Joe Rogan Experience #1508 - Peter Schiff

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Three, two- …

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      Three, two-

   2. PSPeter Schiff0:02

      (clears throat)

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:03

      ... one. Boom, here we go. Hello, Peter.

   4. PSPeter Schiff0:07

      Joe.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:07

      Good to see you, buddy.

   6. PSPeter Schiff0:08

      Nice to see you again.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      I like how you-

   8. PSPeter Schiff0:09

      Different style at least, but nice to see you.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:10

      I like how you have the Euro Pacific Capital above your left shoulder. Very nice, very wise.

   10. PSPeter Schiff0:16

       Well this, this is my studio in my basement-

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:18

       Ah.

   12. PSPeter Schiff0:18

       ... here in Connecticut where I'm hunkered down. But you know, in honor of doing your show, I poured myself a, a glass of scotch.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:24

       Oh. There you go.

   14. PSPeter Schiff0:25

       So I have it.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:26

       Oh, I feel like I should get drunk too.

   16. PSPeter Schiff0:27

       And I'm sure you have something to drink, but I wanted to toast your Spotify deal.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:30

       Oh, thank you very much. All right, I got a bottle of, uh, my good friend Josh Barnett's Warbringer Warmaster Edition Mesquite-

   18. PSPeter Schiff0:38

       Ah, yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:39

       ... Smoked Whiskey. So I'll have a, I'll have a little bit of this.

   20. PSPeter Schiff0:41

       Here's to you and Spotify.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:42

       Thank you.

   22. PSPeter Schiff0:42

       And you know, I think they're getting you cheap. You probably could have held out for more money.

   23. JRJoe Rogan0:46

       Well, you don't know how much I got.

   24. PSPeter Schiff0:48

       Well, I just know what the public says. All right.

   25. JRJoe Rogan0:50

       They don't know how much I got either. But thank you very much.

   26. PSPeter Schiff0:52

       Well good, if you got more, dr- I'll drink to that too.

   27. JRJoe Rogan0:55

       Thank you. I'm very happy. Spotify is awesome, I'm very happy. I'm just, I'm, I'm happy to be-

   28. PSPeter Schiff0:59

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan0:59

       ... with a, a company where they have a, a vested interest in my success. Like we're together, you know, wh- whereas-

   30. PSPeter Schiff1:05

       That's the beauty of capitalism.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   When you say, "I…

   1. PSPeter Schiff15:00

      and Medicare and all these sacred cows that nobody would gore. Trump should have been the guy to do it. He should have said, "The buck stops with me. I don't care if I don't have a second term." And he should have vetoed all of those bills that he signed. He never should have agreed to allow the, allowing the debt ceiling to go up. He should have en- enforced that debt ceiling. We now have 26 and a half trillion of debt, right? When he came into office, it was just under 20 trillion. So we've already added six and a half trillion since he became president. I would not have allowed the debt ceiling to go up at all, not one nickel, and I would have forced the government to cut government spending. And that's what Trump should have done. Uh, you know, but, but he didn't want to do it because he, he was more concerned about the politics of it.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:41

      When you say, "I would," are you running for president? Are you ready to do this?

   3. PSPeter Schiff15:44

      No, I'm just saying what I would have done had I been Trump.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:45

      Are you ready to do this, Peter? Are you ready to do this?

   5. PSPeter Schiff15:48

      I, I'm not running.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:50

      (laughs) But we need someone who understands-

   7. PSPeter Schiff15:51

      But you know, it would be interesting. I could be the first Puerto Rican president.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:55

      (laughs)

   9. PSPeter Schiff15:56

      I'd be a... Do, do you ever watch The Sweathogs?

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:59

       Yes, sure.

   11. PSPeter Schiff16:00

       Yeah, I, I'm Mon Epstein. I'm a Puerto Rican Jew.

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:03

       Epstein played my brother in an episode of Newsradio.

