Close Your Mouth

The Paul Truesdell Podcast

Welcome to the Paul Truesdell Podcast. Two Pauls in a pod. Featuring Paul the Elder and Paul the Younger. So, what's the gig? Individually or collectively, Paul and Paul sit down and chat predominately at the Truesdell Professional Building and record frequently. They explain a few things about how life works before time gets away. They connect the dots and plot the knots, spots, and ops with a heavy dose of knocks, mocks, pots, rocks, socks, and mops. Confused? Then welcome aboard! You see, Paul the Elder and Paul the Younger enjoy telling complex stories that are always based on business, economics, and forecasting while having fun, laughing, and being among like-minded men, women, and children from Earth, Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune. Individually and jointly, Paul the Elder and Paul the Younger, coupled with Team Truesdell, have been there and done it. If you enjoy front porch philosophers who take deep dives and connect the dots, while drinking coffee during the day and a whiskey after five, welcome.

It is a true pleasure to have you onboard.

This is, The Paul Truesdell Podcast.

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Unknown Speaker  0:00  
We are back, and the reason why we had taken a pause for more than a few weeks is that we wanted to adjust what it is we're doing so that, because of our schedules, which both went nuts, we can basically do the podcast in a variety of different locations. People to do it basically anymore. I had a gentleman in the office the other day, and he had a remarkable tablet, I believe. Have you done any research on those things? I don't even know what you're talking about. Remarkable is where it's only writing. It is like E paper, and it's really ultra thin, and it's not connected to the internet in any way, shape or form. It's not like an iPad. Interesting,

Unknown Speaker  0:51  
yeah, I may have heard about that fairly recently. It's the name. Sounds familiar, but yeah, is it E Ink only? It's E Ink only, yeah, okay, yeah, I think I saw something. It's actually really clever for me. It will never replace an iPad, but what I was looking at it is that it's really ultra crazy thin and his leather notebook and how he was taking notes. And I asked him a little bit about it. He said he liked it more than the iPad, because he's in business and he's always making notes, and if he needs to grab anything off the internet, he just grabs his phone real quick and looks at it. Yeah, that makes sense. I can I can see using a tablet, a regular like iPad, and the same time. That's my point. It's funny, because I'm sitting there with my iPad and my legal pad, sure, and he's were sitting there with his

Unknown Speaker  1:45  
I think it was remarkable. It could have been some another brand, because there's several of there. But do you remember when you know it's gonna be several decades now, when you were when I started talking about E paper, and it was the death of newspapers? Yeah, yeah, I do. And what I didn't understand then, which I still think, is it's a viable product. We were down, I think your mother and I were down in Nevis. So this would've been about 1995 I think it's 95 sounds about right. And back then, you know, they didn't have internet, like they have a day and all that. We used to get a, we were on vacation for like, two or three weeks down there, and they had a they got a fax machine. They had a fax machine, and they would photocopy headline news from the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and it was just kind of a, yeah, you know something, people today wouldn't have an appreciation. No, of course not. And I

Unknown Speaker  2:45  
say the word VCI or CDs, people, even people today, don't even know what a CD is. Anyhow,

Unknown Speaker  2:54  
I always thought that you would have like a newspaper where you could actually turn the paper and that the print would be there and you would recharge it. Yeah, always thought that would been an interesting device. Anyhow, that's, I'll just start off with that for today that I thought it was, you know, it's one of those things to think about. So that's kind of a goofy way to start off our talk. Let's, let's go to the elephant in the room. I wanted to say something about that. The thing that's interesting about the E paper stuff is that while that concept is, at this point, I think, pretty close to being viable, or at least some version of it, where your entire,

Unknown Speaker  3:34  
you know, basically, you have, like, a newspaper size, or, you know, front page of a newspaper size, like E Ink display. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  3:42  
you're not going to have multiple pages just due to the logistics of how the device has to work. But it took a long time for E Ink to get to the point where it was capable of it took a long time to get the E paper so that it was capable of quick enough changes that it wasn't annoying and that you could things like writing on it like you're describing with the remarkable and some of these other devices. In the past, they were really great for reading only consuming information, but now they're at the screen is able to refresh fast enough that it's usable as a device you interact with, maybe one button press every second. Or,

Unknown Speaker  4:25  
you know, back in the day the Kindles were the created a market for the device, or that that tech, and it's despite seeing fewer and fewer E Ink displays, at least in my day to day, the technology continues to march on, and new and interesting applications keep coming up for it, which I think is good. Well, you know, yeah, the Kindle is was originally designed, I think, pretty much for just reading. Yeah, absolutely. Do they even have a I don't know. Yes, it can, you can write on it now, no, no, but they still exist. Okay, so the Kindles out there is for reading, my understanding, on.

Unknown Speaker  5:00  
These things, you can also upload all your ebooks and everything else so you have, yeah, I don't, I don't know how the software works on those I just know that you can write on it and it's responsive enough that it's useful. Because, you know, for for those who don't understand how the technology works, you know your regular screen requires a constant battery charge to or a positive charge to keep this the pixel, or in the case of OLED, lit, or in the case of LED, you know, it's keeping the actual LED array lit and projecting something. But then there's also a backlight behind Julie is, you know, forcing the light through the charged pixels? Well, there's no question

Unknown Speaker  5:44  
where E paper, it's a bunch of charged cells that you are turning them on and off once so it stays on or stays off. So it doesn't require a constant you know, charge of doesn't take it doesn't require a constant stream of electricity to keep the image on the screen, which is how, for example, a version of that technology is in my watch. That is how it can get, you know, on battery conserving mode, like 45 days of runtime, despite it being a Bluetooth connected, wireless, GPS enabled smartwatch. So, you know, it's, it's substantially more battery conserving compared to your traditional screen methods. So your devices need way less power. They can be way thinner. You can achieve things like what we were talking about with the newspapers, where you have, you know, potentially, like a flexible little screen that's super ultra thin, and the electronic guts are in, you know, something that's the size of a, you know, a quarter, you know, yeah, you know, years ago, one of our software techs was saying that everything was going to be this one you had, remember the palm and Palm Pilot and all those devices, and they were only for data management. They kind of tried to get into phones and whatever. And he said everything would be eventually on the phone. And we had this very robust conversation. I said, There's no way possible that people are going to gravitate to this, a small little device and try to do everything again. I was wrong, but I'm going to say same time. I'm right. Nobody who is a power user, who is efficient and effective is doing everything on a phone, just not no but it is interesting that that even in the days of the little three and a half inch iPhones, that it had the market capture capability that it did. Obviously, things have shifted. Everybody's adopted, quote, unquote, the big phone years ago. But it really is amazing that even that little, tiny, three and a half inch glowing, you know, people could see how powerful what would enable you to do in the future. No, the the speech by Steve Jobs when he comes out. And, you know, does, it's a phone, and, you know, Bob his speech of three, yeah, it's a phone. It's an mp three player, it's an internet communicator, just like he nailed it. I mean, that was the and, to be honest, those are the three things that your smartphone is still very good that, right? That's, those are the three primary things that I use my phone for. Ever since, you know, in the music category, just add podcasts. You know, that's, that's, that's the vast majority of it. And these days, you know, you cannot people consume tons and tons of video on their devices. So that would be the one, the one other thing. But, you know, you could also lock that into Internet communication, because it's not just one. I mean, it's not just two way. It could be one way internet, your videos and article reading and that sort of stuff is so, you know, at the end of the day, it is funny how what is, what's phrases. More things change, the more they stay the same. It's the same. Core principles and concepts apply regardless how dramatically different the landscape looks, as far as the actual implementation goes well, you know, I have said to you, you know this, and anybody listening may or may not know this. I've talked forever about being efficient. Efficiency is everything, and how everything has stayed the same while it's still changing, so everything's a remix. So in my case, I'm probably going to buy one of these

Unknown Speaker  9:30  
Remarkables and begin using it, because first off, when I travel and I'm out of the office and understand that I have a full studio and full Office at the house, a full studio and office at the at the office,

Unknown Speaker  9:45  
and that's where, you know, our headquarters, you know, everything is, you know, first class, top notch, etc, just like we're here now, actually recording at the house and but you know, you.

Unknown Speaker  10:00  
The power of the iPad. You just pop it up, look at it, and that, in conjunction with the iPhone, is utterly amazing. I mean, the simple size, because I don't like taking my computer. I don't like taking the Mac out running around. That's my granddaddy device, despite it has the same exact chip as your iPad, and in some aspects, is thinner and it basically has the same screen. Totally agree with you, but you understand what I'm saying? Oh, I get it, but at the same time, you know, I My iPad is sitting in my office, and I'm pretty sure it hasn't had a charge, which is obviously bad for its battery in a month, maybe because I keep forgetting to plug it in. Yeah, and I use my phone and my computer, because the iPad experience frustrates me to the point that I just get mad and, well, your iPad use is totally different than mine. Oh, yeah. I mean, even though we're father and son, President, Vice President of the companies. You know, we in essence do the same all the different companies. Way we're structured, what we do is totally different.

