Jacob Smulian: Hello and welcome to another episode of Geopolitical Cousins.
I am your editor and apparently intro maker Jacob Mian.
Um, this is a super fun episode.
The cousins are unpacking the US' response to Iran's attack on Israel.
Um, they are diving into whether or not deterrence is a credible strategy anymore.
And then the topic we've all been waiting for.
Taylor Swift's geopolitical reach.
So the world is messy.
It's raining outside.
Get off your phone, go touch some grass and let's get into it.
Jacob Shapiro: Alright, listeners, Marco is up at, is it four
20 or five 20 in the morning?
Marco?
Marko Papic: It is five 20.
Five plane.
Okay,
Jacob Shapiro: four.
Four would would be uncivilized.
Five is at least in the realm of civilization,
although it's still not good.
Uh, everybody admires your dedication for being here.
It's nice to see you.
Marko Papic: Well, first of all, uh, this is the life of a strategist.
It's 24 hours.
You know, you've got clients, uh, requesting a call at
like 3:00 AM in the morning.
Uh, it's also a life of someone who lives on the West Coast.
This is how the rest of you.
Punish us for living in, uh, on the Pacific, uh, coast.
And then finally, uh, if you want to achieve absurd levels of manliness,
you do have to wake up early to bench press, and we will get to
this a little bit later, I believe.
Jacob Shapiro: Yes.
From, from Canadian nationalism to, uh, Uber Manliness.
Uh, let's just start right there.
So this was sparked by an article BBC had it, but there's a bunch
of different, um, uh, bunch of different articles around this.
Uh, we're gonna be talking about Father Moses McPherson, whose congregation
has tripled in size in the last I.
18 months.
He lives in Georgetown, Texas, just a little bit north of Austin, Texas,
the city where Marco and I met also.
Uh, it's funny, I was thinking, I didn't even tell you this.
Marco uh, Gordon Ramsey did like a kitchen nightmares episode in Georgetown, Texas.
And this is like a, I don't know, spiritual life nightmares
is what this guy does.
I don't know.
He like goes into your house and yells at you and tells you what to do Anyway.
Uh, so he, uh, this guy Father Moses, he was a Protestant who
worked as a roofer, but now he's a priest in the Russian Orthodox
Church outside of Russia or RO car.
I dunno if they call it that, but that's what their acronym is.
Acronym is here.
Um, and I mean the, the BBC article has just, whoever wrote this
article must have had a ton of fun because it leads off with a quote.
A lot of people ask me, father Moses, how can I increase my
manliness to absurd levels?
End quote.
Um, and he has a whole YouTube video as championing a form of veal
unapologetic masculinity, uh, with which.
Sort of confusingly Marco includes skinny jeans, crossing your
legs, using an iron, shaping your eyebrows, and, and eating soup.
These are all things that are too feminine.
Yeah.
These are like, you know.
Yes.
Yeah.
So he, he's saying that these things are too, uh, too feminine.
Uh, he's gotten 75 new followers, uh, which doesn't seem like a
lot in 18 months, but whatever.
Like, that's more than zero followers.
He, I wonder if he has a podcast, he, he can claim that he, uh,
tripled it in size anyway.
Um, it also, it literally seems like a plot.
I don't know if you've seen the righteous gemstones on HBO.
It's like a, like I'm watching it with my wife right now, which is about these
like us mega, it's like, it's about a us mega church and John Goodman is the pastor
and he's got all these silly children.
One of the kids, like the youngest one of the kids, seems like a closeted gay guy.
And he's, he's assembled this like army of muscular men and he's like
teaching them how to like, uh, be with Christ, but also like, like literally
they're training to carry the cross through the Judean desert itself.
And like they have to eat nice and like lift a bunch of
weights and things like that.
And I turned to my wife and I was like, 'cause she grew up
in the, in the Baptist world.
And I was like, is this real?
Like, do people do this?
And she was like, nah, nah, this is a joke.
But it's not a joke.
'cause here's Father Moses saying we have to increase our levels of manliness.
Um, you know, Skyward.
So I'll let you cook from there, Marco.
'cause we are gonna make this serious in a second.
Marko Papic: Yeah.
So I think, um.
First of all, I am Orthodox and I can tell Why didn't
Jacob Shapiro: that?
Marko Papic: Yeah, we, I mean, you know, serves, serves our Orthodox
and we definitely eat soup.
In fact, when I was, uh, young, my grandmother who had herself observed
levels of manliness, just FYI, so she would like force feed me soup.
Before the meal, it was like, if you didn't eat soup, this
was like obsession of Serbian grandmothers was to feed you soup.
So I don't understand why soup in the American version of, uh, Russian
orthodoxy is, um, is not manly.
But, uh, so first of all, for those of you who don't know, um, Christianity
has many different denominations.
The two main ones before Martin Luther came along and like protested the
two, um, were Catholic and Orthodox, uh, roughly split along the borders
effectively of the Byzantine Empire.
Uh, and the difference between the two, and this is important 'cause a
lot of people don't understand it.
Uh, whenever I say I'm Orthodox, they're like, oh, you're Russian Orthodox.
It's like, no, no, that's not how it works.
Um, in the eastern part of Europe, uh, most countries basically have
their own, uh, orthodox religion.
So think of it the way that Anglicans, for example, exist.
Um, you know, it, it's much more associated with the state
itself, the nation state.
And so you have Armenian Orthodox, you have Bulgarian Orthodox, you
have Russian Orthodox, uh, do not have, of course Ukrainian Orthodox,
which was controversial, um, Serbian Orthodox, uh, and so on and so on.
Greek Orthodox, of course, also very important.
You have several other denominations and they're all, um, essentially equal.
Although the Archbishop of Constantinople is still like Titularly.
Uh, above all of them, you know, uh, but, but not really.
They're, they're pretty much all equal.
So each one of these groups has its own pope.
Uh, anyways, this particular offshoot in the US that's gaining a lot of,
uh, uh, followers is the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia.
So the diocese, I guess, would what be, what we would call it, is it's an
offshoot of the Russian, uh, church.
It's not the American Orthodox Church, which I actually also believe exists.
Um, anyways, long story short, um, because, uh, Russia's so manly,
you know, um, there is, I guess, appeal, um, for people to join
this Russian Orthodox Church.
And I thought that was really interesting because later embedded in this article,
um, is basically this interesting link.
Um, to a web, to a website run by the, I think, Russian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, where you can go and get a visa.
You can get a visa for, um, join, uh, for basically residency in Russia.
Uh, that's a path to permanent residency for like-minded
individuals from countries.
And they list the countries and the countries are effectively
all from, um, from the west.
Um, it's not like any Russia adjacent countries.
Um, it's just targeted towards the west to attract immigrants, like
wine minded, conservative, you know, people who believed in manliness.
Is, I guess, not eating soup and not wearing skinny jeans, obviously,
even though one would argue perhaps that you have to be, you have to
achieve giga levels of manliness to pull off skinny jeans in 2025.
That's, you know, some would say that, some would say that's how you
achieve giga, levels of manliness.
But yeah, so like the Russian foreign ministry has this website, um, and this
visa program that allows you to join, uh, basically Russia and get, uh, residency.
And it was in this article, I guess because, uh, you know, it's,
it's this whole wave that's now, uh, started, uh, it's on YouTube.
It's a guess in the Russian Orthodox, uh, offshoot of Russia standing as a bulwark
for Western, uh, traditional values.
Um.
I don't know what to say about that.
It seems weird.
Jacob Shapiro: Well, yeah, it's called, it is called the shared
values visa, which is remarkable.
And it's like got pictures of like a ballerina and like beautiful, you know,
uh, beautiful scenery inside Russia.
I don't see any pictures of like, Siberia here, for example.
It's like some beautiful, like rock fixture in the middle of a lake.
Um, I, I think there are like a couple interesting things here.
The first is like the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in general, um,
is actually extremely geopolitical and it's, it's really relevant to, to Vladimir
Putin and all the things that he's done.
And Vladimir Putin, you can kind of tell is obsessed with
this idea of manliness too.
Not just conservativeness, but manliness.
Like always needing to be out with his shirt off, riding the horses,
like jumping in the cold water.
Like he's always had to project this image of being super manly
and super strong all the time.
Um.
And I think part of it is that for most of the 20th century, the
Russian Orthodox Church was on the outs with the Russian government.
The Russian Orthodox Church had really deep ties with the Czars, and it was sort
of the Czars and the Russian Orthodox Church, like, I don't know, like governed
as a little bit too strong, but they worked hand in hand to maintain Russia.
Uh, but the communist wanted nothing to do with religion.
Uh, I'll, I'll, I'll take a, a Lenin quote here outta my bag that he wrote in 1905.
Quote.
Religion is a kind of spiritual gin in which the slaves of capital
drown their human shape and their claims to any decent human life.
End quote.
Probably Lenin would be eating soup and, uh, in, in skinny jeans in Moscow right
now as he's, as he's blogging that.
Marko Papic: Yes.
Jacob Shapiro: Um, and like, I don't know when the, when the
communists first take power, there's sort of this uneasy relationship
with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Um, the Russian Orthodox Church is allowed to rally Russian patriotism in World War
II and the fight against Nazi Germany.
But in 59 Khrushchev basically says no more.
We are gonna be a real communist, basically atheist state.
And the Russian Orthodox Church sort of has to go underground and Putin turns
that around when he takes power and when he's trying to sort of rebuild
a sense of Russian nationalism.
He really does inject the Russian Orthodox Church, um, with a lot more
importance and gives them free reign.
And sort of the same way he gave ProGo free reign with
the, um, with the mercenaries.
He gave the Russian Orthodox Church free reign to go about and spread,
uh, as you sort of say Russia's values throughout the Orthodox world.
And apparently he's trying to spread it throughout.
Of the United States too.
I, I don't think it's gonna do that much in the United States.
Um, but you know, like, uh, there was some Pew data that showed that,
uh, you know, Orthodox Christians in the United States are 64% male,
which is up from 46% in 2007.
So, so something is happening like men are flocking, uh, to this Orthodox
church in some meaningful way.
And I guess.
I guess he's articulating something.
