Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive October 9, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
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or else your economy stalls out. So we don't have a choice of having lots of young people and you can either give birth to them or bring them in from immigration. But young people are like gold as humans go, as human beings go. Mexico sent us their best. I think that's the truth. You know Trump is famous for saying they're not sending their best. That's the adults, right? Because the adults incl…

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doesn't need any more trouble, right? So somebody from social media said that the kids in cages, because they all have this foil, aluminum foil looking blankets, and he said that it was making all the kids look like gas station burritos.

I just don't know how to respond to that one because I laughed as soon as I realized, oh yeah, a burrito is wrapped in that tin foil thing. And there's pictures of all these kids wrapped in tin foil and they're from South America or they're from Central America. So you think to yourself burrito. But is that racist? Tell me, is it racist or is it just offensive? Like where's that line between offensive and racist?

Because I will tell you that I'm pretty sure the person who said it was not in favor of any children of any kind suffering in any way. So certainly nobody had any bad feelings about the children and I don't think anybody had any racial animosity. But it's right on the line there, isn't it? It's sort of right on the line of you hear it, you go, I don't know if I would have said that in public. The only reason I can say it in public is that I'm talking about it. If I just said it as a joke I think I'd have to pay for that probably.

Somebody says gas stations sell burritos. I think the ones with, yeah I think they do actually. Depends on your gas station.

All right. Well at least people are laughing at it. You don't want to laugh at any group who are suffering. So but I don't know if the children are all that suffering. One of the questions that's never asked is are the migrant children who are in these containers, let's say it even lasts for a week, however long it lasts, it's only supposed to be 72 hours but let's say it lasts a week, what was their life like before they got in that cage? How many of them are actually happier in the cage?

I mean nobody wants to stay in the cage forever but how many of them are actually physically better fed, warmer, safer from crime than they were every day of their life until they got in the cage? Again I'm not pro cage. I'm just saying that if you're using your elite American filter to say my God if I went, if I left my current life and had to be wrapped in tin foil and laying on a mattress in a container next to the border that would be the worst day ever for me. But that's not them.

I think they're going from a horrible situation which is why they came here to a situation which looks horrible by our standards but might not be that bad compared to where they were a week ago. Right? So I'm not saying that the cages are humane or that they're good. I think we should all just have a general feeling that you don't want to put kids in containers and you don't want to put kids in jail of any kind if you could avoid it. But maybe you can't avoid it. If you can't avoid it you can't avoid it.

Somebody says the conditions for those kids might be better than boot camp. Might be. I say definitely. Don't you think that a typical volunteer military person who goes through boot camp has a worse time in boot camp in terms of physical comfort than any of the migrants who are kept in cages for three days? Again don't want anybody in a cage. It's just we got to put it in perspective.

So the perfect situation would be that we treated everybody humanely but somehow everybody believed we didn't. So the ideal situation is to let reality and persuasion decouple. Treat the kids humanely but tell everybody it's a living hell and they better not come.

All right. Somebody's making a bad pun instead of quesadillas, kids ideas. All right let's not be offensive. Somebody's calli

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ng them AOC burritos. You're right on the edge of being racist by modern standards. So far you're just being offensive. And by the way I always try to make this distinction. Rarely do you see a comment that's actually racist. Even the ones that people are getting canceled etc. We've come to believe that offensive, something that bothers somebody, is also racist. But I would argue they're rarely t…

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