Joe Rogan Experience #1508 — Peter Schiff Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Three, two, one, boom. Here we go. Hello, Peter. Oh, thank you very much. Alright, I got a bottle Well, you don't know how much I got. I'm very happy. Exactly. amazing a lot of people have come down here but i don't know i don't think you've been to puerto So we would normally come back then. But since they're going to be taking the classes online,

3:01 future. Today is the 14th, 14 of july and uh we're a few months and I voted for Trump the first time. and that's who we should elect. Is that who you're voting for? have to pay the taxes. Wow. So, you know, that's a good tradeoff that I'm, you know, pretty much way. And so it's, you know, voting for anybody, it doesn't really matter who you vote for.

6:23 our former self, that our industrial So I thought he could win. And he did. But here's the problem. ever. And none of that was true. And so you have the same people who voted for Trump thinking that once you're the insider and Trump's now the But when Reagan came in, he really wanted to shrink government. I mean, he campaigned about getting rid of the Department of Education, the Department

10:10 Trump signed on to all kinds of increases in government spending, more spending on the military, printing pass, we don't get that for free. it. I don't have it anymore. The government took it from me in taxes. But if the government doesn't take it from me, they just print money and they hand it to somebody else who didn't earn it and power through an inflation tax. And so that's what Trump decided to do, to pay for government

12:45 living and getting a paycheck, the inflation tax is very heavy on you. And that inflation tax is tax, corporate or personal. We didn't have social security. We didn't have minimum wage or any of has its own constituency that benefits from it? And so once you're there, you can't cut anything He should have used the bully pulpit and used his office right away to level with the

15:24 So we've already added six and a half trillion since he became president. I would not have But we need someone who understands. really yes he played my older brother who was a priest who beat us up the only thing that spreads faster than the coronavirus is ignorance about economics, And then COVID-19 came. But doing that is what prevented a real recovery that would

19:06 We need higher interest rates. And Trump was like, no, I don't want I don't want withdrawal. Who's going to vote for me But I'm not a doctor, Americans have to sacrifice americans have to sacrifice more than a third of americans began paying income taxes they weren't paying any income taxes before In addition to that, the U.S. government told Americans, we need more money than this.

23:19 In addition, nobody got a bailout. it's facing a global threat from a tyrannical german nazi regime this it's a different situation than dealing with a virus i mean well no well It wasn't their fault. If you ran a restaurant and now your customers weren't coming because these things in person and i understand that it's impossible for you to do that right now

26:22 of telling people to stay home? Like, what could have been done? They didn't have credit card debt. Businesses couldn't survive if their revenue stopped. That's a long rainy day. a lot of businesses afloat okay should have failed years ago hold on let's talk about maybe It's not like these people— their own decision making, they would do a better cost benefit analysis on what they

30:54 That is the problem. I understand. We are doing so much damage to the economy. I mean, commercial real estate is going to get killed for so many reasons. It was in trouble, I think, before COVID. But COVID, they had rented all this space that was now on the market for sublease. But all this was inflated by been done a long time ago because of mismanagement.

33:52 protesters who were blaming Wall Street for the bailouts and Yeah. So, I mean, it really shows you the loss of civility in just, you know, 10 years. we're running up as much debt now as we ran up during world war ii but we had the capacity to I mean, the debt's never gonna go down. and we use that money we print to buy all sorts of stuff that the rest of the world produces,

36:39 and they loan it right back to us at very low rates of interest. And then the dollar is going to crash and we're not going to be able to import anything anymore. But now, but when the dollar's value collapses, see, you can't keep printing trillions and trillions of dollars and expect the dollars not to lose purchasing power. Peter, as an economic expert, what would you have done differently?

39:10 But what I would have done on the federal level is I would have dramatically cut government spending, most of the government money is is transfer payments where the government takes money from But let's look at the PPP. don't have to pay them back so it's free money right and i could have gotten one of those loans All you had to do is apply. How do you pay your busboys?

42:21 Can you explain how that's possible? Because our revenue was never shut down. So when I want to talk to a customer, the customer doesn't drive down to my office. So all that happened is that it's a windfall. The asset management companies, the hedge funds, It's not just a temporary thing. We need to build up our savings again because we've depleted it.

44:58 They have to effectively utilize resources. So to the extent that the government prevents diminishment of their income why were they able to receive pppp well that's the problem with government programs there's always fraud look whenever the government is giving out free money They're non-recourse. There's no collateral. So a lot of businesses that were going to fail anyway,

47:17 So if you ask for less than $2 million, we'll assume you're being honest. now, the last thing they want is to go back to work because they're making so much more money I mean, I don't blame anybody for not wanting to work I mean, so there's a big cost of working. you can't get people to work hold on please i get more money not working so you know what some people

50:01 about the program i went online and i doubt and went online and I got the application just to see what it was. It was like, I forget what the limit was, maybe 100 grand a year or something like that. I'm a hypocrite because I'm living in Puerto Rico, but I'm not committing taxes. So, I mean, people can say I'm a hypocrite because I'm living in That seems like a business.