I find the description of his, of Father Moses and this particularly
masculine orthodoxy that he's describing, pretty boring.
He is like saying you can either, you can serve God by being a nun
or a monk or by getting married.
Uh, he says you should not use any birth control.
Masturbation is pathetic and unmanly.
Uh, he doesn't want his services to feel like a Taylor Swift concert.
Okay.
Um, he says The look at the language of worship music, it's all emotion.
That's not men.
Okay.
Bullshit.
Uh, but fine.
Like, it's just, it's just like very sort of normal, retrograde,
patriarchal, conservative, like fluff.
But I guess that's what people want.
I don't know.
Marko Papic: So there's, there's a couple of things where we can take
this and I definitely wanna take it to the visa, uh, the value visa that
Russia has, which is fascinating.
Uh, you know, I encourage everyone to go to the website.
Uh, I mean, BBC does as well, which, which
Jacob Shapiro: that was funny to go to the website.
We do not, we do not suggest that you apply for the Russian value visa, or I
guess you could do whatever you want.
Y'all are all, you
Marko Papic: do whatever you want.
I mean, why not?
Like it's a free market.
Um, I guess, and just the pictures that they show ballerina, the cre uh, the
Kremlin, um, and also just this like picture of a family that got from, from
like a stock photo, um, of just, you know, a man holding a baby, a woman holding a
child, and they're holding hands, running through, I guess wheat fields in Russia.
So, um, couple of things.
First of all, I do think that men and boys are, are clearly lost.
There's a great book by Richard Reeves called Of Boys and Men, which
I would encourage ev everyone to read.
And in fact, effectively it argues that, um, it know one
of the problems is that, um.
Just genetically speaking and biologically speaking, women and girls
develop faster than men mentally.
Um, and so what happens in competition in education is that quite often
girls are going to outperform boys.
Now, in the past, the way that we, uh, didn't allow this to happen is we, what's
the word, discriminated against women.
That's right.
That was their solution for thousands of years of human history.
We basically just discriminated women.
Um, but because we don't actually do that anymore, or not to like the extent it
happened in the past, what's showing up in test scores, in educational results,
in job opportunities, especially in a heavy service oriented economy, is the
fact that, you know, girls Rule as the first chapter of the book is titled.
Now, Richard Reeves is not some right wing ideologue.
Um, he's actually, um, I think, uh, what is he exactly?
Um, I don't think he's just an author.
Uh oh, no, he is, um, he is a social scientist, senior fellow at the
Brooking I institution, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.
Um, which I have to say sounds weird.
Uh, has a PhD, I think in, um, oh, a geography.
Uh, interesting, interesting path to write about this.
But, you know, he's not, uh, I mean, you know, he works for the
Brookings Institution, like he's, he's not some weird YouTube show
or a podcaster, if you will.
Um, and so his book is not some sort of call to go back in time.
He's just trying to fix this, uh, this issue that's coming up.
And then nobody is very comfortable talking about, you're
not comfortable talking about it, because if you talk about.
Boys and men falling behind, you're somehow anti-feminist.
You know, and I think one of the most interesting thing that Reeves argues
is that that's not the case at all.
You can be a feminist and you can also just identify ways in which
men and boys in today's modern society are starting to fall behind.
But why do I bring this book up?
I bring this book up, first of all, because it's an interesting one, and
I like reading different perspectives.
But diff the other issue is that, um, Reeves is right, and that's why there's
such appeal to new forms of achieving uber manliness, you know, in a world where boys
fall behind the school, uh, and then end up, you know, um, you know, facing law
schools and medical schools where a vast majority are not women, uh, who graduate
from those programs, which is fine.
Like that's all good and, and fine.
But like the point is there is.
There is something missing.
And I think it's being filled increasingly by ideologies and new
religious cults or new religions, uh, and new appeals to how to become a man,
you know, new, new sort of, uh, ways.
And I think it's an interesting point that I don't think we've all
accepted as the source of the new ideological tensions in the world.
I think that's something that like, is not being discussed enough.
In other words, we're in a post-industrial society, this appeal of bringing
back manufacturing to the us there's part of it that makes sense from
a national security perspective.
You should be able to build cars if you one day have to build tanks.
Okay.
Steel, aluminum, I get it.
Yeah.
Steel aluminum are really important in a war.
So there are ways to justify, you know, tariffs through national security.
But when you start asking for bicycles and like, you know.
I don't know, like toaster ovens to be built in America.
You have to step back and be like, okay, well what is this about?
And then you realize, well, it's about the fact that, you know, for
a lot of men who are not very well educated and can't really do service
jobs, um, what is there to do?
So I do think that this, this issue, this socio, you know, biological
issue that we have in our society of men and boys falling behind in 2025
is not just a silly sort of a meme.
It's also underpinning a lot of the, uh, policies that are
being shaped by right of center.
Um.
Parties across the world.
Jacob Shapiro: Yeah, we, we talked about Israel Palestine last time, so now we're
gonna talk about, uh, the, you know, this, uh, we're, we're just flirting with the,
with cancel stuff all over the place.
I, it, it's funny, I think there's a lot of different things you can attribute
this to, and I don't know which one it is.
I'm, I feel like it's a cop out to say, oh, it's all of them,
but maybe it's just all of them.
But like, on my list of things that could be driving this, um.
Uh, there's a couple different ones.
Number one is just like the sort of with the, with the, with the end of the
Cold War and the victory of capitalism.
Like we can go back to, to Lenin and the gin of the masses and just say
like, yeah, like all of this, like Godlessness and just consumer culture
and bye byebye, and do whatever you want.
Like there is like a moral center that seems to have gone away.
And if you look at decades of declining religious rates.
Um, like that's in there.
It could also be driven by the internet.
Like people are not hanging out in person anymore.
They're hanging out and playing video games.
They're, they're not, uh, when George Kennon was writing in the 1950s about how
much better the United States is in the Soviet Union, one of his key indicators
was Americans hang out with each other.
They go to bowling leagues.
They have like natural affiliations and institutions where they do stuff
together and they're not worried about the KGB taking and, you know, arresting
them and putting them in the gulag.
They just want to go bowl and like do whatever they wanna do.
Like that has really gone away, uh, manufacturing and agriculture, like
two of the manliest jobs out there.
Even if you are making bikes like steel and aluminum, really manly,
being in the field doing stuff like really manly doing stuff with
elec, uh, electrician work like.
Yeah.
You know, all that, all those jobs have gone away and they've
been considered bad and they've sort of been considered low end.
And as to your point, the manufacturing jobs are not even really there anymore.
I wonder if the university has something to do with this.
Um, and you can see, I think with the way that MAGA is cool with the, the
Trump administration literally shooting the United States in its own foot,
like I really do think 10 years from now, when we talk about the long-term
impact of the Trump administration, the attack on US universities that is
happening right now is gonna be the.
Biggest thing that negatively impacts the US going forward.
But you can feel in how the MAGA movement treats, um, the academy, that
they think there is something wimpy, whether it's critical race theory
or, you know, all these other things.
Like there's something there.
And I would tie that to the issue of manliness with, you know, it used to
be, um, that only the, not the best and the brightest that the upper
crust of society went to university.
Like university was finishing school for the men of the aristocracy
or for the upper classes.
Like people like Franklin Delano Roosevelt went to university because it was sort
of, oh, you were on the short list of somebody that could run the country.
I think for better mostly, but for better and for worse, like the
university has been democratized.
Not only can anybody go to university, everybody should go to university.
And we'll tip the scale so that no matter where you are, how intelligent
you are, everybody deserves the same chance to go to university and get
a liberal arts degree, even though that's not necessarily what you need.
So I think that's in there.
And then feminism is in there too.
And women saw women wanted to have money of their own.
They wanted to have careers of their own.
Uh, I always crib from um, Christopher Hitchens who said, if you want the,
the most surefire way to cure poverty in the world, empower women, give them
access, like, and give them power of their, their own biological clock.
Every single society that has done that, um, has enriched itself massively, uh,
going forward, which actually cuts against this idea that Russia shared values, the
woman has to go back into the house and breed while the men do manly things and,
and build things and stuff like that.
There's an interesting juxtaposition there too.
And then, I know I'm rambling, but the last thing is just,
it's also not just the, like the Russians and the shared values.
Like this has been an obsession of Elon Musk's and sort of the rights
for some time in the United States.
Like I can go back to three, four years ago where Musk is talking about
population collapse due to low birth rates being a much bigger risk to
civilization than things like global warming or things like geopolitics.
And you've got like this coterie of your Joe Rogans and your Dave Portnoy and your
Chris Williamsons, all of whose podcasts I would happily appear on so that I could
connect with the misguided male youth.
But they're all out there, like in this very, muscular is the wrong word.
It's like a very simplistic, like a very sort of empty bro culture that
a lot of people listen to because they relate to it 'cause they feel
like it's a quote unquote safe space.
So I don't know.
I'm trying, I'm like throwing things out at the wall trying to
figure out what the why is and we probably won't be able to do it.
Marko Papic: But no, I think, I think what's what's fascinating about this
is that this is one of the things that I think is happening in the
world right now on almost every issue.
Um, and what I mean by that is that.
There is a challenge to the conventional wisdom, and it's usually set, uh,
right of center, um, and the liberal left and the progressive mainstream
ignores it and basically says it's a slippery slope towards a racist
eugenics, like Nazi fascist state.
And so it refuses to discuss it, and then it's just remains in the right wing domain
where it leads to a Nazi fascist state.
So what do I mean, what do I mean by this?
Um, like climate change I think is a very similar topic where, um, climate
change obviously is clearly happening.
But is it going to cook us by next Tuesday?
Are we all gonna die by next Tuesday?
Eh, I'm not sure that that's the case.
And no, driving a Tesla doesn't make you better human being.
It actually makes you stupider if you are driving a Tesla in part
of the country where electricity is not derived from alternatives.
So you're just a moron who's driving a piece of technology with 200 kilograms
of metals that somebody had to dug out, dig out of the ground, take to
China, refine it and send it to you.
So that's a good example to me of, of an issue.
Similarly with this, and what I find, uh, fascinating with Richard
Reese's book, which I've read by the way I just checked up.
