In this fast-paced episode of Rush to Reason, host John Rush dives into the complexities of navigating life during the holiday season. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, John discusses the unusual calendar setup for this year and offers practical advice for managing both personal and business-related schedules. Transitioning from personal planning to larger societal issues, John unpacks the influence of government spending, education reform, and timely political topics including alien conspiracies and more at the federal level. Join John and listeners as they explore how these issues impact daily life and what can be done moving forward.
SPEAKER 08 :
This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 05 :
You are going to shut your damn yapper and listen for a change because I got you pegged, sweetheart. You want to take the easy way out because you’re scared. And you’re scared because if you try and fail, there’s only you to blame. Let me break this down for you. Life is scary. Get used to it. There are no magical fixes.
SPEAKER 08 :
With your host, John Rush.
SPEAKER 05 :
My advice to you is to do what your parents did! Get a job, sir! You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same, and there’s a big difference.
SPEAKER 11 :
Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
SPEAKER 14 :
Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind? It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush. Presented by High Five Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling, where every call ends with a high five.
SPEAKER 15 :
All right, welcome Monday. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Hopefully you had a great weekend as we head down this final full week before we get into the week of Thanksgiving. And this particular year, it’s a strange year. So most, I don’t think, really… I’ve probably looked yet. There’s about three and a half weeks. There’s only three weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yes, three weekends. Because of the way Thanksgiving falls this year being at the very, very, very end of the month. Yes, the day after Thanksgiving is the first weekend of December. So that’s really Thanksgiving weekend. And then there’s three other weekends and you’re into Christmas week. So it will be a very fast-paced Thanksgiving. Time for most people between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so just an FYI. Whether you’re in the business end of things, planning, or you’re just trying to figure out things family-wise or whatever, just a little reminder. If you haven’t looked down the calendar, just something to think about. There’s three weekends outside of Thanksgiving weekend. There’s three weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Normally, you have a full four weekends. And sometimes five, but this time around it’s three is all just the way things are falling. Part of that’s also because Christmas comes on, sorry Jesus, but it like comes on the worst day ever, Wednesday. You couldn’t pick a worst day for Christmas to land on, in my opinion, as a business owner, than a Wednesday. So I know a lot of folks out there probably would disagree with me on that, but you can’t pick a worst day of the year to have a holiday, and that is a Wednesday holiday of any kind. So, all right. Question of the day from Friday. If there was a future alien invasion, which state polled as America’s best hope for survival? That would be Virginia. It gets an impressive 8.03 out of 10 on the Alien Survival Index. So probably a good thing Lauren Boebert is close to Virginia. If you’ve been watching anything about her, you’ll understand why I just made that statement. I’m not picking on Lauren, but, you know… And maybe I’ll throw this into the podcast this week, Charlie, for something to talk about outside of politics. I mean, I know it kind of involves politics, but that’s this whole Capitol Hill investigation of underwater aliens. And I’m sorry, folks. Do we not have anything better to do with our time? I get it. We’re waiting for a new president to come in and, you know, they got to do something. But isn’t there anything else we can work on? I mean, the alien invasion we have right now is coming from the southern border. That’s the alien invasion, not some underwater invasion with just a bunch of nonsense. I’m sorry. I’m just going to say what I think. It’s nonsense. Is there underwater cities? No. No, there’s not. Is there aliens living in the ocean? No, there is not. You know, what are these objects? I don’t know. Frankly, don’t care. As you guys can all tell, I don’t believe in the boogeyman or aliens. Neither one. So I might throw that out to Bob on Wednesday, Charlie, just because Bob’s a little more intrigued by the whole alien thing than I am. That might actually make for a good conversation. So I may add that to my notes. So today’s a possible question. Before she was Queen of England, I actually knew this answer, by the way. I don’t know why. I think, hint, because of the background I’ve had. And that’s all I’ll say. But before she was Queen of England at age 18, what did Princess Elizabeth take training in? Any ideas, Charlie? Close. Close. Yes, Charlie just said in my ear, he’s very, very close. So anyways, answer that on the Facebook page, on the Rush Region Facebook page. Before she was Queen of England at age 18, what did Princess Elizabeth take training in? It’s a two-part. There’s two answers, by the way, and Charlie got one part of it correct, so you couldn’t hear what he said, but there’s a two-part answer there. So answer that again on our social media page. Okay. I’ll get into something I want to play in a moment that goes along with this particular topic. And there’s a lot of, of course, folks on the left. And I’ve read so much hysterical things coming from the left. For example… This is the New York Post, so it’s not the left, but it’s talking about the left. And what can Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy actually cut in federal