Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. On the text line, I got a message
from Carol who says, please explain to me how a
man who has never had a job got the mayorship
of New York City. Shouldn't there be some qualification that
you have to have to run a city, especially like
New York City. No, apparently not. There's no qualification. It's
just did you win enough votes? So that's it. So,
but this is gonna this is going to allow me
to segue into this next topic, which is related to
Mam Donnie's victory. If you look at the exit polling,
and I've seen some of the data, went over some
of it last night on a live stream. But the
the the exit polling shows you which groups of voters
broke for which candidates, and the massive ones were young women.
There's a massive gender divide between male and female. Now,
part of that could be attributable to you know, Andrew
Cuomo with his sexual harassment scandal, sure, but that's part
of it. Ben Shapiro was on Fox News and he
was talking about how you know, mom, Donnie just kept
saying affordability, affordability, affordability, affordability, and just kept saying the word,
but offers up no actual real solutions that could work.
It's just you know, socialism. And what he says, like
that is apparently irrelevant. The solutions don't matter. The only
thing that matters is this this hammering of the word affordability.
And when he said that, I started thinking, well, you know,
that does make a bit of sense when you look
at the demographics of the support around Mamdani, which was younger, female,
college educated, affluent. Right, this is an over production of
elite's problem where people go to college. They're told you
go to college, you get to be part of the
quote elite category with this college degree, and you'll be successful.
You'll have all of the American dream at your fingertips
because you went to college. And then these kids come
out of college and they realize and by the way,
this is not just on the left, this is on
the right. This is an entire generation. They've been told this.
I was told this, right. The boomers, the Baby Boom generation,
have been telling us this for fifty years. Go to
college and then you'll have a more successful career. Right,
you'll make more money, you'll be able to afford more
things and go on the trips and better lifestyle and
all of that. Well, that was true, and it's now
not so much. And that's the problem that the younger
generations are running up against, from the millennials to the
Gen zs, they're running into this where they're not making
a lot of money, they're saddled with a ton of
college debt, they can't afford any of the housing, and
they're looking around and saying, if this is the capitalist system,
it has failed me, and so why would I be
a capitalist?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I understand this argument, and it all falls under this
category of affordability. So here comes this you know, photogenic, telligenic, slick,
young guy comes from a life of privilege, but acts
like he's a third worlder, and he promises you that
he'll get somebody else to pay for all your stuff. Now,
keep in mind also that the more affluent female younger
voters that supported Mom Donnie, they are affluent, they come
from money, so they have a personal experience with this
kind of lifestyle which they themselves now cannot afford. And
there are many reasons for that. I've gone over these
reasons over the years. One is that you know, you're
used to living in a five thousand square foot house
because that's what your mom and your dad, you know,
being married and having jobs and working for a couple decades,
that's what now they're able to afford. They've built up
this way health You grew up in that wealth, and
you think that's the norm. And so when you go
looking for your house, you're not looking at a nine
hundred square foot home in a you know, kind of
blighty part of town. You don't want to live there,
as that's what I bought when I bought my first house,
very small, run down, bad neighborhood. But that's what you
do when you start out. You don't but a lot
of people don't want to do that. They don't want
to start out like that. Their expectation is too high
for their skills and abilities, right, so, and that is
part of it as well, But it is also an
affordability issue, to be sure. So Shapiro says, you just
keep saying affordability, affordability, but you don't offer any kind
of real solutions. And I hear that, and I see
the exit polling, and I say, well, that kind of
makes sense. Then why this message just hammering away one word,
one you know, one slogan. Why that might resonate more
so with a young female audience. And this has to
do with the thesis that I've talked about for years
also on the show, which is the men are from
Mars and women are from Venus. Men and women communicate differently,
and anybody in a relationship with a member of the
opposite sex has encountered a discussion of some kind that
turns into an argument for no reason, no discernible reason,
which is the you know, wife comes home from work
wants to talk about, you know, some jerk at work.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: Husband's like, well, you know what, this is what you
do to solve that problem? And the wife keeps talking
about it. Husband says, well, to how you solve the problem?
Wife keeps talking about it. Now they start getting frustrated
because she is in the conversation for support and he
is in the conversation for solutions. Men and women are different.
Not all women in all conversations do this, and not
all men in all conversations do it, but generally speaking
like this tends to be the case. Right, Women want
to talk about the issue, talk about the problem. They
know the solution that they are going to employ, but
they get satisfaction by talking it out. Guys do not.
Guys want Okay, here's the problem, here's the solution. Boom boom,
done so, and then you start talking past each other.