He worked for Nick Clegg.
I mean, you know, like he was the leader of the liberal Democrats in the
United Kingdom, deputy Prime Minister.
I mean like mm-hmm.
He is not a right wing lunatic.
So for all of you who have not heard of this book of Boys and Men, no, it's
not some right wing appeal to like subjugate women, but what he does is
he presents data and says, Hey look, boys are falling behind in education.
There's nothing like wrong with that.
Like, you know, they just develop a little bit later than women, but we
send them to school at the same time.
And they compete for entry exams at universities, very competitive at
18, and they are not yet ready to compete with 51% of the humans who
are developed earlier than them.
So then they fall behind and then we, they fall through the cracks, and then
they're left to be caught by the YouTubers and podcaster that you were mentioning,
and apparently the Russian Orthodox Church of America, which offers them
a path to Uber, levels of manliness.
But what I find interesting, and where I wanna point a finger to is
to the left, is to the liberals, because they're the ones that are
unwilling to even debate this issue.
In many ways.
And I actually, the way I found out about Reeves is I watched him on,
on a couple of, like comedy talk shows where he was basically being
made fun of by the interviewer.
Like mm-hmm.
All really, like, men are falling behind.
And he's like, no, no, I'm actually serious about this.
You know, like, here's this book, you know, and they're like, ha
ha, ha, uh, and he's like, no, but seriously, we need to talk about this.
And if we don't talk about it, then the men who fall through
the cracks or the boys are going to find ways to be, to fulfill
themselves, to be manly on YouTube.
And I think this is, this is something where Donald Trump and
the MAGA movement are kind of right.
You know, it's, it's this, it's, it's, it's this, um, failure to debate, failure
to recognize something is a problem that then leads to people reaching for the
Russian Orthodox Church as a solution.
To their problems.
And it's, it's, it's the unwillingness often of, um, the establishment
writ large to debate the issues similarly with climate change,
mitigation of climate change.
You know, like, um, as somebody who lives in Los Angeles, who's, uh,
who's, uh, basically, you know, a place where I live almost burned down.
Uh, I can tell you that I don't want the mayor of my city going to cop.
Mm-hmm.
Like she needs to stay in this town and make sure that there's
mitigation to climate change.
'cause it's happening.
You know, like state officials like Governor of California should
not be going to an international conference in climate change.
Sorry, bro.
Sorry.
You know, come on.
My podcast, come at me.
We'll talk about it.
But Governor Newsom should stay here and mitigate for what's gonna happen.
Sitting there and pretending it's not happening, you know, and that
we can still mitigate it through EVs in like Bulgaria is nonsense.
You need to make sure that there's enough water in like fire hydrants
for example, so that mitigation occurs again, a very similar problem that we
have in our society where there's an issue and it just doesn't get handled
because the waste to handle it actually undermines the bigger, bigger story.
Um, so this is one of those things and I find it, you know, fascinating that
we've basically gotten to a point.
You know, some young man, um, has no recourse to anything else other than
to listen to Joe Rogan bench press and join the Russian Orthodox Church.
Jacob Shapiro: Yeah.
Um, yeah, I'm here in New Orleans ground zero for climate change.
And exactly to your point, like, you know, there have been so many plans about how
to deal with living close to water and invariably none of the plans get made.
They just build some more pumps and some construction company gets
a backend deal and, and whatever.
Um.
I, I guess, um, you know, you were talking about the left.
I, I wanna protect some part of the left because I don't know if you saw this.
Did you see that Bernie Sanders went on Andrew Schultz's podcast, um, a
couple weeks ago and was getting major flack on the left for going on there
because like people accused him of being a racist and things like that?
I would, I would encourage people to go watch the episode itself.
It got over a million views.
Um, but he did, I mean, he did what Bernie always does, which is Bernie.
This is the thing I like about Bernie.
Even if I disagree with 60% of what comes out of his mouth, he's always the same.
He's always authentic.
Like he's telling you exactly what he thinks and he basically is
like, don't get me on this hole.
I'm a racist thing.
I think that this is a class issue and I think poor people have been
taken for a ride in this country, and I think we need to deal with
inequality in all these different ways.
Don't distract me with all this bullshit.
I was marching in the sixties and seventies, like,
I'm not, I'm not that guy.
I hate that I'm being pigeonholed like that.
But to your point, like Bernie was like kept on the outside, uh, in that.
And that 2016 election was sort of thrown into the populous bag,
pushed to the side, pushed as, as this person who wasn't relevant.
When there is, there is a voice on the left that is
willing to sort of confront it.
And there it's, it's less about, um, or, or the thing that he's really
focusing on there is the establishment.
And, and this is where the, the sort of Trump thing breaks down because it's, you
know, Trump promised to drain the swamp and to get rid of the establishment,
to challenge conventional views.
And o okay.
Like, with you, with you, with you, except like the level of like, of like
propping up the establishment and the grift that we're seeing out of this White
House is just like absolutely shocking.
And that doesn't seem to matter to people.
But, uh, last point, just, um, you know, it was shocking at the time that
Kamala Harris wouldn't go on Joe Rogan's podcast like she had Trump on and
like, she, well, no, correct me then.
'cause she didn't, my understanding was that she didn't wanna go on,
Marko Papic: she, no, uh, Joe Rogan addressed this, uh, on his
podcast, I think, and it was, uh.
She basically said, look, you have to fly to us and I'll give you an hour.
And he was like, no, no.
The whole point of this is you have to come to my like physical location, be
here for like three hours and it's when this thing gets into that two and a half
hours, that's when you start losing, you know, your, your composure and that's
when you see the real stuff, you know?
And, and I thought that was fair.
Um, on his, you know, this is how he does it and, you know, she
has to do what he wants, but they refuse to accept those conditions.
And then Trump was like,
Jacob Shapiro: already, it's the same thing like Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris.
Like if he hadn't invited her, Kamala Harris should have been
begging to get on that show.
She should have been trying to reach all those people that were listening
and instead by saying, no, they just gave another platform to Trump and gave
all those, anybody who was looking to Rogan like a Oh, okay, like Trump is
brave enough to come on here and talk to this guy, and the other one isn't.
That's like all I really need to know.
And I, I don't want this to be a Joe Rogan love session, but I will say
like, I listen to him every once in a while, honestly, when I have trouble
falling asleep gets me right to sleep.
Um, but, um, I think.
I think he does a really good job of opening space
for interesting conversation.
He's not afraid of looking like an idiot and asking stupid questions sometimes
to smart people, sometimes to people I regard as absolutely batshit insane.
But like, he opens up a space for conversation.
And I think there is like a real desire for like, oh, like you
could say whatever you want.
Like you'll, you'll, like, it doesn't matter how dumb the view
is, like you can learn or that's a gateway drug into actually learning
something rather than being taken by Father Moses to stop jacking off.
And, uh, no, that's,
Marko Papic: so, okay, so here's some homework for our,
uh, for our, for our fans here.
Um, so first of all, go and watch, uh, Richard Reeves' interview, uh,
of Boys and Men and reframing debates about gender on the Daily Show.
Uh, this got, I think, uh, 267,000 views.
It's on YouTube and he's basically interviewed, um.
By Desi Lid, who is one of the anchors of the Daily Show, rotating anchors.
And effectively, like, it's a hilarious interview because this guy who worked
for Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democratic Party of the United Kingdom, probably
the most socially liberal party in the United Kingdom, um, wrote a book that
says that boys have fallen behind and Desi lytic can't stop by making fun of him.
You know, it's like, this is ridiculous, right?
Like, but men are toxic.
Um, and he has a real problem with the, the term toxic masculinity, you know?
Um, and he makes a really good point, which is that we have basically decided
that this is a ridiculous conversation.
Anyone who has a conversation about boys falling behind is clearly a right
wing lunatic, and therefore we're gonna just let them join the Russian
Orthodox Church of America and you know, God, and then, and then learn how to.
Become men from, from much, much worse options.
And that's, I think that's where the establishment really is.
Deaf and, you know, um, how to raise boys, how to, how to integrate men into society
when you know the easy jobs are gone.
That's a really important issue and shouldn't be left to YouTubers
and podcasters and, you know, various like Reddit threads to solve
Jacob Shapiro: so that, well, and I don't know how you've, I don't know how
you feel about this, arguably is going to get much worse if the promise of AI
is everything that people say it is.
Okay.
So first it came for the manufacturing jobs, but how about the lawyers and the
architects and the engineers and the, even some of the doctors and things like that?
Like what happens when,
Marko Papic: well, most doctors and lawyers are now women.
Jacobs so.
Jacob Shapiro: You know?
Well, okay.
Like, it's gonna come for them too.
I'm just saying like, you've already got like this like, like tip, like,
like they're losing like professional avenues for accomplishment.
Like what happens when, well, there is an anecdote, I've said this on my
other podcast where, um, some, some friends that I have in North Dakota,
the, the men in the, like the young boys college age don't want to go to college.
They want to go to electrician school or trade school or whatever
else, and just make a hundred grand or 150 grand, be an electrician and
they're totally happy with that.
Or be a stone mason or something like that.
Marko Papic: Yeah.
Well that's not a bad idea.
I mean, I think that that's where one of the things that President Trump
said was that he wants to redirect this funding from Harvard to trade schools.
So, I mean, there isn't, there is, there is an argument for that.
Um.
Obviously it doesn't have to be redirected from Harvard, but the truth
is that in Germany, for example, not everybody does get to go to university.
Uh, I mean, you, you get a chance, but, uh, if you're not good enough,
um, quite a, quite a lot of people end up going to a two year program.
I don't wanna call it a trade school.
It's not necessarily a trade school.
It can be a two year program for hospitality.
It can be, uh, you know, a two year program for like a, like
an accelerated business degree.
The point is there is other alternatives other than the university.
Um, but, but you know, what's, what's interesting to me about all this is
that, um, it, it requires I think, acceptance of some of the problems.
For example, with climate change, it is very expensive to transition
to an electronic vehicle, electric vehicle, you know, so we need
to take that into account.
Putting taxes and gasoline, uh, may make sense if you are in the city.
Fine.
Like totally got it.
