Transcription
Trump just got an office, launched a meme coin, and it went to like a 70 billion dollar market cap. The downside to blockchain is it's the opposite of Trump; it's the opposite of a mob boss. I think title insurance is a scam. I think overall people are excited. I'm really interested in how this affects the deficit. They just updated the US debt clock to include Doge. I don't think there's a person in the country that is disappointed with that. Jeff Bezos tried it, couldn't do it. Elon Musk tried it and did it right.
Let's talk about tariffs. It won't raise prices by 25%. What tariffs do is they actually increase the value of the dollar compared to that country's currency. It's deflationary. There is a national security concern. China doesn't own TikTok. Tom, welcome back to the show. It's been crazy. Trump just got an office, launched a meme coin. Unbelievable! Then his wife launches a meme coin, and then we got him being a mob boss throwing around tariffs. I want to talk about that, and obviously, from a tax perspective, I want to get your initial thoughts.
He won, and the people spoke. I think overall people are excited, but it is wild times. I think the media just got revived because they had four years of content now. So with that, how's that for an intro? Welcome back to the Better Well Show.
No, I love it, Caleb. Always good to be with you. You know, never a dull moment with our friend Donald Trump. Let's dive in. Big picture-wise, via the zoom, in your perspective, Trump's in office. What are some of your thought processes? Anything changed since we've last chatted? Why don't you start there, and then I want to talk about tariffs because something super fascinating. There are people on both sides of the aisle, and I would just love to get your perspective around that.
Well, I do have thoughts about tariffs. I actually had a long conversation with my wife at breakfast the other day about tariffs. My perspective is a little more balanced than most people's on tariffs. They're effectively attacks, but who are they attacks on is the question. I think overall, you mentioned it; the thing Trump brings is energy, and we haven't had that kind of energy in a very long time.
I actually think his four years away served him. I think he'll be a better president now than he would have been had he been reelected in 2020. I actually think that four years of Biden was a bit of a wake-up call for a lot of people. I know my wife's not happy about how the election turned out, but you know, I mean, 49% of the people are not happy, right? 51% are happy. They say, "Well, you know, it was a landslide." No, it wasn't really. Reagan's second term was a landslide, right? But we haven't had a landslide since then.
I think it's interesting. I'm really interested in how this affects the deficit because Trump increased the deficit substantially during his term. Will the deficit hawks—one of my questions—well, the deficit hawks in Congress, because they've got so much clout, because there's such a small majority of Republicans in Congress, perhaps they will actually do something right, which is kind of my take on it.
From a tax policy standpoint, Trump is 100% right that we need to encourage manufacturing in the US. I mean, I don't know anybody in the tax industry that would disagree with that. So I think right there, probably the most important part of his tax policy is the tax policy surrounding manufacturing in the US.
Did you know that they just updated the US debt clock to include Doge? Have you seen this?
No, here, let me share my screen. Thanks to Twitter, I saw this today. The US debt clock can be super depressing; you have the 36 trillion and counting, but you have this little Doge clock right here on all the money that's being saved. Today they're saying that there's over eight billion dollars so far that they saved through the Department of Government Efficiency.
Like a couple of days ago, this is saying the Department of Government Efficiency Advisory Commission, the real-time saving objective from reducing government waste, fraud, and abuse in federal government agencies. So don't shoot the messenger. I'm just saying this is what's here, and I think what Elon or whoever's idea with this—this is very Elish—is to publicly show the money that we're saving.
My question just to you is, you're right, the first year that Trump or the first four years that Trump was in, it wasn't like they slashed the debt. I feel like it's been more of a conversation, and there are people speaking into his ears, including Elon, that are obsessed with this. But then you also have so much of the media saying, "Elon's days are numbered in DC. Elon and Trump are not going to get along." You almost see from day one like the media is trying to set them up to have a falling out.
Of course they are. They like conflict. Media likes conflict. What are your thoughts on the Department of Government Efficiency? How do you see it playing out? Do you think it's already been sued?
I will tell you that I don't think there's a person in the country that is disappointed with that. I think of all of Trump's proposed policies, that's the most popular of all of his potential policies. Everybody knows that the government's bloated. Everybody knows that there's a ton of waste in government. Everybody knows that we spend money where we shouldn't. I mean, everybody knows that.
And it's not just the government, by the way. I'm not trying to throw government workers under the bus here. A lot of people that work from home are not working full-time. There are people—you know, I mean, there's literally—you can buy a mouse clicker that you can walk away from, and then it's clicking so that it appears like you're at work. You can buy one. Are you kidding me?
Or, you know, you go to the beach. So we are at the beach, and it's 1:00 in the afternoon on a Wednesday, and the beach is crowded with surfers. I turned to my wife and I said, "I think these people are all working from home." She says, "I think so."