   13. PSPeter Schiff16:07

       Really?

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:08

       Yes. He played my older brother, who was a priest, who beat us up. It was fun.

   15. PSPeter Schiff16:11

       Yeah, yeah. Gabriel Kaplan's show. That was... in 1970. But yeah, I'm, I, I could be a Puerto Rican Jew.

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:16

       Yeah, there you go.

   17. PSPeter Schiff16:16

       Because you know, I can't vote, right? I can't vote for the president, but I can run. In fact, I could be the only person elected president who couldn't vote for himself.

   18. JRJoe Rogan16:24

       That's hilarious.

   19. PSPeter Schiff16:25

       (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:25

       Now, I'm so glad you're on here today because you have a unique ability to illuminate all these areas of finance and taxing and Wall Street, that most people just simply don't have the understanding or the knowledge to, to lay out for the layperson like myself. When you look-

   21. PSPeter Schiff16:44

       Yeah, well, I pre- I appreciate that. And, you know, you've got a great audience and I'm hoping to clear up a lot of misconception out there, 'cause I've been saying, you know, the only thing that spreads faster than the coronavirus is ignorance. You know, about economics, uh, about, about finance. And so I want to clear that up. And, you know, a good place to get started is to really talk about the current state of the US economy and, and where we were, right, leading up to COVID-19. Because, you know, Donald Trump is out there claiming that we have this great economy, right, that just got screwed up by COVID-19. We had to shut it down. But we didn't. We had an enormous bubble. There was nothing great about it other than the size of the bubble. And the reason that it collapsed so quickly was because what happened was COVID-19 was a pin that pricked that bubble. In fact, the bubble was already deflating before COVID. It started to deflate in the fourth quarter of 2019. That's when the Federal Reserve stopped hiking interest rates and then started cutting them again and started doing quantitative easing again. And then COVID-19 came and it was like a giant spear that put a gaping hole into a bubble that was already deflating.

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:55

       Can I pause-

   23. PSPeter Schiff17:55

       And it just accelerated the process.

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:56

       Can I pause you there, Peter? Can I pause you there? Why did that happen? Why did that process take place before COVID-19?

   25. PSPeter Schiff18:02

       Well, because again-Um, Trump was very critical of Janet Yellen during the Obama years, rightly so, because Yellen kept interest rates artificially low to make Obama look good by propping up the stock market and the real estate market with cheap money. But doing that is what prevented a real recovery that would've benefited Main Street. And so those are the people that Trump was tapping into, the guys on Main Street that were getting screwed as the guys on Wall Street were being enriched by, by bad monetary policy. So Fed was r- uh, Trump was right to criticize Yellen and then he didn't want to reappoint her because supposedly he was gonna reappoint somebody that would, would do the right thing. But as Powell was doing the right thing, albeit too slowly, Powell started to correct the problem by raising interest rates and shrinking the balance sheet. But when that began to impact the markets, Trump was like, oh. He started criticizing him. You know, "We're gonna fire you. You're, you're a terrible Fed chairman." He was doing the right thing. We need higher interest rates, and unfortunately higher interest rates means the stock market's gonna go down. I mean, that's just the reality. The real estate market's gonna go down. You know, we're addicted to cheap money like a drug addict is addicted to heroin. But if you've got a guy addicted to heroin, the solution isn't more heroin so he stays high. The solution is, okay, no more heroin, and now you're gonna go through withdrawal. So the economy started to go through withdrawal as the Fed was withdrawing that cheap money, and Trump was like, "No. I don't want, I don't want withdrawal. Who's gonna vote for me if they're, you know, ev- everybody's hung lo- I wanna party again. I want the stock market at record highs." A- a- a- and so, you know, but so because we, we, we, we did this, we never actually had a real recovery. We just, you know, put more air into the bubble. But, you know, when, when COVID started, this is important to understand. So COVID-19 hits, and all of a sudden, you know, and I don't even know... I've, I've seen some of your discussions on, on the podcast about COVID itself and, and, and whether or not the threat is being exaggerated. Is it really as big a health threat as a lot of people say? And, you know, I'm not an expert there. You know, I, I tend to, I, I tend to always be suspicious of government and I, and I kind of think it's being exaggerated like most stuff, but I'm not a doctor, I'm not an immunologist, and so I, I, you know, let's just take them at their word that it, that, that it's as bad as they say. L- I just wanna focus on the economics of it. But, so when COVID hits and people, you know, people start, you know, staying home and they're not going out and, you know, and the e- co- people start losing their jobs and the economy starts tanking, right? The government comes in as if it's the government's job to rescue the economy. And the politicians say, in fact Trump himself said, "Oh, we're at war. I'm a wartime president. This is like World War II." Remember that? Remember when he said that?