You may not need to go to target with your car, like take public transportation,
but if you live in a rural part of the United States of America, um, you know,
you may believe in climate change, you may wanna mitigate it, but you don't
have public transportation systems.
So that's not the best way to mitigate this issue.
For example, all I'm saying about this is that I do think there's callousness.
That's what I would say.
I think the left.
Mm-hmm.
And the liberal mainstream has been callous when it comes to these
issues, dismisses them as nonsensical and doesn't wanna discuss them.
And I think this 15 minute interview between Richard Reeves
and Desi Lytic is like a perfect example of that callousness.
Now, God bless her, she's a comic.
It's not her job to interview the man properly.
Um, but I thought that that was, that was a very, very good, uh,
way to kind of think about this.
And that's why this BBC article, you know, comics, uh, attention.
That's why we spend 35 minutes.
Basically talking about it because, um, BBC, I mean, on one hand, really good
job on shining a light in this issue.
On the other hand, they are making fun of it themselves.
They're saying like, look at these idiots in central Texas, you know,
finding appeal in Russian orthodoxy.
Like, how, how stupid is that?
But what they're not really, uh, examining, and it's not their job,
they're just journalists, but what they're not examining is why, why do mm-hmm.
You know, young men starting families find a need to, you know, like appeal to
some sort of a higher power in order to feel, uh, comfortable with who they are.
And that's, and that's I think, a deeper social issue that's maybe at the crux of
almost all of our increasing, you know, increasing levels of, of toxic ways to
achieve Uber manliness, which includes, uh, toxic forms of nationalism, jingoism.
You know, trade tensions, a lot of this stuff at its root cause
may be a biological reality.
We have finally broken down discrimination against women, and that's awesome.
Yeah.
And not all of it, again, it's not perfect, but we've
broken down a lot of it.
But that has created this interesting consequence, which is that men and
women don't develop at the same pace.
And so by the time they're 18 years old, men should be behind, given the
biological realities of the two of them.
And I think that's fascinating.
And Dan might be, and, and it really, yeah, sorry.
Uh, permanent gendering almost of politics, you know, which is, uh,
which, which is not a good thing.
That is not, you know, politics should not be gendered.
Jacob Shapiro: Well, and going back to our Russian values visa, like there's a reason
that Vladimir Putin, like made Ukraine, like, you know, he wanted to deify them,
but also that Ukraine was like, you know, this source of like sexual promiscuous.
And there's, you know, gay people running around Kyiv and they've abandoned the
values of Russian Orthodoxy and like, we have to get the back into the Russian fo.
Like this was part of the rhetorical cocktail that justified this, and
as Russian men going to fight.
So that's what you're, you're getting if you get the Russian value piece.
Marko Papic: I love the way you put it.
Put that again, what kind of cocktail?
Jacob Shapiro: What did I I I've, I've already blacked out.
What did I say?
Marko Papic: Well, no, I mean, it's, it's this toxic cocktail.
You're right.
That definitely got, um, used for Russia versus Ukraine.
But, but even the tariffs, even this idea of bringing manufacturing back
to the US it appeals to a sort of a lost individual sitting somewhere in
Oklahoma or Indianapolis or whatever, and saying to themselves like, Hey,
if only we didn't have globalization, I would be in a better spot.
And first of all, that's ridiculous because when we do return manufacturing
to America, you are not gonna be in that factory unless it's to oil
the automated robots, you know?
So like you will still not have a good job.
Whoever you are out there, but I'm pretty sure you're not listening
to Jacob Shapiro and Marco Bob.
Um,
Jacob Shapiro: you know, and, and this, this was actually like on Fox News.
Like, uh, Fox News has Jesse Waters.
He did a whole segment, uh, what was this?
In, in April.
The segment was, could Trump's tariffs be the ultimate testosterone boost?
He's called everything from grocery shopping to eating
soup in public feminine.
I wonder if he's visiting with Father Moses.
Uh, and you know.
Marko Papic: Like you are.
So, I dunno, I
Jacob Shapiro: make a great soup.
I mean, you're outside ridiculous.
Marko Papic: You're working, there's like smoke billowing out of the soup.
Like this is, this is very manly.
Like you try eating a soup made by a Serbian grandmother.
God.
Jacob Shapiro: But listen.
And, and he said when you, he said, when you sit behind a screen
all day, it makes you a woman's.
Studies have shown this.
And then there was another, uh, another person who came on the program that
said that Trump's trade policies, to your point, we'll fix the crisis of
masculinity stemming from the loss of manual labor jobs in America.
So this is not academic.
Like if you're listening to this and being like, uh, Marco and Jacob
retired, they're, they're searching for something to talk about.
No, no, no, no.
This is like actually the top of the fold.
Like in, like, not just in the Joe Rogan universe, in the Fox news universe,
in the mainstream like right wing
Marko Papic: universe.
Well see.
But see, this is what I'm getting at.
Now we can sit here and make fun of it, right?
Or we can say, okay, okay, okay.
But like, but why does it appeal?
First of all, I just gotta be very clear.
There will be no expansion of manufacturing jobs in the
United States of America.
It's not gonna happen.
It is not gonna happen.
Zero chance that that happens.
Zero.
Let's, you know, I'll find anyone about it.
Um, and I ate soup from a Serbian grandmother, so come get me.
You know, like, and so like, so, okay, so five years from now, when we look at
the numbers and we see like there was a little bit of a hiccup in manufacturing
jobs, the point is the policy appeals to this, like bringing testosterone
back to America and then, you know, the liberal left and establishment
will say, well, this is stupid.
There won't be any jobs in America because Mark was right.
It's automation.
But we still haven't solved the fact that a bunch of dudes find this appealing and
they find it appealing because of the kind of things that Richard Reeves talks in
his book, not some right wing, lunatic, centrist, liberal, Democrat from the
United Kingdom with a PhD in geography.
You know what I mean?
Like this guy is.
Just presenting facts.
Yeah.
Um, and we don't want to talk about those facts because it somehow makes you less of
a feminist or less pro women to point out that boys are falling behind in education.
And this, I can't stand this, I can't stand this as an analyst 'cause
this is what I do for a living.
I'm just an analyst.
I analyze problems and I hate it when certain problems are colored
by politics and you're not allowed to even bring those problems up.
Um, because it makes you somehow, you know, not member of the establishment,
which I obviously couldn't care less.
'cause my clients pay me a lot of money to not be part of the establishment.
And
Jacob Shapiro: really what we really, what we need is all these young men
to come listen to the two, the two white cousins talk to each other about
these issues and real, this is where you will learn the art of manliness.
Should we change the tag for the podcast?
Like discovering the Art
Marko Papic: of Man?
Oh yes.
Uber Manliness comes from listening to Jacob Shapiro and Marco Parker.
First of all, ranking a global powers by geopolitics is pretty manly.
I'm gonna say.
Um, of course.
And I mean, and also like, you know, ranking the most geopolitical
like sport movement moments.
Like Yeah.
I, I think, I think we're manly.
Um, and I think it's funny to be manly, by the way, and I
think that's, uh, I think we're
Jacob Smulian: manly.
Marko Papic: I think
Jacob Smulian: we're manly.
Marko Papic: Please, uh, validate my masculinity.
Okay,
Jacob Shapiro: well I'll, I'll, I'll get us outta here on, on one personal
story, or, or you can, you can respond to it, which is, 'cause I, I, I'm gonna go
read this book that you rec recommended with Reeves, and I went through my list
of like, potential reasons for this.
But the, it sounds like from the book that you mentioned that he's really
talking about, it's actually a biological, physical thing, the way that's education
structures are set up The beginning.
The beginning, yeah.
The beginning.
Okay.
And then, then he gets into the other stuff.
Marko Papic: Why do girls crush it?
Like that's the idea.
Like girls are crushing it and it's, you know, because they're biologically more
advanced at the early part of their life.
They just, uh, they mature faster.
Which by the way, if you have children, when I, I have two daughters, well,
and I have two daughters and a son.
And I remember going to my wife when my son was about 18 months old, and I said
like, we should, we should get him tested.
I think, I think, I think, you know, there's something mentally wrong with him.
And she went to me and she's like, no, he's just a boy.
And your first child was a girl and so you're anchoring to her development.
And I was like.
Oh, okay.
So not wrong.
Like I've lived the experience, but I've also lived and before,
uh, sorry to No, no, you're good.
Interject with my personal story to yours.
Um, this is very personal to me because I have witnessed in the educational
system across both Quebec and California, subtle ways in which young boys
are being discriminated sometimes, sometimes for just being like, you know,
neurotic little, you know, shitheads.
They're just being, you know, like in, in the case of my son as, as an
example, I mean, I was in a meeting in his kindergarten, you know, the
poor kids didn't speak any French.
And the kindergarten teacher, the principal and my wife kind of ganged up
on him and, uh, in, in ways that were like projecting societal problems on like, the
principal literally uttered the words.
Does he have problem respecting women?
Now, this is a five-year-old boy.
You know, and everybody in the room.
Every woman in the room was like, kind of nodding knowingly.
And I was like, no, he's a 6-year-old.
He's 5-year-old.
Shithead.
He has trouble respecting anybody, you know?
Um, but anyways, that's, that's, that's, I think, uh, anyone who's actually
raised kids in today's world, I think can, can relate to some of these issues.
And, uh.
And it's, you know, that's why it's a very interesting topic for me.
Jacob Shapiro: Well, and just my personal anecdote on this, um, listeners may
know this, I don't know if you know this, uh, Marco, I was a proud member
of the Cornell University Glee Club.
I was also the Omega for two years in the row in the Glee Club.
So that meant that I had the lowest voice in the entire Cornell
University Glee Club for two years.
We would compete to see who had the lowest voice.
That, by the way, makes me way more manly than Father Moses.
I have sung the Rah Madoff Vespers and I can hit the low be flat.
Father Moses, I bet you can't do that with all of your aversion towards
soup and all of your nonsense.
Anyway, Cornell University Glee Club was an all male group when I was there.
And, um, it was honestly where I learned not to be a shithead.
I was exposed to like all sorts of.