You know, working from home is said to be just as efficient as working in the office. I don't believe it for a second. You've got to have the right people; you've got to have the right situation. I think Doge is such a good idea, and who else to be in charge of it than Elon Musk, who slashed costs at Twitter, now X, and came up with the idea that we're going to reuse our rockets?
You know, Jeff Bezos tried it, couldn't do it right. Elon Musk tried it and did it right. Does it every time. I think it's great. I think it's awesome.
Yeah, and I think I saw him speak on a podcast. He just said, "Hey, we're just going to force people to show up, and that by default is going to get people to quit." Of course!
And then there was something that went viral on Twitter a while back where a famous investor would go out and ask people where they worked at when they were sunbathing, and then he would short that company's stock. That was his whole pull. If you keep on finding people that aren't working and suntanning, you're going to short their stock. It's an interesting thought process.
Alright, let's talk about tariffs. How will the 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican imports impact US consumers and businesses?
Well, let's start with what it won't do. It won't raise prices by 25%. Tariffs don't work that way, and here's why. Because a tariff is protectionist, right? Typically what happens—and there's lots of studies that show this; I'm not making this up—what tariffs do is they actually increase the value of the dollar compared to that country's currency.
So remember, we hear a lot about, you know, is the dollar going down or what's going on with the dollar? The value of the dollar is completely relative to the value of other currencies of our trading partners. That's how you really look at the value of the dollar.
So, to give you an example, a year ago, my wife and I went to Europe. We went to the French Open, we went to the beach in Portugal, went to Venice. We love Europe. What was really noticeable is just how cheap everything was. Well, it's not that it was cheap; it's that the dollar was so strong compared to the euro.
If the dollar, you know, historically was only worth 80, it took 120 to buy a euro. Now it's almost parity, right? So a dollar buys a euro. What that means is, as the dollar gets stronger, the goods that we're buying from that foreign country are cheaper because we have more purchasing power.
It's not cheaper to the people in that country; it's cheaper to Americans. So what typically happens with tariffs is they actually make the dollar stronger versus the other currency. So that means that compared to the peso or the Canadian dollar, the US dollar will be stronger. Well, that will reduce prices, not increase prices.
Now, there's going to be some price increase, don't get me wrong. The other side of this is that other studies have shown that the sellers—the people we're exporting to, the people we're importing from—they will try to reduce their prices somewhat because they don't want to lose market share.
So we'll put price pressure on them because they don't want to lose market share. If they're getting a 25% nominal price increase because of a tariff, they don't want us to go somewhere else, right, where it doesn't have that 25% increase.
So there is pressure. Now, I do think, Caleb, it has to be targeted. I think it has to be well thought out. I don't like across-the-board tariffs. Those don't make a lot of sense to me. But targeted tariffs will not produce the price increase that the media says they'll produce.
So you will not get a 25% price increase with a 25% tariff. You'll get something less than that. You will probably get a price increase, but not that much.
Yep, so you're saying that if everyone had the same currency and everything was the same, yeah, obviously creating more friction is going to be passed on. What we're saying is we're looking at different economies, and people want—like, the one thing that Trump ran on is we have a country that just, like, we're getting ripped off from everybody.
He even said, "I'm not even going to tell you the countries that aren't ripping us off because I don't want to give them a competitive advantage." So he's pretty much saying we're just getting crushed, and there's room—implies like there's room for potentially these companies to go lower because they don't want to lose the US.
Well, that's number one. Number two is we have the US dollar, right? We're the strongest economy in the world. We're not as big as China; we're not as big as India, but we're the strongest economy.
If you saw what happened over the last few years, people were going, "Well, geez, the US was struggling." Well, not compared to Europe, not compared to some other countries, right? And China is really struggling right now.
It's not a zero-sum game. We're actually looking at how do we match up against everybody else. If you're the 800-pound gorilla, right, and you're the big economy, why are you just giving that away for free? I mean, that's Trump's point, right?
Why are you just giving that away for free? Why aren't you expecting something back from your trading partners? In his first term, he improved the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, and he wants to do it again. He wants to tighten it even further.
The other thing to remember, Caleb, is that what we buy from Mexico, we also buy from other places. Some of what we produce here, some of it we might buy from South America, some of it we buy from South—because, you know, a lot of it is fruits and vegetables, right?
So we buy a lot of fruits and vegetables from Mexico, like avocados, as an example. Well, could we buy those from Ecuador? Maybe, right? So it's not just like they're not a sole source. If they were a sole source, that would be a problem for us.
Yeah, right. But if they're not a sole source—and you take China, China is not a sole source. Well, there are a few things that are almost a sole source; we got to be careful on that side.