Unknown Speaker  11:10  
But what I'm thinking is, I found myself and I started thinking about this a couple days ago. I'm always sitting there with a legal pad, my iPad and my phone, if I go to the Capitol grill, if I go to Panera Bread, if I go to somebody's office, if I'm sitting in the car, you know, I just where I'm out and about. I always find I got three damn things always going on. Always have three. And the frustration is, I like, I'm used to legal pad, you know? I mean, you just can't break that. That's 60 years of habit of writing a legal pad, but when I want to take a note, I take a picture of it and I transfer it. Yeah, absolutely, it's a pain in the butt, yeah, wow, if I could do this and sync it. And the problem with an iPad is it's a little thick. It's a little pain the ass on the hand. And sometimes you get all these distractions and things move, you know, because, again, like notability is a fantastic program, but if I just could write simple notes, yeah, yeah. The, I will say, the ability to quickly transfer pictures and files back and forth between your phone, computer or iPad or whatever, is something that's fascinating. But on an appointment a couple weeks ago, and had to do some quick scanning of documents and sending emails and various things. Two phones that I use, one that's got all the company stuff on it, I was able to take a take a scan picture of a bunch of documents, air drop them over to throw the email out in seconds, compared, you know, fumbling around with, okay, now I've saved it into the file app, and now over here, do this, you know, weird Konami Code combination, like we're on, like we're on the Nintendo, you know, punching in, you know, this magical series of sequences to get a file to attach to an email on your phone. Instead, it was just AirDrop over drag, drop done, and I had the email out in no time. Despite, you know, your computer doesn't have the same photographic capabilities that your phones. So anyway, it's just, it's interesting how well you gave me a phrase years ago, power users. I mean, yep, I think you said, said about me in terms of all the different programs I use, I'm the ultimate power user. I mean,

Unknown Speaker  13:27  
you look, you look at the Mac sitting there, or my keyboard, my keyboard here, at the house here, and my keyboard at the office, the E is gone, worn about again, I don't think I've ever had a keyboard. I didn't wear out the keys on thing. Yeah. The downside is that Apple's keyboard they don't have as they especially the one you have, it's painted. And unfortunately, they don't. They don't use a hard enough, I don't know, paint or the process for it is not as durable as it should be. I'm sure that's part of their dastardlypo, boost their accessories, accessories, and add on services that they have a 60 to 70% margin on. Okay, so that's we talked about, the e reader and the E pet tablet. The other thing I stumbled on, and again, for those of you who already know this, you know, just bear with they have a thing called paper like, and they have another thing called pen tips that are designed strictly for the iPad. So paper like is, you peel this, this film on on the iPad screen. You apply a film to the screen. Yeah, you apply and it makes it feel like it's paper. Yeah, yeah. That's been around for five years probably, well, you know what, I was off school then,

Unknown Speaker  14:44  
yeah, it's, it's

Unknown Speaker  14:46  
the first versions were kind of weird. I've heard several people say they've made them better and fixed the various problems. But it's an interesting concept. I It's all about what, basically.

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
Just making it feel like you're writing on something exactly paper instead of whatever. And then it makes the screen kind of a matte finish instead of glossy. And then they have another one called pen tips. And so I was reading through this, I was going, Oh, that's kind of interesting. Maybe that's an neat alternative. And I immediately went, No, it's not. I get it for someone that can't or doesn't want to spend four or $500 for a writing device.

Unknown Speaker  15:28  
Well, the thing, the thing you have to remember is it's not just a writing device. It's the complexity that comes with adding another device from another ecosystem to flow and all of that. I mean, it's, that's thing people forget, and that's the one thing i i Actually it's one of the core reasons that I continually don't fail to use my iPad to its maximum capacity. You know, I haven't had a new iPad in

Unknown Speaker  15:55  
at least six or seven years, and I basically refused to upgrade it so it works as long as it works, but I refuse to replace it, because I just I don't get enough use out of it. And one of the reasons is I'm not the ecosystem, and the workflow of using it is just not It feels annoying. It's it doesn't actually solve a problem for me, as I guess the way to put it, and it's just another thing I have to think about keeping charged and worrying about. And you know, what app is this? How do I do this or that, or whatever? You know? So it's, it's one of these things I just, I personally workflows as simple as possible, so that that's the, I would say the biggest inhibitor to that device's success is if you already use tablets and already have a spot for that kind of device in your device, I don't really see somebody adopting it. You would be the odd bird in that and that. You see it as something to use. I can see it for somebody like me who doesn't, who despises the the the tablet, and because of that, has a slot open, would potentially be, could be filled by such a device. But personally, that doesn't fit my workflow. I mean, I have a means of taking notes. I mean, I I use, you know, text based notes for things all the time, and then if I take paper notes, I take a picture of them with my phone and store them program itself. So kind of depends on No, I totally, I totally get that one of the, one of the things I if Apple had a touch screen on the Mac, it's never gonna happen. I know, but, but understand what I'm saying here. So when you're on your phone, you have a touch screen on your Mac. I mean, you're on your iPad, you have a touch screen, and you start to get used to that. When you're working. It's just, it's just short term muscle memory. So if I'm sitting there and I've got my iMac, and the number of times I've actually gone out with my MAC, my phone and my pad, and I'm, let's say I have an appointment. It could be anywhere. Could be in Dallas, could be in New York. Could be, it could be, I'm waiting in an airport. You know, I got an hour or two to kill. I want to get a lot of work done. I'm going to power use, right? I mean, there are people that do that rather than just sit back and read a Harlequin romance novel. The

Unknown Speaker  18:18  
number of times I have touched my screen and like, why is this not moving? Oh, that's right, it's the Mac is I have to go over. I have to glue my iPad and move things around, though. No, I gotta use the mouse pad. It just sounds silly. Maybe it's just, maybe I got Joe Biden syndrome. Maybe I'm just getting looked old. It's a muscle memory thing. I can tell you, if you're, if you're doing that, you're you've spent the majority of your time recently on your tablet, and your muscle memory is to touch the thing instead of instead of type. That's I've heard lots of people say something similar to that. It's not an uncommon phenomenon to so I'm not senile yet.

Unknown Speaker  18:58  
No, I wouldn't say so,

Unknown Speaker  19:01  
hey, let's talk. Let's change. Let's go. Let's take the elephant in the room. So we watched the majority, at least. I watched the majority of the debate. We haven't watched the reruns or anything. I watched the last half. I missed the first half. So where our discussion is going to be based upon, let's say we looked at CNN, we looked at Fox. Afterwards, we were looking at all the talking heads. We talked about it fairly extensively.

Unknown Speaker  19:33  
I think your comment is and I listen. I know a lot of people are you know their hair now is bristling on their neck, especially the people that know me and know how I feel their teeth are they're great entertaining, or they're mad, or they're anxious, or they're upset, or, yeah, yeah, I can just see if I know if that's your reaction, you need to calm down. Nothing that, nothing that is going on. I.

Unknown Speaker  20:00  
Will impact your life that much. So I think there's two things. I think your observation, we've talked about it extensively, but credit is where credit is due.

Unknown Speaker  20:12  
You have been around people of Joe Biden's age your entire life, and the effect that he could have on younger people as a result of this debate, and both he and Trump, let's talk about that. But I also don't want to forget

Unknown Speaker  20:31  
that we really ought to talk about some of the hardcore, rarely discussed, who is actually in the administration and the bench. So let's talk about, yeah, well, sort of attack the latter first. I mean, this is something that that we discussed last evening. And, you know, the reality is, is, you know, I was, I was kind of shocked at the immediate response by, you know, the moment they pulled away from the from the debate stage on CNN, because it was hosted by CNN,

Unknown Speaker  21:08  
they immediately were going crazy about how this is terrible. Biden's, it's, it's over. Biden's, you know, ruined his campaign. Blah, blah, blah. And my initial gut reaction was, Well, that wasn't really what I saw. I wasn't shocked by anything that I saw, and I'm it's as if these people have not been paying attention for the past six years who this man actually is and and what the behaviors he's showing and his the his age effectively. And, you know, my immediate reaction to that was, well, it doesn't really matter which one of these people you elect. They're not. They are not. You know, the presidency is larger than one man. And the thing that is shocking, that you just don't see anybody discuss, is, who are the people behind the president? Who is you're voting for a team of people, not just one person. Yeah, you're definitely voting for a team. And one of the things that with Trump, I think you have to sit back and say, Do you really want to be on his team when, if he gets reelected? Do you have the money set aside for all of the inquiries, litigation that just seem to naturally come with anybody's appointed office? Yeah, I mean, I look at the track record for how are people treated? Are they thrown under the bus?