spending? This is an article talking about the first place they should start is transgender monkeys and DEI and checks of dead people. There’s a complete article on that in New York Post. But I’ve read all sorts of things where there are just so many naysayers on the left, mainly because they don’t want to lose their jobs. talking about things that they won’t be able to touch. They can’t do this. They can’t do that. There’s an article out in the Colorado Sun over the weekend about the education, Department of Education. If you shut that down, what would that look like for different states? This one happened to be, what would education look like in Colorado? My answer back would be better than it does now. So if any of you from the Colorado Sun are listening, which you may be, my answer to you is despite everything you wrote in that article, here’s the real answer, better than it is now. Get federal government out of the way. Let the states, local school boards, and so on control the education of the kids, and it will get better. Now, will it be perfect? Well, you guys already know my thoughts on the public indoctrination system. But by localizing it more than it already is, because it’s not very local if you really want to get down to it, because the teachers’ unions have huge, huge input as to what happens inside the classroom. And, again, that’s coming on a national level. So get rid of the feds. Save, I think it’s $328 billion, or maybe it’s $238. I might have those numbers. I think it’s $238, sorry. $238 billion a year is what we’ve budgeted for the Department of Education. So get rid of the Department of Education, and actually education across the country will improve. And I challenge anybody to prove otherwise. And the reason why you can’t prove otherwise is if you look at where we’ve gone in public education since it started officially, yes, there were individuals that wanted to get it going clear back 40, 50 years prior to it actually happening in the late 70s. But since we’ve actually enacted it and have been spending billions of dollars, yes, that’s with a B, billions of dollars a year per year, our test scores have gone down, not up. But there’s other things that you’ll start reading along the lines of what Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy can actually do in both of these individuals. have a goal, as I said last week, to be done by June of 2026. June of 2026. 18 months. Essentially, they feel like they can get enough done to curb a ton of government spending, and then things after that could just go on, you know, quote-unquote autopilot if they get things done correctly. All right. Up next, we’ve got Golden Eagle Financial. Speaking of money, saving money, planning for the future, make sure you talk to Al Smith today. Find him at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 15 :
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SPEAKER 15 :
All right, we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. John and Cheyenne, what’s going on, sir?
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, John.
SPEAKER 15 :
How are you, sir?
SPEAKER 07 :
I’m well. How are you today?
SPEAKER 15 :
Good, good, good.
SPEAKER 07 :
Good. Did you see the clip yesterday of Vivek Ramaswamy on Maria’s Bartiromo Sunday show?
SPEAKER 15 :
I did not, no.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay. He was saying that they’ve already looked at it, and there’s a ton of money they could save out of the executive branch.
SPEAKER 15 :
Really?
SPEAKER 07 :
Just by programs that have been installed by executive order. that Trump could just go away with the stroke of a pen.
SPEAKER 15 :
Oh, that’s easy then.
SPEAKER 07 :
The other thing he was saying is there’s hundreds of programs that were authorized by Congress, but they’re still being funded.
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, you know, John, as I’ve always said, and I mean this sincerely, government is like church. Once something gets established, it can’t ever be backtracked.
SPEAKER 07 :
Unless you get somebody like we’re going to get now.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yep, absolutely. And by the way, John, in either case, it ruffles feathers. Yeah, exactly. It just does. Because people get used to doing what they do, and they’re used to having that whatever it is, whether it’s church and a committee or whether it’s government and a particular department and or paycheck, they get used to that. And even if it’s studying how ants make a hill in the middle of Africa, which, by the way, we study things like that and send money to places like that. It’s the dumbest thing ever, John. But they get used to that stuff.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, yeah, that’s pork. Every congressman has at least one or two of those little pet projects that somebody at the University of Wyoming will go with them is researching and needs $10 million to fund it. for, you know, the transsexuality of chimpanzees in China or some crazy, you know.
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, I have a full, I’ve got a full, I won’t be able to play it because it’s 11 minutes long, but I’m going to play four or five minutes of somebody going through the top 40 of these. I won’t get to all 40, John, but I’ll go through a few of these that this guy lays out to give you all an idea of some of the stupid, idiotic things we spend money on.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I read, and I think I’ve I read the numbers right, but don’t quote me on this. If they shut down the Department of Education, and out of the $238 billion, they would cut $38 billion in just overhead. And they could send the other $200 billion to the states.
SPEAKER 15 :
And really, my thought on that is, don’t. We’re all paying property taxes already. I mean, I guess if they wanted to send it and reduce property taxes, I’d be okay with that. But I’m not okay with spending $200 billion on the state’s budget that they already have. That’s ridiculous.