But whether they're not a sole source—like just manufacturing, generic manufacturing. So what I mean—and the other side is, would it be that bad if we increased prices on cheap Chinese goods that end up in the trash? I don't think so.
Now, explain to me in your own words external revenue. What was it? They're launching like an idea, the external revenue service?
Well, here's the thing. If you have enough tariffs and they get complex enough, you've got to have somebody in the US government that is tracking, administering, making sure that people are actually paying the right amount of tariff.
I mean, think about how complex our world is, Caleb. You know, you have things that you go, "Well, this is made in the US." It says it's made in the US, and yet it gets components from Asia, Africa. It's a compliance issue to make sure that people are getting it right.
The idea of an Internal Revenue Service or an external revenue service is just to ensure compliance.
Okay, okay, okay. And so what are your thoughts? I wanted you to play devil's advocate if you can. Is there a downfall of Trump being like a mob boss? Like, he straight up is trolling Trudeau. Maybe it was one of the reasons to get him to step down.
And pretty much being like, "Hey, you're going to do this; we're going to impose tariffs." In a way, it seems like he's gotten his way up to this point. Is that because of that energy that he's bringing?
Because it also—and again, I don't want to make this super political—but he's getting into office, and the hostages get released. We'll see what happens with Russia and Ukraine, but it seems like it's like, what is it? Because he will actually force something.
Is he dealing with terrorists, or is it just like, "See, you think those countries would want Biden in, and they'd be like almost making it more politically weak?"
Leaders are always more dangerous than strong leaders, always. Weak leadership is just weak. You know, if—I mean, you think about—we all remember, and for some of us it was us—we all remember the kid that got picked on all the time, right? They were weak, and the weak get picked on.
We're a very strong, powerful country. We should not be picked on. We should not have our lunch handed to us, basically. You know, I mean, we shouldn't be—we should—I'm not saying we should pick on other people at all.
I'm just saying, and for example, in Trump's first term, he talked about he really got Europe to increase their defense budget because we were paying all of their defense budget. Why are we doing that?
Yes, yeah. I'm a big believer that we need to—you know, I personally like NATO. I think it's good that we have allies. I mean, you don't want to be on your own, right? We have the advantage that we are not really—it's not like we've got invaders on the north or the south of us, right? Or the east or the west.
That said, Russia's proved that they've got weapons that can reach anywhere in the US. So does China. So it's not like it used to be where we can just be—you can't be isolationist anymore. You've got to be involved with the other countries.
But at the same time, do we want to make sure that we are treated fairly? Yeah, I think we do.
Is there any tax benefit of changing the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, or is that straight up like a branding deal?
I think those are more defense questions. I think the Panama Canal is a defense question. I think Greenland is a defense question.
Yeah, I was going to ask you about Greenland. It's all strategic. Those are strategic. What you don't want—the Panama Canal is where all the trade goes through, right? All goes through the Panama Canal. Do you want the US to be held hostage over that?
Do you want—Greenland is very strategic. I actually think Greenland's going to be successful for Trump. I'm not saying he's going to buy it. What I am saying, though, is that Greenland's—which is Greenland, Denmark—because Denmark controls Greenland, right?
They're already talking about, "Hey, come on, let's have discussions." They don't want an invasion; they want to be friendly to the US, and I think that's great. Sometimes it takes a projection of strength to do that.
You know, I think the people that are afraid of Trump are afraid he will be a mob boss. We do have—what makes America unique to the world is our checks and balances. What you don't want is you don't want a president—you know, the founding fathers did not want the president to have too much power.
They actually wanted the president to be of very little power because they had just had a king. They did not want another king, right? They had King George; they didn't want King George back. They were worried that a president would be King George.
You do have to—I'm comfortable that we have checks and balances. A lot of people are less comfortable, which is why people call Trump a fascist or something like that.
We don't actually have a democracy per se. However, we do have more of a republic. What we do want is we want to make sure those three arms of government—the administration, which is the presidency, the judiciary, which is the courts, and Congress—are checks and balances on each other.
I think that as long as they do, and I actually think the narrow margin in the House is going to be a big—has already been a check on Trump because he wanted the debt ceiling raised, and they said no.
I already don't think he's going to—you know, America is not like some other countries. You do—I mean, look at Biden. Biden wanted to forgive all student loan debt, couldn't do it because the court said, "No, you can't do that."
He acted like a mob boss in ways, right? I mean, that was absolutely—he knew it was illegal. He knew what he was doing was illegal and said, "Well, in the meantime, we'll forgive enough debt that it'll be worth it." I'm going, "Are you kidding? You are purposely doing something that's illegal as the President of the United States."
I mean, that was—I thought that was disgusting, frankly. I'm not shy about that one.