Unknown Speaker  22:44  
You know, basically, if you know Trump is a very opportunistic person, and when he ran the first time, a lot of people who worked with him in the past said that, basically, you can't trust this man. He will throw you under the bus at the first opportunity, the moment it attacked something is after his prestige or his personal opinion of himself or public image of himself, he will toss literally everybody

Unknown Speaker  23:12  
up to probably the only people he won't throw under the bus or his own children, but that's basically it. Well, look at Rudy Giulio. He'll throw employees of 30 years under the bus,

Unknown Speaker  23:24  
and that's just how he operates. And, and I was like, you know, well, these people are probably just, you know, effectively, just,

Unknown Speaker  23:33  
I don't know, people who have had bad experiences. You know, it's kind of like the Internet review syndrome. You know, it's difficult to get people to publish positive reviews on anything. So you have to really weigh negative reviews on anything with you know, what percentage does that actually represent? Right? Because people that have had a negative experience are much more motivated to complain and tell their story than people who have had a positive one totally. And so, you know, understanding this man has been in serious complex business, in particular, construction for 4045,

Unknown Speaker  24:15  
years, it totally made sense to me that, you know, construction is a nasty business for multiple reasons. And of course, he has a multitude of people who are willing to come out and say that, you know, he screwed me over. Blah, blah, blah. Well, yeah, to that regard, but to that regard, though, just kind of give context to people my age, going back to the lady Leona Helmsley, you know, she

Unknown Speaker  24:40  
really got a bad rap from a lot of people only because of the fact that Leona Helmsley ran one hell of a hotel operation, and because she was a female and she was assertive in the Yes, she did do things where she was brutal to some of her people that I'm not going to say was not true, but they just take one single thing and just made it into this.

Unknown Speaker  25:00  
Absolutely, she's just a complete, you know, a hole. And that was having known, no, that's not true. So, yeah, so, you know, I took all of those things initially, as you know, like, Okay, that's a data point. I don't know that. I totally believe it or think it's that important. And at some level, having somebody who's, you know, decisive and willing to make tough decisions, or that sort of thing with people that are incapable of doing their job, is important at times.

Unknown Speaker  25:30  
So, you know, there is there. I can see both sides of his lane and

Unknown Speaker  25:35  
but then, you know, you look at his tenure in office, I mean, I think the biggest problem Trump has in this campaign is that he has a track record to run on. And this is the thing that honest analysis is almost non existent out there. It's everything is so biased. You don't have the you don't have people actually looking at the policy points and looking at the track records and analyzing things like like you used to have, at least in some small corners of the world back, you know, 20 plus years ago. So the point is, when you look at things from that perspective, it's like he has a track record to look how did he handle certain situations and and are those indicative of how things would happen in the future? Because, you know, it's very rare that, I mean, I don't, I don't know of any. I mean, this may be the first time. This is definitely the first time in most in any American's life, unless we have 100 plus year old Americans out there still voting unlikely.

Unknown Speaker  26:40  
There might be two or three. This is the first time you have somebody running for office in most Americans lives that have a track record to run. You have a man who is president for four years and you have another man who has been president for almost four years. Yeah, we have to go back to, we have to go back to Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah, that's, that's exactly what I was thinking. So, you know, that was a that was a heck of a long time ago. When did he run again? What was that 1905? Or Yeah, something like that. So, you know, basically nobody's alive that was able to vote back then. So that's so this is, this is a new phenomenon that is actually quite interesting, because take the the personal investment and the emotions out of it. And look at it. They're actually you actually do have things to compare and contrast, handled crises, their policy points on social issues,

Unknown Speaker  27:32  
social security, the economy, foreign policy, like you can actually go bullet point for bullet point. It's not a hypothetical of, well, this person says, This is what's in their platform. It's like, who cares? It's in their platform. What did they do? Yeah, and that would be something would be handy if we're not going to do it, but if somebody literally did bullet pipe by bullet point and but not just point by point, do it in a timeline, yeah? And then how they changed over time, yeah, that would be, I think, phenomenal. So anyone out there who is in the academic world listening to real world people discussing things at a common language, but at a high level, that's what we do, yeah, do a timeline and the metamorphosis of each of these candidates, because there's no doubt Trump was pro pro abortion. There's no doubt that, you know, he has capitulated to pro life. There's no doubt that he has been all over the board in political

Unknown Speaker  28:31  
leanings. I mean, he was what independent and conservative and Democrat and Republican. I mean, yeah, he's been all over the board. He I don't this is the thing about about Trump that, you know, I think a lot of people get lost in the cult of personality, that I think most people definitely did in 2016 one way or the other. It scared him, or they're caught up in his cult of personality. And again, it was because he had no track record to run on. He was like, I'm gonna do X. I don't like the way things are going. Blah, blah, blah. I'm going to do why? And you know, he has a track record to run on, and that's the thing, you know. I guess if it was any other period in history, that would be the thing that you know people would talk about, because you didn't have

Unknown Speaker  29:20  
your Tiktok brain rot among the entire population, where what you look at I was, we were both kind of laughing at this last night. You know, every time Fox News does a transition from one topic to another, it's a fox news alert. And, you know, their bells swooshing graphics and all this stuff has no meaning, and it has no meaning. It's just a way to like to get the Pavlovian response from their viewers, to look back at the TV, there's something else going on. It doesn't it doesn't mean anything other than look. That's really good. Look back at the screen. Dog, that's really good. It's a pebble. Oh, that is really good.

Unknown Speaker  30:00  
That's what it is. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't mean anything because they did a breaking news alert because they were back from a commercial break, for God's sake. It was just it made no sense. So anyway, point is, is that Dun, dun, dun, dun. CBS Radio Network breaking news, every article is Dun, dun, dun, dun. CBS Radio Network breaking news, they don't do that, they just do the sound. Oh, yeah, yeah. Exactly. They know what they're doing, yeah. So, so point being is that, you know, in the era before, you know hyper media, you know, you had to read articles and you had more concise, thoughtful, constructed arguments on certain things. Well, that's the one thing that with the with the loss of newspapers people do not read. They do not sit back with my mother and father and myself as a kid. You know, Mom and Dad would read the morning paper in the early morning. And, you know, we had the Milwaukee Sentinel, then the evenings of Milwaukee Journal, and they'd catch up on things, and they'd talk about things, and you'd have the, you know, CBS, Walter Cronkite, or you had Eric Severide, you had NBC, you know, you had the three news networks, right? But, but the thing is, you had water cooler conversations. Everybody did it. My mother would go out, you know, they'd stand out on the

Unknown Speaker  31:20  
porch or the sidewalk or in a driveway, and at the corner, and she talked with her gals and the guys, people talked Yeah, like, what's going on? Yeah. And did you hear about this? Did you hear about that? Yeah. And they talked about things Yeah, more than Oh, did you see that meme on Facebook? Yeah, God, which is, which is the conversation I hear? Oh, did you see the meme on tick tock, if you're under, if you're if you're under 45 and if you're older five, it's it's Facebook, it's insane, like it. People completely lack the ability to construct their own thoughts on anything. They just parrot the last handful of things that they've seen. And that's the thing about Trump that is scary, because everybody that has come out of his administration, not that didn't come out in a positive way. Said the same thing that, like, he would go into a meeting with an idea, and then he'd leave with somebody else's idea. He was, he was, he was the last 15 minutes of on a position that of the person he'd been talking to, which, you know, makes him a very good politician, because he molds into whatever the flavor of the day is, but it doesn't make him a good policy maker. And that's, in my opinion, very, very clear based on his ability to get things done in his first administration along the lines of what he ran on in 2016 and obviously, you know, you can go both bullet point for bullet point and argue why. And you know this person, that person, this and that and that sort of thing. You can, you can explain why these things happened. But the point is that you know the fact, the facts at the end of the day are, what did he actually get done? It's not a whole hell of a lot. And the same thing can be said for Joe Biden. I mean, same thing, like he had a thin majority and lost it. Trump had a more substantial majority in the House and the Senate, and then lost it, just like Barack Obama did. And, you know, you go back to like George Bush w as it were, and he had a a reasonable majority to get things done in 2006

Unknown Speaker  33:18  
and people forget that. People forget that they had a they had, you know, run of the roost, effectively, for for pretty much anything, for the better part of his, the majority of his administration, and that's why certain things got done. Well, one of the things I want to I want to talk about, because I, you know, we have people that are clients, prospective clients, people who are in business and political thing, who listen to our podcast a couple quick things. One, you have these people who are never Trump, okay, they just irk me to no end, because they irk me just as much as you have the people who are. They call them megas. You know, all Trump, all Trump are no if you're not all in on Trump, then you're the devil. I mean the extremes, yeah, it's the extremes. They bother me of the political spectrum are, well, they're inconsequential, because they are people whose whose minds cannot be changed by any fact or any and that's where I'm going with this change of policy or anything, it's, it's purely, it's the cult of personality, or it's the or it's the hatred of the personality, and those are just not useful. Then the other thing is, you have the people who are never Biden,

Unknown Speaker  34:35  
you know, no matter what he does, he's, he's bad. The other issue then comes down to, you know, Biden, for some people, was like, the adult standing next to the sandbox. And I'm, I'm quite comfortable, yeah, that that's reason why he got elected. Absolutely. You know, it's like, well, at least somebody is standing next to this, this disaster. Now we have.