SPEAKER 07 :
I kind of agree with you there. But if they could, yeah, eliminate property tax and the federal government say, we’re going to fund your state’s education, because I’m pretty sure Colorado… even with the federal aid, is not spending $400 million on education every year.
SPEAKER 15 :
You know, if somebody can look that up and let me know what we do spend annually, I would love to know that.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, what the department, yeah. And then it also gets rid of 10 layers of bureaucracy, which most states have to, well, we’ve got to fill out these 17 forms for the feds.
SPEAKER 15 :
Okay, really quick. This is a little bit old. So the 2019-2020 budget was $7.6 billion. It’s now the base pupil funding $8.4 billion in Colorado. Total program, $9.7.
SPEAKER 07 :
How much of that’s going into the retirement funds? Good question.
SPEAKER 15 :
Great question. And by the way, the government, or the government, the governor, Polis, wants an additional $305 million this year. He always wants. They all want more money. And again, our pupil score, our student scores do nothing but drop.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I would say if a teacher wants to raise, how many kids in your class are reading at grade level? Or doing math at grade level. Good question. Those should be the standards. Can you read and write and do math at grade level? Because if the kids aren’t at grade level, then, you know, what are we giving the teachers more money for? You know, and the teachers union will come back and say, well, we’re not getting any help from the parents.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yep.
SPEAKER 07 :
But wait, but then they’re the first ones that want to outlaw homeschooling because it takes money out of their pocket.
SPEAKER 15 :
Correct.
SPEAKER 07 :
Correct. So it’s a vicious cycle. But the other thing Vivek said yesterday, this was interesting. He said if the president orders all personnel back to work five days a week in office, the workforce would probably drop by 15%.
SPEAKER 15 :
That’s true. That’s an easy one, too. In other words, you can’t work from home anymore.
SPEAKER 07 :
No more remote work unless, like, I would see where you could call your boss and say, there’s a blizzard on the interstates closed. I’m not going to make it in. Can I remote work today? An exception to the rule. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Or I’ll take a vacation day or whatever. Right. But, you know, the exception to the rule, but to just say, There are federal workers that haven’t been seen in offices since COVID.
SPEAKER 15 :
Which means they’re probably doing little to nothing at all.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, yeah. In that case, I would say probably. But those are the things that you could save a ton of money on. Because how many of those federal workers worked out of, say, the IRS in D.C.’ ‘s main office?
SPEAKER 15 :
Good question.
SPEAKER 07 :
And they moved to, I don’t know. They moved to Tennessee to not pay state income tax. Right. And they’re remote working. How does that work? You know what I mean?
SPEAKER 15 :
Right, right. No, great. Again, we’re going to see some things that people aren’t going to like. Let’s just say that.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, well, if everybody doesn’t like it, then it’s probably good for the country.
SPEAKER 15 :
Absolutely.
SPEAKER 07 :
John, have a great day.
SPEAKER 15 :
You too. Appreciate you, John, very much. Joe, you’re next. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 06 :
John, I’m going to start with a little stuff. Are you familiar with a book that Senator Tom Cotton puts out?
SPEAKER 15 :
Oh, yeah. I’ve read parts of that in the past.
SPEAKER 06 :
Now, I’m going to give you just a little tiny one, but I want you to imagine this multiplied by thousands. For instance, federal government funded a study for 600,000. Why did chimpanzees in captivity throw feces? Do we care? No, we don’t. Why?
SPEAKER 15 :
We don’t care.
SPEAKER 06 :
So $600,000, well, okay, it’s only half a million. It’s only half a million. But there are thousands. We fund these ridiculous grants and studies to determine things that nobody cares about. So you start with that. And then we have things like eliminating the Department of Education. And John is right. For every person in D.C., one person in D.C., can impose a burden on every school district in the country. They say, you need to send me all these reports, and you’ve got literally tens of thousands of school districts filling these reports, which never get read. They just have them in a file in case they ever want to go research them. So you’d be saving. But let’s go even deeper. There are some great programs out there. I’m going to take some really great programs. Meals on Wheels, Section 8 housing allowance, school lunch programs. I think those are great programs, but I think they should be funded and administered at the state level, not the federal level. And I think the federal government, Trump and the Congress should say, a year from today or a year from January, we’re going to stop funding all these programs. Now, states, that gives you a year, you know, next November when you have elections. If you want to keep paying for, by the way, my neighbors drive his and her BMWs. And their kids get free school lunches.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah. By the way, John or Joe, John, too, you’re listening. That stuff’s just utter nonsense. I mean, if anything, there ought to be a qualifier for some of that stuff.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, John, I agree. But if your state wants to give every kid in the state a free school lunch, even if their parents live in a two million dollar home. God bless you, but let the taxpayers of your state vote for it.