So you do want to make sure—you know, I mean, for example, I'll give you—Trump's already done something that I'm going, "Yeah, not going to hold up," which is birthright citizenship, right? He's issued an executive order, "No birthright citizenship." An executive order can't eliminate birthright citizenship in the Constitution. You can't change the Constitution without going through the proper channels, right?
Yeah, so anyway, it'll be interesting to watch. I—you know, he does understand Washington a lot better than he did four years ago. So if I were in Washington, I'd be scared if I were in Washington.
Yeah, especially if you're like an employee for the government and you're not really pulling your weight, you might be.
Well, even if you are pulling your weight, you're going to be scared.
Yeah, I think you could run on a platform to say, "Hey, we're going to abolish the DMV," or "We're going to make this thing way." I think you could probably get all 50 states to get behind that.
That might be like an ace that we have to use. I think you could run on a platform of unwinding the 16th Amendment. I think people would be thrilled—no income tax.
Yeah, let's talk about that. So tariffs—are tariffs going to—like, Trump would go down as one of the greatest presidents of all time if he could eliminate income tax. Is that going to happen?
Do tariffs have the ability to at least sub some of the taxes? You know, even if you did everything you could do in Doge and you imposed tariffs, you'd still probably, just because of our entitlements, you'd still need an income tax.
Now, on the other hand, could you eliminate the 16th Amendment and bring in a value-added tax? Yes, you could.
Okay, let's talk about that. Would a value-added tax not be the same as a consumption tax?
A value-added tax is a type of consumption tax.
Okay, why don't you explain that?
Your consumption tax is a broad term. A sales tax is a consumption tax, as an example, right? A value-added tax is most similar to a sales tax.
One of the reasons that I'm not as opposed to tariffs as a lot of finance professionals is because other countries all have a value-added tax. If you talk to some economists, they'll say, "Well, but it's not the same because a value-added tax applies equally to resident citizens of the country or residents of the country as it does to people in other countries."
Okay, I get that. However, when you're such a big importer as the US, we have a trade deficit, which means that we import more than we export, right?
Yeah, well, okay, so that means that all of those imports are subject to a value-added tax.
I'm sorry, all of those—they are not. So the imports, what we're importing is not subject to a value-added tax, but what we export is.
Okay, yes.
Okay, yes, that's a—I'm sorry, but that probably limits our exports. It's probably one of the reasons for a trade deficit is because they exempt their exports from the value-added tax.
All countries exempt exports from value-added tax, and they put a value-added tax on the imports.
What that means is that if you have—now, if you have a choice, I buy—I'm French. I buy something from a French company versus a US company. I am paying the same value-added tax.
Okay, so yes, in that way, it's different than a tariff because a tariff—if France has a tariff on US goods, then you buy it from the US, you pay a tariff. But if you buy it from a French company, you don't.
Yeah, so that's basically what we're saying. If you buy it from a US company, you don't have a tariff. If you buy it from a French company, you do.
Or a Mexican company, to use the current—you know, where he's going first. He seems to be going to Canada and Mexico first.
A value-added tax, though, I think puts us on more equal footing with other countries from a net export and import perspective. I don't think you would need the tariffs quite as much if you had a value-added tax. I think it would soften that blow, but it is a consumption tax.
Now, one of the questions, of course, is with the sales tax always is how do you make it not regressive? Meaning how do you not make poor people pay a higher percentage of their income?
And you do that with exemptions. I mean, we do it in sales tax already. I don't know why that's even a question. You know, nobody's saying your state sales tax—remind me where you live, Caleb.
Tennessee.
Tennessee. So nobody's saying your state sales tax in Tennessee is a horrible thing for poor people. Well, why? Because you exempt food, you exempt medicine, you exempt those things that are basic necessities.
You do the same thing with a value-added tax. A value-added tax would be higher. Like, how much would a value—what would your suggestion be, or what do other countries?
So I think the thing to do is first, let's get Doge to do its job, and let's get rid of the waste.
Okay, yeah.
Then let's look at what do we actually need to run the country. Now let's look at the numbers and say, "Okay, how much of a value-added tax would we need in order to pay for that?" And let's make it that much. If it's 10%, it's 10%. If it's 15%, it's 15%.
But before you do a value-added tax, you must get rid of the 16th Amendment.
Okay, because can you imagine?
In our lifetime, are we going to see someone run on that? I guarantee you that even if you eliminated the income tax, but the 16th Amendment remained, the next president's going to add a 1% income tax, then a 2%, then a 5%, then a 10%, and pretty soon you're France that has a 35% income tax and a 20% or 22% value-added tax.
I'm going, you know, the reason the French complain and riot over their pensions being lowered is it is almost impossible to save for retirement in France.
Yeah, because you're paying all your money in taxes.
There you go. So you kind of have to choose.