Male diversity and like it was okay to not only was it okay to feel things,
you had to feel things in order to sing well and to be a good musician and like
unpacking all of the baggage of you're not supposed to be feeling, you're supposed
to be masculine, you're not like, like the Glee Club was like where most of
that stuff got rehabilitated for me and I learned that you could be emotional
and masculine at the same time anyway.
Like, not to make this like a, a therapy session.
The reason I'm bringing it up.
It's because in the last couple of years, the Cornell University Glee Club, it's
not all male, and they've stripped all references to things like brotherhood
and fraternity and things like that because they wanted to make it more
inclusive and they wanted anybody who was the right voice part be able to
join the Cornell University Glee Club, even though there was also, there's
an all female group too, the Cornell versus cor, the Cornell University
Chorus and other like, you know, um, um, other choirs that you can join if
you want boys and girls or male and female voice parts and things like that.
And I'm just saying like, um, like, like maybe it's the biological
thing, maybe it's consumerism, maybe it's the loss of manufacturing
jobs, all these other things.
I just like the fact that in my own lifetime I saw the institution that
like helped me work all the shit out.
Really no longer exists because it's not politically correct to have hey, just
dudes here, like just dudes figuring out how to be dudes and like in a
really productive, like really open like way, but like that's not okay.
Yeah.
Everything.
Yeah.
I'm.
Marko Papic: Uh, it, it, it is, it is a great example because I'm, I'm,
I'm positive I would bet anything I own that the Cornell Glee Club is not
a source of toxic masculinity facts
Jacob Shapiro: and, and cured me of some of my own, like,
like boxes in that direction.
Yes.
You know?
Marko Papic: Exactly.
Of course.
Yeah.
No, that's, that's a great example.
But, um, let's go to the Visa for a second.
So, basically there's a clear problem in, in the West that
you and I have identified.
Richard Reeves talks about it too.
Uh, we all understand it, what to do with men and Russia goes
like, he, we've got a solution.
Come to Russia, you know, and you could be a man.
Um, and that got me thinking, first of all, God bless Russia.
All is fair in love and war.
I have no problem with the Visa program.
God bless you.
Yes, yes.
Do it.
In fact.
You know, if you don't feel comfortable being a man in America, go ahead,
pack your bags, go to Russia.
I have no problem.
It's a, it's a free world baby.
And if Vladimir is, is welcoming you to Russia and you wanna take him up, I
have absolutely no problem with this.
I would not impede, I would not punish, I would not, I would not do
anything to people who wanna do this.
But
I think this is brilliant and I don't understand why
the west doesn't do the same.
You see, I think it's high time that, um, we separate immigration into buckets.
You know, you can have immigration plan to bring labor into the country.
Fine.
Like, makes sense.
But why not have offensive immigration policy?
Like if you have a certain level of education and you are from
a country that's an adversary, we want to like a vampire.
Suck your educated, smart people out of the country.
And so, you know, I've jokingly proposed this in the past, like when Russia
invade Ukraine, I would've just said, I would've opened all the consulates, all
the embassies in Russia and said, Hey man, if you have a master's degree and above
like free green cards to America now, of course there's like, no, there's gonna
be a ton of spies that come, like, come across the pond, obviously, obviously.
But eh, so what, you know, what does the FBI do anyways?
Like, there you go.
Jobs program.
Go, go make sure these people are not spies.
The point is, I think that, um, when you, when you think about the West
versus Russia or versus China or versus any other adversary, I think it's a
fair point to say that the quality of life is much better in the West.
I mean, anyone who doesn't say that is like.
Clearly lost their marbles.
And the point is, yeah, I mean, I think that what Russia is doing is a great
example of offensive immigration policy.
And um, God bless them, they're allowed to do that.
It is, like I said, all fair, all is fair in love and war.
I think the US should be adopting the same policy, but here we see the
ideological uniformity of the right wing.
We, we spent the first 45 minutes effectively criticizing the ideological
rigidity and uniformity of the left.
The problem with the right is that it's has its own ideological, sacred cause.
And one of them is immigrants are bad and immigration itself is some
sort of a tool, uh, with which the left is trying to like, um, reduce
the white population of America.
But there is, there are, there are ways in which immigration has in the
past been used, um, quite offensively.
And I think that this would be one of the ways to do that.
So I actually, um.
I support the Russian, uh, what is it?
Value visa.
I think it's a great idea.
It's
Jacob Shapiro: a value visa.
Marko Papic: Yes.
Value visa.
And I think that, um, you know, it, it's, it's not just a way to, um,
anger the American establishment.
I think it's a way for them to like, basically suck some talent into Russia.
But I, I don't think anyone's really gonna apply it to that visa.
I mean, it's gonna be very small.
I think if the reverse happened and if the West started appealing to really
smart, educated Russians, I think that you would see, um, a huge exodus.
Huge.
And in fact, most of the Russians who are educated, who are just trying to
work and raise families, they actually moved to places like Tbilisi in Georgia.
They moved to Belgrade in Serbia.
And, uh, it's, it's shocking that the West is effectively
treating all Russians the same.
I mean, that's on some level.
Like ethicist, it's racist.
Similarly, with all Chinese treating everyone the same, if these are
your adversaries, if these are your geopolitical rivals, then absolutely
it makes sense to drain them of their human capital and their talent by
making an appeal to them, making it easier for them to come as international
students and as professionals.
Jacob Shapiro: Preaching to the choir, but the, the US is doing the exact opposite.
The US is basically making it impossible for, uh, you know, advanced students from
any countries to come to US universities.
So, so
Marko Papic: let's pivot to that because I know that you're, uh, you're
interested in that, in that part.
Uh, you tweeted No, no, I, I,
Jacob Shapiro: I, I, I don't think we have to pivot to that.
I think we've got some other stuff to talk about, but just like, like it's,
it's shocking guys we're talking about this, that like, like actually the
Trump administration is doing the exact opposite of what you're talking about.
Like, like, and maybe they, you know, uh, I saw, I think it was Rubio out there
claiming that they just need to expand social media vetting before they, you
know, restart student visa interviews.
But they've halted student visa interviews for the entire world trying to get to
US universities as they're like trying to get, you know, trying to get funding
sources away from the universities.
And you're taking away that sweet, sweet international student like tuition.
Like it's just gonna, like irrevocably change the face of US
science and it's gonna open up.
They're not gonna go for the Russian values visa, but Japan is trying
to attract more skilled labor.
Japan, like, like they're trying to attract immigrants.
Like that's how, like long in the tooth the situation is.
If China started doing this, like I think it would be really difficult
for people not to think about being at the cutting edge there.
Europe is the odds on favorite, or to your point, Canada, like an odds on favorite
to like really profit from this, but like, no, listen, it's not what US is doing.
Listen,
Marko Papic: just to be clear, just to be clear, there is a lot
of fraud, uh, and there is a lot of like, uh, non-productive ways.
Of attracting international students as well.
So Canada had this problem with language programs.
Um, so basically you can just show up in Canada, get a student visa and like learn
English in Vancouver, but you're just really partying and eventually you stay or
like, you know, you're a quote unquote the drain on like social resources and so on.
I get that, I get that.
But there's ways to eliminate that vacuous, non-productive source and pool
of international students and direct them towards the more productive.
And Canada's done that.
So Canada is actually cutting international student
applications, uh, 10% this year.
Uh, but the effort is to keep the university applications relatively
stable, uh, and eliminate those, you know, semi fraudulent language programs.
Um, I think the US uh, I think maybe we've overreacted.
I. To this, maybe they are just like introducing social media vetting.
I don't think it's sustainable to not attract international students.
Uh, I think we need to separate what's happening to Harvard
from the State Department issue.
And again, we'll, we'll see in 12 months.
Jacob, who's right, who's wrong?
You know, like, so I'm open, I'm open to being obviously wrong
in this being like terrible.
Um, but I'm, I'm going even beyond that.
You know, what I'm saying is that our entire immigration system can
be changed and not just of the United States of America, but also
of Europe and also of, uh, Canada.
And what I mean is that it can start to aggressively recruit educated and
well-trained professionals, you know, and, and not, and I think the, it,
it starts with a very simple point.
You cannot treat anyone, everyone who's Russian, as if they themselves
approved and authorized and planned the invasion of Ukraine.
And effectively that's what we're doing.
And it's benefiting countries like Georgia and Serbia.
You know, whereas it could be benefiting countries like Germany, which do
need IT professionals desperately.
Um, and it's just a silly fact that this is, this is one of those
things where geopolitics has not been able to break through, uh,
very parochial domestic politics.
Jacob Shapiro: Yeah.
Um, you know, I think that maybe, uh, government should take a, they
should take a look at what the NBA does, like aggressively recruiting
talent throughout the entire world.
Get the best players into the National Basketball Association.
And so the NBA becomes the best because you find Giannis and
you find Victor, Victor, Ana.
Like, why shouldn't you just do that with immigration in general, you know?
Um, I feel like, was it not Germany?
There was a, I thought it was the eu.
Yeah, I mean, the EU actually a couple weeks ago, like launched a
new initiative to try and attract scientists and researchers.
To the block and I feel, I can't find it off the tip of, I'll have
to see if I'm just imagining it, but I believe, I thought it was Germany
or some European country was like basically offering Russian, like
academics, like access to the country if they needed it, like after the fact.
There you go.
But I can't, I can't find it.
Um, exactly.
Um, okay, we did an hour on the Art of Manliness.
That's great.
Dealer's choice.
Marco, do you wanna talk about Bitcoin and crypto or do you wanna talk
about the big beautiful Bill first?
Marko Papic: I think big, beautiful Bill, uh, Elon Musk was, uh.
Basically interviewed, um, uh, criticizing it.
He was of course the head of Doge, which was supposed to
improve government efficiency.
And, um, he was surprised that the bill increases the deficit rather than def d
decreases it, which, you know, I don't know what planet he was on, uh, non Mars.
'cause you know, his Starship blew up so we know it wasn't Mars.
Jacob Shapiro: He, he was wearing an Occupy Mars shirt, to which I
say, Elon, what are you waiting for?
Please go.
Sorry,
Marko Papic: you, it was just, uh, it was just such a hilarious, like, oh
my God, this increases the deficit.
