Solving America's Problems

More than half of homeowners are locked into a rate under 4%, and an estimated 1.7 million home sales never happened because of it. Daniel Sosa, a mortgage broker who started in the business in 2007, tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley he never charges the $1,300 to $2,500 in ancillary fees most banks build into every closing, saving clients $7,000 to $9,000 per transaction on average....

More than half of Americans with a mortgage are locked in under 4%, freezing nearly two million home sales. JD Cobb has spent two decades closing loans in Texas, and his advice runs against the wait-and-see instinct: buy at today's price, refinance later. He takes Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley through the whole machine — the four Cs , who really owns your note, the pay option ARMs he w...

There are twelve down payment assistance programs in Austin and Travis County alone, and JD Cobb says almost nobody asks. He names TSAC and TDHCA , which cover three to five percent down, plus a mortgage credit certificate he can count as monthly income. He tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that a soft credit pull costs the buyer nothing and that he'll pay to rescore a client's credi...

The average American buyer is now 38 years old — Dave Conley bought his first home in his twenties and had to borrow the down payment from friends. Dave and Jerremy Alexander Newsome press JD Cobb on where the starter home went, and JD is blunt: Gen Z is skipping steps, and his own first house cost $187,000. He explains what happens when a self-employed file hits an underwriter's desk, why writing...

More than half of Americans with a mortgage are locked in under 4%, and that lock-in alone has frozen out nearly two million home sales. JD Cobb's answer sounds backwards: don't wait for the rate, buy at today's price and refinance later. He walks Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley through what a refinance actually involves, the four Cs every lender checks, and who owns your loan once it's...

22.6 million U.S. households now pay more for housing than they can afford, and the average home costs five times the average salary. Sam Froerer, who co-owns thousands of apartment units through Compass Capital, has never owned his own home himself. He tells hosts Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that the industry treats tenants like a commodity, and the top 50 owners control under 11% o...

A $100,000 investment can show $60,000 of paper losses in year one — a tax benefit ordinary renters never get access to. Sam Froerer tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that Trump-era policy restored 100% bonus depreciation after Biden had cut it to 40%. He argues the top 1% pulling away from everyone else is the same pattern behind every collapsed civilization in history. Asked...

Landlords call it "value-add," and raising rent $100 to $200 a month after new cabinets and a dog park is the same move the industry has run for decades. Sam Froerer calls his own company "experience-add" instead, telling Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that renters need income at two-and-a-half times rent just to qualify. Insurance per unit in Florida and Texas tripled from $600 to $3,0...

22.6 million U.S. households now pay more for housing than they can afford, and the average home costs five times what the average family makes. Sam Froerer co-owns thousands of apartment units through Compass Capital — and has never owned his own home. He tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that the industry's top 50 owners control less than 11% of it, and most landlords treat t...

The top 400 richest families in America pay about 2% in taxes while everyone else pays 20 to 26%. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley kick off a new series on housing, laying out why the American dream of homeownership is structurally rigged — flat wages, boomers holding 70% of property , and a tax code built as welfare for the top 20%. They trace housing booms back to the 1920s and post-WWI...

Real estate investor Grant Cardone says never buy a home — rent instead, and put your money in the market. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley debate the case for renting versus owning. Dave, who's rented for over a decade, lays out the freedom of renting against the nonstop chores of ownership. They find zero libertarian voices anywhere in their research — everyone agrees housing is broken....

The top 400 richest families in America pay about 2% in taxes — while everyone else pays 20 to 26%. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley dig into what surprised them most in their research. Dave says the tax code was quite literally built for people not to pay taxes, funneling mortgage and college-savings deductions mostly to the top 20%. He found 30 million American children living in povert...

Baby boomers now own roughly 70% of American homes and property — and politicians are too scared to touch it. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley lay out the thesis for a new series on housing: wages stayed flat while prices and interest rates exploded. Dave says the newest housing law just passed the Senate 85-5 and became law without a presidential signature. It bars investors who own 350+...