Yeah, I love it. Is there a difference between land value tax?
Oh yeah, property tax is completely different. Now, property taxes are highly regressive. In other words, if you're a—let's say you're fixed income, right? You're a widow or widower; you're living on Social Security.
I mean, you can literally—we have a house. So I bought my house about 10 years ago or so, paid about $750,000. We have a house down the street that is similar size that is on the market now for 4.5 million.
Wow!
Wow! Imagine the difference in property taxes, right? Now what you've done is you've increased property taxes by four times, you know, five times. If you're on a fixed income, you have to sell your property in order because you can't afford the property taxes.
So California did something really smart a number of years ago. They did Prop 13, which means I think that is the best law California's ever enacted was Prop 13 because what it said was, "As long as you stay in your house, we're not going to raise your property taxes."
Okay, yeah, I think that's fair. I like that.
Because you shouldn't—the government should never confiscate somebody's house.
Yeah, period.
Yep, that's a—and really, do you own property if you have to pay taxes to actually stay in it? That's an interesting conversation that you could go down the rabbit hole with.
But then especially if someone can up that, they could really make your life miserable because you could literally get pushed out of your own home if that was possible.
That's—and that happens to people. Currently, that is happening to people as we're seeing this price inflation of real estate. We're seeing people get pushed out of their homes, cannot afford the property taxes, and I think that is criminal, frankly.
If the SALT deduction cap is repealed, how will it impact taxpayers in high-tax states and the federal budgets?
So if the cap is repealed, in other words, it goes back to no cap—first of all, can I go on record as having a SALT deduction is a stupid idea?
Okay, sure, yeah.
There, I mean, seriously, my idea would be why is it 10,000? Make it zero. Get rid of it completely. Here's why.
So we have this large standard deduction, so people who are—most people, they're not getting the SALT deduction for property taxes. If it was just for property taxes, I'd be okay with that.
Okay, you want to limit it? Maybe, I guess you could just because of means testing, right? Whatever, maybe. But I just don't think state income taxes should be deductible. It just makes no sense to me.
You know, it used to be—you're too young to know this—but years ago, federal income taxes were deductible on your state tax return. Yeah, that's gone.
But now states go, "Wait a minute, it's okay for us to get rid of the federal tax deduction, but it's not for the feds to get rid of the—" Then here's the other thing that people forget: very few people actually received the SALT deduction because we had this huge alternative minimum tax.
Yeah, so I'm just saying if you're going to bring back the SALT deduction, you better bring back the alternative minimum tax.
Okay, okay, you went on record. I love hearing that.
Talking back about tariffs, when it comes to tariffs on Canadian oil, is that going to have any effect on prices? What are your thoughts? Do you have a prediction around how tariffs are going to affect our oil in the United States?
Because one of the things that Trump is really clear on is drill, baby, drill.
Yeah, okay, so I'm an oil investor. That's where I invest. I invest in oil. I like having oil prices up around 80 a barrel. If you drill, baby, drill, you get the oil prices down to $40 a barrel, you no longer have any incentive to drill.
So what's right now? I will tell you that oil developers do not want to drill, baby, drill. They do not. We're at a—so $80, 70 to 80 is a really good price point for oil because we have to balance between those producing and those consuming.
There are some people who say, "Well, we're just going to benefit the consumers." Well, that's called the Soviet Union. That's what that's called, okay?
Yeah, but now there's no incentive to produce.
Yeah, so you have to strike a balance, and we're actually in a pretty good equilibrium right now. So I like the idea that Trump's freeing up Alaska for drilling.
But we have something—we have an interesting aspect of the US where private individuals owning private property is actually in our Constitution. The right to own property on our own property is in the Constitution. I don't know of other countries that have that.
So for example, a lot of countries—take Russia, for example. I mean, Russian citizens don't own oil; that's owned by the government, right? In most countries, a lot of countries, the natural resources are owned by the government; they're not owned by the citizens.
In the US, citizens own the oil. So I think let the market determine. I'm a big free market guy. Let the market determine how much oil to produce and how much oil to put out there.
Putting tariffs on Canadian oil, I don't know. Do you really need to do that, or can the market solve that? I'm thinking the market can solve it.
I mean, Trump's the one who wanted the Keystone Pipeline, which was an easy way to ship Canadian oil to the US. So I'm not quite sure that there seems to be a—wait a minute.
I feel like I've got whiplash because I feel like if one person can pull this thing off, it's Trump. That's the thing. But you're right; sometimes you're like, "Hey, I feel like we're contradicting ourselves here."
Which, you know, you go after Biden for killing the Keystone Pipeline, and then you put a tariff on the same thing, right?
Not quite. It's all about packaging. I thought Biden and his administration did a terrible job talking about their wins.
