you like us, this more to come, and if you don't like us, well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, we still like you, we still like you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, and so yeah, until next time. I'm Chris and I'm Steve, and this has been some deep shit.