Unknown Speaker  35:00  
Now grandpa, yeah, next to the sandbox, and nobody like, okay, see now grandpa can be really dangerous. Now, you mentioned about track records. I get that. But one of the things that in business, for the people who are hardcore,

Unknown Speaker  35:17  
you are listening to the Paul Truesdale podcast, two Pauls in a pod. Truesdell wealth, Incorporated, is a registered investment advisor, and as such, do the personal and extensive holdings of the truesdells. Truesdell wealth and their clients, you should assume that they have a position in all companies discussed, and that a conflict of interest exists.

Unknown Speaker  35:40  
Okay, we had to take a little break there. Had the phones go nuts on us for a second. So I think I was talking for the people who are hardcore FANBOYS. Trump, Biden, Kennedy, Elon, Musk, Bezos. I don't know how anybody has a fanboy of Bezos.

Unknown Speaker  36:00  
Steve Jobs, you know, in business, if you surround yourself with a bunch of yes men, the problem you have is you're going to have an amazing burn rate. Potentially, you're going to have a burnout rate. You're going to be done and out. And you have in business deal with facts. So in the political process, I get the fact that, especially me, I'm surrounded by a lot of people who are political and the fanboys around somebody sometimes they just, I just want to scream. It's like, that is not a true fact. One is that the lockdown, for example, began only under Biden, that Trump never locked the country down. Yeah, that's not true, obviously, unless you live in a parallel reality. And then the thing is that you know Fauci is bad and, and, but who stood next to Fauci the whole time and whatever, the woman was made? Yeah? Well, yeah, Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci,

Unknown Speaker  37:02  
both are have been castigated by the conservatives in particular for lockdowns and this and that, but they forget that the same guy who I for a few moments last night was criticizing Biden for his inability to fire people. He just never fired anybody. Blah, blah, blah, when the pressure, when the time when the moment hit, when the pressure was on, when it was very clear that the handling of the pandemic was overkill and needlessly painful for a lot of people, and the policies from the federal government were insane, especially when cross referenced that with The needs of business and the needs of the country to keep on moving, Trump didn't fire those people. Did he those people? As far as I know, Deborah Birx quit or moved on to the private sector or something. And Anthony Fauci, I may may may be wrong about this, but I believe he is still the highest paid federal employee, yeah. And so, I mean, I'm going back to and I can see the face of certain people who would be just screaming right now. These are not facts. Idea you and I deal in the world of facts. When you deal programming, do you ever like inadvert ones and zeros and different? No, it has to be sequencing. It has to be in order. And that's the thing that. No, I do emotional programming, yeah, just flow. It's like, new math. Emotional programming, yeah, I can't even imagine. And then the other thing is, you know, we are not, um, what's, what's that guy's name? I saw him on um, Joe Rogan recently, within the past month, or some, some actor, I can't resist, I can't really the guy's name. Anyway, he has, like, new math, and he's new math. Well, he has like, he has like, he's like, convinced the entire world's perspective on things is wrong. Science is wrong, yeah, and how?

Unknown Speaker  38:53  
Basically, he's convinced that that one times one does not I'm sorry, two times. What is it? Two times zero is two not? Okay? Yeah, that would be new math. Yeah. He's like,

Unknown Speaker  39:08  
the guy is just completely like, and then to that regard to all the you know, your Democrats who are hardcore gun control, you do realize it's Uncle Joe who told the world that he told his wife, if anybody's breaking in, to take a shotgun on the second floor and shoot the person or shoot in the air. No, just shoot. Just shoot randomly. Yeah, off the balcony. I mean, just two blasts, just two blasts, and they'll scare them away, despite the fact that's a felonious discharge from the firearm. And this is also the ones who are, you know, everybody is pink inside, everybody's the same when nobody's different. And yet, he has said some incredibly racist things about blacks. Remember his pool convent, you know, well, I was a lifeguard. And, you know, he was telling stories about when he was a lifeguard, and then, and then, of course, his super predators.

Unknown Speaker  40:00  
Thing and stuff. Like, yeah, I mean, so let's just get blunt. Nobody's Perfect, nobody. But also, like, you take the opposite look at for things at Trump with regard to and he's the one who who pushed through the executive order and then allowed the ATF to to ban bump stocks that his No, no Court nominee, no, just overturned. No, Trump didn't do that. That was, it was Obama or Biden. No. That was those Trump's. That was Trump's capitulation to the public outrage. And, you know, by some small annoying corners of the of the country

Unknown Speaker  40:36  
over the what do you call it the Las Vegas shooting right that Trump's FBI basically closed the books on and walked away from and said, basically their conclusion is,

Unknown Speaker  40:49  
well, here's the thing. I had that conversation with somebody recently, and every time you we bring up things like this, the head shakes left and right, and the hand then goes like, well, that doesn't make any difference. You know, it's still Biden's bad. Well, that's not an argument. What I'm what I'm leading to for this, for everyone listening to us, is the pick for Vice President, I think becomes incredibly important this time, more than ever before. So let's say Biden goes in. You know, Camilla Harris. Now, what I don't, I don't think Biden's gonna make it to the election. I agree with you on that, not, not that he's gonna die. I don't think the party will allow him to be the nominator. And that was kind of what I was reaching back for. Well, he'll do an LBJ Lyndon Johnson, who stepped aside in 6768

Unknown Speaker  41:39  
so that's the thing. You know, you know, I'm sure people will be like, Ah, you're anti Trump or all your bill Biden. It's like, no, not really. I kind of despise both these and in equal but different ways. The thing I just dislike is the is the sugar coating, or the ignoring of certain facts for like, emotional comfort, which is just dumb, because the reality is, is, if you if this works, you up, ignore it. Yeah, I've done that for the vast majority of the past, and guess what, things are no different. But yeah, I mean, going back to what we're saying, you know, you're electing a team of people, so who are, who's on the back, and the reason I was talking about Trump and his management practices and the people he hires, and how he handles people and all that is very important. Because, you know, you go back and he was initially elected in 2016

Unknown Speaker  42:29  
you know, there were all kinds of great ideas about bringing people in from non government, the non government world to to give input, potentially, you know, second, you know, Vice Chairs of things. Yeah, they had that application online. And your mother and I actually thought about, well, you know, what could we wind up doing to help them? And they collected, wow, popular 1000s and 1000s. What do you ever do with all the application? So here's the interesting thing. This is where, this is where Trump's inability to manage his own people comes into play, and this is, this is exactly what I'm talking about, you know. And I don't have any evidence that Biden can manage his own people, either, to be totally fair. I mean, he's got Jake Sullivan, who I would have fired months ago because he, as National Security Advisor, is, is walks on eggshells and is afraid of his own shadow. Yeah. You know, I despise that human being, but more than a lot of people, but anyway, but so my point is that they're both equally bad, but in traumaticular circumstances, at least in my mind, would you rather have somebody that is of the opposing political persuasion be bad at their job and annoy their base and have something I don't know, at least decent to run on, or would you rather elect your own who then makes you dumb? That's kind of really looking at this. But anyway,

Unknown Speaker  43:54  
yeah, the all those people applied, they had 1000s and 1000s of business people and normal everyday citizens with various varying levels of experience apply to be part of this. Let's call it more open and transparent, filling the roles of the administration, because people forget that you know, and the president you know takes office, it's not just him and his handful of cabinet numbers that proved by the Senate. There's 1000s of people, potentially, that are cycling in and out. The President ultimately is appointing to positions for committees, and you to that regard, going back to his first term, he didn't have a bench because you had a lot of people who were in the Republican Party. This Never Trump. So you had a lot of people who would normally step up, because that's what they do. They go from academia, they go into private sector, and they rotate back and forth. A great one would be with Dick Cheney, yeah, he went back and forth. And you can say whatever you want. You know, he was the devil incarnate, but he knew things. Trump didn't have that well, and a lot of that had to do it.

