Normally Podcast: Immigration Reality Checks, Exit Tax Panic & the Collapse of Blue-State Economics
4/16/202631 mincomplete
0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.
0:02Guaranteed human. I'm Carla Markowitz.
0:17How's it going, Mary Catherine?
0:19It's going all right. I took the kids on a, the two littles on a
0:23preschool field trip this morning.
0:25Nice. Where'd they go? Little walk to the library.
0:28You know, learn how to treat your books, get a little tour.
0:31I like that. Yeah. That's really cute.
0:34I missed the young years where you got to come along on field trips.
0:39They do not let you come along on field trips as they get older.
0:42Yes. Well, I have learned that having this second set of kids, as mine become
0:47tweens and push me away.
0:49Right. And teens and whatnot, that on the way home, I played my littles free
0:54bird and taught them to say, play some Skinner and yell it out the window.
0:58Uh -huh. And they were really game for it, whereas my 10 and 12 -year
1:01-old would be like, what are we doing now?
1:04I remember teaching that very important lesson to my children as well and to my
1:09husband, who I'd never heard of it.
1:10Like, I was like, yeah, you have to scream out free bird at random shows
1:14that are not Lynyrd Skynyrd.
1:17Play some Skinnerd! Yeah. My four -year -old, very convincing.
1:22She's got it in her soul.
1:24Good. Yeah. It's really, it's an important trait to have.
1:27So I'm going to Buck Sexton's having a book party tonight in South Florida.
1:34His book, Manufacturing Delusion, New York Times bestseller.
1:38It's really good. Like, I can't tell you I finished it.
1:41I'm about halfway through, which for me is like a miracle because I never get
1:45to read. I did it.
1:46But it's really good. It's very, very well written.
1:49You can completely hear Buck in it.
1:51You know, like those political books you read and you can't hear the author at
1:55all. It just sounds like AI, but before AI was really a thing.
1:59You could hear Buck's, like, turn of phrases and just the way he speaks.
2:05It's excellent. Manufacturing Delusions, people.
2:07Very nice. Get it. Manufacturing Delusion.
2:11I'm excited to check out that book.
2:13We have, speaking of delusions.
2:17Let's hear about delusions. We have some immigration check -ins because the thing about the
2:24immigration narrative is that if you don't check back on every story, you're going to
2:29miss some pretty major developments because there is a tendency of the press, which is
2:34very, like, basically pro -open borders, to say that any pickup of any person is
2:40some huge violation. As you know, Kilmer Obrego -Gracia has, like, a year and a
2:46half of due process now going on.
2:48As did Maghoud Khalil. And in this update, we have appeals court orders judge to
2:58end contempt investigation of Trump administration deportation flights.
3:02So this is a year ago about when the Trump administration sent some Venezuelan immigrants,
3:09migrants out of the country, and they were illegally here.
3:13And basically there was a fight over when they needed to come back because the
3:18judge, Boasberg, who's a D .C.
3:20judge, decided that they needed to come back.
3:22And whether the administration had violated a court order when they continued in flight out
3:29to wherever they sent them, well, this decision, this, he then decided to hold them
3:37in contempt and to do this criminal contempt investigation.
3:41And a higher court says, the legal error at the heart of these criminal contempt
3:45proceedings demonstrates why further investigation by the district court is an abuse of discretion, one
3:50of the judges wrote. Criminal contempt is available only for the violation of order that
3:54is clear and specific. Boasberg's March 2025 order did not clearly and specifically bar the
3:59government from transferring plaintiffs into Salvador in custody.
4:03The ACLU vows to continue fighting this.
4:06I love that the ACLU is on this, huh?
4:08Just like they actively fought for all of us during COVID, remember?
4:11Mm -hmm. I do remember very, very well.
4:14Yeah. So that didn't work out for Boasberg, as several of his orders have not.
4:20Right. And it will go to a higher court again.
4:23So it's a bit of a white pill, as the kids say, because it's a
4:27three -judge panel and they're in D .C., this U .S.
4:30Court of Appeals. You kind of don't think they're going to vote in the direction
4:34of Trump no matter what.
4:36And the fact that they did is, look, it's encouraging.
4:39It means that there are some judges out there that are not going to let
4:44their political opinions sway their, you know, decisions.
4:47So, white pill. I like it.
4:51And also, again, I want to be careful of violating people's civil rights.
4:57And also, not every single illegal immigrant needs an expedited, to -the -top, super ridiculously
5:09thorough three -year process before we can get them out of the country.
5:14That is not a workable situation.
5:16That doesn't make any sense.
5:17Frankly, many of the people who have gotten their cases heard way up high and
5:22quickly get better service in the U .S.
5:26I'm just - justice system than Americans do.