52:24 And so they were businesses of it. But you know, a lot of the people that applied were just self-employed people, you know, and so they were businesses of one. And so they got the, you know, they got their own, uh, pay, People don't realize how much damage we have done to this economy. The U.S. government, the Federal Reserve, is doing far more damage than COVID-19.

53:20 Kudos to you. And he's like, hey, Peter Schiff, what should I do? Yeah. Well, again, first of all, we have to acknowledge how weak the economy was before COVID, right? That we didn't have a great economy. The economy was a mess, that people were broke, What's wrong with that narrative? It's all the corporate debt, all the individual debt, all the government debt.

56:20 So what we needed to recognize is, OK, we need to reverse all that. This is making the problem worse to accept our money and you know they're not going to be accepting it much longer so it this is bad And look, maybe we maybe we should have dealt with the crisis more like Sweden. there's no estate tax in sweden really zero no yeah i would have never guessed that

59:46 with the income tax, the corporate tax and the personal tax. He wants to raise the corporate tax businesses. Because if you, if you take more than half of the socialism to people that are more interested in a community. Nobody wants a fire department to be only for people who have money. But hold on a second. And they know they could. the best way to take care i understand but i'm going to give you but i that's what attracts

1:03:54 and for us to understand each other i'm hoping i think so i'm here i listen to make that bridge It's not there just for one person. I am all in favor of private charity. this is not right. We can't take money from the taxpayers and just give it to somebody because i see what you're saying it's i like what you're saying is there an opportunity where these two

1:06:57 money went to the government, I had a lot less money that I could be charitable with. I mean, squander the money. And the last thing they want to do is end poverty because then there's no longer Poverty rates were really falling in this country until the government declared war on poverty. were kicking poverty's butt poverty rates were really falling in this

1:08:46 lifts people out of poverty and so the smaller the government is the more capitalism we have they don't want it to be squandered. And you can say, hey, we're going to take 10 cents to run the charity and actually 90 cents is going to go to the people that we're trying to help. and so they can be as inefficient as possible. But then the private charity wants to help people out

1:10:40 Is that what they want? That's what everybody's worried about. yet they think politicians are angels Because the way a business grows and gets bigger more than the money I'm voluntarily make my life miserable they don't have to get me to voluntarily do anything. They just take my money by brute force and they just do to me whatever government to protect people from a business getting out of control and demonizing people

1:14:49 Right. We have scarce resources. They're not infinite. We have so much land, labor, capital. And those businesses need to fail so those resources can be freed up to be utilized more And politicians are concerned about what you can see, because when the politician bails out a company and they save the jobs of these workers, everybody can see that and they can take credit for the jobs they supposedly save.

1:17:24 to have some sort of regulations right so who decides you can't violate people's rights but give me an example when you're saying there has to be some rules uh to protect workers from their subsidy. It was just commercially effective. It didn just commercially effective law making it illegal to compete right this company Because if there was no other jobs available, if you live in a place.

1:18:54 is at walmart you're working at walmart if that's all you have you know it's well assuming walmart pay my workers you know uh you know a tiny wage uh because they're not going to work for me but don't you agree there should be a minimum wage that are in demand there's plenty of people that And that's always the problem. When you have people defending the minimum wage,

1:20:55 once upon a time was actually lower than the white teenage unemployment rate. Well, first of all, we had no minimum wage before it was implemented, and we had much lower rates of unemployment, real unemployment. But you look at countries that don't have the minimum wage before it was implemented and we had much lower rates of unemployment real But wait a minute.

1:22:29 switzerland doesn't really have i mean there's other countries that have some kind of weird remain at your job if you like it, if you think it's the best alternative. Look, people quit all Everybody can be self-employed. reasonable as a community i know what you're saying in terms and the most you can earn is $4 an hour, every hour that person works. So the only way I can hire somebody who is providing $5 worth of

1:26:05 having that job, developing some skills, to the point that you can make $50 an hour, amount of productivity. So if the minimum wage is $15 an hour, what that means is if you only have actually makes a lot more sense the way you're framing it about like if you only provide ten And the reason for this is because we've priced the human beings out of the market.

1:29:08 More and more detached. I never did. But look, I delivered groceries. I delivered pizza. I worked in a shoe store. They fuck up. And they would actually learn a trade. That's what happened. They're both good movies. they do all kinds of shit for you. your tire pressure was good. gas stations. You're going to go in, you're going to order off your smartphone

1:32:54 Because of COVID, people love them now. I remember the first kind of like high-def TV I ever saw, what we look at now i mean you can't even watch one of those things but you know we didn't know And you know what? So we can use those resources. We can do other things. And then the price came down to 5,000. And then more people Because the only time you wait to buy something is if you can't afford it.

