California faces a $600 billion to $1 trillion pension gap

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:36:25

   what's happening with this california flight stuff because yeah i was with palmer over christmas and a bunch of other guys yeah from that side and um i didn't know about it i knew that it was going to be brought in before the end of the year it's this sort of sticky thing that seems to be following people around but it's also going to get worse over time it seems like there's more and more rumblings that stuff's going to keep on this feels like the sort of core engine of california's prosperity since the 1800s is now unraveling yeah uh i'm in a bunch of group chats i talked to a lot of people i would say probably a third of people i talked to have already left you're asking about people leaving right and i would say um like a survey we did informally in a group which has been published uh talked about is close to 87 percent of people are going to leave

2. 1:37:18

   um these are the core leaders in tech and the other thing is i talked to a lot of emerging tech ceos of startups that are doing really well that are growing and they're all looking to leave like there was one company i was talking to they're going to move up to Northern California from Southern. And they're like, now I'm going to move to Nevada. And that's because they're worried about what's next. So California is in this fundamental sinkhole right now. It goes back to my point about people making promises. In order to get elected, politicians promise people something that they don't have today. That's how you get elected. You don't get elected by saying, I'm going to take stuff away from you. The government's going to do less for you. Show me one politician in the last hundred years has been elected saying that.

3. 1:37:58

   so in order and there's a fundamental kind of like moment this come to jesus moment can you keep doing these promises can you even meet the promises you've already made and in california the answer is no california set up a system um where we created the highest tax rate in the country because of all the success in silicon valley all the income that's being generated all the success and capital gains and whatnot and use that to fund a bunch of nonsense the the bullet train to nowhere you know freaking like 30 billion dollars in nothing like the how much is it 30 billion um and they've had six ceos by the way that have all been fired or the one guy just got arrested it's insane there's um it was just published that this this homeless program 220 million dollars are spent on it six homeless people got themselves out of the cycle of uh

4. 1:38:53

   poverty that they were in um you go down the list what was it sorry just what was that thing about the affordable internet oh bill rural broadband that was it and for the same amount of money that was spent i think every american citizen could have got starlink yeah that and that one that's a federal problem i don't yeah yeah yeah but you're gonna get me very emotional i've been i've been very like you seem like an emotional i've been very like unemotional during our uh talk about science in the future and then this is the opposite okay this is the bullshit the opposite that happens when social systems become manifest like um rotten it's a system where people lie to each other in order to keep themselves in power in order to keep their money flowing in order to keep this nonsense up and running people lie to themselves they lie to

5. 1:39:43

   their constituents and the democracy starts to become like what's the point like does this even work california in particular um we made a bunch of changes to the pension system so we have public pensions for public employees in california and over the past um uh 12 to 15 years those changes have resulted in a bunch of guarantees to people on their future retirement benefits that the state simply cannot afford to meet the estimate currently is that there's 600 billion to a trillion dollars in the whole okay the state then has a question how are we going to like pay for all these people all the stuff that we promise them and that's a big part and then there's also all the near-term stuff like health care costs hey we promise them health care We promised our union workers healthcare.

6. 1:40:32

   We've got to figure out a way to fund the healthcare because the promises were made. But the promises were never funded. The promises were never possible to be funded. And when suddenly it all comes to ROOST and everyone's like, well, how are we going to make the payments now? How are we going to fill the hole? That's the situation California is in. California has such a heaping liability problem that it's now, you're seeing like all the rats jumping, you know, off the ship or they're burning the ship or the people are leaving the ship.

7. 1:40:59

   I don't know what the right analogy to use is, but that's the chaos that's ensuing in California in this very moment. And so we talk a lot about the billionaire tax. The billionaire tax came about because of one union, one guy at one union called SEIU UHW, who set up a scheme where they would tax you 5% of your net worth if your net worth is over a billion dollars, which everyone in this audience is like, who cares? Screw the billionaires. But what it does is it gives the state assembly, the legislature, the ability to, in the future, change the threshold and the amount.

8. 1:41:27

   So theoretically, you could take the 5% on billionaires one time and make it 1% on billionaires every year. Wasn't this the case with the original income tax? 1930, it was 1%. Tell people the story of how the original income tax... I mean, the original income tax was pitched because we did not have an income tax in the United States. And that was, again, why this country was founded. It was set up as no taxation without representation.

9. 1:41:51

   There was a huge tax scheme to fund all of the nonsense that was going on in England. uh and careful now i mean at the time very different um not to speak to the people but the uh let's call it the aristocracy and uh you know what we call the elites today and by the way the i think about the term the elites it's sort of like that spider-man meme where like everyone's you're the elite you're the elite you're the elite like the tech guy's the elite like that's kind of the moment we're in right now like the tech guys are the elites but like the tech guys last year were telling they were calling out the ngos as the elites and then you know it's just like everyone's an elite your privilege is more privileged than my privilege yeah this is all rooted in marxist philosophies by the way it's all this like oppressor

10. 1:42:30

    press stuff like again but all of those philosophies fundamentally uh distinguish people's agency like this is so critical for people to understand when you give people a bunch of stuff