Each one feels like they're not being heard because they're
just having a different conversation. Basically, So that might actually
be something that Republican candidates should start doing. Seriously, Like
if you don't have to offer solutions and you just
get to say stuff, just hammer away at a word,
and people who are complaining about affordability and they hear
you say affordability, like that might actually resonate with half
of the voters, the female voter, or a lot of
the particularly the younger female voters. Right, that might work.
This also gets to a thing that Rob Henderson writes
about Rob Henderson. He is with the I think it's
the Manhattan Institute, I want to say, but he has
a website, Robkhenderson dot com. And this was actually he
made these comments at a speech that he recently delivered,
called luxury beliefs are status symbols. Right, So keep in
mind the demographic that I mentioned that went for Mom Donnie,
because the working class people, they voted for Cuomo, the
people that Mom Donnie like highlights and says, these are
the people that we care about. These are the people
that are going to get all of this help, right,
the taxi drivers and the bicyclists that are delivering food
and stuff. Right though, those folks they did not vote
for him because they usually have a good BS detector.
But these are luxury beliefs, and in particular the defund
the police. This is a sort of classic example of
luxury beliefs. And he says that luxury beliefs have to
a large extent replaced luxury goods. Luxury beliefs are ideas
and opinions that confer status on the upper class while
often inflicting costs on the lower classes. Right, they get
status by saying these things for themselves because they don't
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the WBT text line, Mike says Bernie Sanders first time,
first full time job was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and
look how that turned out. That's that that is actually
my fear is that that this is just the first
of many electoral victories. Mamdannie will secure working his way up.
Now he can't be president, but you know, he can
run for all of these other offices. You know, I
think he'll probably make a run for governor if he
has you know, if he makes it eight years, as mayor,
Dana says in his defense, in his defense, Trump does
the same thing. He has consistently said he has a
plan for health care, but no inclination to the slightest no,
I think he said he had a concept of a plan.
He doesn't even have a plan. But yeah, this is
and this is why Ben Sapiro was talking about the
use of affordability. Affordability but no actual solutions, no plans
that get implement it. And he says, that's why you're
seeing these swings right to left, right to left, because
people come along with populist rhetoric but don't actually have
any way to get the things done. And I think
he's I think he's largely correct on that. And yeah,
Trump is on the right. He harnessed the populism on
the right make America great Again, which is a recognition
that you aren't where you should be, right, that things
are sacked against you, and we can make it better.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So it's an acknowledgment of your pain. So yeah, absolutely,
like this is why, honestly, I think like the next
versions of MAGA, if there are going to be any
if the movement doesn't just completely implode, it's going to
be somebody who can strike a populist chord but also
knows how to get stuff done. This was asked of
us at the News and Bruce event, and I said
it at News and Bruce, which is that's why I
like Ron DeSantis, because the guy I keeps racking up
wins in Florida that are things that conservatives and populists like.
So eight oh three Numbers says, it's not so much
about the college degree that'll give you success, it's about
the kind of degree. During the last forty years I worked,
I saw that these degrees people were getting did not
prepare them for the jobs that they could get that
pay the most money.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yes, obviously, if you are getting a degree in some
of the hard sciences and such, those are more likely
to pay off. I'm talking about the quote unquote elites.
This is this is framed in this way under the
heading of an overproduction of elites. I call them foe elites.
Of course they're not actually elite, right, But they take
these college classes, they get these degrees that are in
you know, political science or something, and they think that
this is going to you know, put them on the
path to get them into the governing class, and then
they'll be in control. They'll be in power. They'll have
a high flying job as a single twenty four year
old in New York City working for a marketing firm
or something, and they've been sold a lie.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 1: It's actually very difficult because there are so many people
getting all of those degrees that that and so the
market will pay you less because there's an overproduction of
the supply. Do do do? That's a very lengthy text.
I will get back to that. So well, yeah, let
me get Ralph on first. Hello, Ralph, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Pete, I think the Republicans candidate can
relate more if they would speak to the ladies and
the ladies telling them what they need in the In
the real world, they can say I feel your pain
and then, like Chuck Schumer, either make a fake constituent
or either a fake situation to help soothe her and
win her vote.
Speaker 1: Like Bill Clinton, did I feel your pain? Yeah, Like
that's why they say those things. That's yeah, I mean,
it's just it's messaging. Ralph, I appreciate the call. It's
finding out what is motivating voters and then saying that thing.
And you don't even need The point of that is
not that men and women are different in the message
has to cater to a woman or a man or whatever.
It's that you don't need a plan. You could just
say the thing and that oh he really connects with me.
Oh he really understands my pain. That's it. So in
eighteen ninety nine, the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen household name,
I'm sure he published a book called The Theory of
the Leisure Class, drawing on observations about social class in
the late nineteenth century. Veblin's key idea is that because
we can't be certain about the financial status of other people,
that a good way to size up their wealth is
to see whether they can afford expensive goods and leisurely activities.