SPEAKER 15 :
Or if you want to put a bill in that has a qualifier that you’ve got to prove that you make less than X amount of money to be on the school lunch program, then that’s fine, too.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, John, I guarantee you, if that stuff went on the ballot at the state level, the people would demand qualifiers like that in the bill.
SPEAKER 15 :
Correct, because they wouldn’t want it to be across the board.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right, and here’s another big one. Right now, Medicaid, you’re familiar with Medicaid expansion. Oh, yeah. Now, it used to be Medicaid was for unemployed people or people living below the poverty level. Right now, John, if you work for, say, Walmart, so you’re making $22 an hour, but you’ve got a wife and two kids, you are technically at less than 400% of the poverty level. So Walmart offers you an employer-subsidized health insurance program, very inexpensive, but because you’re less than 400% of the state and federal poverty level, you qualify for expanded Medicaid, and guess what? Medicaid has no payroll deduction, no co-pays, no deductibles. So even though you have health insurance available from your employer, why would you sign up for your employee’s health insurance program when you can get it for free from the state?
SPEAKER 15 :
You wouldn’t.
SPEAKER 06 :
So you’ve got not thousands, not tens. You literally have millions of employed people in this country with health insurance available to them from their employer as a result of Obamacare because Obamacare said if you have 50 or more employees, you have to offer them health insurance. You have millions of people who have access to health insurance through their employer, don’t take it because they can get Medicaid at zero cost. Now, again, if you put all that back on the states and said to the residents of Colorado, we’re going to bump either your state income tax or the sales tax by 30% to cover these things. These are nice-to-do things. These are not must-do things. That’s right. How do you think those things would go over in the ballot measure, John?
SPEAKER 15 :
Not very well.
SPEAKER 06 :
I mean, if you said to the people of Castle Rock, hey, Instead of a 6% sales tax, we’re going to have a 9% sales tax to pay for these things. Do you want to vote? Check the yes box. How many yes boxes do you think would get checked?
SPEAKER 15 :
None.
SPEAKER 06 :
None. Same thing with free school lunches for everybody. Same thing. And, John, why is the federal government doing Section 8 housing allowance?
SPEAKER 15 :
They shouldn’t.
SPEAKER 06 :
Why shouldn’t that be a state program?
SPEAKER 15 :
It should. It shouldn’t be. Right. I mean, again, there is so much. I’m just reading a few things, and I’m going to play a video here. If I don’t get to it this hour, I’ll do it the third hour or even tomorrow with Andy, depending upon what the day goes like. But, you know, Joe, we’ve got a 12% vacancy in a lot of federal agency headquarters, meaning that over 10% of that building isn’t used.
SPEAKER 06 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 15 :
And we’ve actually got empty government buildings sitting nationwide. That’s another thing I’m sure that Vivek and Elon will look at first. How many empty government buildings do we have nationwide, and why do we have them on the books? We’re maintaining them. We’re dealing with all of that. And by the way, those particular areas, most local governments should be happy that those things would go on the auction block because the minute that a private person starts to own those, they start paying property tax on those because the federal government doesn’t, as you know.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. Federal government doesn’t pay property taxes. And by the way, the taxpayers, even though the buildings are empty, you’re paying to heat them and cool them.
SPEAKER 15 :
Maintain them, everything.
SPEAKER 06 :
Maintain them. If the roof leaks, you’ve got to repair them.
SPEAKER 15 :
Oh, I’m one for Joe, and this is something that Trump has talked about. Move a lot of these three-letter agencies out of D.C. Just get rid of them.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yep. Couldn’t agree more.
SPEAKER 15 :
Get rid of those buildings. Go find space someplace else. And, you know, if they want to own space there, more power to them. That’s completely up to them. Or if they want to, you know, lease that space. Again, they should put some qualifiers around that because we own, and this is a whole other conversation probably for another day, but even when you look at the amount of empty land, national parks and so on that we as a country own, in my opinion, Joe, far too much.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. And EV subsidies, John, agricultural.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yep.
SPEAKER 06 :
We’re still paying people to either grow corn or not grow crops. Let the free market take over. That’s right.
SPEAKER 15 :
Absolutely.
SPEAKER 06 :
So get rid of all those incentives and subsidies.
SPEAKER 15 :
If I get time, I’ll play some of that later. If not, I’ll do it tomorrow, Joe. But it’s just mind-boggling. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 06 :
It is mind-boggling. John, you could start shoveling. You know, and it’s just immense, the amount of waste and unnecessary spending. It’s huge.
SPEAKER 15 :
It’s trillions upon trillions of dollars, Joe, as you know.
