Episode 201 Scott Adams: Healthcare Costs, Weed, Criticizing the Press, More
Date: 2018-08-31 | Duration: 30:26
Topics
Thoughts on Theresa May’s dancing skills and embarrassment Healthcare costs and socialism Is President Trump’s criticism of the press a needed pushback? Is there a need to balance positive weed messages with negative ones? Is Jeff Sessions behind the “need” for weed negativity?
Transcript
Boom! Oh, what a good day it is. It’s always a good day, but today is a little better than usual. Today is a very special Coffee with Scott Adams. Special because the content will be so, so good. And better than that—more than content—we will also be sharing the Simultaneous Sip. Oh yeah, it makes your coffee 75% better; science has proven.
And now, if you will raise your mug, your vessel, your glass, your container with your favorite beverage—coffee preferred—mmm, oh that’s good. Now, we have a theme song for Coffee with Scott Adams. You already know how that goes. Sing it with me, everybody.
Theresa May’s Leadership Skill
Enough of that, but what we also need is a dance to get us going. I know Ellen on The Ellen Show likes to dance with her audience, but I thought I’d like to do some of that too. So I was looking around for what would be a good dance for this audience, and I saw one on a clip. It’s actually Prime Minister Theresa May visiting an African country, and she was doing a dance that I think I’d like to do for you as well. I hope you can see it.
Now you’re probably thinking to yourself that I’m going to make fun of Theresa May for her dancing skills, but you’d be wrong. I’m pretty sure that one of the reasons that Theresa May is Prime Minister and you’re not is because she can do that. And by that, I don’t mean dance poorly. Anybody can dance poorly. But what she can do is she can stand in front of the world and do something that she’s not good at. Think about the power of that.
I’m sure people gave her some hard times about it, but I’m not going to. I give her an A+ for having one of the most essential qualities of success, which she demonstrated right there: a complete lack of embarrassment. That doesn’t mean that in her private life or in her private moments she doesn’t feel embarrassment, but it’s pretty obvious that she’s worked through it. It’s not stopping her. It’s not slowing her down. She might feel embarrassed or awkward at times like everybody else in the world, but it’s not stopping her. So I’m going to give Theresa May an A+ for having an essential leadership skill, which is the ability to just put yourself out there and the ability to take a chance.
Healthcare and Socialism Thought Experiment
I was curious about healthcare, and you may have seen a thought experiment that I put on Twitter. I did a Twitter poll in which I asked the following question. Of course, this question is not a realistic question; it’s a thought experiment to get a little deeper understanding of what people feel about healthcare.
I asked this: If the government of the United States… it is plugged in, my mic is plugged in. I’m not going to answer any more questions about the sandwich. Seriously, if you ask about the sound again, I’m going to stop the broadcast.
Anyway, I asked this question: If the government of the United States could pay only five dollars per year total—not per person, not per day, but just five dollars total—and give healthcare to everybody? Excellent, high-quality healthcare.
The Cost of Universal Healthcare
Let’s say the cost would never go up and there would be no problems. How many people would be okay with that, or would they say “No, that’s socialism”? Surprisingly, a huge number of people said that they would not allow people in their country to have healthcare if it personally cost them one-millionth of a penny because they don’t agree with socialism.
Amazingly, people are so committed to their anti-socialist philosophy that even in a thought experiment in which I said you seriously wouldn’t pay personally one-millionth of a penny to provide universal healthcare that’s excellent, a lot of people said, “No, it’s a hard line. No socialism.”
What I was trying to get at—remember the old joke? I’m just going to start blocking all the people who say the microphone’s not working. I was getting at the joke. I think it was W.C. Fields talking to Mae West. He said, “Hey, would you sleep with me for a million dollars?” And she reportedly said, “A million dollars? Well, gosh, maybe I would.” And then he says, “Would you sleep with me for twenty dollars?” And she says, “What kind of woman do you think I am?” And he says, “We’ve already established what kind of woman you are. Now we’re just talking price.”