Of course it does.
Um, and it always was going to, um, I actually, uh, am gonna take a hot
take here, which is not a popular one.
Uh, whether you're a conservative or a liberal, um, I don't think it really
increases the deficit by that much.
I. You know, uh, this is not to say that the US deficit is not very large.
It's between seven and 8% and it's going to be for the next
10 years, which is insane.
And it's insane, uh, not because having an 8% deficit is a bad thing.
Um, but because there are moments when you need to expand your deficits to offset
the loss of private sector, um, you know, economic activity such as in a recession.
So when a recession happens, you should be in a deficit.
There's nothing bad with that.
You have to go into deficits to offset and get the economy back on track.
And when you are at 8% deficit with no recession, that's
a really bad place to be.
It means that you don't have any room to stimulate if a recession happens.
And I wanna spend a little bit of time, um.
Here.
A a lot of, a lot of my clients, very sophisticated investors, but
also just like regular people, you know, or twitterati if you will.
Uh, a lot of people expect there to be some sort of a calamity.
You know, there's gonna be a giant bond market riot
because the deficits are large.
Um, America is basically gonna default.
Uh, it doesn't have to actually happen.
It can just be a slow burn.
You know, you don't have to have a heart attack.
You can just basically slowly die over a period of 10 years.
Why?
Because interest rates are going to remain very elevated for the private
sector, which includes both corporates.
It also means you trying to buy a home with a mortgage, you're gonna
have to lock in at a much higher rate.
And the reason for this is very simple, when the government has a
lot of debt and it has to constantly refinance that debt in the markets.
Imagine it's like a government having a credit card.
Um, and that credit card is constantly carrying like a $50,000, you know,
bill over and over every month.
The interest rate on that is going to be, uh, very high, and there's
not gonna be a lot of demand in the economy for non-government debt.
So whenever interest rate is applied to government debt, the private sector
always has to pay a higher interest rate.
And the difference between the government and the private sector is
the government can print money and can raise taxes whenever it wants.
Like the government can get revenue whenever it wants by just taxing you more.
So it will always have a lower rate of interest.
It will always cost it less than just private individuals.
And because of this, the government will get refinanced
at 4.5% on its 10 year debt.
But that means that your 30 year mortgage is gonna have to be six or 7%.
It's not gonna come down.
I think that this is something that will over the next 12 months
become the political issue in the United States of America.
People will begin to associate, it, will start to understand the math
because enough people, especially millennials who are not pretty old,
like, you know, I'm a millennial.
I'm 43 years old.
Millennials are going to start being like, wait a minute.
Why don't I own a home at 45, 43, 40, 39?
The interest rates are too high, but I saved all this money and all this
crypto, you know, I made all this money with Bitcoin, like I can afford a down
payment, but I just don't wanna lock myself in with a, uh, interest rate of 7%.
And it's that connection between the rate of interest, the cost of
financing, and the government debt.
So cost of financing for individuals and corporates and government debt.
I think that connection is going to be, start being made.
Um mm-hmm.
And I think that.
What I would say my hot stake here is that yes, this big beautiful
bill does add to the budget deficit.
Although if you actually take tariff revenues, assuming that
the 10% tariff remains, it's actually pretty flat to be honest.
So if any, you know, if I hear a bunch of liberals coming out, like,
you know, a couple of months from now seeing that President Trump's big,
beautiful bill added to the deficit, you know what, like, do some math.
Look at what Joe Biden did.
Look at what Trump and Nancy Pelosi did together as a, as a, as a loving
couple running the country in 2020.
Like this is not this, this bill is the least profligate bill of anything
that was passed by the United States of America over the last like seven years.
So like, relax.
So, no, this is not the issue.
The issue is this.
I'm fine
Jacob Shapiro: with that.
Just, just to be clear, that's not saying that much, that this is the least
profitable of the last seven years.
Marko Papic: I know.
No, no, no, but exactly.
But this is a truly a bipartisan effort to fuck up American finances.
That's the point.
It's been a bipartisan, like, if you wanna find some bipartisanship, there you go.
It's the budget deficit.
It's beautiful.
Like it's, it's a source of love between the two parties.
But what I'm getting at is that my hot take, Jacob?
Is that this is it.
This is the last one because from here on out, the politics are gonna pivot.
Uh, and actually the politics already pivoted in January, which is why this
bill is adding $2 trillion to the deficit and perhaps not even if we
Jacob Shapiro: 2 trillion.
I thought, where, where are you getting 2 trillion?
I've seen 3.8 is the number that I've seen people settle on.
Where's your math?
Marko Papic: Uh, 2.3 trillion from CBO.
From CBO, I thought it was 3.8.
Well between two, 2.5 and 3.5.
That's fine.
The point is, the point is it's over 10 years, just to be clear.
Um, so nowhere close to the kind of spending that we did during COVID.
Uh, and the second issue is that that doesn't count the tariff
revenue, uh, which is somewhere between one and a half in 2 trillion,
uh, assuming eight 10% across the board's tariff, not assuming all the
nonsense that was done on April 2nd.
So this bill is either flat and doesn't add to the deficit, or it adds 1
trillion over 10 years, which is a joke given the current size or the deficit.
The point, the, the whole point of this, the whole point is that that's the
peak and I think that politics is going to start moving the other direction.
Uh, again, it already did.
I think that this bill was supposed to be five to 7 trillion,
but they actually found cuts.
I. To add to it, which was not something that was, uh, expected in 2024.
Uh, in 2024.
One of the reasons that the dollar rallied, and one of the reasons that,
you know, everybody thought that Trump would bring growth was that he would
simply repeat what he did in 2017, but the macro conditions are not there for that.
And so the bond market rioted in November and December of last year and
forced the House of Representatives to basically add cuts to this bill.
And by the way, just to, yeah, there's,
Jacob Shapiro: yeah.
Marko Papic: Just one last point just to show the difference
in the political context.
In 2017, when the Republicans passed the original tax cuts that were now
extending, it was passed without any cuts.
It was completely and utterly just unfunded.
This one, they actually found a lot of cuts, uh, and they actually introduced it.
And so that's why the bill is not five to 7 trillion over the next 10 years.
It's two to 3 trillion.
Jacob Shapiro: Yeah, it's funny, as you were talking, I was trying to find the,
the CBO and I've got two different CBOs.
One estimate is 2.3 trillion, one is 3.8 trillion.
So I guess it's somewhere between 2.3 and 3.8 trillion is the estimate of
what it's gonna add, uh, to the deficit.
And we'll see what happens with the Senate.
I mean, there, there, it's not just like, we can talk about the spending issue too.
I mean, there's some hot button stuff in here, like the changes to Medicaid are
gonna theoretically save $625 billion, but are estimated to push almost 8 million
Americans off of healthcare coverage.
Um, and if you start messing with people's healthcare, I feel like the
politics is gonna change around that.
There's also, like, I had never, maybe I'm just a, a new bio with this.
I had never heard of salt taxes.
And now the idea that there's like this huge increased cap on state and local,
local tax deductions, like funny there and all, all the green energy stuff.
I mean, I don't know that, that again seems just like
shooting ourselves in the foot.
Also, glad I went ahead and put solar on my house last year rather
than waiting, uh, until this year.
Um, but I don't know.
I mean, if I was gonna take the opposite side, um, well, I, I guess I can't take
the opposite side because you're saying that you think this is gonna get passed
and that just makes the problem worse.
You just don't think that there's gonna be any more gravy after this one.
That this is the last one.
Is that the right characterization of what you're saying?
Marko Papic: Yeah.
Uh, basically, uh, this is it, you know, a budget deficit around seven
to 8%, um, over the course of the next, um, you know, 10 years is
unsustainable because we will have a recession at some point, you assume.
Um, and that will require the deficit to go even higher.
Um, and also the bond market is basically saying, look, we're not gonna riot.
There's not going to be some sort of a calamity where, you know, bond
yields go through the roof, but we'll just stay at a very high level.
So you're not gonna have a heart attack, but you're extremely
unfit and can't climb stairs.
Jacob Shapiro: And how do you think that's gonna change us politics?
Like, well, because the, the hard thing for me to imagine is that you're
gonna get a real impetus towards fiscal like conservatism because like,
people are just used to the goodies.
Marko Papic: Well, let's talk about that.
So the, the way it's gonna happen is that, um, we're gonna be in a permanent state
of high interest rates, and eventually people are gonna ask why, why are we
in a permanent state of high interest rates, which constrain economic growth,
consumption of durable goods of homes?
And the answer is going to be, well, because the government is
crowding out private sector spending.
And private sector investing.
And this is, by the way, this is something we all learned at 19 years old, crowded
into an amphitheater at a university when we took macroeconomics 1 0 1.
This is that crowding out effect.
This is why you cannot grow the economy with deficits.
And so the irony, Jacob, is that fiscal conservatism will be stimulative.
This is where the fiscal conservatives and the right wing
policies and economics are correct.
When your deficits are persistently high, reducing them does actually lead to more
growth and even more equitable growth.
Like access, you know, access to credit is very important if you're poor.
Mm-hmm.
You know, uh, you're not using credit to buy jet skis and boats, although,
you know, obviously some people are.
But, um, access to credit is how you get a truck so you can get, have a job.
So you can be a plumber, uh, or access to credit is how you get
a home in a nice neighborhood.
Or it's how you send your kids to college.
So access to credit is very important.
It's not pernicious, it's not bad.
But when the government has basically taken all the supply of, you know,
bond buying, that there is, there is no more supply for the private sector.
And so that's where cutting the deficit will become stimulative.
Uh, and I think that over the next, um, you know, this, this bill
basically was al already surprised.
It, already surprised how conservative it was.
And again, I know the mainstream media is not labeling it as such because liberal
media wants to paint, paint Trump as being profligate and irresponsible.
And I mean, on some level he is.
But I don't think that the media is properly telling investors,
and also just regular listeners, how much lower this deficit is.
Like how much less of a deficit this bill is bringing to the
table than it could have.
If you actually listened to Trump's um, election platform,
it was 10 to $15 trillion.
Extending the 2017 tax cuts alone.