SPEAKER 06 :
Trillions and trillions. And again, some things are good and should be done. Like, I’m going to just use one. Meals on Wheels, John, is a great program. should be nothing the federal government does. Right. Let the states do it.
SPEAKER 15 :
Correct. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right, John.
SPEAKER 15 :
Joe, appreciate you. We’ll take a quick break. We’ll come back. Got a special guest joining us. Hi-Fi Plumbing is next. Don’t forget, they do electrical now as well. Hi-Fi Plumbing and Electrical 877. We high-five.
SPEAKER 13 :
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SPEAKER 15 :
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SPEAKER 15 :
Michael Bailey Law, he is our mobile estate planner. Make sure that you get dialed in, get on his schedule to get your estate plan handled, and it’ll be first of the year before he can do that. But call him today. Find him at klzradio.com.
SPEAKER 16 :
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SPEAKER 14 :
Now, back to Rush to Reason, presented by High Five Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling, where every call ends with a high five.
SPEAKER 15 :
All right, we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Trevor Wagoneer joining us now, Chief Economist and Director of the Research Center Computer and Communications Industry Association. Trevor, welcome. How are you?
SPEAKER 03 :
Doing well. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER 15 :
I appreciate it very much. All right. Talk to us about AI. It’s something that I think intrigues some folks and scares a lot of others.
SPEAKER 03 :
Certainly. So artificial intelligence tools have really taken off in the past two years with chat GPT and other generative AI tools really coming to the forefront in that time. And I wanted to see how users were engaging with AI and how their preferences with respect to devices had developed in light of the rising popularity of artificial intelligence tools. So I surveyed 1,000 consumers and 1,000 workers to see how people are using AI and devices in their ordinary lives and at work.
SPEAKER 15 :
So the research that you guys did, number one, how many people are actually using AI? And the other question I guess I have for you along those lines is how many use it but don’t know they’re using it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Those are both very important questions. So now many people do know that they’re using AI. When we survey ordinary consumers, 39% of all consumers are using explicit AI tools. We’re talking here about like ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI services that advertise themselves as AI tools. And they’re using them at least several times a week. And when we survey workers, at least 47% are using clear AI services like ChatGPT every single day. So it’s become a very common occurrence for many people. But as you pointed out, there are many people who use AI without necessarily realizing it. AI is sort of built in at this point to many services that we utilize, sometimes just in the background in recommendation algorithms on a streaming platform. and sometimes more directly. Even if you’re doing ordinary search, you’ll probably see a little bar up top that says AI assistance, and it will be providing some extra options for you generated by AI.
SPEAKER 15 :
Two people that I guarantee you will be using AI in the not-too-distant future. That will be the Department of Doge with Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk. I guarantee you, Trevor, one aid that they will be looking at to look at a lot of governmental spending and where is a lot of this waste. And maybe I’m wrong, but I anticipate both of these guys knowing who they are using AI to help in that job.
SPEAKER 03 :
That seems very likely, especially since they’re advertising. They’re going to push the workers for them to work 80-hour weeks. When folks are working 80-hour weeks, they want any assistance they can get with good tools to help summarize research. And that’s sort of AI’s sweet spot, as we found.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah, I can really see them using it personally, making others use it, having it really on a broad spectrum, using that governmentally speaking, which, as you know, that works its way into the regular business end of it, and so on. Okay, let’s talk about the downsides to AI, if there is any. And I’m like anybody else, Trevor. I’ve looked at things through the past. I’ve been self-employed for decades. Oh, gosh, since 1986, I’ve seen lots of things come and go. A lot of things have been added into the workplace that, frankly, have been a huge advantage. I realize with everything there are pros and cons. What do you see as being some of the cons of AI?