I was wondering if there’s a similar thing going on with socialism and healthcare. Is it really the socialism we care about, or is it the cost? Because you might act differently if it’s a philosophical hardline versus thinking, “It’s not the socialism that’s the problem; it’s the problem that it doesn’t work, or that the government never does anything right, or that the price will go up, or that we don’t trust it.” I was trying to figure out if it is the fear of the government ruining everything, or that you don’t like the idea of any of your money going to help somebody else. Where is the dividing line?
It was interesting. A number of people said anything the government does is going to be bad news. But the government does lots of stuff for us, like collective defense and building roads. Sometimes you just have to get the government involved.
Then I said to myself: What would it really cost? We’re hearing a lot of folks who are being labeled as Democratic Socialists—Bernie Sanders being the primary person here—talking about universal healthcare or so-called single-payer. They’re saying, “If other countries could work it out, why can’t we work it out?” Which is actually a pretty persuasive argument.
I started asking a few questions. What would it cost for universal healthcare, and what’s our total tax intake? PolitiFact looked into it, and on the high end—and I think you have to assume it would be on the high end—it would cost 3.3 trillion. How much would everyone’s federal taxes have to go up in order to absorb the extra $2.5 trillion? I think it’s something like 75%.
Now, I probably have my numbers wrong, and somebody will embarrassingly correct me, but remember I’ve got the Theresa May thing working for me. I don’t get that embarrassed just because I’m doing math wrong in public. But the general idea here is: Why don’t we know how much everybody’s taxes would go up? Imagine if you were to just raise everyone’s taxes by the same percentage. What is that number that would get you to universal healthcare? The number I came up with is a 75% tax increase.
If it’s somewhere in that 50% to 75% range, that’s the number that the Republicans or the people who are not in favor of this should be focusing on. Instead of just saying they want universal healthcare, why don’t they say they’d like to raise your taxes 75% to give you universal healthcare? Then you’ve got both the costs and the benefits.
I don’t see any mathematical, practical, or economic way that any of this is possible. Not even close. So under those conditions, what do you do? It seems to me that we’re being lied to. Doesn’t it feel like we’re being lied to on this topic of healthcare? Because I don’t understand how other countries could be doing this while the only way we could do it is by raising our taxes by 75% across the board.
Since you wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class by 75%, you’d kind of have to raise taxes on the rich by 90%. It would be a waste of time to raise taxes on the lower class because they don’t have any money; they’re not paying federal taxes in the first place. All you have left is the rich. Unless I’ve done my math wrong, something like a 90% tax increase would destroy the fabric of society because rich people would just leave. If the US tax code raised my taxes by 75%, I would leave the country in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t you?
Criticizing the Press and Safety
Next topic. I’m hearing some pushback from the press saying it’s dangerous for the President to criticize the press as being “the enemy of the people” because it’s causing some risk of physical danger. The risk is that some nut is going to say, “Enemy of the people? I’d better go take a weapon and do something about this.” We hope nothing like that happens.
But let’s look at the full picture. He’s not doing that just for fun. He’s doing it because the press has characterized Trump supporters as literal racists and Nazis. Literal racists and Nazis. In other words, people who are worthy of being punched by Antifa or anybody else. Now, that’s a very dangerous situation. We’ve seen plenty of reports of Trump supporters being harassed and physically accosted.
In such a world, is it dangerous for the President to put pressure on the media who are creating this unsafe situation? Or does it make it less dangerous because it’s a needed pushback in terms of freedom of speech? Is the President’s freedom of speech, which does create some danger for the press—I’m not going to deny it—a pushback for the press creating real physical danger for people like me?
CNN’s coverage makes me personally 30% less wealthy because of the pushback, and I am in physical danger to the point where I don’t do public events anymore because I wouldn’t consider it safe. Why is that? It’s not because the public came up with these opinions on their own. The public gets their opinion from the fake news. They get their opinions from the press.
I know some of you might be thinking, “It’s not just one side that has fake news. What about Fox News?” All sides are guilty of some spin, some bias, some fake news. But I don’t see the Fox News version making it dangerous for anybody. I don’t see Fox News calling people snowflakes and putting them in physical danger. But I do see CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times and Washington Post calling a third of the country actual white supremacists and racists. That very much puts them in physical danger.