   26. JRJoe Rogan21:00

       Yes.

   27. PSPeter Schiff21:01

       Yeah. It's World War II and we have to sacrifice. Americans have to sacrifice to beat, um, COVID-19 the way, you know, a p- a prior generation sacrificed to beat, you know, Nazi Germany, uh, uh, uh, Imperial Japan. We have to sacrifice. Except what we're doing now is the complete opposite of the actual sacrifice that Americans were asked to make during World War II, right? Apart from the fact that 16 million young men went off to war and risked their lives, apart from that sacrifice, the people that didn't go off to war, they actually sacrificed. Right? So 'cause 1941 when the war started, not even 10% of Americans paid any income tax at all. Fewer than 10%.

   28. JRJoe Rogan21:51

       Really.

   29. PSPeter Schiff21:51

       1942 there was a victory tax, and after the victory tax more than a third of Americans began paying income taxes. They weren't paying any income taxes before the war. All of a sudden they're paying income taxes. And in 1942 they, they, they created the withholding tax which Americans, you know, we pay it today, you think it was always there. Up until 1942 nobody had any income taxes withheld from their pay. What happened was if you were among the few people who actually paid income taxes, you didn't write a check until April 15th of the following year. You made no payments. You made no quarterly payments, you had no payroll withholding. That started as part of the victory tax. So massive tax increases on Americans. In addition to that, the US government told Americans, "We need more money than this. You need to loan us money." And so the f- the Treasury started selling these war bonds to the public and middle class Americans bought the equivalent of trillions of dollars of war bonds. So the government taxed the middle class and borrowed from the middle class to pay for the war, and this is in 1940. We just went through the Great Depression, so these are Americans that just lived through a 10-year depression, the worst period in American history, yet they had enough money to loan trillions to the US government and to pay much higher taxes than they were paying before. And in addition, nobody got a bailout. No businesses... If you ran a restaurant and nobody was coming to your restaurant because your customers are off fighting a war and the ones that weren't fighting a war were now working harder to pay higher taxes, you know, and they... people weren't taking vacations, they weren't going to theaters, they weren't staying in hotels, but none of these small business owners got one nickel from the US government. The government didn't loan money to anybody, it didn't bail anybody out. What are we doing now? The opposite. The government is cutting people's taxes-

   30. JRJoe Rogan23:47

       But hold, but hold on a second. Hold on a second. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   I understand. …

   1. PSPeter Schiff30:00

      they think should fund it. We can't just use the Federal Reserve as a piggy bank. The, the Federal Reserve cure is gonna do more damage than the coronavirus disease. And I think if the states knew...... that they would have to bear the economic consequences of their own decision-making, they would do a better cost-benefit analysis on what they shut down and how they do it, right? Right now, every state is like, "Oh, let's shut everything down, and the federal government's gonna bail everybody out. So we don't care if we put people out of work, 'cause they're gonna get these enhanced benefits from the US government. Oh, we don't care if we shut down businesses, 'cause they're gonna get these PPP grants from the government." But if the federal government let every state know, "Look, you make a decision. This, you handle this the way you want, and you pay for it." Right? So you do a cost-benefit analysis, because thinking that everything is free, that is the problem.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:51

      I understand.