SPEAKER 03 :
So you need some of the pros, I think, to contrast the cons against. On the pro side, we see that it really is proving useful. When we survey workers, 74% are planning to increase their usage of AI tools, and a similar percentage are planning to increase their usage of desktop devices like laptops as a result of increased use of AI just because they find it easier to use these AI tools on desktop devices like laptops than on their smartphone. So a lot of folks are finding these tools very, very useful. Now, the key limitation with AI that I think anyone who has used an AI tool like ChatGPT has found is that they’re right about 98% of the time, but the 2% where they’re not can sometimes get you. They’re prone to what are sometimes called hallucinations. I had a great experience where I used ChatGPT to summarize a large amount of literature for me. And then I gave it a very careful read, and I found that it had given me a great literature review. But then it had made up an entire paper in the middle of it. And if I hadn’t done a line-by-line read, I never would have found it. And that’s the sort of limitation that we’re still sort of facing with these AI tools. They really do save you a lot of time, but you do have to do a lot of detailed checking.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yep. I’ve used them myself for certain things, Trevor. I can’t disagree with anything you just said. They are not foolproof. You still have to monitor what’s going on. They will. I like what you just said a moment ago along those lines. I mean, they’ll end up doing some things. They, I say AI, you can call it a he, she, it, whatever. I mean, AI. It will do things that at times aren’t accurate, even though I believe as time goes by it will get more accurate. But the realization is we’re not there yet, and we still need to check what it’s doing. The other question, Trevor, for you is – And with anything, any new technology that comes along, yes, there’ll be some displacement of workers. But typically those workers end up finding other work in other areas. I mean, if they’re sharp, they will. And at the end of the day, those are the those are the shifts that, you know, even Henry Ford make made back in the 20s when it came to the assembly line. Things will maneuver around.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, certainly. With any innovation, there’s bound to be a little bit of disruption. And disruptions can be a little bit painful at times. But there are more opportunities than costs here, given all of the evidence that we’ve seen so far. A number of economic research papers have tried to estimate the potential value of artificial intelligence to the global economy and global productivity over the next few years. One by PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that global GDP could increase by about 26%. by 2030 as a result of increasing adoption of AI. That is quite an impact from a single innovation. That would mean $15.7 trillion of global GDP growth, and a huge $6.6 trillion share of this GDP growth is expected to come from increased productivity. So that creates a lot of potential for upside that folks can find in other roles and in increased productivity boosting wages.
SPEAKER 15 :
Absolutely. Trevor, again, chief economist, director of the Research Center Computer and Communications Industry Association. For folks that want to keep up on this and they’re really in tune with what’s going to happen or they want to find out what’s going to happen, how do they find you guys and stay up on this?
SPEAKER 03 :
Certainly. They can always find our research at research.ccianet.org. That’s research.ccianet.org.
SPEAKER 15 :
Awesome. Trevor, I appreciate your time today, sir. Have a great Thanksgiving holiday, by the way.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you. You as well. And don’t be surprised if after this Black Friday, you find some of your relatives looking for laptops because they like to use laptops for these AI tools more than smartphones.
SPEAKER 15 :
I can’t argue with that. Trevor, thank you again. Have a great night, sir. Thank you. You as well. We’ll do it. And again, folks, AI will, and again, as I talked about with Trevor, even what Vivek and Elon will be doing in that regard, trust me, they will be using AI. And I think what they’ll end up doing, I saw something today where Musk tweeted out how archaic The software and some of the government hardware that we’re using all throughout government when it comes to some of the things that are done software-wise, it’s crazy. I think I’ve stated before that, and I don’t think I’m wrong in this. Charlie, we might want to check this through the break. But I think the IRS is still running off of hardware-slash-software that was built in the late 60s, early 70s, if I’m not mistaken. That’s how archaic some of this stuff is. It’s absolutely mind-boggling and, frankly, ridiculous that we haven’t done some of the upgrades in some of those areas that we should have done over the years. And the amount of money, by the way, that is waste – that’s another area of government waste, and I’m sure that’s where those two – We’ll look at those things as well. We’ll be back in a moment. I’m going to play some of these government waste things that I said I would play a little bit earlier here. I’ll do that as soon as we come back. Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning is up next. Don’t forget, they’ve got a great furnace tune-up special right now. Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning, klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 08 :
Now back to Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 15 :
All right, and for grins, I did look. About a third of the IRS’s software slash even some legacy hardware and so on literally is 25 to 64 years of age. So I wasn’t wrong in what I just said a moment ago. Those are some of the things that you will see Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk fix. And it’s just, by the way, that’s just stupid. The amount of extra time, labor, and so on that goes into making some of those things not only function, but the use of, it’s just dumb. Dumb. I don’t know how else to say it. All right. Let me see if I can get this video fired up and just listen to some of this. Here we go.
SPEAKER 04 :
to Ecuador to host 12 drag shows in Ecuador with American tax dollars. Actually, this is the National Science Foundation. Excuse me, strike that. It seems like a State Department thing. National Science Foundation last year did a study of butterflies in Europe. So we funded, with American taxpayer dollars, a butterfly study in Germany where we paid a Swedish scientist to study butterflies in Germany. Last year, there was also a NEA grant that was done to set up a display in Brooklyn for the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band, which, by the way, is not even an American band. And always popular, we had an almost, well, $350,000 grant to study smart toilets.
SPEAKER 15 :
Okay, I’ve got to stop. Because so far, there’s not one of those that we’ve spent money on that mattered. Not one. And again, he’s going to keep going. I’m only a minute six into an 11-minute video where he just keeps going and explaining where government waste is.