We used to say keeping up with the Joneses, Right,
the neighbor they got a new car. It's an outward
display of wealth. But now like they're like people have
nice cars all over the place, right, Like a new
nice car. Used to be something in like my neighborhood.
If somebody came home with a new car, like all
the neighbors would gather around, like, oh, look at this
new car and all that. But people, I don't think
people do that anymore, unless it's like a like a
hot rod or something. But he says, this is why
status symbols are so difficult to obtain and costly to purchase.
That's the key, right, It's an hour or display that
I have the means and also as important, I have
the leisure time to just fritter away because I just
have nothing to do. I have all this extra time
to do these activities. In Veblen's day, people exhibited their
status with delicate and restrictive clothing like tuxedos, top hats,
and evening gowns, or by partaking in time consuming activities
like beagling. I don't know what that is. I think
it has to do with dogs or activities like golf,
But now anybody can play golf. I mean, look, George,
he just came right off the links over here. Here's
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Regarding luxury beliefs asatus symbols, the idea here is that
economic capital money is converted into cultural capital. Right he
talked about Rob Henderson talked about in this speech about
Thorstein veblin his book The Theory of the Leisure Class
from eighteen ninety nine. His findings were later echoed by
renowned French sociologist Pierre Bardieu in his nineteen seventy nine
book called Distinction. In his work Bordeaux, Bordeaux described how
distance from necessity characterized the affluent classes. Distance from necessity,
in other words, you don't need that. It's just a
display of opulence, and that's what characterizes the affluent class.
In fact, he's the one who coined the term cultural capital.
Animals do it as well. He cites another study about
African gazelles and how the strong, healthy ones jump up
in the air when they see a lion, and they
don't do it to warn the other gazelles. They do
it to show the lion that I'm strong. Go get
somebody else. So humans and animals adopt costly means of
expressing themselves in order to obtain distinction from the masses. Right,
I want to show everybody that I'm not like them.
Affluent humans often do this economically and culturally with their
status symbols. A difference, though, between animals and humans is
that the human signals often trickle out into the rest
of society, which weakens the power of the signal. And
once a signal is adopted by the masses, the affluent
abandon it. They no longer care about this thing. Used
to be they dressed nice, and then when a lot
of people could afford suits and such, then the affluent
do what. Now They're gonna dress like swabs. You notice
nobody wears a tie anymore. There are other historical examples
of this. He talks about spices that they used to
be a sign of wealth and affluents, but then when
Europeans colonized India and the Americas, the cost of spices dropped,
and now the masses were able to get their hands
on some oregano, and they were like the French actually
banned spices. They were like, no more spices. Louis the
fourteenth the court chefs banned sugar and spice from all
their meals except for desserts, because they're not, you know,
monsters dueling. That's another one. They would duel. And then
when the masses got their hands on guns and they
could duel too, then the affluent we're like, well, we're
not doing that anymore. The yearning for distinction is the
key motive, right, and in order to convert economic capital
into cultural capital, it has to be publicly visible. But
distinction encompasses not just clothing or food or rituals. It
also extends to ideas and beliefs and causes. In the past,
people displayed their membership in the upper class with their
material accouterment. But today material goods have become cheaper, right
more accessible. So the affluent have decoupled social status from goods,
and they've reattached it to beliefs. The upper class craves distinction.
High status people desire wealth and status more than anybody else,
according to studies. So what do top hats have in
common with defunding the police? Well, who were the most
ardent supporters of the fashionable at the time defund the police?
Cause of Five years ago, a survey from Yuga found
Americans in the highest income category were by far the
most supportive of defunding the police because they can afford
to hold that position because they already live in safe,
oftentimes gated communities. They can afford to hire private security. Right,
it doesn't affect them now, it's really going to affect
the masses. Expressing a luxury belief is a manifestation of
cultural capital, a signal of one's fortunate economic circumstances. He says.
There are other examples of luxury beliefs as well. Another
one would be the downplaying of individual agency in shaping
life outcomes. In other words, you're being held back. The
affluent will tell people this, this is woke, that there
is a they that's out there. In fact, here this
is James Lindsay talking about it on the Winston Marshall podcast.
Speaker 3: When we understand, well, why isn't that playing that's so odd.
Once again, it's not let's see here, plug that in there.
Let's see maybe this will play.
Speaker 4: Now when we understand woke this way as having woken
up to a structure of the world where they control everything.
There's some they. Who are they? That's abstract at this point.
It doesn't matter who they are. There is a they.
They control everything, and they've controlled everything such that you're
not allowed to say or think certain things, so that
you're kept in a false consciousness about how the world
really is. And this is why Tucker Carlson, in my opinion,
is woke, right.