Maybe that's a talking point where, like, what wins they had, but it was just like the energy. And again, maybe I'm a little biased because I voted for Trump, but the energy is so different when you're like, he's signing executive orders, and he's talking, and he's like asking, "What am I signing?"
Okay, and then like, "This is a good one." The energy is different, and I guess if you don't like that, it could turn you off.
But I like—you can't look at him and Biden, and one feels very strong and exuberant, and the other feels like we got to usher him away. I do think that translates, and I do think good energy gets things done.
And we'll see. You know, Trump is a negotiator; we know that.
Yeah, and you know, I hear 200% tariffs on cars from Mexico. That's not going to happen. I mean, come on, come on, let's be realistic.
So are tariffs—here's the thing: tariffs, are they good negotiating tools? Yeah, they are. You have to, though—you can't be bluffing. You've got to be willing to do it.
Now, I find it interesting that Trump's talking about tariffs on Russia because I thought we weren't doing any business with Russia. So I'm not quite sure how we get tariffs on Russian goods when we've said we won't—we boycotted Russian goods.
So I'm confused.
Right, confused here.
I have a question about TikTok and Trump. It's almost like he's saying, "Hey, TikTok's worthless if they don't—if they can't be in the United States," kind of deal.
And so he said something about the United States getting like 50% of their proceeds. Can you help me understand that? Because it feels very like that would be illegal and like TI.
I'm not for the government trying to get involved in companies.
No, look, TikTok's a national defense issue. The legislation, bipartisan, that said TikTok, you have to sell—you have to sell TikTok or you have to shut down. The reason for that is because China's really good at infiltrating us, and they are not our friends.
I mean, trading partners will be friendly with them. You know, Trump wants to meet with Xi, but they're not our friends.
Do you really want their ability to spy and collect data on all of us? Right? Do you really want that?
I loved—there was somebody who proposed, "Well, why don't Elon Musk buy TikTok?" I'd be a huge fan of that. Great! Because I don't think Elon Musk is going to do something contrary to national security concerns, right?
And I feel that about, you know, having US interests own things like that. That's the issue. The issue is not we want to shut down TikTok. Nobody in Congress wants to shut down TikTok.
What they want is they want—they don't want China to own TikTok.
Right, no, I understand that. But is it possible for the government to get 50% of the proceeds? I mean, he wants an American—how does that help anything if the government gets 50% of the proceeds?
Well, no, because what he's saying is if that's the case, then there can be oversight and make sure that they're not stealing.
Like, I don't—I'm just talking about what—and my question to you is, is that even possible for the government to own?
I think the better answer, frankly, is a US owner.
But yeah, okay, that's what maybe that's what he meant the whole time. I just—I know it's either a US owner or, yeah, the US government.
Well, Congress says you have to—it has to be a US owner. That's what Congress said. That's what that law says.
Yeah, is TikTok—you got to divest. The Chinese owners need to divest of TikTok so that China doesn't own TikTok. They're not saying TikTok's bad. Nobody in Congress said that.
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think it's great, but the point is that there is a national security concern.
Oh, I want to ask you about crypto. I mean, crypto is one of these things. I remember when Bitcoin was under 20; that's kind of when I started paying attention to it.
And then it goes up and down, and now, like, it seems like President Trump is a very pro-Bitcoin guy, potentially. I could not believe that this is real, by the way.
Before taking becoming president, he, through TR Social, announces that he has, like, I think he— I don't think it's him, but he licensed his name out to this group, and it went to like a $70 billion market cap.
And I think it now, at the time of this recording, is around 40. And then Melania, I'm not sure where her market cap is. That seems so insane to me. I can't—like, we're living in crazy times.
So that's number one. But then number two is, what is your prediction when it comes to just crypto markets with gold? Like, that's a conversation debate I want to set up on.
Maybe we get Mark Moss to talk about crypto and Bitcoin and maybe someone else on gold, and I want to see. So I'm asking a lot of questions, but I guess the thought process is I would love to hear your thoughts around what just happened, where you perceive crypto going, and like, are you becoming a believer in having some of your assets in crypto?
Well, so first of all, what's one of the biggest businesses in the US right now? Sports betting. People love to speculate; they love to bet. Americans love to bet; they love to gamble.
And that's all, yeah, I mean, you know, the meme coins—that's just gambling. That's just legalized—it's just legal gambling. That's all it is.
There's no there there. It's like when Musk was on Saturday Night Live, and remember this is the Dogecoin, right? So that's where Doge, I think, came from, was the Dogecoin.
And they asked him straight up, "So this is like a scam?" He goes, "Yeah, it is." I'm going, "There's no there there. There's no function for it."