The best U.S. cash experiments still can't prove money durably improves health or child outcomes. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley spend five episodes chasing why, hearing from Ron Lynch that free cash is a chain, not a check , and from Chris Rimbal that money itself may vanish within 20 years. Dr. Conley and Dr. Rhodes weigh in last: cash helps, but isn't the answer either host hoped for...

Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley close the series on the loudest disagreement yet: has the AI revolution already hit , or is it still coming? Dave says he now runs this entire podcast alone — work that used to require four or five staffers — because of AI. Jerremy pushes back, insisting today's AI still isn't truly intelligent, just a sharper search engine stitching articles together. Dav...

The best U.S. cash experiments still can't prove giving people money durably improves health or child outcomes. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley pick up their UBI rebrand mid-series: Dave proposes literal shares in America, dividends tied to the AI and data economy already built on public information. Jerremy renames the whole concept the Citizen Capital program , hoping shared ownership...

Free cash isn't a check — it's a chain , according to Ron Lynch, who argues handouts push society toward technocratic feudalism . Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley open this series admitting the American dream started fracturing sometime in the 1990s, once information itself became the real currency. Lynch's claim: money given for nothing quietly erodes purpose, feeding the "trust fund bab...

The Federal Reserve can legally buy any publicly traded company outright — no permission required. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley open with the Dow hitting a record 53,058 , though Jerremy flags SanDisk and Micron as stretched after their runs. Dave counters that AI now makes up roughly 40% of the Nasdaq , a concentration risk the Fed has no playbook to unwind. They dig into SpaceX's 45...

Recipients were two percentage points less likely to work — and critics called that proof people quit when you pay them. Dr. Elizabeth Rhodes ran the longest unconditional cash study in U.S. history: 1,000 people, $1,000 a month, three years. Below the poverty line, nobody worked less. People spent the money on rent, food, and kids, but the financial boost faded to nearly nothing by year three. Rh...

Rhodes admits her study was never designed for a world where income decouples from labor — but it's the closest data anyone has for what's coming. People are stitching together patchworks of gig work that standard labor surveys can't even capture. Dave Conley went from \"UBI is a terrible idea\" to \"how are we not doing this\" after weeks of research. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave land on So...

People spent the money on housing, food, and their kids — every global cash study shows this, yet the stereotype persists. The financial wellbeing boost was strong in year one, weaker by year two, and nearly gone by year three. Nobody started a business, but entrepreneurial interest surged because the labor market doesn't work for people who need flexibility. Rhodes says cash hits a wall when heal...

Recipients were two percentage points less likely to work — and critics called that the whole story. Dr. Elizabeth Rhodes ran the longest three-year unconditional cash experiment in U.S. history, gave 1,000 people $1,000 a month, and found something economists missed: below the poverty line, nobody worked less . Sam Altman helped fund it, but Rhodes had NIH and NSF backing with full scientific ind...

The biggest US cash experiment returned a big fat zero on measurable child outcomes. Dalton Conley tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave that poverty rewires the body at the DNA level , but cash alone can't undo it. The 1960s negative income tax kept people unemployed longer and increased divorce. AI leaders dropped the jobs apocalypse once it scared people. Alaska's Permanent Fund is the close...

Dalton Conley tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave: yes, he'd take the UBI check — because you don't have a choice. A thousand dollars a month transforms life in rural Mississippi and barely registers in New York City. Jerremy says he'd opt out; Conley says almost nobody thinks that way. Social Security is untouchable because it's near-universal and tied to work — UBI needs that same armor. Co...

Nobody trusts the institutions that would run the check. Dalton Conley tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave a sovereign wealth fund modeled on Alaska's Permanent Fund — structured like the Federal Reserve — might be the only design that survives politics. When Alaskans get bigger checks, they go to the dentist more, and missing teeth is one of the most stigmatizing outcomes in American life. T...