5:28Right. It's using our system against us, really.
5:32It's saying, like, you have this system that we're going to completely jam up with
5:37these cases. And again, the idea that every person who entered illegally during the Biden
5:43years should have their day in court is it's going to take, you know, decades.
5:47And that's entirely the point.
5:50By the way, the tell is that at the end of the line, like when
5:53Kilmer Arbery Garcia has had due process, like every single kind you could possibly imagine,
5:58because he already had tons of process before they tried to get him out.
6:02After another year of due process, the people who want open borders are still like,
6:07no, you can't. Yeah, you can't.
6:09You can't. I feel like we can't.
6:12Yeah, it's not. It's actually not the due process that they have a problem with.
6:15It's the policy of not having open borders.
6:17And it always bothered me so much.
6:20And it continues to bother me that Democrats largely agree with open borders, but could
6:25never, ever run on it.
6:27And so they do it this way.
6:28It's like, have some, you know, I'm not going to say, you know, the male
6:33anatomy, but run on what you actually believe.
6:37It just always seems like Democrats run to their right and Republicans also run to
6:43their right and everybody governs to the left.
6:45Yes, it's annoying. Another great update.
6:49Do you remember the story about an Illinois woman who claimed she was detained by
6:54ICE for 43 hours? And she's a she's a U .S.
6:58citizen. So we were like, OK, I'm listening.
7:01Yeah. Tell me what happened.
7:02Yeah. Well, an Illinois woman who claimed she was detained by ICE for nearly two
7:07days was actually relaxing at a hotel getting spa treatments, according to a one million
7:11dollar defamation suit filed by a county sheriff.
7:14U .S. citizen Sonny Nakvi, 28, gained national attention last month when she and a
7:19band of supporters, including Cook County, Illinois Commissioner Kevin Morrison, publicly insisted she was unlawfully
7:25detained by ICE officers for roughly 43 hours.
7:28But no, it turns out they have surveillance of her in a hotel.
7:36But that they had to go through all of this to prove that this woman
7:39was lying and trying to say that ICE is detaining American citizens.
7:43I remember the story so well, because I remember all the people on my Facebook
7:46feed who fell for it.
7:47And look, they're detaining American citizens now.
7:50And I have like, you know, acquaintances and friends who are like, I travel with
7:53a passport now because of this kind of thing.
7:56And it's like, you really don't have to actually.
7:59So. Yes. Miss Nakvi departed CBP within 90 minutes of her arrival in the United
8:03States, DHS wrote at the time.
8:06And it looks like there is evidence that she checked into the Hampton Inn and
8:10Suites in Rosemont, Illinois. I mean, you could do a little better with the spa
8:15if you're already faking being detained.
8:19I don't know that I would go to a Hampton's Inn.
8:23Yes. But all right. All right.
8:25You know, you and I can definitely pick a different spa to pretend to have,
8:30you know, been detained to.
8:32Yes. They also obtained texts from her to someone else.
8:36So she may have been spying not at the hotel because I agree with you,
8:39Hampton. It would be a weird choice.
8:40May I use your card to order some food?
8:42She asked someone during these 43 hours.
8:45Going to check out the gym in like five, she texts someone.
8:48May I use your card to pay my spa lady?
8:51These are all during the period in which she's supposed to be detained, apparently.
8:56You know, with all the crime documentaries, people still don't know how to like really
9:01commit crimes. They just put everything in a text.
9:06The whole thing where you shouldn't put these things in writing has escaped two generations
9:11of America. It's baffling because you feel like they should know by now, but they
9:15still don't. They just don't.
9:17Right. She's a 28 -year -old woman.
9:18You know, she watches True Crime, girl.
9:20Come on. Right. And she's wearing the same clothes in the reunification photos that went
9:28public as she is in the hotel wandering around, seemingly not being detained.
9:32So look, ma 'am, it's just always worth checking in on these things.
9:36I have another update, by the way, from Fairfax County, where if you'll remember an
9:40adult, if you guys have, I can't remember if we've addressed this in the show,
9:43but an adult illegal immigrant who is enrolled in Fairfax County schools at a high
9:48school had been accused by some, I believe, about a dozen female students of groping
9:53them in pretty serious ways in the hallways.
9:57And of course, in Fairfax County, because we have a Soros -funded lefty prosecutor, Steve
10:02Descano, who doesn't like to prosecute people, particularly illegal immigrants because they might face deportation
10:08and ICE consequences for that.
10:10They, of course, uh, like didn't really try to get him in trouble, downgraded his,
10:16uh, accusations or charges. And then, um, he's going to be like, just doing his
10:22thing again. That's horrific, actually.