   3. PSPeter Schiff30:51

      Right? We are doing so much damage to the economy. People have no idea. We are gonna get such a massive economic collapse, far worse than what I thought was coming, you know, when I did your show last few times. This is gonna be much worse. We are compounding the mistakes of the past with much bigger mistakes. I mean, if you think it's bad now with the, the civil unrest, it's gonna get a lot worse when there's noth- there's no food.

   4. JRJoe Rogan31:13

      I agree.

   5. PSPeter Schiff31:14

      Right? When, when, when we run out of stuff.

   6. JRJoe Rogan31:16

      Can I pause you?

   7. PSPeter Schiff31:17

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan31:18

      Last time you were on, you were predicting the bubble of commercial real estate y- and, and a, a lot of other issues. What, what do you think is different about that situation now, and how m- how much does that compound what we're dealing with currently?

   9. PSPeter Schiff31:35

      Well, obviously, the coronavirus has made, you know, th- the problem worse for commercial real estate.

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:42

       Yes.

   11. PSPeter Schiff31:42

       I mean, commercial real estate is gonna get killed for so many reasons.

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:45

       It's de- it's devastating.

   13. PSPeter Schiff31:46

       But it was in trouble, I think, before COVID. But COVID, again, just accelerated the process, but obviously, uh, if you are a retailer, you know, no one's coming into your store, your restaurant, if your, if you got a gym, if you got a movie theater. So you're not collecting any rent, so you wanna default. And so now your landlord's not getting paid, and he might have a mortgage, and now he can't pay because he's not getting rent. You've got all these office buildings where a lot of offices now, like my company, almost all my people are working from home now. I mean, I got some people that come into the office, but I got a lot of people working from home. And so a lot of companies are thinking, "Hey, I don't need all this, uh, commercial space. I don't need as big an office anymore because more of my people are working from home." So now you have pressure on the rent. So that was already happening, you know, you had WeWork that blew up and they had, you know, they had, uh, you know, rented all this space that was now, you know, on the market for sublease. But all this was inflated by the Fed. Keeping interest rates artificially low to prop up these bubbles made that real estate bubble very, very big. And so now it's gonna be far more disruptive when it pops. But it's gotta pop. You know, trying to prevent bubbles from deflating by trying to blow more air into them just makes it worse. Maybe you delay the day of reckoning a little bit, but you make the day of reckoning much worse 'cause now you have additional mistakes that you need to reckon with.

   14. JRJoe Rogan33:07

       I understand. So w- it's, it's essentially like a pull off the Band-Aid situation, and we, we, we have to have a, a healing moment. You have to let things collapse that need to collapse that sh- should have been done a long time ago because of mismanagement.

   15. PSPeter Schiff33:25

       Yeah, and you have to understand that we're ripping the Band-Aid off a wound that the government inflicted us with in the first place.

   16. JRJoe Rogan33:31

       Yes.

   17. PSPeter Schiff33:32

       Right? The, the free market never would've screwed us, screwed us up this much. It was government interference in the free market. That's why, you know, capitalism gets a bad name. You know, that's why, you know, we talked about on a, on, on one of these, uh, earlier podcasts about when I went to occupy Wall Street years ago, and I went down to Zuccotti Park because you had all these young protesters who were blaming Wall Street for the bailouts and for the financial crisis, and I was saying, "No, it's not Wall Street that took the bailouts. Blame the government for providing the bailouts, for making them available. Blame the Federal Reserve for funding all this and inflating the bubble." You know?

   18. JRJoe Rogan34:08

       Yes.

