Solving America's Problems

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...

The largest US cash experiment returned a big fat zero on measurable child outcomes. Dalton Conley tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave the American dream only worked because WWII obliterated every competitor. The 1960s negative income tax kept people unemployed longer and increased divorce. AI leaders dropped the jobs apocalypse narrative once it scared people. A MAGA-Bernie coalition might b...

Forty percent of Americans are one paycheck from crisis — and Chris Remboldt says that's shareholder capitalism deliberately optimizing stock price over human welfare. Post-money means real wealth is time, energy, and atoms. He tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that UBI is a dead end , ad-supported free housing and food arrive in 10-15 years, and a self-replicating Von Neumann fleet...

Chris Remboldt says superintelligence is already here and a self-replicating Von Neumann robot fleet arrives in four years. He predicts AI companies will quietly replace broken institutions because regulated industries can never reform themselves from inside. Dave pushes back hard: Big AI strip-mined decades of collective intellectual capital for free, and the robots should hit Liberia before the...

Most people aren't starting at zero — they're at negative 100 , and Chris Remboldt says the first move is giving up the belief that help is coming. He tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that UBI "makes him think of the DMV" and that in 10-15 years food and housing are free — ad-supported. Labor is a terrible foundation for human dignity. The best mind-virus architect wins every electi...

Shareholder charters legally force companies to prioritize quarterly stock prices over mission — and Chris Remboldt says that's the engine behind a generation priced out of owning anything. Post-money isn't a utopia pitch: it's a recognition that real wealth is time, energy, and atoms. Chris tells Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley that a stay-at-home mom can now ship a product with AI that...

Ron Lynch moved $6 billion in consumer sales, made four films, and called Spielberg from a grocery store basement at 23. He says UBI doesn't hand out income — it hands out outcome, and outcome without effort is a cage. Alaska's $1,700 annual checks prove nothing; the realistic number is $30K, and at that level you buy complacency — and when a neighbor dies, their check redistributes. Plantations r...

UBI isn't communism — it's worse, and the strongest case for it ends with one word: slavery. Ron Lynch says in five years you'll produce a feature film for $5,000 using AI tools and four photos — blockchain kills the studio middleman , $1 admissions split 50/50 with creators, and some random kid funds his family's entire dynasty off one film. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley run the light...

Palantir tracks every digital transaction, IDEMIA harvests biometrics, and Allied Universal has cameras on every corner — the compliance infrastructure isn't coming, it's already here. Ron Lynch says UBI is the carrot that locks you into that stack. Without a middle class, you get feudalism with Wi-Fi; tiny homes with shared kitchens are cages with better branding. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Da...

Alaska's $1,700 annual dividend proves exactly nothing — Ron Lynch says the real number is $30K, and that's precisely where complacency sets in. Ron moved $6 billion in consumer sales, called Spielberg from a grocery store basement at 23, and made four films — and his read is that UBI doesn't hand out income, it hands out outcome . Outcome without effort kills purpose. His charity TeleHelp gave ri...

A third of American workers are one missed paycheck from crisis , and AI is repricing the assumption that human labor has permanent value faster than any safety net can respond. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley open their UBI series by naming what dissolved the American Dream contract — and pointing to three real experiments that prove giving people a floor doesn't produce laziness: the A...

If guaranteed income demonstrably cut violent crime, lowered healthcare costs, and boosted entrepreneurship — and the only documented trade-off was recipients working one hour less per week — Jerremy Alexander Newsome says the answer is obviously yes. Dave Conley argues no institution can be trusted to administer it, so it needs to be constitutionally locked in as Amendment 28 — or it becomes a co...

Crime drops exponentially when money enters poverty — Jerremy Alexander Newsome calls the data nearly unarguable. Dave Conley and Jerremy work through the laziness question and land in the same place: most people aren't lazy, they're searching for purpose, and what looks like disengagement is distraction from a deeper problem. The conversation sharpens into a direct comparison between Alaska's oil...

A third of American workers are one missed paycheck from crisis , and AI is repricing the assumption that human labor has permanent value faster than any safety net can respond. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley open their UBI series by naming what dissolved the American Dream contract — work hard, buy a house, build something — and argue it was always built on the premise that time and ef...

One guest puts the odds of a US recession by end of 2026 at 95% . Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley close out one of their longest series by walking through every guest and claim: Spencer Conley on college debt as a geographic trap and AI already cutting headcount , James Klein on that recession call, Cruise Gamboa on identity tied to achievement, Catherine on ghost jobs and work not being...

A home that cost $213,000 in 1988 costs $5 million today — and Jerremy argues the math doesn't work anymore. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley make the case that at a 6% loan rate, a house has to triple in value over 30 years before any real appreciation shows up. The new American dream, Jerremy says, is owning equity — not a mortgage. They walk through renting as emotionally unstable but...

Markets haven't priced in reality yet — and when they do, most people won't have options. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley argue that individual action only matters when it builds optionality , and that the harder problem is systemic: institutions, governments, and businesses operating with zero consequences for the damage they cause. A viral campaign they attribute to Spencer Pratt — liv...

One guest puts the odds of a US recession by end of 2026 at 95%. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley spend this episode running through six guests and their core claims: college debt trapping people geographically, ghost jobs flooding hiring platforms, identity tied to achievement as a psychological trap, and AI already cutting headcount in real companies. Pam Jordan argued the income gap is...