10:26Yep. This is, uh, this is the place that you pay all your tax money
10:30for. If you break the law to come here and then you break some more
10:33laws, you're treated better than somebody who's from here.
10:37That's... And the local reporter, Nick Manok, uh, also dug up on Descano's website an
10:42explicit expression of that. He said on the, on the site, he's since wiped it
10:47clean. He said on the site, it is not a fair adjudication, uh, in our
10:52justice system. So... if someone faces more consequences due to their immigration status because of
11:00the other crime they committed.
11:01And therefore, because of that, he cuts back on the punishing of the crime.
11:06You know, I'm not going to say it every episode, but if you wanted to
11:09move to Florida, we are here for you, Mary Catherine.
11:14It keeps happening. Oof. You know who else is really good at following up on
11:21the stories is Bill Malugin.
11:22I just I think he deserves all the shout outs.
11:25He's always on top of these stories.
11:27He's never letting them just slide.
11:28And he's always like, remember this big story?
11:31This is how it turned out.
11:32I think he's just excellent.
11:34Yes, he does a great job.
11:36He and Griff Jenkins were all over the Biden era and they have continued to
11:40follow this. They know exactly how these things happen and what the really bad stories
11:45look like. And by the way, I saw a stat the other day.
11:48This was from Cato. So they were reporting it as a negative.
11:52But it's the number of asylum seekers coming to the border because of the policy
11:58which has changed from literally anyone.
12:02Yeah. Yeah. Too much more restrictive.
12:04From come on in to don't.
12:06Like, yeah. That number is way, way down.
12:09Which, again, I am somebody in the past who would have been like, yes, asylum
12:13seekers, I want to be able to take them.
12:15But when you abuse the asylum system, as Biden did to make it into anyone
12:20and everyone, I then become much more skeptical and say, hey, as Trump might say,
12:25let's stop while we figure out what the hell is going on.
12:30Yeah. Yeah. You should have a process.
12:32It's really not that complicated.
12:33I, you know, I was that asylum seeker.
12:36There was a process in place.
12:37We had to do certain things.
12:39I mean, I don't think that's a crazy thing to ask for.
12:41And the thing is that that position, our position where, you know, asylum seekers should
12:46be able to apply for, you know, to be refugees in the United States, that's
12:51such an unpopular position now because of the last few years of mayhem.
12:55Americans are over it. And it's unfortunate for people who believe in legal migration.
13:00You abuse the system and people lose trust in the system and then you get
13:03backlash against the things you want.
13:04I feel like we've seen this somewhere before.
13:07Indeed. All right. We're going to take a short break and be right back with
13:11more on normally. We are back on normally where a growing number of blue states
13:20are trying to charge wealth exit taxes.
13:24And it's really mind boggling because, again, I think we've seen this somewhere before the
13:30whole putting up a wall so people can't leave.
13:33It feels very familiar, actually.
13:36California has this billionaire tax act that is potentially going to be on the ballot.
13:41We've talked about this one before because it's such a crazy tax.
13:45It would be a retroactive 5 % tax on your total net worth, not on
13:50your income, on your total net worth.
13:52So it could be your house is your total net worth.
13:54It could be anything and you would have to pay 5 % of that.
13:57Some people wouldn't have the money to pay that because their money is in other
14:00things. So a lot of billionaires are making their way to the exit.
14:05California has lost a couple of really big name billionaires like Sergey Brin and some
14:09other ones. And the thing is that they don't even know if this is going
14:14to get on the ballot.
14:15And then if it does get on the ballot, they don't know that the governor
14:17is not going to veto.
14:17But as we've talked about on the show, these people don't trust their fellow voters
14:23not to get it on the ballot and they don't trust their politicians not to
14:27enact it. So they're leaving, multimillionaires are leaving too because they understand what's going to
14:32happen. As soon as the billionaires are out the door, who's 5 % are they
14:35going to try to take?
14:35It's going to be the next tax bracket down.
14:38Now, Washington state, they passed a 9 .9 % tax on incomes over a million
14:45dollars. And they're now saying that maybe they're going to have this kind of wealth
14:51exit tax. And it happens, you know, happens right around the time that Starbucks CEO
14:56Howard Schultz, he had an estimated net worth of over $3 billion.
15:00He announced his move to Florida, which a lot of these guys are doing.
15:05And I'm always here to say, please vote correctly when you get here.
15:09You did this to your own state and maybe don't do this to our state.
15:15Yeah. To your point, Carol, if you are needing to economically checkpoint Charlie, your people,
15:20and not let them escape the burning economic situation you have created, there's something wrong.
15:29You should look at yourself.
15:30You should look at your policies.
15:32You should not look at the people who are leaving and blame them.
15:35And this seems to be a frequent left -wing contention.