1:36:17 get off the phone so quickly because i didn't want to spend the money well you know people Yeah, that's a good example. And what's it's going to do it better i see what you're saying and it sounds beautiful if it was that And you can't blame the private sector for trying to get that power to be used in its advantage, But the guy that produced it, Jimmy Morrison,

1:39:36 It's because we had too much government. the depression until 1945 when we ended the second world war and government finally started to get And it's coming soon. racism. They're because of too much government. And those problems are real. The only reason we have an income tax is because we were going to tax the rich in 1913. They don't. wealth that Bernie Sanders, and I know you had him on the show, but a lot of the wealth that

1:43:24 if you have a community that's always want to do drugs let them do drugs right yeah and even if those drugs are harmful adults can make cost of the illegal drugs. So let's say there's a heroin addict and now heroin is illegal. And so And when you have heroin, when it's illegal and there's all these profits, the drug guy, the pusher has an incentive to get you hooked on it.

1:46:17 the skills or they can't earn enough money. They're not productive enough to generate income above the poverty line. government schools. They waste their time. They learn nothing. A lot of these kids graduate. They couldn't afford that. What if they couldn't afford the private schools? be a little young how old before you pull the plug on that kid? The tuition in first or second grade is probably

1:49:25 choice. And the parents aren't even involved. If the parents were actually writing a check and You have to get a license to sell flowers. if they can find customers, then great. is it consideration social media But people, especially now, There wasn't that much in the way. right that was the problem that was the problem the government right before the government

1:53:11 The government wouldn't bail them out. Their depositors would lose money. We have we have a very fragile system. have a jurgensen the libertarian candidate she'll say some of this stuff no and you know i'm sure i'm being fair and compassionate because i understand the damage that is being done i old Harry Brown quote that he ran for libertarian president. He said the government is great at crippling you and then handing you a crutch and saying, you see, without me, you couldn't walk.

1:56:50 erecting a roadblock. And we created government in America. Government didn't create us. We didn't all four of my grandparents came to this country broke, barely spoke any english right some of them were teenagers they came with nothing That's our birthright, is to be free. this is what I'm seeing from you. were going to get out of hand you have politicians right yes and and maybe term limits would help this if we could have some term limits or something like that.

2:00:20 and so this is what happens so people are bribing politicians to use their power to benefit them or to hurt their competitors. How do you fix things? What if he did? Do you think he's been lying or do you think it's been a disagreement? unemployment the way we measured it in the past. Because So, you know, you're not looking for a job. looking for a job, you're not counted as unemployed. So when you take the statistics from today

2:03:48 but his basic premise was right the numbers were a lie the same thing about the stock market how is you would get paid if you bought a loan. If you got a loan, you'd you'd get paid. That's what he higher interest rates as i said earlier the reason that we were so ill prepared for covid19 the reason That's a long time, Mr. Schiff. and i'm making 60 grand a year and they go, you're qualified.

2:06:31 The government is buying these loans. and it sells it. mattress no payments no interest you know for you know, for, you know, till 2022, 2023. Yeah. They would save up their money and then they would buy stuff. get an income producing asset. Nothing services that debt. They have to service the debt I'm looking at it like if I was a 19-year-old kid and his summer will be immeasurably better with that Corvette

2:10:55 negative i don't blame the kid i blame the system for making it possible for him to borrow the money Nobody borrowed money to go to college, right? once the 18 year olds could vote, this was a big thing. have no credit history, you have no assets. So you're not going to be able to get a loan. When? Oh, okay. so it became this self-perpetuating cycle where the more money the government guaranteed that

2:15:12 They loan directly to the students. whatever the hell they wanted It's because people are paying with their own money that they got to keep the cost down. College so expensive. talking about having these harvard kids do school online for pedicab drivers, they all had college degrees. Some of them had two or three degrees. Because before the government started subsidizing college,

2:18:19 everybody's got a college degree, they mean nothing. they didn't even go to high school. All of these billionaires dropped out of grammar school. against this educational Can I throw something at you something if you think education is expensive now wait till you see how much more it costs when it's free do you think that the current state of colleges when you know when we

2:20:37 driving forces is a lot of these universities they always want to hire professors especially there are look you can find some examples of universities that that teach you know real It's like a lot of times when people learn economics in a university, they end up knowing less about economics after they graduate than before they enroll. i don't know i don't doubt that although i mean look she could hold on a second peter she's just

2:23:38 then the government itself becomes a business and the problem is it needs to verify or justify its own existence by they want to feel better about the results. And this is the interesting thing because a lot of people of my persuasion, right, we look at the left and we don't think they're bad people. a reductionist argument the rational thought because they don't have those thoughts right

2:25:48 Yeah. And look, I watched your interview that you did with Jon Stewart. Right. government has never spent this much money and the problems have never been bigger but hold on to government and maybe they do good with it there's no example of government doing good One of the best things that you can do for people is employ them, provide them with a But you can also, Joe, you can invest.