Jacob is 5 trillion.
Just that alone is 5 trillion.
Just keeping our taxes the same.
You and I since we're US citizens and we live in America just keeping
our taxes the same cost 5 trillion.
And yet this bill is somehow between two to 3 trillion
additive to the deficit only.
So I think that the zeitgeist has already changed.
I mean, clearly it has.
Uh, in 2017 the tax cuts were unfunded.
Now they're partially funded.
Uh, going forward, I think this pendulum is gonna swing even
further towards fiscal conservatism.
And the reason for that is not because government spending is bad.
I hate that it's not, government spending is sometimes extremely good,
but in this particular case, we're just running such a high deficit
that it's basically preventing you.
Yes, you listening to this, buying a home with a reasonable mortgage rate, I.
Jacob Shapiro: Yeah, I'm, I'm not a, well, I, I'm, I'm struggling.
I'm struggling.
I, I get the zag that you're trying to make.
Um, and, and yes, like it's, it's the art of the deal.
He started at 10 to 15 trillion and now it's down to two to 3 trillion, but
it's two, it's still two to 3 trillion, um, that, that's being added on.
So it, it's hard for, it's hard, and maybe I'm guilty of anchoring to the
10 to 15, uh, trillion or anchoring to the liberal media, but to me it just
seems like, um, yet another, I mean, and, and I also, I'm so uncomfortable.
I'm like literally squirming in my chair, being in a position
to agree with Elon Musk.
Uh, but here I am like squirming in my chair, being like, okay.
And I felt this way about the first Trump administration too.
Like the one thing I really, really liked from the first Trump administration.
Um, platform was infrastructure spending.
And I feel like we got everything but the infrastructure spending.
And the one thing I actually really liked about the Trump platform was,
oh, maybe like a return to some like, notion of fiscal like responsibility.
And there's not, there's there, to me, there is no fiscal responsibility here.
It's just the gravy train is gonna keep going.
And the idea and like the things were, are gonna have to get really
bad for the normal American, um, citizen in order for the government
to say, okay, we do have to cut back.
And then it's also just, um, it's, it's all of the policies smooshed together.
So if, if you take what you're talking about with the one beautiful bill in a
vacuum, like, okay, I can sort of get all the way there, but then you start,
you know, remembering that, well, part of what they're accounting for is that tariff
revenue is gonna pay for some of this.
And I mean, I think the tariff policy is nonsensical and that
most of these tariffs won't be here probably in six to 12 months.
And if they are, it'll be like negative on the US government.
You, you pair all this stuff with, okay, but you're also
like killing the universities.
You are making it impossible for international students to come here.
Uh, immigration migration is also sort of stalled, so you're not getting that.
So maybe we're gonna get labor shortages and higher labor costs and then
we're gonna get labor cost inflation.
What happens if we actually got.
Something that happened in the Middle East or, um, that caused,
you know, energy prices to go up.
Or like what if energy prices stay low for so long that American shale
producers are out of the game and then you get a sudden spike and what are the
inflation numbers gonna look like there?
Food prices here, they're not nearly where they were like,
you know, three, four years ago, but they're starting to tick up.
They're appreciably above where they were last year and like
trending in the wrong direction.
So you start like putting all of these things together and then you think about
a United States that, to your point, has no fiscal space anymore, has done
the max of what it can possibly do.
And what did it get with that?
It didn't get beautiful infrastructure or manufacturing capacity or innovation.
It got nothing out of it.
Just like,
Marko Papic: yeah.
Yeah.
Like the 2017 tax cuts basically just stay.
Um, so a couple of things that I would say.
First of all, tariffs are like taxes.
They are taxes, they're, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
There's a Laffer curve.
Basically, if I were to tax you at a hundred percent Jacob, you would quit.
Become like a glee, a professional gleesing, you know what I mean?
Like I wish God, that'd be great.
And the reason is that you don't have an incentive to work anymore at 90% taxes.
Similarly, if I were to tax and import at 50%, you would just not import it.
You would just stop consuming or you would buy an American
alternative, uh, at which point you would get no revenue from tariffs.
And that's why there is this like counterintuitive point.
If you wanna raise money from tariffs, you can't manufacture at home.
Lemme say that again.
If you want to raise revenue from tariffs, you have to continue to participate
in globalization and trade because you're raising revenue from imports.
Mm-hmm.
And that's why you are right.
What's going to stay is probably just that 10% across the board tariff.
But the 10% across the board tariff is small enough that it will allow
tariff, like tariff revenue to be collected and imports to continue.
The US is not going to shift that manufacturing domestically, but
it will also be able to raise about one and a half trillion.
Now, some of the estimates are two and a half.
I go with the least, um, least optimistic one from the Peterson Institute.
I think that's the most appropriate.
So one and a half trillion will be raised, and that's what I'm seeing.
I think this bill is actually far more conservative than people understand.
It raises deficit by two to 3 trillion, but I'm comfortable
assigning one and a half trillion dollars worth of revenues from tariffs
because globalization continues.
Americans will continue to buy bicycles from China no matter what
National Security Hawk psychopaths say.
And effectively that 10% will raise one and a half trillion dollars.
So that's the first thing I would say.
That's where I think that maybe we're.
Well, it's funny because Trump himself calls it a big, beautiful bill.
I would say, uh, it is a mod, moderately sized, and yet somehow still functional.
Bill, you know, was that a phallic joke perhaps?
Um, it's not that big, you know, Donald, it's not that
big but me, you know, it works.
So that's the first thing I would say.
The second thing I would say is that the P research actually has a great poll
that looks at the share of respondents who say the deficit reduction should
be a top priority of the US government.
Mm-hmm.
And that p research poll is fascinating because it actually hits some of
the very important macroeconomic moments of US history Exactly.
Correctly.
For example, after 2008, it goes from 50% of Americans think the deficit
reduction is important to 70 by 2012.
And that's the birth of the tea party.
The Tea Party was born out of this concern about the deficits, and the Tea
Party got a lot of flack for a lot of things they did, but the Tea Party in
Barack Obama, both of them together, and I think both of them deserve credit.
The conservatives obviously always give it to the Tea Party.
The liberals give it to Obama, but both of them sat down and actually
reduced the US deficit from 10% to 3%, two and a half, like just under three.
So the US deficit shrunk from 10% in 2000 and uh, 10 to basically, uh, by
2015 it was like, I think under 3%.
That's an extraordinary amount of deficit cutting.
And it happened democratically through a legislative process.
Now it was very painful, and that pain led to voters not
caring about deficit reduction.
And you can actually see on the chart the share of respondents who say the
deficit reduction should be a top priority, declines down to 40% by 2021.
We're now in a post pandemic world.
Everybody wants infrastructure just like Jacob does.
Everyone's cool with it.
And we start spending, and Donald Trump takes advantage of this
decline in political support for, for basically prudence.
He passes the tax cuts in 2017 without any offsets at all.
Just blows the budget deficit for the first time since the sixties in what
economists would call a pro-cyclical way.
First time since the sixties that America expanded its
deficit outside of a recession.
And then of course, during the pandemic.
Both President Trump and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, basically
start out doing one, one another who's gonna, you know, blow through the
deficit more because it's the pandemic.
And then Joe Biden famously, when he became the president in
early 2021, blows out another 2.1 trillion for no really good reason.
Like that one, I think was the most egregious act of fiscal responsibility
that that February, 2021, that early 2021, basically decision to just do
some more helicopter drops to the American public, because why not?
Even though we had a vaccine on the way we knew it was coming, and
it was pretty clear that lockdowns were not gonna last anymore.
The point is that this line bottomed in 2022.
This support for deficit reduction bottomed at 40%.
Only 40% of Americans thought in 21 that this was important.
It's now back up to 60.
It's back up to 60 Jacob from 40 to 60% in four years.
Why?
Because voters are kind of not stupid.
And they understand that inflation was one of the consequences
of all this fiscal orgy.
And the second thing that I think voters understand is this crowding out effect.
They're starting to ask questions like, wait, why?
Why is this auto loan, like I was able to afford a car, buy a car and have an
interest rate on my auto loan at like 3%?
Now it's at like 7%.
Why?
Why is my mortgage not 2%?
Why don't we have 2% mortgages for 30 years?
And the answer to all of this is the deficit.
And so that's why I'm, I think, uh, first of all, I can empirically prove to you
that the directionality of this is moving towards more, uh, fiscal conservatism.
But the other one is that historically I think a lot of people are very reticent.
You know, there's this very callous and glib view.
The democracy always stands towards socialism and towards more spending that
voters will never vote to cut themselves.
Their entitlement benefits that.
Is repeatedly throughout history proven incorrect.
Argentina just elected a dude with a chainsaw and he was carrying a
chainsaw for a very symbolic reason.
IE I'm gonna cut The government people voted for him.
Margaret Cher did not mince words about what she was gonna do.
David Cameron in 2010, same thing.
Um, and similarly again, Obama and the tea Party got together and actually
shrunk the deficit from 10 to 3%.
Not because they were doing something voters didn't want.
No, no, no.
It was the voters that pushed them to that.
Uh, and you can measure where voters are on this kind of like,
um, you know, profligate versus conservative line through just polling.
And I'm telling you, it's moving in the other direction.
Jacob Shapiro: Don't you miss the days of, uh, you know, civil cooperation
between the Obamas and the Tea Party when our, our discourse was so civil and we
were working together, uh, in order to reduce the deficit and things like that.
Yeah.
This has been a trope.
This has been a trope in our podcast.
Uh, you might be right about this, so I feel like I need to think
about a little bit more, but I will disagree with you until the day
that I die that the voters are smart or know anything, they're morons.
The Cornell University Lee Club cured me of my toxic masculinity,
but not of my intellectual elitism.
It's all a bunch of idiots.
Um,
Marko Papic: well, you know what I would say, I would say that, uh,
voters over the long term approximate good judgment, asymptotically.
Jacob Shapiro: I don't know.
I, I don't think so.
And your ar I don't think your Argentina example actually helps you that much
because things had to get, you literally had to get to hyperinflation and people
had to get, so, like, things had to get so bad in Argentina that they were
literally willing to elect any crazy person who was just seen as different, um,
Marko Papic: which, yeah.