   19. PSPeter Schiff34:09

       But, you know, the interesting thing, if I tried to do that today, if I tried to go to one of these protests, one of these Black Lives Matter protests or any of these, I mean, do you think they'd be civil? You think I could do that? You think I could walk into a crowd of hundreds of people and take the opposite position-

   20. JRJoe Rogan34:23

       They would-

   21. PSPeter Schiff34:23

       ... and walk out of there, you know? (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan34:24

       They would beat you to death.

   23. PSPeter Schiff34:26

       Unscathed?

   24. JRJoe Rogan34:26

       They would beat you to death, 100%. (laughs)

   25. PSPeter Schiff34:29

       Yeah, so I mean, it really shows you-

   26. JRJoe Rogan34:31

       That's unfortunately-

   27. PSPeter Schiff34:31

       ... the loss of civility in just, you know, 10 years.

   28. JRJoe Rogan34:33

       Well, it's, it's not just a loss of civility. It's a loss of opportunity and a, a, the loss of a faith in the system and the future if we stay on the same path. That's part of the problem. It's that people don't believe that if we keep going the way we are going that things will work out in, i- i- i- in, in an equitable, fair, and balanced way, and that's where-

   29. PSPeter Schiff34:58

       Yeah, but the, the-

   30. JRJoe Rogan34:58

       ... young people today-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Now, when you, when…

   1. PSPeter Schiff45:00

      resources. So to the extent that the government prevents businesses from laying off workers that really should be laid off, they ultimately compromise the viability of those businesses, and in the long run, they may end up putting people out of business that would have stayed in business. Maybe they, you know, maybe if somebody had 100 employees, and maybe they could have downsized to 30 employees, and at least those 30 employees would have a job, but instead, they, they keep those employees on the payroll for long enough to the point where the whole company has to go out of business, and now everybody loses their job.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:30

      Now, when you, when you say hedge funds were able to receive PPE, and you're saying that they did so while they were still earning profits, and there wasn't any diminishment of their income, why were they able to receive PP- PPP?

   3. PSPeter Schiff45:45

      Well, that's the problem with government programs. There's always fraud. Look, whenever the government is giving out free money, people try to qualify for it. Now, you know, you can read the fine print, and I know a lot of other people could say, "Hey, you know, Peter had said as long as your business was affected by COVID," and look, yes, my business was affected. I mean, people worked at home that used to work in the office. But it, you had to s- you had to basically testify or certify that the money was necessary to support the ongoing operations of your business, which, for most of these firms, it wasn't. And you also had to say that you had no other source of capital, which again, people were lying. But the government basically said, "If you ask for less than $2,000,000.00, we're gonna look the w- other way. We're not gonna vet these loans."

   4. JRJoe Rogan46:29

      But hold on. Hold on. Did they actually say that?

   5. PSPeter Schiff46:32

      And, you know, the other problem with these loans-

   6. JRJoe Rogan46:32

      Did they actually say that?

   7. PSPeter Schiff46:33

      ... is that they're non-recourse, there's no collateral, so a lot of businesses that were gonna fail anyway, and that were gonna lay off all their workers, took the money. They're still gonna lay off all their workers, but now they're not gonna have to pay the money back, because they're gonna bankrupt their business. And once your business is bankrupt, even though you fire all your workers, you're under no obligation to repay the loan.

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:52

      Okay, did they actually say that if you asked for less than $2,000,000.00, we're gonna look the other way? Like, wh- where are you taking this from?