SPEAKER 04 :
was one of the grants that we actually paid for with our federal tax dollars last year. We also had a grant that was done studying colonial Mexican soundscapes. Now, I’m sure colonial Mexican soundscapes are fascinating, but we paid for a researcher to travel to Mexico and then to be able to write a series about the sounds of colonial Mexico and how they could be used to be able to influence communities. We, last year, did a study on helmets and seat belts in Ghana to be able to study whether seat belts and helmets were effective for saving lives in Ghana. Can I just go ahead and answer that question for free? Seat belts and helmets are a good idea.
SPEAKER 15 :
Folks, again, they’re going to go through some of these things line by line, trust me. They’ll start on the major end of things, and this is where AI, by the way, they’ll implement it to look at some of the things that we’re talking about in this video. I’m talking Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, and they’ll look at some of these things. And where the pushback’s going to be, as John from Cheyenne said earlier, some of these things are pork projects that are done by certain individuals in either the Senate or Congress. These things get tacked on to other bills. Oh, we’re going to go ahead and make a budgetary request for X. Well, yeah, but the only way I’m approving that is if I get my thing added. And then the next guy comes along and says, well, unless I get this added or I get that added. That stuff needs to stop, by the way. In fact, one thing that would really help a lot of this budgetary stuff is a one-line bill, one-subject bill, I guess is what I’m trying to say. You can’t add all these other things in. We’re going to do one thing, one thing only, not 15 others or 50 others or 500 others in some cases, i.e. the inflation bill or what they call the infrastructure bill. I’ll keep going.
SPEAKER 04 :
They save lives. Free. I can go ahead and give you that advice. How do I know that? Because we’ve already spent millions of dollars in other studies here in the United States. But instead, we spent money in Ghana studying helmets to see if they’re actually a good idea there. And amazingly, they discovered, yes, they are. There was also a grant that was done last year. I’ve got to just walk this one through. This was at the Springfield Museum of Art in Missouri. There was a grant to be on a display, an installation of the exhibit in the museum called Yoko Ono Men’s Piece. Now let me just read this to you. It’s a simple white room where shattered cups and saucers are placed on a table and participants are asked to mend the fragments together using common household items like twine, glue, scissors, and tape. And the resulting works are displayed on nearby shelves as evidence of the power of collective action. Again, I’m not opposed to fixing broken saucers in a public place and displaying them. All I’m asking is why did Oklahomans work overtime last year to pay their tax bill to fund doing the Yoko Ono white room where people fixed broken saucers?
SPEAKER 15 :
Evidently, I didn’t read all of this or watch this entire video, but this must be a presentation he’s making, I guess, in the state of Oklahoma politically in their either whatever chamber, House, Senate, I don’t know which. But it gets more ridiculous, by the way. I’m not even going to play the rest of it. We’ll put this up in our show notes where you guys can look at these things and watch this on your own. And this is just one. I mean, you can go look at Open the Books. You can go look at, as Joe was talking about earlier, Mr. Cotton’s look at this. You know, there’s a book that comes out on almost an annual basis talking about wasteful government spending. Folks. We’ve got to rein this in. I mean, it’d be one thing if we were a country that had an overage of budget. In other words, if we collected more than we spent annually and we had all of this extra cash and we didn’t know what to do with it and we wanted to go do some of these things on the side, I might, might, I don’t think I’d even be okay with it then because if that’s the case, give it back to the taxpayers. But I might be okay with it if that were the case. The reality is, As I’ve said many, many, many, many times on this program, we’re borrowing money to go do these things. We don’t even have the money in the first place, so we’re borrowing it on the backs of future generations to go spend ridiculous amounts of money on stupid things like this. It needs to end. Flat out in. Now, this is a bigger topic for the likes of Elon Musk and Vivek because both of them are smart enough to know that a lot of these things are baked into other bills that pass. And once they’re done, you got to go back in and redo them. But we’re going to have the power of the purse in the first two years. Let’s get these things fixed. And again, the pushback is going to come from the libs saying, well, it’s already been earmarked. It’s already been spent. You know, we’ve already got some guy doing this study on helmets and seatbelts in Ghana. How can we take that guy’s job away? Well, you just take it away. Go find something else to do, pal, or whoever you are. Woman, lady, team. I don’t know who it is. Frankly, I don’t care. I don’t care who’s doing this stuff. This Yoko Ono exhibit a moment ago that we as taxpayers are funding. Stop. Stop. Just stop. This stuff at the end of the day benefits no one other than those that collected money off of the display, of course. No one else benefits. And we’ve done all sorts of stupid things with money as he as he first opened up talking about funding drag shows in other countries. Why? Why are we doing that? Why? This is our money, your money, my money, and or the money of our future generations that will pay for this. It’s just stupid. We’ve got to stop at some point. It’s like