Unknown Speaker  45:00  
Lot of that had to do with how he handled the Republican Party right during the convention and the transition to being the party's nominee. He took all these people who smeared and beaten over the head with a mallet to get to the nomination, and he continued to be trying and was not as conciliatory and did not work behind the scenes the way one typically does to then kind of ingratiate yourself and garner respect and support from so that you can put together a dynamic cabinet and steady until the last moments of the campaign. He ran against the Republican Party. Yeah, and to that regard, I want to elaborate on what you said about which has part of his appeal also, remember, I mean, absolutely, you know, there's a time to set that aside. There's a thread to there's a needle to thread here that he'd Well, well, one of the things is, you have the, you have the

Unknown Speaker  45:54  
visitor log for the White House, yeah, and that's never 100% accurate. Oh, they say it is, but it's never 100% accurate. But the point being is there, as you know, I tell people this all the time, the one of the big values that we bring to what we do is I have a lot of quiet conversations with people, and you have to have those quiet conversations. It's not about putting deals together that are nefarious or backroom or cigar smoking, you know, you you have to have a quiet off the record, put the phones away, get them into your room. We have to have a conversation how, who's who, what's, what's, what's going on. Those are intense. I don't know that we have a track record of that with either one of these guys. Biden is obviously very good at this from years ago. I mean, he was Biden. Was amazing in the Senate, like him or not, he did a good job. But I'm just going back to the fact, you know, when somebody is always taking credit for something, they're never giving credit to somebody else.

Unknown Speaker  46:56  
To me, it means that they were not comfortable in their own skin, and they just don't, they're they're just incredibly insecure, and I think that people who are afraid to surround themselves with smarter people. You know, I can make the decision, but I want the smartest people around me possible.

Unknown Speaker  47:16  
That's who you want as your leader. I'll make the decision, but I want to, I want smart people around me.

Unknown Speaker  47:24  
Are we looking at that? And that's I'm going to go back to the same thing is, yeah, I think this vice presidential pick is going to be amazing. And then if Gavin Newsom gets the nomination, which I think he will over Biden, who's the Vice President going to be they throw Camilla Harris out. I mean, it's just weird to me. I mean, if she's ever desiring to be president, she has to make a run for it. Now, once Joe steps aside it, she doesn't have the support for it, though. The Well, I can tell you what the deal would be. The deal would be just exactly like what Nixon and Eisenhower did with Earl Warren. He'll say, you know, do you want to be a Supreme Court justice? They'll cut a deal, and she'll step aside, and hopefully he'll make good. And

Unknown Speaker  48:10  
who's the Sotomayor? She's about ready to die anyway. She's not healthy, and so Sotomayor will resign for health reasons, and the next Supreme Court justice will be Camilla Harris. Guarantee it? Well, regardless. I mean, if Gavin Newsom seems to be the only competent

Unknown Speaker  48:27  
person that would even remotely have the national idea to replace Biden,

Unknown Speaker  48:34  
if that's the case, then you wouldn't want Harris as is, purely because she's also from California. Yeah, that's good point. That would be just too toxic to on the other hand, if you have Gavin Newsom and somebody who is

Unknown Speaker  48:52  
especially somebody that much more moderate, at least as far as public perception,

Unknown Speaker  48:59  
that could be a very, a very dangerous combination. Well, I can tell you who it would be. Is the guy who was the, he was the senator from what Virginia? What's his name? West Virginia? I lost. He'll never, no, I'm thinking somebody like the governor of Virginia. He's a very moderate Democrat. Yeah, that guy does well,

Unknown Speaker  49:21  
somebody like that who does not have a toxic national name ID, whereas Gavin Newsom would have, you know, 100 days or so to articulate why he should be president, and it would be, I can guarantee you, if it goes down this way, much more moderate. Obviously, he's not running to be president of California. He's running to be President of the United States, and he is not a stupid person. He'll have all the money. He'll need money's not a problem. It never has been. He has

Unknown Speaker  49:53  
well, you know, by the way, before you go San Francisco, political money power has always been behind and because of that, he's.

Unknown Speaker  50:00  
Never really had a money issue. And you combine that, which are very distinct clips, you combine that with the traditional, let's call it the Northeast blue blood Democrat, that Biden has. And then obviously Wall Street and Silicon Valley fall in line for obvious reasons.

Unknown Speaker  50:19  
You know, basically I see this as somebody like Newsom's to lose with them at that point. Oh yeah, no. The slick, the slick advertising will be, will be unbelievable. The key, the key thing is, he will be articulate. He'll be able to he is a young man in the grand scheme of things in American politics. He's young who

Unknown Speaker  50:38  
can give a talk. He's charismatic, he's good looking, and he will be able to present himself in a very presidential fashion, in a way that Trump is completely incapable of doing. And so, you know, I almost view this as if you want to get really conspiratorial, this is all this is just to say, Make Biden look as bad as possible. Let him, let his own ego destroy him. You bring in the pretty boy, and then the Republicans feel like they are on top of the world. We're going to beat this guy. It's over. Trump's in. And then basically the worst case scenario happens, yeah, and I know you didn't see the I know you did not see the beginning of the of the debate and that I saw a little bit before it started. And who do you think was on every channel they he was front and center. Newsome, yeah, so CNN, all of them had him. Fox didn't really, but he was, you know, front and center. Oh. Gavin Newsom, thank you. It was like you could see it on the handwriting was on the wall, sure, but you know, going back to what we started off saying on this Saturday, because I think we didn't clearly articulate this, the fear we have, which is a long discussion. Now, we've had a couple breaks, but the problem is, you're going to have more and more people are going to look at anybody over the age of 65 is, you know, yes, that's what I was trying to get back to. Was that, you know, the perception of the age and stuff, you said, you have a lot of people, especially, you know,

Unknown Speaker  52:11  
you have a lot of Magas who are fervently, you know, they have a very strong opinion about everything. And a lot of them is, at least around here, are older, right? The retirees things like that, yeah. I mean the retiree, the retiree as the elder statesman, the person who's been around the block you listen to has been gutted because of Trump and Biden. Yeah, I agree. And which bothers me, because I'm in my 60s, and I feel as though, you know, I mean, very blunt with you. I feel as though going forward, you're gonna have some people who are gonna like, yeah, you're too old. I get that now, like, why are you working? Because I love what I do, you know, yeah. And so I hear a lot of people complain that, oh, Biden's too old, blah, blah, blah, that sort of thing. And obviously Trump is trailing him by just a couple years. It's not that much. Nope, not good. And you have a lot of people saying things like, Oh, well, he's too old. Look at him. And then you also have this, like we were talking about in the very, very beginning was, you know, you have people, it's almost as if they're shocked at how the behaviors of people when they decline. I mean, when, as you get old, you just you're not as mentally sharp 24 hours a day like you used to be when you were, you know, 2020s, 30s and 40s.

Unknown Speaker  53:29  
You know, especially somebody like Joe Biden. I mean, my God, he's been walking around the, you know, the marble halls of the House and Senate chambers his entire life in hard shoes. I mean, the guys probably has horrific back pain and issues, so he walks around like he's like he's got back issues, or leg issues, compounding on whatever else you know, ailments he may have developed just as a part of getting over. Right, right? Well, one of the things that Biden does that just real quickly, that I think is a telltale sign of serious cognitive challenges. It's always has to do with the mouth. Oh, yeah. So for those of you who don't know us, we have 1000s and 1000s and 1000s, 10s of 1000s, of estate planning clients, and these also include wealth management, risk management, asset protection planning. I mean, we have done this for 40 years, and I'm just a very, very robust, busy practice, there are just certain telltale signs. Now, somebody shuffling is not necessarily a sign of cognitive impairment as physical impairment as well. No, it's one of these things. It's like a matrix. Yeah, there's indication, but it's not a guarantee, right? You just got to work your points. Yeah, and again, you know, getting brain lock. I've had brain locks in on my 20s. If you're like, so totally busy and you're running, like, Okay, wait, what are we doing again? You know, that's not a big deal. And as you get older, you have so much experience that your brain goes now, are we talking about this, that, or something? Okay, you lose your train.

