ound like stepping down? Isn't she moving sideways because she said she's got other you know she wants to work on other stuff so why is that down? Maybe the other stuff is better. Isn't that up? Anyway it was a weird choice of words. But she's being replaced at least temporarily with of course I checked a white woman and I said to myself hmm replaced with a white woman. Now I don't see an indication that the white woman is a lesbian and so is that diverse enough for MSNBC? You know women are good they like women but I think they like women who you know if you're going to be in prime time you got to be a little extra. A woman and black a woman and gay you know lesbian. So I don't know it was a white woman and so I was first thinking I don't know I don't think they've nailed that because it's a white woman and she just doesn't seem entirely on brand. But then I saw what eyeglasses she was wearing and then I understood. Let me explain it to you without showing you the glasses. You know if somebody walks around the corner you make an instant judgment. If somebody walks around the corner with glasses like mine I'm hoping they say oh there's a guy with glasses and that's it right? But I'm just going to tell you what would happen if the new head of MSNBC which again might be temporary if you saw her coming around the corner you would instantly see her glasses the type and style and you would say to yourself oh God. So if you haven't looked her up yet do this and have a good laugh. Just go look at what glasses she's wearing and then ask yourself what you would do if she walked around the corner in any context any context. She walks around the corner and you look at her and you go just the glasses. Oh God. Check it out you'll think it's funny anyway.

Hamas says they reached a deal with Israel to release a third of the hostages. There's some people who say that didn't happen. I don't know maybe. But I'm wondering if Israel has figured out the ultimate prisoner exchange. So as I understand it Israel typically will give up lots of people for every one person that they get in return. So it might be 50 to 1, 10 to 1. So there are going to be a whole bunch of people that Israel thinks belong in jail that would be returned. And my first impression was how's that right? I mean you can all those down you know it seems like you're just making it worse. There's the picture. But I wonder if Israel is so clever that they're going to return all the hostages to the war zone so they can kill them more effectively later. So it'd be better to kill them than to keep them in jail. So it feels like they're going to get their prisoners back and take them to a safe place but the ones that they wanted to keep in prison are probably the ones who want to go back to the war zone which is probably exactly where Israel wants them to be so they can kill them. I feel like Israel just found a way to kill their prisoners. They just have to do it indirectly. Stage one we'll release them. Stage two we'll put them back in Gaza where they want to go. Stage three goodbye.

All right I'm going to close with I'm going to throw in a bad idea okay. Now the way I do this is that the bad idea the purpose of it is to make you think of a better idea. So this is to make you think differently. It's not that I necessarily think this is a good idea because there may be some hidden problems etc. And here what it's an idea for DOGE. So right now people pay six and a half percent on their salary to Social Security. So my idea is to make that go away. That goes to zero. So everybody who has a salary gets this instant 6.5 percent raise which is more than 6.5 percent because well 6.5 percent raise. So that would give everybody some extra cash so they would be able to spend a little bit more. But how do you fund retirement? Well here's the bad idea right. Remember I'm calling it a bad idea but I don't know why so you'll tell me why it's bad because I'm pretty sure it's bad. But if you look at the total value of the Fortune 500 you know the total capitalization its value if you added up all the stock basically it'd be over 50 trillion. If you were to say we've got to cover 1.3 trillion in Social Security payments at the moment and growing how much of that stock would you have to effectively tax to pay for it? So imagine if instead of anybody paying anything that for several years that you know maybe up to 10, 5 to 10 years suppose that we keep the old system in place where we'll while we're building up a new system and the new system would look like this. Once a year every company in the Fortune 500 has to print some new stock which would dilute their existing shareholders a little bit and 2.5 percent of their capital value would go to a fund that would be for everybody's retirement.