   9. PSPeter Schiff46:58

      That's what it, well, what, what it says is, "We'll assume that you're filing an honest claim," right? 'Cause they're saying that, "If you, if you ask for more than $2,000,000.00, we're gonna vet the claim and we're gonna take a look at your situation," but it said on the small business administration that, "We'll just assume you're being honest," right? "So if you ask for less than $2,000,000.00, we'll assume you're being honest." Well, the minute they say that, "Ah, shit, I'm gonna lie." That's the problem. So many people lie. Whenever the government has a program, it gets abused. That, that's part of the problem with government spending, right? Everybody tries to qualify. Like, just like the unemployment benefits. This crazy, uh, deal with the, um, uh, enhanced unemployment benefits. You have a lot of people now who are being paid twice as much not to work as they were earning when they were working. Now, you create that kind of incentive, you have a lot of people now, the last thing they want is to go back to work, because they're making so much more money not working than they were when they were working. And most of these people, if you have a job where you're making, you know, $10, $15 an hour, $20 an hour, chances are, you don't love your job. I mean, you're not working because you enjoy what you're doing. You're working because you need the money. You need to pay the bills. Well, if you can make the same amount of money or more without working, I mean, who's not gonna go for that? I mean, I don't blame anybody for not wanting to work if the government is paying you more not to work than what your boss was paying you to work-And of course, you know, there's more than just working. You have to get up early in the morning, you gotta fight traffic, you know, you, you, you know, you, you got other expenses. Maybe you gotta, you know, put your kids i- in daycare, you know, you gotta, you know, launder, you know, dry clean your clothes. Women, women can spend an hour in the morning doing their hair, doing makeup. They don't get paid for that, but they gotta do all that, you know, and add all that to commute time. I mean, so there's a big cost of working, and then of course you give up all your leisure. When you're at work, you can't have fun. The government now has created a situation where people are getting paid to have fun. So, I mean, how do you end that? What politician is now gonna take this away?

   10. JRJoe Rogan49:05

       I understand what you're saying about that, and I do agree with that, and that was very shocking to me that, uh, people that I know who have friends that are on unemployment don't want the economy to reopen 'cause they would lose money. And I was like, "My God-"

   11. PSPeter Schiff49:17

       Oh yeah, look I know people-

   12. JRJoe Rogan49:18

       ... "what a conundrum."

   13. PSPeter Schiff49:19

       ... who can't hire people.

   14. JRJoe Rogan49:19

       But ho- ho- hold on please.

   15. PSPeter Schiff49:20

       You can't get people to work.

   16. JRJoe Rogan49:20

       Hold on please. Hold- hold on-

   17. PSPeter Schiff49:21

       Why should you work? I get more money not working.

   18. JRJoe Rogan49:23

       Hold- hold on-

   19. PSPeter Schiff49:23

       You know what some people do?

   20. JRJoe Rogan49:24

       Peter- Peter- Peter-

   21. PSPeter Schiff49:26

       They work under the table.

   22. JRJoe Rogan49:26

       ... Peter. Hold on please.

   23. PSPeter Schiff49:26

       They get cash.

   24. JRJoe Rogan49:27

       Jesus Christ.

   25. PSPeter Schiff49:27

       They wanna pretend they're unemployed-

   26. JRJoe Rogan49:29

       Peter-

   27. PSPeter Schiff49:29

       ... so they can keep getting those benefits, and then they take a job under the table for cash.

   28. JRJoe Rogan49:33

       Hold on please.

   29. PSPeter Schiff49:33

       That's what's going on.

   30. JRJoe Rogan49:34

       I, I believe that, but, but p- that doesn't make sense with hedge funds. With hedge funds, if you're talk- we're talking about small businesses. Does a hedge fund qualify as a small business? And we were talking about-
5. 1:00:00 – 1:13:16

   Right. Right. …

   1. PSPeter Schiff1:00:00

      tax from 24, where it is now, to about 40-something-ish. I forget the exact amount. But corporations are taxed twice, right? They're taxed when they earn the money and then when they distribute it to the owners. So you have to add up both rates. But then he also wants to apply Social Security taxes to those dividends, not just the Medicare taxes. So he basically wants to take the corporate, the effective corporate tax rate up from about 40%, where it is now, to about 60%. That's where he wants it.... you know, which is a, you know, a huge increase, or 70%. I forget the word, it's a- it's a- it's a massive number. And it really is fascism, because the government ends up owning all these businesses. Because if you- if you take more than half of a- the income of a business, I mean, you basically own that business. I mean, it's your business. You're getting half the in- more than half the income.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:51

      Right. Right.