Unknown Speaker  55:00  
Thought, you right, we get lost in the details sometimes, well, like, like, if somebody says, Well, you know, let's go to the tape. But for me, you know, okay, the tape would refer to a, a double, real cassette tape recorder, or, you know, your video tape. It has a very specific meaning, yeah, and, but if somebody uses the word tape for something else, what context, if the setup wasn't there? And I tell people all the time, stop doing this to me. You got to do the setup. What are you talking about? Well, let's talk about Roosevelt. Which Roosevelt are we going to talk about? And it's the same thing, and that's what I'm you know. So there's not one thing, but when a person walks around and their mouth is always open, the mouth breathers, that's a one of those big indicator signs. Plus, you can also see the eyes, where the eyes become very fixed and they don't move around, and they have that that distant gaze off in the distance. Now to that regard, Charlie Munger died, and Warren Buffett is still alive, but both of those guys until the very end, seem to be sharp as a tack, and they're old, okay, but I bet you, if you put

Unknown Speaker  56:15  
Warren Buffett up on stage for that length of time, he'd stumble as well. Oh, of course, yeah, that's, that's the thing. So that's the point I was trying to get to here is, you know, the the reality is, I think a lot of people were shocked at, oh, they either ignored this stuff, or thought clips were brought out of context, or if this is the first time they've seen Biden in his full glory for a full, you know, 90 or minutes, or two hours, or whatever it was, and they got to see that. Oh, well, he actually is. He has, he has aid quite a bit since we last paid full attention to him, when he ran four years ago, and to which I'm not surprised, because I've been paying attention. None of this is surprising to me at all. This is just, this is what happens when you get older and you're under high stress and that sort of stuff. Like I'm not surprised by this in the least,

Unknown Speaker  57:08  
but it obviously has shocked a lot of people to their core, the way I've seen the commentary, and you have a lot of comments I've seen from conservative leaning and also the mega crowd who, like, Ah, he's incompetent, this, that and the other. It's like, do be very tread very carefully, because we do have a country that will be very close to a majority above above the age of 50, yep, for a period of time going forward, especially with all the Boomers and Gen Xers now are approaching that age, right? They're, they're all, they're all, quote, unquote, they're, you know, let's just say over they're over the hump, right? They're over there. Tread very carefully. I know you said, you said, Gen Xers are now over 50. I just me, I just, you understand, like, holy cow. Like, holy crap, sorry. Just like, mother, whatever. So we're gonna have a huge portion of the population that are, are this age that can be qualified as, quote, unquote elderly or whatever, right? Do tread careful, because

Unknown Speaker  58:18  
what is it? 65% of the federal budget goes towards social security and Medicare and Medicaid, so elder retirement entitlements consume more money than interest on the debt. Military, fire, police, air traffic controllers, roads, bridges, everything. Oh, but, but, just so you know. And that is a danger. When you bring that up to people, they go, Oh, no, that's not that's not true. That's not true. No, no, military. Military is sapping on the left. And, yeah, if you're left, if you're left leaning, it's the military. If you're right leaning, it's, it's EPA, green energy, green stuff, or something. When the reality is, is, it's, it's, it's public entitlements that are consuming the vast majority of the tax revenue. And so, you know, in debate, they talked about, you know, the fact that, if nothing is done, you know, in around 10 years, maybe sooner than things, yeah, you're gonna have a potential, you potentially have a cut in Social Security if the Social Security trust fund goes bankrupt, something we've been talking about seems like forever, but and people used to say, oh, that's never going to happen. And neither candidate has a reasonable response to Trump, I think, never addressed the issue. Yet it was, we're going to do tariffs or something, I don't know. It didn't make any sense, and just real quickly, and then Biden's was equally nonsensical. Oh, we're going to tax the rich more because somehow they don't pay enough. Yeah, no, you can tax you can tax her. Either you can tax what, quote, unquote, the rich all you want. There's never going to be enough money to fill the hole there. And, you know, just for the record, anybody who is still with us listening, you know, listen, we, we are telling all of our clients.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:00  
It's, you've got to get prepared for a 20 to 30% drop in Social Security sometime between 2033 2034

Unknown Speaker  1:00:08  
it could be sooner, could be a little bit later, but sometime in that time, it's going to happen. And at some point in time, the only way to fix this is they are going to reduce benefits to people who have a higher net worth? Well, yeah, that's definitely what's gonna happen and but that's only one approach, right? Like, there's a lot that and should be done. But the anyway, the point is, is that, you know, you have this in. The reality is we're only halfway into into Boomer retirement. Yeah, half of boomers are still working, or maybe a little bit less now, yep, that's it. So people don't understand the point that I'm driving here towards you know slowly is that we, you're going to be enemy number one to a lot of people when, when you have people who are in their 30s and 40s, so people my age, who are making reasonably decent wages and their taxes are going to be 50 and 60% of their of their income is going to be taxed federally to compensate for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are some of the proposals right from, from, from people you know, primarily on the left. And if that is something that comes to fruition, you will be enemy number one, and one of the easiest ways to deal with you is to deem you incompetent and you are unable to make decisions for bingo. I'm glad you finally said it, because that's I've been talking this for an age, an age war, yeah, a demographics war is far more likely than a Democrat, Republican or black, white, brown, Asian or Plutonian or somebody, oh, yeah, no, yeah, it and I'm not being when I say war. I'm not talking about killing people, you know, gunfire. I'm talking about, yeah, no, political. It'll be a political. Political war, you know, as the old saying goes, you know, you know, politics is war by other means, right? And that's what this is. So, you know, also do. It's great phrase, by the way, younger generations are much smaller, so they're not only going to be taxed higher just don't have the votes, they also are going to set aside certain differences that older people won't. And you know, while people may get really mad about various aspects of, you know, immigration or certain specific policies or whatever. I can tell you, younger people don't give hoot about the abortion debates or anything that is an argument among a bunch of young people are like, okay, you know, basically, pretty much everybody's like, pro choice, but at the same time, you know, just make the gross stuff illegal, unless you're unless you're one of these extremists, most people are just kind of like, it's just not

Unknown Speaker  1:02:48  
important. And I can tell you that because, you know, my sister has spent, you know, time in college getting her master's degree and stuff recently, and she told me a great story about having been on campus when Roe v Wade was was struck down by the horrible ultra conservative Nazi Supreme Court. Right? Yeah. Is that when they burned down the campus everybody she said, the only person that talked about it was a transgender person, literally everybody else on campus was here, yeah, and she's in an area that is conservative but more liberal inning than a lot of at least, considering it's a college campus. And the thing that I I've told people repeatedly that, even when it comes to investing, I mean, we deal with this all day long, people bring up an issue, it's like, that's not relevant, yeah, but that, but I was talking to the news, said this, that's not relevant to you in any way, shape or form. People get worked up over things like, I use this example all the time, and the Pete, the names will change, because I'm just not going to change it. But you have three people are in a canoe in India. They're crossing the river, and the canoe flips and they drowned. I don't get I don't care. I have no compassion. I don't know feeling. And then you have people say, Oh, I can't believe you wouldn't feel better. There's only so much compassion and emotion you have now, if it was Putin and Trump and Xi Jinping, I might actually pay attention like, Oh, that's not good. All three of them are in the same boat, and it flipped and they all drowned. Yeah, I might clap. But

Unknown Speaker  1:04:18  
the point being, the point being people get worked up on things, and they attribute value to things, they're completely worthless. Yeah, exactly. And you're killing yourself. Well, you're just wasting your own time, effort, aggravation and money. You're killing yourself, yeah, man, you're wasting your life worrying about third or make absolutely have no bearing on reality also. And you're complaining on Facebook or continually talking about various things this is affecting other people. How are you actually changing hearts and minds? Are you just blathering on into the void?

Unknown Speaker  1:04:53  
The lack of self awareness when it comes to like, emotional, political topics is is an interesting.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:00  
In and of itself. And by the way, you know who I didn't see last night on anything? My pillow guy. Oh no, I don't think my pillow guy could afford super Prime Time rates that I'm sure these channels were getting. It was all like very high end things. I had the YouTube stream on for CNN, and obviously they or whatever, to make sure that ads only ran during their little breaks in the middle or whatever. But, and they were, I'm sure they got super mega premium bucks for those, like three ad slots. Oh yeah. Well, my pillow guy seems to, seems to fill all the empty slots. Well, he took over the guy for Ronco, which actually is, or the seal of meal or sham Woe that he took over? Yeah, well, hey, it's smart. I mean,

Unknown Speaker  1:05:48  
you're selling a commodity product, you know, you can't spend too much on that. But, you know, I'll say something that'll probably piss off a lot of people listening. If you have somebody who is older and you're screaming at younger people for having their face buried in their phone or on their computer and playing games all the time, but you're sitting there in front of Fox or CNN all day long. 24/7 screaming at Republicans or screaming at Democrats. Do you do realize that you're just looking at the future version of you. Well, what's even crazier about this? I've seen studies on how much time people spend watching television. You should pull this up. It's and, you know, like in the 80s, it's like four or five hours a day average per person, which is insane. God. And as you know, that was in the 80s, yeah. And as as TVs got better and bigger and whatever, it just grew. I think, I think the peak was like six hours a day or something, just absolutely insane.