2:28:23 when i was saying it i was saying if i could give more money and that money, if I didn't have to think about where to put it, if I knew that that money was going to be managed by ethical, knowledgeable wizards who know how to take care of the world's problems and they just get 5% more taxes from people that are are doing well i'd be willing to do it it wasn't saying that i'd be i think it's a good idea to give more money to these people that we elect

2:29:30 So you should, if you're going to, if you want government to have more money, it should be your local government, your city, your county. This is such a waste of money and such a waste of resources. government has all kinds of strings. The federal government says, if you don't do this and you no receipts whatsoever. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. And here's, you know, here's an

2:32:12 The politicians are going to say, you see what happens when you don't have enough government, that the Federal Reserve was creating We're going to have massive inflation in a weak economy. But I also want to make sure and this is what I'm doing personally. I do two things, right? I try to educate people so that they understand the economy and so they know who to blame for the problems.

2:34:29 I mean, they'll still have their money. checks that the government is sending out but when the checks bounce because they don't buy anything that's when you're really going to see have done differently? And what can we do now? Like stop what would you have done differently and what can we do now rates from the federal reserve not lower interest rates we don't need any more money printing and we need the government to cut spending okay but the opposite of what we've

2:37:12 that, that our cure is so much worse than the disease ever could have been. We got to understand gonna look but you know but hold on you know they thought take care of it did you not the federal I know I have a good friend that almost died. So if you're sitting here saying they should have done this, in a way at least, it's an unfair version of Monday night quarterbacking or Monday morning quarterbacking because we didn't really know what this disease was.

2:39:16 It's like the 08 financial crisis. were in trouble because the loans went bad. And now Wall Street had packaged up these loans into corporate debt, record government debt. As a community of people, shouldn't there be a way, at least the government does its best at their own because businesses are shut down this is why i disagree that it's the same sort of

2:42:54 this, let the free market, let landlords and tenants work it out among themselves. I mean, It just prints. And so that means people are i believe that governments would have acted more responsibly if they didn't think they could put now created a situation where so many people oh i'm not going to go to work oh i don't want to But now all of a sudden, no, no, no, I'm not going'm even i don't even want to go if i have to wear a mask i just want to stay

2:46:01 think it's interesting because i don't think it's either or. I think there's definitely a lot of people that are going to just never go back to work again if they get that money, if they get free money from the government. Joe, we pay farmers not to farm. a policy to make food more expensive than it otherwise would be but what is there less abundant

2:47:16 from competition. when they needed food, And the way they were describing it was like people like to look at subsidizing farms as being this frivolous thing or thing that doesn't really benefit the people. have fewer smokers because we're making the cost of tobacco higher that's what government does government comes in and makes the price of food But they said we're doing it because it makes tobacco more expensive.

2:49:25 They never say that. If the shit hit the fan, you think it was really all about economics? There should be no subsidies for businesses. if we can have 19th century capitalism with 21st century technology, I mean, it's amazing what we And if we can free it up from a mundane activity, that labor can do something else. And now we can have more. I think when I started coming on, you know, it was closer to a thousand, but I think it's

2:52:40 peers agree is the right way to go and it's going to lead to a better future. But a lot of the people making these decisions with greed and money over have to understand is capitalism channels that greed in a very positive way. Because in order for is that the in the general public's view when you say free market capitalism they equate mean when with examples of socialists that have impoverished people.

2:55:41 They don't share the wealth. a bunch of presents right but you're agreeing you lie to them when you tell them about santa understand more. And then you give up your childish beliefs. The problem with a lot of these older could actually talk about no i think but i just want to say this before we wrap up i think you provide some very honest and brave insight you you buck the trend of sugarcoating things and the way you

2:58:36 they're like maybe we can try it one more time and get it right yeah and it's not my version Customers go where they get a good deal. Right. And so I want to put my faith in individuals and the free market, not a bunch of Instagram. What's your Instagram? Yeah. You know, I just started Instagram. Crazy enough. My wife So I'm talking mostly economics. I do a little politics. I touch on some of the social issues.

3:01:09 stocks i'm doing everything i can to preserve as much wealth as i can for americans yes so that And I'm going to start putting up. He's going to find out momentarily. I did that Occupy Wall Street and I got two and a half million views on it now on my channel. That after they heard me talk they did some more There's only me and a few other people spreading the truth.

3:03:51 They tune out all the nonsense.