If the President calling these groups the “enemies of the people” creates some physical risk—and I don’t want anybody to get hurt—it is a reasonable response to having his supporters put in physical risk by fake news. If the President pushes some risk back in that way, I’d say that’s probably a healthy situation. What would be less healthy is letting the press create a dangerous situation for a third of the country where it would be just okay to attack them. You need a little pushback from that. I think it’s appropriate that the risk is part of the pushback, but I don’t want anybody to get hurt. Don’t do anything physical or even intimidating regarding the press.
Weed, Jeff Sessions, and Political Strategy
Let’s talk about my favorite topic. I heard a report yesterday—I’m waiting for some confirmations—that there are 14 organizations within the Trump administration that are organizing to put out a negative message about weed/marijuana. Apparently, the thinking is that there are too many positive things out there about marijuana and they need to balance it with some negative things. To which I say: What?
This is just speculation, but I’m trying to imagine how the conversation went. I’m hearing some pundits say they think Jeff Sessions is behind this, not President Trump. That sounds like it might be right because Sessions doesn’t like weed and the President reportedly doesn’t have a strong anti-weed opinion.
Imagine someone went to the President and said, “Mr. President, Jeff Sessions has asked us to pull together as much information as we can on the negative effects of weed as part of our push to keep it illegal. Do we have your blessing?” And I can imagine President Trump hearing that and saying, “Sure, why don’t you go ahead and do that? Fine.”
Have you connected the dots yet? The other story in the news is that the President would like to fire Jeff Sessions. If the President fired Jeff Sessions today, the only story would be: “My God, he fired Jeff Sessions because of Mueller! He must be guilty! The government is falling apart!”
But suppose Jeff Sessions took a hard stand against marijuana and wanted to keep it illegal. Let’s say the President said, “I don’t like that idea. 10% of the people in prison are there for marijuana stuff. I don’t like what it does to the minority population. I’m going to fire Jeff Sessions and make sure that weed does not become a problem.” Suddenly, he can fire Jeff Sessions, and who on the left is going to complain about President Trump favoring that outcome?
I’m blocking everybody who complains about the audio because it ruins the Periscope when everyone interrupts me with problems about the audio when I already know the rest of you can hear. I think it would be a genius thing.
Systems vs. Goals in Politics
For those of you who read my book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Bigly, you probably know my thinking about systems versus goals. A system is something you’re doing every day that moves you closer to your outcome. A goal is just saying, “I want X.”
Does it seem to you that Democrats are goal thinkers and Republicans are systems thinkers? When Democrats talk about healthcare, they say, “I want healthcare for everybody.” That’s a goal. I would like that too, except I don’t know any system that would get you there. I’ll be talking to Dr. Shiva next week about some systems that might get us there.
Think about the topic of danger to the media. The left says, “Stop putting the press in danger by saying they’re the enemy of the people.” That is a goal. A system would be: “Let’s use free speech to balance out any of these problems.” The Republican says, “The President has freedom of speech, and the press has freedom of speech. If they make it dangerous for Trump supporters, Trump supporters might make it dangerous for them because that’s how things balance out.” That’s a system.
Look at gun rights. The left says, “My goal is to have no gun deaths.” Well, how do you get there? What’s the system? Because the systems we know of wouldn’t really work in this country. The right says, “We’ve got a system. It’s called the Constitution. Everybody just follows it.”
Even with the economy, you see the President lowering taxes to improve the system. The Democrats say, “Hey, you’re giving money to the rich,” which works against their goal of income equality. Look for how often you see that people on the left don’t think in terms of entire systems; they think in terms of a goal. And the goal is usually one you don’t even disagree with if you’re on the right. There’s nobody on the right who wants more gun deaths. There’s nobody on the right who doesn’t want you to have healthcare. There’s nobody on the right who wants children to be separated from their parents at the border. When the left talks about these things, they’re talking about goals, but they are often free-floating ideas.
I’m going to get off of this now—too many complaints about the sound. But in a little bit, I’m going to do a special Periscope about my startup, Wenup. We have some really big announcements. It’s going to be good and fun. I will talk to you later.