Unknown Speaker  1:06:51  
Wow. But then as as computers and smartphones and things like that, all it did was replace the TV time. Bingo. They're not doing anything different. They're just looking they're sitting in front of the pre programmed nonsense. And in the case of phones and computers and gaming consoles and things like, they're interacting with, it's viewed as something slightly different, but effectively the same. It's crazy. And also, you know, the smartphone head being buried in the Smart is actually nonsense, because I see, I see retirees and people that look like retirees that are engaging in very much similar behavior, especially the younger ones, they seem to have the same habits as the 20 year olds. Yeah, it doesn't make it same thing. It's just a remix. Yeah, everything's the same. I don't I literally don't care what anybody says, everything's a remix and, yeah, that's why I

Unknown Speaker  1:07:45  
pick up put things down and pick up a book, go outside and do some gardening, pull a car out in the driveway and wash your car. Hey, you know what? You don't have to go to the wash rack. Saves gas, saves time. You get you bend over. You were saying the other day it was hotter and all Billy hell, and you were out washing and waxing the car and your phone. How many calories did you burn that day? Every day, it's like that. Now I can't, I can't do anything. I can't do anything without just completely so close at this point, it's been hot. It's hot and it's been muggy. And you know what? Get out and get in it, because you get used to it, and your body will thank you for you know, if you, if you go a week without breaking a good enough sweat that you have to change your shirt, you're probably not getting enough exercise, especially around Hey, speaking of how much it has been hot, hot, hot. So you said that I looked over what is the name of the grill that you have outside the gas grill. I have a Fuego, guys, can you spell it? F, U, E, G, O, right. It's round, right? It's oval.

Unknown Speaker  1:08:51  
It's an amazing grill. Yes, right, yep. So we do a lot of steaks. We do, we do a lot of we do a lot of barbecue and smoking and everything else. It's outside. I got news for you. Anybody who is cooking meat inside it, grill, it does an amazing job. Now to that regard, because of where I was yesterday, had to get a bite to eat out. Have you seen what the price of a decent steak is lately at a restaurant, holy cow. Yeah. I mean, holy cow is a legitimate statement now, yeah. I mean, the people forget, like, you know, you can complain all you want about food prices, and that's just gonna be purely correlated. There commodity item correlated, wishing

Unknown Speaker  1:09:40  
so put that aside,

Unknown Speaker  1:09:42  
food costs out are substantially more than the raw food prices, like there was a point in time where you know pre covid, you know certain places, you know their volume, their their weight in purchasing power, could drive prices down, down enough.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:00  
That it was a it was a premium, but it was a reasonable premium, right? Not including, but because of covid. You know, one thing people forget about is the market dynamics that changed, and from my observation, they're still here. People are eating out all the time. That was my point. Volume of people that are eating out is insane. Like, the handful of times I will grab something just quick because I'm busy and I don't have time to, you know, do anything, or I'm not going to be in a place where, where I can actually make something myself or or I my lack of foresight. I didn't prepare anything ahead of time. I It's just packed everywhere. It doesn't matter what it is, and it's drive through. It's not just in in, you know, Eden dead. It's a ghost town. What is what? It's just the hordes of people going through the drive throughs or picking up for takeout or or all that. I'm never gonna buy used car because it's got a is a it's a rolling garbage drop. It's insane, like, I mean, it's, it's, it's in this is also just another thing you pay attention, especially around here where you know, going eating out is an event. It's something to do, especially if you're retired. I mean, it's just an excuse to get out of the house and do something a lot of the times, right? Yeah, instead, get in your golf cart and go for a ride. So, but you look around, it's like, oh, the economy's terrible. Well, how come every restaurant looks like there's a damn weight outside? Yep. Like, it's crazy. Like, you know, I another good example of this is, oh, the economy's doing terrible. But yet, what was it Monday? Is the highest airline traffic, highest number of passengers flying commercial. And with the Fourth of July, it's just going to be continuing, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I think by the end of the year, we will have 10 of the top 10 most traveled days by passenger count in US history will be this year. So I gotta say, if the economy is doing terrible, why? Why is everybody flying? It's not like Monday was a holiday, right? Or is it a holiday I just wasn't told about? I don't know. And that has been that way for nonsensical days. Multiple times this year, they've hit the top 10

Unknown Speaker  1:12:18  
list of most trap most passengers through through airports, and that's and that's domestic travel too. That's not like we're having, you know, Joe Biden's infinite immigration criticism from the right, that wouldn't be that way either. I mean, this is purely domestic travel going from Tampa to or whatever, whatever the heck people get on planes for. But anyway, so I thought that was very interesting. But these are all like weird transitional things from Coke, you have a lot more people eating out. And the reason I brought that up was

Unknown Speaker  1:12:52  
you've had this dislocation in pricing primarily due to labor. So when you and then increased minimum wage and all exactly so. So in Florida, for example, you know, food prices, especially for eating out, is insane. I mean, we went to capital grow in Tampa a couple weeks ago, yep, and I thought it was really fair. No, actually, the prices, I was, like, I got a rib eye and, like, it was, everything was, was perfect. And we walked away and paid the same you would pay at a Chili's, no, there's a fact.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:27  
I mean, granted, like, you know, we didn't have drinks and do all kinds of stuff, but the it was a very mild premium for a substantially better meal. So I was super impressed by that, because it really shows you how much food costs have gone up, particularly eating out because of labor. Like a few years ago, when we had our constitutional amendment that everybody got to vote on, oh, boy, do we want to increase the minimum wage in Florida $15 an hour. I remember that was what five years ago they basically increased $1 an hour for five years. So it's $15 an hour by 2025

Unknown Speaker  1:14:05  
so the last step up is we have six constitutional amendments coming up in Florida, and I can guarantee you, 99% of the population doesn't know anything about them. And remember, this is the population that gave us the feral pig constitutional amendment few years ago. Remember that, where you have to have, you know, pigs have to be treated? Yep, I just Well, yeah, they killed the they killed pig farm in Florida. In Florida, it's just not something you can do anymore. So now we import every other southern states. But anyway, point is, in Florida, we've got the same minimum wage, I think you have in California, and $15 and you California, though, is weird, because the fast food industry has to be 25 Oh, yeah. What? Who in the right mind? Well anyway, point point being is that is that you have labor costs, but you then you also have other pressure costs, like every single place you go to that.

Unknown Speaker  1:15:00  
Is anything to do with food service or retail, has we're hiring? Yep, every single one and every single place you go to is, you can just visibly tell they're chronically understaffed. The exception of that is Publix, because they obviously pay well and they

Unknown Speaker  1:15:17  
but you do see a lot more elderly. I don't mean to use where else senior citizens working? Oh, definitely. And, you know what, they don't have a skull on their face. I've noticed a lot of people don't have a skull. They're like, they're I'm glad I'm out of the house. I'm doing things, Yep, yeah. And I'm not just making that up. I mean, in my in my experience, I look for them first, because I know they're gonna actually, like, pardon my language. Give a shit about what my question is? Versus, you know, the the punk kid who looks at me like I have, you know, horns coming at him. And why? Why? Why are you even here? Why are you bothering me? It's like, well, that's undoubted. Well, even in in the financial services and legal industry, the customer service things, I mean, we have regulatory authority issues that we have to deal with. And as you know, I had to say to a fellow the other day, look, I have been in business longer than most few people have been alive. It doesn't work that way. Well, the rules say we got to do this. Do you have a supervisor who's more than 12? I'm sorry, it just, it just, I'm tired of this stuff. But well, yeah, so with regard to the labor issue, also consider the retirement problem. This is something I've seen very little discussed on national scale, but it's a huge fact that, like I said, we're only, like roughly halfway into the baby boomers retiring. Well, these people occupy millions and millions of jobs, and they are leaving them. And guess what? Now your gen xers and your Millennials are moving up the ladder. Who's filling their jobs and who's filling the jobs that those people are and moving up, you know? People say, ah, the economy is terrible. We're all dying, you know? And blah, blah, blah. And basically, what they mean by that is that inflation sucks. Yes, inflation does,