You know, and, and there's a lot of examples of that, by the way.
Uh, after the financial crisis in Greece, massive fiscal consolidation.
Greece is now doing really, I mean, relatively well, uh, not
really well, but relatively well.
Uh, we talked about that recently.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, you know, um, so yes, you are right that financial crisis do help.
They help push in this direction.
Um, but again, you know, it doesn't have to be a financial crisis.
It can also just be a, a slow burn.
And that's what I'm telling you.
What I'm basically telling you, Jacob, is that we have a slow burn.
We have a burden on the economy, which is the high interest rates,
and they're not going away.
And it's gonna be very difficult to overcome that.
Unless the government actually.
Releases some of that potential by cutting its own debt burden.
Jacob Shapiro: Um, yeah, and I, and I think that counterfactual,
'cause I we're, we're gonna talk about this I think throughout the
course of the rest of six, 12 months.
'cause I think you are correct that this is gonna be like the Rubicon or
this is gonna be like the thing that is gonna animate politics going forward.
But I, I go back to what I said earlier, which is, I'm with you sort of a ways
there, but I think what's different about this time is that the populace
have captured in large part the state and populace are not going to cut spending.
Populists have to keep on giving the goodies in order to maintain,
uh, their political positions.
And Trump, and we talked about Bernie earlier, also a populist, like a
lot of these folks that are in the house, these are populists, these
are not people that I think are gonna turn their back on on this spending.
They couldn't do it even though like they're, you know, you had
Doge and these other things.
Wandering around trying to do that.
And I think the problem is that even with, even like, let's accept the argument,
like let's say, okay, it's only 2 trillion, it's, it's not as conservative.
Let's, let's, I don't think we're gonna get a trillion and a half
of tariff for revenue, but okay, let's say we get the trillion and
a half of tariff for revenue too.
Like, okay, it's still like we got nothing for all of this.
And we're sitting on a society that is not gonna manufacture things, that is giving
up a lead in innovation that is behind on and is going to be further behind
on all of these other different things.
And so you're gonna get governments that are gonna look at this equation
and be like, well, do I keep giving the goodies or do I make the hard cuts and
take people off social security and take people off Medicare and take people off
Medicaid and cut us military spending and go after the big ticket budget items
in order that things are gonna grow.
But like to do that, like you have to rehabilitate the society
and rehabilitate the economy.
And we're not like, we're not there yet.
Like we're not laying the groundwork for that.
So you'll get into this trap where.
Like, it's not gonna be like it was in previous iterations because like
you would need spending just to get the economy to where it can take
advantage of what you're talking about.
Does that make sense?
Well,
Marko Papic: actually there is another way to do it, and I think that populists can
get us there and it's left-wing populists.
And so for everyone out there who's on the center right, all the way to the
far right, you know, be very careful with this notion that like, oh, Trump is
just gonna be like Nero and burn Rome, because what's waiting in the wings
is an alternative way to cut deficits.
And it's called raising taxes to the nose bleed levels baby.
You know, that's, that's another way you can solve this issue.
So we keep talking about cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts.
Oh, you know, cuts to Medicare, this, that.
But let's be very clear, president Trump is getting none of his
priorities from the election.
Like, you know, taxes and tips are going through a, a couple of other
things, but for the most part.
You know, he talked about expanding the deficit, 10 to 15 trillion.
Not literally, I mean, he didn't say those words, but when you do the
math, you put all of his priorities, he's getting none of those.
Jacob, the vast majority of this bill is going, you know what?
It's going towards keeping the law the same.
And this is what a lot of people don't understand.
It costs a lot of money to keep the 2017 tax cuts.
Why did they expire?
Because they were not funded, as I said earlier.
Jacob Shapiro: Yeah.
Marko Papic: They were not funded and because they were not funded,
the reconciliation procedure, which is used to pass the 60 c pejorative
said the reconciliation procedure basically forces you to, uh, uh,
sunset those, those, uh, that bill.
And so the, the fact of the matter, Jacob, is that there's an easy way, easy
way to significantly reduce the deficit.
I. It would be to just let, uh, the tax cuts of 2017 basically sunset and
I expected the next president of the United States of America, if it's not
a Republican, will effectively take us back to the tax rates, uh, of pre 2017.
Jacob Shapiro: Well, and, and I think you actually, I think you made the
important point here, which is that there's an alternative to what you're
talking about and that it's on the left and that it's higher taxes, of course.
And, and, and this is where like, I, like I do think some of what's happening.
Well, I don't know, like, maybe, maybe Trump is right.
Maybe he really could shoot someone in fifth and fifth Avenue
and nobody's gonna pay attention.
But when you look at things like, oh, charging however much money so you
can get access or not, not charging money, uh, however much Trump meme coin
that you buy, you get personal access to the dinner with President Trump.
Uh, you can buy club memberships for the new club that they're setting up
in Washington dc I think the starting membership is gonna be $500,000.
All the deals that the Trumps are signing, um, in the Emirates and in the Gulf.
And like, I mean, they've, they've made billions of dollars so far on
some of these like crypto initiatives.
And I think we should save like crypto and Bitcoin, like for a
proper conversation down the road.
But which is just to say if the re, if the net result of all of this is that the
rich get richer and that you literally have, um, like the president of the United
States using the office to enrich himself.
Like that is eventually gonna give the other side fodder for Yeah, tax the rich.
How did they get that money?
Like, we want some of that piece of the pie that needs to come back into the
system rather being taken out by these people who are still manufacturing in
China or who are, you know, in their ritzy clubs or in their, you know, gold
plated toilets and things like that.
Like, I think there is a populous move waiting there.
And to your point, if the auto loan rates go up enough and then the mortgage
rates go up enough and you can't blame the Biden crime family, or you
can't blame the woke people anymore for that because it was the Trump
administration that was doing all of it.
Like there is sort of a counter o okay, like let's let's take out the
Franklin Delano Roosevelt playbook.
Let's get taxes up in the 50 to 70% effective range.
Let's do all of this different government spending and hands
outs and things like that.
Like I do think that's a door, um, that is, that is lurking
in the background a door.
I think it is.
What, what beautiful metaphorical language for me,
Marko Papic: I think, I think life is about the delta.
Life is about perceiving.
I mean, markets certainly are, you know, being an investor investment
strategist has taught me that.
Um, it's not about the levels, it's about the delta.
It's about a rate of change.
And what I think is the most profound thing is that President Trump walked
into office expecting to do what he did in 2017, blow the deficit, five, seven,
$10 trillion funding, maybe some of it through some cuts, but not really.
And he's been pushed by the combined efforts of the bond market and members
of the house to get that down to two to three with sum tariff revenue.
And that is actually a shocking rate of change towards a more
conservative approach to deficits.
Now I think that, I think that over the next five years, that's
gonna include some tax increases.
Yes.
It's not just gonna be finding cuts.
You're absolutely right.
There's gonna be a little bit more, but right now we can close on this, but.
Right now, the United States of America spends more on financing
that deficit than on the US military.
So just think, you know, that that's ultimately unsustainable
and we'll have to change.
Jacob Shapiro: That's a good place to leave it.
Any parting thoughts on the NBA finals before we get outta here?
Marko Papic: Uh, I mean, you know, so there's a geopolitical
s to the, uh, to the finals.
I mean, uh, looks like it's gonna be Indianapolis versus Oklahoma City.
That is.
I,
Jacob Shapiro: I wouldn't count out the Knicks yet.
Uh, I guess we should would
Marko Papic: not count out the Knicks yet.
I don't know.
Jacob Shapiro: Hope Springs eternal.
Marko Papic: Um, okay.
Well if it is Indianapolis versus OKC, though, uh, I just thought it's,
it's funny because it's kind of like Trump country, you know, and yet he
hates the NBA, which is interesting.
Um, and, uh, yeah, I mean, like, it's kind of cool.
I think especially for Indianapolis, it's a huge, you know, like basketball city.
I think if they make it to the finals, I think that would be kind of fun.
Um.
I guess the same for OKC.
Uh, I've been, I've been to OKC, I've watched the game there.
It is, it is a great atmosphere.
Um, but as long as the Seattle Supersonics don't exist, I'm
always going to be a little bit miffed about OKC, having a team.
Jacob Shapiro: Yeah.
I wish I could make it interesting, but I I really, I I, it's gonna be
KC that, that seems pretty clear.
It's probably gonna be OKC for the rest of the century, unless the
Spurs have something to say about it.
Marko Papic: I think, I think they're, they're a great team.
I think, um, you know, dot is amazing.
Uh, I think that his defensive prowess is really, really, uh, what sets them apart.
One thing I would say though is that I feel that that team has a very
high variance on how it's refered.
And I don't mean this in a bad way, but like, um, you know, I think that
what they did to Yoic was amazing.
Um, uh, like Caruso was draped all over him, but every single minute, every
single second of that exchange was a foul.
And it just came down to whether you're gonna call it or not.
And so I don't think that OKC has like a recipe for long-term success
because despite the fact that SGA obviously is amazing, I just feel
that at some point over the next 12 months, the referees could stop kind
of treating them like a novelty.
Like, oh my goodness, look at them.
They, they beat the crap out of their opponents.
So the perimeter, you know, like the reason that Caruso can guard Yoki is
'cause you're letting him file him.
Um, the reason that.is able to shut people down on the perimeter is that
quite often he is following the screener.
He is, um, you know.
What's the backup point guard?
Uh, number 22.
My brain just stopped.
But, uh, you know, that guy like is a hundred percent using his hands
on defense Every ABA play now in the NBA, everyone's just like wrestling.
I don't know if you've noticed that.
Yeah, that's a lot.
Um, and so anyways, um, I'm not sure how sustainable that is in the long term.
I think at some point, or, you know, the NBA has these, these waves where they just
kinda let something happen 'cause it's novel and they're like, oh wait, that's,
that's actually really aggressive defense.
No, we're gonna start calling foul.
And then suddenly their defense isn't as good as it was in the past.
Jacob Shapiro: Yeah, that's a fair point.
All right, we'll get you outta here.
Let's go get some coffee.