Speaker 1: And then he goes on to Tucker Carlson stuff. But
the key there is woke. This is a luxury belief
because at the core of it is that you are
repressed by some they that's out there. A twenty nineteen
study led by Joseph Daniels at Marquette University was published
in the Journal of Applied Economics Letters. They found that
individuals with higher income or higher social status were most
likely to say that success results from luck and connections
rather than hard work, while low income individuals were more
likely to say success comes from hard work and individual effort,
believing that you are responsible for your life's direction rather
than external forces appears to be beneficial, right. The studies
show this. If you take responsibility for yourself and you
work hard right, you improve yourself, you will be better
off rather than going down the path of a victimhood mindset.
But what do the affluent actually tell their kids?
Speaker 2: All Right?
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as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right,
so back to this Rob Henderson piece, and again you
can read the entire speech. I'm just giving you the highlights.
It's very lengthy. Robkahenderson dot com is the website, and
he's talking about these luxury beliefs and expressing a luxury
belief like defunding the police. It's a signal that you
are more wealthy than somebody else because it doesn't affect you.
You can say this stuff and it has no impact
on you. These are luxury beliefs. You can you can
deal with their not being cops outside of your nice
neighborhood with you know, with all your security that you're
able to hire yourself. Then there was this idea of
you know, work hard and you know, take control and
responsibility of over your own decisions and your life, and
that's the path to success. But the luxury belief tells
you no, it's actually luck and connections. Right, So again
there's somebody else preventing you from getting ahead. This is
a luxury belief that the affluent tell other people. But
get this, they don't tell their own children that. So
while the surveys show that the more affluent people talk
about luck and connections to other people, that's what they
say is a greater determining factor in success than hard work,
and lower income people say, no, it's hard work. Stanford
psychology professor Albert Bendura his research showed that belief in
personal agency has powerful positive effects on life's outcomes. But
it's he says, you see what affluent people tell their kids,
and what seems to happen is that the affluent people
often broadcast how they owe their success to luck, but
then they tell their own children about the importance of
hard work and individual effort. And then there's the vocabulary.
He says, when I was growing up in foster homes,
or making minimum wage as a dishwasher, or serving in
the military, I never heard words like cultural appropriation or
gendered or heteronormative. Working class people could not tell you
what these terms mean. But if you visit an elite university,
you'll find plenty of affluent people who will eagerly explain
them to you. When people express unusual beliefs that are
at odds with conventional opinion, like defunding the police, downplaying
hard work, or using odd vocabulary, often what they are
really saying they are communicating their signaling. I was educated
at a top university. I have the means and time
to acquire these esoteric ideas. I can explain to you
why a man can give birth. Only the affluent can
learn these things, because ordinary people have real problems to
worry about. The chief purpose, he says, of luxury beliefs,
is to indicate evidence of the believers social class and education.
It's signaling. Members of the luxury belief class promote these
ideas because it advances their social standing, and because they
know that the adoption of these policies or beliefs will
cost them less than others. It doesn't matter to them, right.
This is why what was her name? Robin DiAngelo can
write the book White Fragility and then go out and
post pictures of her fancy mountain estate with her You know,
thirty people in attendance, and every single one of them
are white. She pays no cost. Right, she injects this
stuff into the general public as a signal. Why are
affluent people more susceptible to luxury beliefs? Well, because they
can afford it, and they care the most about status.
They care the most about it. In short, luxury beliefs
are the new status symbols. This is why you see
a lot of a lot of the ranks of the
quote woke. The people that have these luxury beliefs and
are constantly advancing this stuff. They're not usually like the billionaires.
I mean, there are some, to be sure, but it's
usually the people that are just below that economic tier.
You're talking upper middle class, right, they would be considered rich,
I guess yes, But they're not like the uber uber rich.
There's this educated class. They go to the finest schools, right,
they get the credentials, and then they're going to come
up with all these theories because I have taken the time,
I have the ability to take the time to study
all of this stuff and then in jail into the mainstream.
And just as many luxury goods often start with the
rich but eventually become available to everyone, so it is
with luxury beliefs, but Unlike luxury goods, luxury beliefs can
have long term detrimental effects for the poor and working class.
This is the Murphy Brown syndrome. Remember I don't need
a man to have the baby. And Vice President Dan
Quayle called this out like CBS should be ashamed of
putting this show on TV and sending this signal. And
then the signal goes out like you can just be
a single mom and you get a donor and have
a baby and do it all yourself and all that. Yeah,
that's a luxury belief because that's really really hard to
do if you are just a regular person. However costly
these beliefs are for the rich, they often inflict greater
costs on everybody else. All right, that'll do it for
this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could
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