Unknown Speaker  1:17:07  
but nobody's being fired. There's very few mass layoffs outside the tech industry when they were trying to optimize for AI that they're going to realize was a huge mistake. But also they're optimizing back to reality as they hired 10s or hundreds of 1000s of people over what they needed, because they thought covid volumes of work and labor needs were going to continue forever, because nobody will ever go into a store ever again. They will just wrong. So

Unknown Speaker  1:17:39  
it's one of these things. You know, some of the, some of the, some of the covid, post covid, economic dislocations that you look at went away or normalized back to a sane level, and others stayed. And one of those state is eating out. People are eating out so much more than than they used to. Because here's what it is, they just they want to be out among people, yeah, and, and people are so, so, you know,

Unknown Speaker  1:18:05  
people are afraid to ask somebody out on a date. They're afraid to talk to anybody about politics. They're afraid. Everybody's afraid because you're gonna offend me. Oh, I'm gonna get all upset. And so you just kind of like, I'm in a smash mosh pit. You know, at least I kind of feel connected. That's, that's what's going on. There's lots of stories all ages. People are lonely. People are lonely and and part of that, and also, like, we're doing a podcast, it's not, it's not going to be ever successful in terms of YouTube hits, because you know what, to be successful, you got to be on video, and you got to be so bombastic, and you got to be, you know, and again, going back, if you're running for president, what's the easiest thing to do? Just be loud, annoying and crazy, yeah, yeah, even if you're not so for the Joe Biden and his administration, if you want to actually win, you got to, you know, maybe put on some gold chains and do a dance and

Unknown Speaker  1:19:03  
do a hip hop. Yeah, whatever the Yeah. So it's an interesting issue, because with a lack of employees to do your lower tier jobs, because the things that are more important are people are moving up the ladder due to older people retiring and evacuating.

Unknown Speaker  1:19:25  
You know, the generations that are younger are substantially smaller, yep, and not as and not as prepared, no. And part of them not being prepared is that boomers stayed in the workforce a lot longer than people expected. It's also the education system is all of the all of it. I mean, you just don't have you're getting more and more people. There's stories about men are not going to college or doing the trades, and they're making two and three times what they would have ever made in college, and they don't have the debt. You know, you have people in their 20s that own homes, and by 30, they're debt free because they didn't go to college. And of course.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:00  
Everybody has to have a college degree. You know, Obama, someday, somebody's going to realize, you know, how he screwed over so many people. Well, I'll give you a good example. I mean, I stopped the mowing mowing shop yesterday to grab some handful of things, you know, some edge one of these fancy new no spill gas cans to fill, you know, your hand tools and some, some stupid stuff, right? And a guy was walking through, he looked like he's about my age, and he obviously lawn care business system. A loud conversation with one employees as he was walking out of the place, and they asked him if he was still expanding or whatever. They're probably just fishing because, you know, buying expensive mowing equipment is a good deal. And he was like, he was like, Nope, I'm downsizing. He's like, I'm gonna, I'll be selling off the last of my jobs and his equipment by the end of the summer. And he said he's, he's made a he said he's, he's made more than enough money, and he's getting quote the hell out of Marion County and to Costa Rica or something. So you have a guy who's probably been doing that business, probably what, maybe since he was 18,

Unknown Speaker  1:21:14  
if he was financially responsible and saved, was able to save 50 $100,000 a year for the past decade. Now, he's going to go to a place that has, you know, a 12th of the cost of living as here he's done well, you know, it's not just Costa Rica. There are, I'm seeing a lot more people beginning to write articles. And obviously we trend. We follow the demographics, the economics, the forecasting, but more and more people are moving to Alabama, Arkansas. Yeah, for certain retirees are going well, we have in our community here, many, many homes for sale. And I know from talking to people a lot, there are people saying, I love Florida. It was nice, but it's gotten too expensive. I'm out of here. We met a guy up in Georgia recently. He said, I can't afford living in Florida. No, that was an exaggeration, but, well, no, but Florida is extremely expensive now, compared to most states, right? And this is what happens. We're the third most populous state. And you know, my joke is, we need, we need a hotel light up signs on the on the state border crossings that say no vacancy, no vacancy. Hey, speaking of which one, we wrapped this up. We've been chatting for a long time. We had a long pause where we had to do some really quick modifications because our schedules, the quality of this may be okay, may not be okay. We had a couple interruptions, but that was I kind of enjoyed this Sure. Okay. So I'm Paul Truesdale, the elder, you are the younger, and we're out of here. Tippecanoe tower two. We're done.

Unknown Speaker  1:22:55  
The Paul Truesdell podcast is brought to you by the Truesdell companies, a conglomerate of independent professional service companies owned and operated in whole or part by members of the Truesdell family and team Truesdell. Visit truesdell.net that's truesdell.net or for Paul the elder's personal website, visit paultrusdale.com you.

Unknown Speaker  1:23:27  
You have been listening to the Paul Truesdale podcast for additional items, serious to humorous, wisdom to occasional outrage of various degrees. Visit Paul truesdell.com

Unknown Speaker  1:23:42  
That's paultrusdale.com

Unknown Speaker  1:23:55  
Paul grant Truesdell, J, D, AIFS

Unknown Speaker  1:24:06  
on the board now,

Unknown Speaker  1:24:12  
people got no respect for the brain dead.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:15  
There's a garbage can in the northeast corner. Drop the bags and leave

Unknown Speaker  1:24:22  
like to start with a list of people I can do without a proctologist with poor depth perception,

Unknown Speaker  1:24:32  
any woman whose hobby is breast feeding zoo animals, a cross eyed nun with a bull whip and a bottle of gin,

Unknown Speaker  1:24:42  
a waitress with a visible infection on her serving hand,

Unknown Speaker  1:24:47  
and any man whose arm hair completely covers his wrist watch. Okay, that's enough of that.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:58  
Mr Madison, i.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:00  
What you just said

Unknown Speaker  1:25:02  
is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response, were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it, I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:27  
Okay, a simple wrong would have done just fine, but you remain One.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:42  
You

Unknown Speaker  1:25:54  
Meet George Jetson

Unknown Speaker  1:26:00  
is by all Right.

Unknown Speaker  1:26:06  
Daughter Judy,

Unknown Speaker  1:26:12  
Jane, his wife, you

Unknown Speaker  1:27:03  
Jay, Stop this crazy thing You

Unknown Speaker  1:27:20  
Oh,

Unknown Speaker  1:27:32  
big wheels.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:49  
Baby, if you never wondered,

Unknown Speaker  1:27:53  
wondered, whatever became of

Unknown Speaker  1:27:57  
me. I'm living on the air in Cincinnati.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:01  
Cincinnati W, K, R, B,

Unknown Speaker  1:28:05  
got kind of tired of packing and unpacking,

Unknown Speaker  1:28:10  
town to town, up and down the dial to me.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:18  
Just maybe think of me once in a while,

Unknown Speaker  1:28:26  
moving, moving. Oh, they're disapproving. Keep them doggies moving.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:35  
Don't try to understand them just throwing bread. So we'll be living high and calculate my truth be

Unknown Speaker  1:28:44  
waiting

Unknown Speaker  1:28:46  
at

Unknown Speaker  1:28:48  
the end of

Unknown Speaker  1:28:50  
my ride. Move on,

Unknown Speaker  1:28:53  
hit him up, hit him up. Move him on, hit him up. Raw, hide. Let him out. Ride him in. Let him in, let him out. Cut him out. Ride him in.

Unknown Speaker  1:29:00  
Roar. Out, right? I'm in cross.

What is The Paul Truesdell Podcast?

The Paul Truesdell Podcast

Welcome to the Paul Truesdell Podcast. Two Pauls in a pod. Featuring Paul the Elder and Paul the Younger. So, what's the gig? Individually or collectively, Paul and Paul sit down and chat predominately at the Truesdell Professional Building and record frequently. They explain a few things about how life works before time gets away. They connect the dots and plot the knots, spots, and ops with a heavy dose of knocks, mocks, pots, rocks, socks, and mops. Confused? Then welcome aboard! You see, Paul the Elder and Paul the Younger enjoy telling complex stories that are always based on business, economics, and forecasting while having fun, laughing, and being among like-minded men, women, and children from Earth, Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune. Individually and jointly, Paul the Elder and Paul the Younger, coupled with Team Truesdell, have been there and done it. If you enjoy front porch philosophers who take deep dives and connect the dots, while drinking coffee during the day and a whiskey after five, welcome.

It is a true pleasure to have you onboard.

This is, The Paul Truesdell Podcast.