One thing that happened during this pandemic is it opened my eyes about human
nature.
I used to be very pro universal basic income.
My thought was wouldn't be great if you just had enough money so you could eat and
you could pay your rent and then you could pursue what you wanted to.
But the reality of human nature came fully into focus when I realized that one, but
some people got all that money from the government, the Covid money, and
then they got unemployment, they didn't want to work.
>> That was Joe Rogan showing off his right wing bonafides
during a recent episode of his podcast.
And that was by the way after he kept saying like I'm liberal, I'm liberal,
I'm liberal.
Except here's some anecdotal evidence for
a blanket statement about lazy American workers.
Let's watch.
>> I have a friend who has a restaurant,
he could not get people to come back to work.
And one buddy of mine, a bartender told him I can come back to work, but
I can only work for 20 hours a week because that way I get unemployment.
So he wouldn't work more than 20 hours a week so he could get free money so he
could have made more money, but he didn't want to because he didn't want to work.
You see a lot of people that own businesses have a hard time finding people
work for them.
So there's pros to that, right?
The pros are people, it's a marketplace that favors the worker.
So workers can ask for more money.
So you're seeing a lot of places bars and restaurants and stuff that have to pay
more money per hour which I guess is good as long as the restaurant can stay open.
>> I guess it's good if the employers maybe pay a little bit more to
entice people to show up.
I guess it's good, by the way unemployment benefits as anyone who's
needed unemployment benefits knows are not permanent they run out.
You get kicked off the unemployment program after a certain it depends on
the state that you're living in.
But to give you an example of how the miniscule amount of
money that the government provides in helping you bridge that gap between
jobs doesn't really make that much of a difference.
Red states cut Americans off from unemployment prematurely during
the pandemic.
Thinking that it would force people it would make people so desperate
that they would have no choice but to go back to work and it had no impact.
>> But that sounds like evidence against what he was saying.
That wasn't the thing [CROSSTALK] that complex unprecedented time.
That might not be the explanation.
>> I don't have a business owner friend who can provide me anecdotal evidence to
make a point and so.
>> About his damn uppity peasants that worked for him.
Yeah.
All I have is a life of working at many restaurants and bars and
knowing what it's like to work there, admittedly not during a pandemic.
I imagine worse, I think it was probably worse over the past few years.
What he said there about the wages was actually better.
I don't know how much he cares about being considered a liberal,
he said that he considers himself one.
But his version was better than I heard Charlie Kirk a couple weeks ago talking
about how there was something that he thought would lead to wages going down and
he was celebrating that is good news because he's a populist.
At least they are Joe Rogan.
>> Because why do you need to work for wages when you can have some billionaire
who just funnels money to you so you can spew right wing talking points.
>> Charlie Kirk has never had a job.
He has literally never had a job, so
Joe Rogan at least has one up on Charlie Kirk there.
Joe Rogan hasn't had a real difficult working class job for literally decades.
He's been a millionaire for years and years and years and years and
now it's his job to go and hang out in the studio and chit chat with his friends and
smoke marijuana and tell you how lazy the peasants are.
It's a cushy gig if you can get it.
>> Well, John actually to that point 2017,
Rogan was notably different from 2020 to Rogan.
So I remember because I used to listen to his podcast literally every day.
I loved it even when he had guests on who I found objectionable,
I disagreed with, whatever, it was still an interesting podcast.
I didn't mind the guests that I disagreed with because you should pay attention to
what the opposing side is saying, okay?
But he had a diversity of guests, he has now moved so
far to the right, he doesn't even realize it, right?
There is no diversity of guests, all his guest [CROSSTALK].
He has conservative and classic liberals, that sounds.
>> He just has right wingers on his show, okay?
At this point, and it's just boring, his podcast has become boring.
But I remember listening to his podcast, he used to make points about what
the majority of workers in America face every day and I thought this was
telling so get a load of 2017 Rogan and how different he is from today.
>> I could not exist in a regular job.
I just I didn't have it, whatever it was.
>> It's a thing when you don't have it, it's kind of scary, no,
I'm not gonna have a straight life, no, what am I going to do?