   3. PSPeter Schiff1:00:52

      So the government is really nationalizing, uh, these corporations-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:55

      That's- that's a very-

   5. PSPeter Schiff1:00:56

      ...uh, through taxation. But it's not the corporations, it's the individual shareholder, right? They're- they're the ones that own the business.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:01:01

      That's a very important way to look at it. The way you- you look at it there, where half of the income is going to someone else. And let me- let, I wanted to stop you for a second, but I wanted to hear that rant. There's a connection that people make to, from, i- it's, they connect socialism to empathy, socialism to kindness, socialism to people that are less greedy, socialism to people that are- are more interested in- in a community. This is th- th- and this is coming from a person like myself who has no economic i- 86% of what I know about the economic world is from you. (laughs)

   7. PSPeter Schiff1:01:39

      (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:01:39

      So I'm- I'm an idiot, all right? I- I listen to people who are experts. But when I think of the idea of community and of helping people out, I think of the idea, like, what- what's wrong with some socialist policies? We have the fire department, that's a socialist policy. Nobody wants a fire department to be only for people who have money. We want the fire department to be for the community, who, it doesn't matter if you have $0, if your house is on fire, we're all gonna pay for the fire department to come put it out. We all have a vested interest in keeping your house from burning down and you dying and the whole community from burning, right? We have these sort of agreements.

   9. PSPeter Schiff1:02:13

      Yeah, well there's a big difference between that type of, uh-

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:02:16

       I understand. But hold on a second.

   11. PSPeter Schiff1:02:17

       ... program.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:02:17

       Just, you're right, you're 100% right. But it's the idea behind it that comes from idealistic people, and I'm putting myself in this category. I am often naïve and idealistic, but also ruthless in my assessment of human character. It's a big contradiction 'cause I think there's a lot of people that really could do more than they're doing, and they know they could, and they wanna make excuses. And it's (laughs) part of the reason why throughout history they've left people behind. There's certain people that if you had a tribe and you had to make it over this mountain, and Bob is fucking lazy and he's like, "You gotta carry me, bro," I'm like, "Bob, we're both walking. Come on, man."

   13. PSPeter Schiff1:02:58

       (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:02:58

       Bob's not supposed to make it. He's not supposed to make it. We want him to make it, but we don't want our kids to die, we don't want our mom to starve, we gotta keep going. Bob, you lazy fuck. Come on, bro.

   15. PSPeter Schiff1:03:08

       (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:03:09

       There's always been people like Bob, and it's part of the problem with humans.

   17. PSPeter Schiff1:03:12

       Yeah. You know-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:03:12

       So I'm a contradiction.

   19. PSPeter Schiff1:03:13

       But the best way-

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:03:14

       But hold on a second. I'm- I-

   21. PSPeter Schiff1:03:14

       The best way to take care of th-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:03:16

       I understand, but I'm gonna give you, but I, that's what attracts people to socialist ideas. It's just that they're nice, that they want everybody to do better.

   23. PSPeter Schiff1:03:24

       Yeah, look, socialist- socialist ideas are very appealing.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:03:28

       Yes.

   25. PSPeter Schiff1:03:28

       I mean, 'cause I- I get that, and that's why they're very popular with young people who don't know any better.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:03:32

       But-

   27. PSPeter Schiff1:03:32

       They don't have enough life experience to understand-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:03:34

       But this is the bridge. Peter Schiff, this is the bridge, because a g- a guy like you who really understands economics can talk to a guy like me and we can explain it to everybody, because otherwise we just ha- and I- I- I'm definitely not arguing with you, but your argument versus people who disagree with you's argument. You have this. But there's a- there's an opportunity to make this bridge, and for us to understand each other.

   29. PSPeter Schiff1:03:56

       Yeah, that's what I'm hoping.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:03:57

       I think so.

Episode duration: 3:04:17