Now what you're saying is Scott you're just taking a tax away from the citizens and their paychecks and you're just giving it to their employers so you know doesn't it end up the same? No I'm not giving it to their employers. I'm taxing the stockholders and if you own a lot of stock in the Fortune 500 nobody feels sorry for you. So it's automatically a progressive tax. The people who own the most assets would be hit the hardest but since the stock market goes up 8 percent a year or more you know it sort of still is okay. Now you ask yourself but Scott people nobody's going to invest in the Fortune 500 which is the biggest investment vehicle right now because you're degrading the return to which I say no the Fortune 500 is 25 percent better than all the alternatives. All it does is make them equal and if you wanted to do what's easy and safe you'd buy that you know which is what I do. I have most of my money is in the Fortune 500. So on one hand it's a transfer of a dollar for a dollar from one part of society to another. So it's from the people who need to buy things to the people who add extra money and put it in the stock market. So the first thing is the people who are the employees have extra money so they spend more. Who is the main beneficiary of employees having more money to spend? It's the Fortune 500. So the Fortune 500 could potentially put 2.5 percent well dilute its value to add some stock and it'd be 2.5 percent pay it every year but the economy would be so juiced that their profits would probably go up 2.5 percent you know or something compensating amount. So if you tax the people who don't have money the result is people spend less. That's bad for the Fortune 500. If you let them spend more they're happier because they're buying stuff they need and the 500 has a massive amount 1 trillion extra spending that just didn't exist. So my question is is that better? Because from the government's perspective there would be kind of out of the business of Social Security. They might be still managing the payments and stuff like that and policing it but it wouldn't be part of the budget so it wouldn't be something you paid and it wouldn't be something that the government took from your salary and gave to the retirement. Now it would have to be adjusted for the fact that there are more retirees and everything else but my main question is this. If you look at all the pluses and minuses it's the same amount of money that goes to the retirees but since the stock you collect would especially if you built up 5 to 10 years of these collections the stock you collect would go up on its own and you're not giving it out the same day that you're getting it with so you would have the possibility that if you collected a few trillion the several trillion could sit there gaining just as things gain and then you're basically keeping up with inflation and better.

So I do not claim that I've thought of everything and these are all good ideas. This is more of a buy Greenland idea. So you see what I'm doing. This is a buy Greenland. This is the external Revenue Service. It's the same persuasion. First I'm going to make you think well maybe it's a thing and then you'll say what are the pluses and the minuses and then we'll have a productive conversation. Eventually smarter people will get involved a lot smarter than me and then they'll decide if that's good or bad. But you're not going to have that conversation and it won't remind you of a better one unless you first say huh I wonder if that's a thing. Is that a thing? And it could be that you know it turns into some hybrid where you get stuck sometimes instead of payments maybe you can opt in that sort of thing. Who knows. But first just imagine that it's a thing that you could get rid of the Social Security tax and you might do something that's some kind of an equivalent with the Fortune 500.

Oh here's the part I forgot to tell you that's actually very important. Do you know why companies like to get into Fortune 500? It's because their stock goes up. Once you're in the 500 you have an enduring systemic advantage over everybody who's not in the top 500 because the big funds all buy the top 500. So the moment your stock goes into it every stock index fund buys that and your price goes up in theory. So why does the 500 and first company get none of that benefit? Is that fair? So taxing the Fortune 500 you're basically taking from them only the unfair advantage they get by being in the top 500. So do Democrats hate that? No we all kind of hate that the elites have special privileges we don't. Being in the top 500 is a special privilege for a company. It's not like other things. So if the only thing you're doing is modifying this special privilege so it's a little closer to other companies that doesn't feel unfair. And especially since the Fortune 500 gets the most benefit from anything that juices the economy in a legitimate way. So it's a surprisingly robust idea isn't it? I don't think I've got the math right and I've probably forgotten some things but the funny part is it's not instantly rejectable. Doesn't mean it's good. I would be very surprised if it's a clean good idea but I added it to the mix trying to be helpful.

Now I remind you one of the superpowers I claim to hold is resistance to embarrassment. So do you think I would bring this up unless I had almost complete resistance to embarrassment? Nope nope. Because I'm probably five minutes away from somebody saying ah you idiot you forgot X and then I'm going to say oh man you're right I totally forgot X. Will I be embarrassed? Not even a l