So Bitcoin and Ethereum—there are a couple of others that actually have a purpose. Ethereum, of course, is programming. It's basically programming; it's blockchain programming. That's what Ethereum is.
And there are a couple of others that actually have improved what Ethereum did. Bitcoin, its unique attribute is there's only 24 million. That's it. No more.
That's where it's like gold because gold historically—the amount of gold tracks with the world population. So there's the same amount of gold per capita now as there was a thousand years ago.
Okay, so that's why gold retains its value. But there's no use of gold, right? I mean, gold doesn't have—it's not like silver. Silver has properties that you can use it.
So this is—I think a good comparison is silver is to gold what Ethereum is to Bitcoin. Silver is a gold to—
Okay, that's interesting because Ethereum and silver both have industrial uses. Ethereum's use is this is the programming language for blockchain.
Okay, yeah. It's built on Ethereum or a derivative of Ethereum.
Okay, Bitcoin is more like gold because it's just a token to retain a value.
Yeah, Bitcoin will not—I don't think Bitcoin will truly be successful until its value is stable. If you look at gold, gold does not fluctuate like Bitcoin does.
Okay, yeah. I mean, it's gone up because the point of gold is gold retains your purchasing power. So an ounce of gold buys the same amount of goods as it did 2,000 years ago. That's the idea, right?
It retains—it doesn't increase in value; it just increases in price, and it kind of goes along with offsets the currency in price increases.
So Bitcoin needs some stability, but I'm not sure that Bitcoin will get that stability until it's over a million.
So I honestly—I said this years ago. I'm going, Bitcoin is either going to zero or two million. I'm going to stand by that one.
Well, it's hard for me to imagine it's going to zero with all the institutions anymore.
I would never say it's going to zero. I just—it's got too much.
So then are you saying—are you putting some in Bitcoin?
I have money in Bitcoin. I have money in Ethereum.
Okay. I have money in gold and silver. I also have money in life insurance. You'll be happy to know.
Yeah, there you go.
Okay, so I just wanted to hear, and I think over the next four years from a regulatory standpoint, I mean, you have David Sacks, who's G to potentially be the crypto czar, and I think he's going to be very pro-innovation.
Anything from a tax perspective on crypto that you're keeping?
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that needs to happen. So first of all, you know, crypto—it's called cryptocurrency, but it's not currency.
So a currency means you can actually use it to buy stuff, and it actually is adopted by a country. Bitcoin, I don't think, is ever going to be adopted that way.
It's going to be more like gold, where it's just a—I can convert it to dollars, but I'm still going to spend dollars. It's really cumbersome.
Bitcoin's—I mean, yeah, blockchain—I love blockchain because it's basically triple-entry accounting, and you know I'm an accountant nerd.
But it's very lost—everyone there lost everybody. It's very cumbersome.
Okay, so I'm going to bring everybody back here because this is actually a very important point. This is why Bitcoin is—this is why Bitcoin works. It's actually why blockchain works.
So years and years and years ago, hundreds of years ago, a monk invented double-entry accounting. In other words, you have two sides: you have a debit and a credit.
What that does is it makes it more difficult to lie, basically, when you have to balance, right? This is why, for example, why people who have a Schedule C are five times more likely to get audited than people that use a corporation or a partnership.
Well, why? Because incorporation and partnership, you have to have double-entry accounting. You have to have debits and credits.
But on a Schedule C, you don't. You just have single-entry accounting. So that means the IRS isn't going to trust you as much.
Okay, bring blockchain in, and blockchain is—you have the debits and the credits, and then you have an audit of every single transaction. Every transaction is audited by every other transaction.
So basically, every single transaction gets audited. It's not that I'm going to get an audit at the end of the year or once every 10 years by the IRS. I'm going to get audited on every single transaction, and that's what makes blockchain work.
But also what makes blockchain cumbersome because every transaction has to be audited by everybody else, right?
And so, but what it means is that you have—it's a much safer system. You think about a three-legged stool versus a two-legged stool. Which would you rather sit on?
Yep.
Right? You don't want to sit on a two-legged stool. Blockchain is a three-legged stool.
So it's literally—instead of double-entry accounting, it's triple-entry accounting.
I got it.
Okay, so there you go. And actually, I have actually explained it that way to what I—people that would be considered crypto experts, and they think about it for a second, and they go, "Yeah, that's right."
And I'm going, "That's the simple way to think about it." It is just triple-entry accounting. That's what it is.
You articulated—I've never heard someone articulate it that way, and it makes—you can see the path of where this utility can come in handy in a lot of different ways.
Example?
Okay, so I think the place that blockchain should go first is real estate titles.
Okay.
And the reason is because I think title insurance is a scam.
Alright.
But if you actually were sure—now, the problem with blockchain is you have to make sure that the original transaction is accurate. So you've got to start with, "Yes, Caleb really owns that house in Tennessee."