>> It was radioactive I would take construction jobs and
I was being poisoned and it was literally getting radiation.
>> So you feel you're dying, you're young and you're awake and you're I'm dying,
this is killing me.
>> I think there's a lot of people out there and for
some awful reason they never find whatever it is that can break them free,
they never catch a ride on that river out.
And I got lucky, I found stand up comedy,
there was no way I was ever going to be able to hold a regular job and
then I got lucky when I was 21 I found stand up and so from then on.
I kinda of locked into this thing where I'm just gonna do what I like, but
everybody says because everybody's giving me advice to do this and
advice to do that and it never seems to be what I want to do.
>> And their advice is coming from a different world.
And they mean well, but they're coming from the whole other value system and
a whole other expectation of their own lives and what your life should be and
all of that.
>> Cool and now the person representing that value system is Joe Rogan
who has been persuaded by one anecdote provided by one business owner friend.
Okay, does he know what unemployment benefits look like?
Does he think that you're like rolling in the dough, wooh.
Yeah.
>> Don't listen to it maybe every once in a while he has someone who is on a minimum
wage job that is his guests on the show.
I don't know, I assume not.
But yeah, I liked a bit of what he had to say in the 2017 clip.
I think the one weird thing is where he seems to have thought that the experience
he had of how soul crushing this manual working class jobs are.
He seems to have come away from that thinking that he has something unique
inside of him that makes that soul crushing.
No, those jobs suck, they suck for everybody.
To be fair to him, I hear what you're saying, but
he would consistently provide a voice for people who have those soul crushing jobs.
>> And I'm not doubting that I'm just saying that he seems to think it's
a minority that doesn't like those.
>> No.
>> Who's skipping into McDonald's every morning.
Yeah, the fryer, I'm back in my domain.
>> Okay, I wanna be as fair as possible.
Right?
So if that's what you got from the clip, I don't
think it's an accurate interpretation of how he used to talk about it.
>> That's fine.
I don't even particularly that Joe Rogan is saying this stuff doesn't necessarily
surprise me and I don't really care.
I don't listen to the podcast.
It's that so many of these guys that conservatives think of as
those lips don't understand us.
These are the guys are real guys why are they all telling you constantly that
you're lazy scum, Joe Rogan is now all of you are lazy for
some reason you guys during two years where your pension is dried up.
And you had a good chance of dying if you went to work and
it was clear that your government didn't give a damn if you literally lived or
died, you guys got really epic uppity and petty about working or whatever.
And now Elon Musk, just constantly with telling people that they're lazy,
these conservatives are just lining up to have their idols spit in their face.
I don't get it.
>> What is the point of going to a job you hate when your wages are so
low that it doesn't even cover the bare necessities of life,
housing, food, just the utilities, just the basics.
Why are you going to go into whether it's an office, a fast food restaurant,
a coffee shop, whatever it is, knowing that whatever you earn,
regardless of how hard you work is still not enough money to cover the basics.
And that's what workers have been dealing with in this country for
decades where real wages have not kept up with inflation since the 1970's.
And so yeah, workers for the first time in literally decades have a little bit of
leverage they have a little bit of power in this situation, which is why you're
seeing Starbucks stores unionize, which is breathtaking, it incredible.
It gives me hope in this country when really every day I wake up,
I'm why would I have hope in this country?
Right?
Workers are taking a stand.
I guess that's a good thing.
According to Joe Rogan, I don't guess it is a good thing.
This is how the free market works, right?
According to the free market proponents, right?
If you want the workers, you gotta pony up and these corporations,
these employers haven't had to pony up for a long,
long time because there was no leverage for the workers.
Now there is and I love watching all these conservatives freaking cry about it.
Especially the ones who get to sit around and as you mentioned,
smoke pot while they collect their millions.
>> I wish everyone could have that.
I wish that was what universal basic income was was a $200 million dollars
Spotify contract combined with literally pounds of marijuana.
I wish that's what everyone got.
>> God, I would be the most patriotic American of all time.
[LAUGH]