that family that’s on the verge of bankruptcy, or in some cases has taken bankruptcy, but continues to spend like they had no problems. and wonder, why are we continually in this position? Well, I can tell you why you’re in that position, because you’re overspending, and you’ll always be in that position. And unfortunately, we as a country do the same thing a lot of families do, spend more than you take in. And we can’t do that. Eventually, it comes to a head. And frankly, we’re there now. Elon Musk has said it. Vivek Varmaswamy has said it. Others in Congress and the Senate have said it. Why aren’t we doing something about it then? Well, this administration, I think you might actually see something get done. And I’ll be the first to admit, Donald Trump is not a thrifter by any means. He’s not a thrifty guy. He understands business. He understands debt. He understands how to use it. The problem is, as a country, that’s a whole different scenario. Now, should the country be run like a business? Yes. Are there times that debt is good? Yes. Not in these cases. And I think Donald Trump would agree with that. When you look at the wasteful spending, it’s dumb. Now, you know, to go into debt, for example, to build a submarine to keep our shores safe, that’s a different situation. And by the way, that one I’m okay with. That’s not the same as funding some of the things we just heard and witnessed a moment ago in that video. So like anything else, there’s good and there’s bad. And what these two guys are going to do, and there’ll be more than just them, of course, there’ll be a team of individuals that will be looking at this, determining where is the real waste? What can we curtail and how quickly can we curtail it? So here’s what I would suggest. If you’re listening to me and you work in government and you know you have one of those fluff jobs, it might behoove you to go look for another job sooner than later. Sort of like that illegal alien that’s here that’s already committed a crime, I would highly recommend you leave now rather than get deported. It’d be a lot easier. Just leave. Go back to where you came from. You’re going to end up there anyways. You might as well just do it now. So like that illegal alien, if you’ve got a fluff job in the government, you might want to start looking for another job now. That’s my suggestion. You probably don’t want to hear that, but that’s the reality of what’s coming. And when I say fluff job, you guys know what those jobs are. In fact, if you have one, you know what it is. And how would I know that? I’ve always been in the private sector, so how would I know that? Folks, believe it or not, I’ve talked to some of these people over the years. They know they have fluff government jobs. They’re not dumb. They know it. They’ll tell you. They’ll tell you they’re an easy street. I’ve heard them talk about it. I’ve heard them brag about it. So, yeah, they know. They know they have a fluff government job. And by the way, no, not all government jobs are fluff. I’ll be the first to say that. There’s some really good, solid jobs in government that are needed, that have to be there, that I’m very thankful those folks do. I’m very thankful. And you know who you are, by the way. In fact, you are typically envious of the guy or gal that has a fluff job. You know where those jobs are. The hardworking government worker knows where the fluff jobs are. And sometimes it’s their boss. Or some admin that does nothing all day long. That frankly, and I’ve said this before over and over again, you can computerize a ton of different departments around the country and eliminate probably a third of the government workforce. And I’m not exaggerating. It’s not that hard. There is so much minutia that gets done that doesn’t need to be. Automate some of this stuff. Eliminate the personnel and save the taxpayer dollars. That’s what should be the goal of government daily. How do we save the taxpayer, our customer? How do we save them money at the end of the day? That’s not how government looks at it, though. They look at it just the opposite. How can we spend more? How can we increase our budgets? Hey, I didn’t spend all of it this year. I better get it spent now or I won’t have it next year. We have a total backwards system when it comes to how government is run, and it needs fixed. American National Insurance is next. Another area where there is a lot of waste, even inside of families, is insurance and either spending too much or not enough on the right insurance. Call Paul Leuenberger, my good friend today, and have him help you with your insurance needs. 303-662-0789.
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SPEAKER 08 :
The best export we have is common sense. You’re listening to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 15 :
All right, in closing of this hour, and I know this is state, not federal, but the same thing applies everywhere. Why do we even have DMV offices? Other than maybe that one-off situation where you’d actually have to go in and talk to an actual physical person, which, by the way, those could be done and typically are done on an appointment basis anyways. But why do we need the number of offices, even on a state level, that we have? All of that could be automated through computer. why we even do some of the things along those lines that we do. And then you move that into a national level, and the waste just compounds. It’s huge. and yet isn’t automated and should be in a lot of cases. No reason why a lot of the day-to-day things that we all do, governmentally speaking, isn’t done on a more automated basis to where there’s not as much human interaction. I’ll save that for another day. We’ll see what these two end up doing in the Department of Doge. We’ll be back. Hour number two is next. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 05 :
The Rich Guy.