You really do own that house. Once that's established, then what that means is anytime you go to sell the house, it's really just a matter of using a coin or a smart contract, and you should never have title insurance again.
Okay, it's established. I think that's where it's like, okay, so it means that you should be able to be assured that your financial transactions are all good. There's no scams out there because it's on a blockchain, right?
That's why I think blockchain as a technology is super—it's amazing, but I will also tell you that the downside to blockchain is it's the opposite of Trump; it's the opposite of a mob boss.
Blockchain is all of the people doing it, right? It's not a single person.
Right, yeah.
Which, attractive—City Bank, Visa, all of the rules are created by City Bank, right? Or American Express, they're created by American Express.
Whereas in blockchain, it's all distributed, and it's created by all the people that own it, which is millions and millions of people, right?
So it's a great—it's an amazing technology that we have not—nobody's discovered yet how to make it simple.
Alright, I'm going to land the plane here. I got just recession concerns. Lawrence Summers warned that Trump's policies could push us towards a recession.
Do you see signs of this happening in the next four years?
Oh yeah, Musk said it, what, six, eight months ago? He said if we do what we set out to do, we're going to have financial difficulties in the short run.
Let me paint the scenario for you, Caleb, real quick. First of all, what's the very first thing he's doing? He's deporting millions of people.
Yep.
Okay, so now you have fewer workers in the marketplace and fewer consumers in the marketplace. Okay, so that is a deflationary activity.
Okay, deflation is, by the way, recession. Deflation, same word, right?
Yep.
Okay, so that's deflationary, meaning it's going to take air out of the market. Second of all, the next thing that's happening, you're going to eliminate hundreds of thousands of government workers.
What are they going to do? Where are they going to get the money to spend? So you have all that gone.
If you deport all those people, alright, you no longer have a housing shortage because those people—yes, they were doubling and tripling up in a lot of cases, particularly from Mexico and South America.
But you deport all those people, you know, millions and millions of people, which is what Trump's talking about.
Okay, you know how long? Now you have a housing surplus, not a housing shortage, which means that rents come down.
If rents come down, that means that real estate investors have less money, right? Banks have less money, and it's deflationary.
Tariffs are actually doing the same thing because now it's more expensive to buy those goods, and so I'm going to buy fewer goods.
That's also—that's another reason, by the way, that the tariffs won't necessarily increase inflation because it puts downward pressure on the economy, right?
So there's a lot of downward pressures on the economy as a result of what Trump's trying to do.
But if you recall this, because you weren't born yet, but I was in college when Ronald Reagan took office. Reagan took office, and he ran on the idea that life is going to be hard until it gets easy, and he made hard decisions.
So do I think that we could have a rough time in the economy for the next two years? I do. I do. But then I think it will flip, right? It'll become a hockey stick.
But you've got to do the hard stuff before you get the good stuff.
It is so fun talking to you. The triple accounting, I'm still processing that in my brain. I love that you have a ton of wisdom, and again, like you're always open to having conversations, debates.
A lot of people, by the way, we've reached out to a ton of people around different discussions. A lot of people do not want to be in a dialogue with someone that they disagree with or might have different views.
I have a tremendous respect for people that know their stuff. They don't need to study to come on, memorize a few points. Like, you know when you know, you know.
And so thank you. This was very fun for me, and I know that we're going to do more content here in the future.
Is there any final words that you want to have? Obviously, we'll put all your links, your YouTube channel, your books down below. Anything else you want to say?
Yeah, you know, debate is how we learn. If we're not—you know, Robert Kiyosaki, my good friend, he says, "Look, there are three sides to a coin: there's heads, tails, and the edge."
Wisdom comes from the edge and being able to see both sides. I've never been afraid of a debate because I don't care. I just don't—you know, if somebody has a good point, that means I learn, right?
I don't need to be right; I need to learn is what I need to do. I think that debate is actually a very important part of society, and it's how we learn. It's how we get better; it's how we grow.
I really appreciate these opportunities with you, Caleb, because I don't feel like I have to say things a certain way. I'm going to say, "Look, this is how I see it." You don't have to agree with me.
Yeah, it's still how I see it. Now, if you want to share another viewpoint, I am always open to another viewpoint.
Yeah, which is why I'm happy to do these with you, Caleb, because just because somebody doesn't agree with me doesn't mean they're wrong.
Yeah, well, and for your clients—and you've said this to me as well—it's like, "Hey, if you come across any text thing, shoot it my way because I love to learn."
Even if it's a scam, and so I also appreciate your just openness and willingness to be like, "Wait, if there's nothing new under the sun, but if there is, I'll take a look at it."
Absolutely, 100%.
Thank you.
Thank you.