15:40There can't possibly be anything wrong with what we're doing.
15:43Like on the date when I someday moved to Florida, no one in Northern Virginia
15:49will be like, did we get it wrong?
15:54No one thinks that. They think, how can we get them on the way out
15:58if they're going to leave?
15:58Right. And the thing that's so funny to me is that, as we mentioned before,
16:04Hochul in particular in New York treated these people and treats them while they live
16:09there with such open contempt.
16:12And then you're surprised when they want to leave.
16:15And then as they're leaving, you remind them, yes, we hate you.
16:20Right. And we want your stuff.
16:21But once you've left, she's like, you owe it to us to come back.
16:26And everyone's like, I'm never coming back.
16:27What are you even talking about?
16:29I don't understand how any of this is constitutional.
16:31I don't get it. I'm not a lawyer.
16:34Therefore, I only understand the big picture of it, that taking somebody's percentage of their
16:40net worth in general, I don't understand how that's constitutional because it's not realized gains.
16:46It's already been taxed when it was your income.
16:50I just don't get that at all.
16:52But then also confiscating money from people who want to move interstate just makes no
16:58sense to me. It's like it's like an estate tax, except you haven't died.
17:02You're just going to a different state.
17:04And the estate tax also is unfair because all of that income has been taxed
17:08as well before you die.
17:10But again, getting you on the way out, it's just, you know, the way out
17:14the mortal coil versus the way out of the state.
17:16Yeah. But I just at some point, can't people see how much their governments hate
17:22them? Yeah. Like in a I experienced this during COVID where it was just like,
17:30wow, this school board really is not just not helping parents, is actively opposed to
17:40parents. They dislike us. They don't want to have anything to do with us.
17:47And in fact, we'll just like our children delivered onto them for the indoctrination.
17:51I mean, it's just like, yeah, it's I mean, to get no services for what
17:58you're getting is, you know, and it's an added bonus of that.
18:01The other thing is that, of course, these people who are leaving, they don't just
18:06leave. They take their companies with them.
18:08So you're not just losing one rich guy.
18:11You're potentially losing much more.
18:13In an article about Howard Schultz leaving for Florida, they say that he is moving
18:18his entire company out of state.
18:20I don't know if that's true because I've only seen it in this one news
18:24piece. But, you know, that easily could be true.
18:27Other high profile companies relocating.
18:30ExxonMobil, apparently moving from New Jersey to Texas.
18:33Uber from California, also in Texas.
18:36Yamaha Motor from California to Georgia.
18:38And then JP Morgan, CEO.
18:40I mean, they haven't moved yet, but he keeps taking shots at New York and
18:44being like, we could move because you definitely could.
18:48He made the comment, the truth is that while New York City has much going
18:52for it, particularly for financial companies because of extraordinary talent, it also has the highest
18:57city and state corporate taxes and the highest individual income and state taxes.
19:01It's doable to move a financial firm.
19:04People are doing it. I mean, West Palm is becoming a financial hub in Florida.
19:11These states are really going to lose out.
19:13And again, for me, I'm welcoming to all these companies that are coming, but understand
19:19why you left. You did not leave because they got to left.
19:23They were that the whole time.
19:26They just had no power.
19:27So make your decisions. Vote correctly.
19:31Don't do here what you did there.
19:33Yep. Because eventually there will be nowhere to escape to.
19:37That's really the issue. But I do, I think, and every time Mamdani talks about
19:41it, you can tell there is this cognitive dissonance where they know they need the
19:45money from these icky billionaires and millionaires.
19:49They're like, I know I need your money.
19:50Right. But somehow in their heads, that money simply is and was stolen from someone
19:57else or ill -gotten in some way.
19:59Look, all companies have some sort of ethical lapse at some point.
20:02I'm not arguing that they're perfect.
20:04Sure. But this money isn't ill -gotten.
20:07Jeff Bezos has a bunch of money because he gives a bunch of services to
20:11a bunch of people. And I would wager that everyone who complains about him has
20:14in the last three days gotten something from him.
20:16Right. That's right. He revolutionized the way you live your life and can get products
20:20at your home. So that's why he has that money.
20:23To Mamdani, who grew up with wealth from his parents and doesn't really think about
20:28how it takes risks and smarts and real bravery to create.
20:34These things. He just thinks it's there.
20:36Right. Like it's there and now it's ours.
20:39Right. It's there and now it's ours, just like mommy's money was.
20:41And that's not how it works.
20:42Yeah. But that whole step.
20:44Yeah. He actually talked about Margaret Thatcher when talking about his new city run grocery
20:49store that's going to cost like 10 times the amount of any other grocery store.
20:52And it's interesting because, you know, Margaret Thatcher was the daughter of a grocer.
20:56He's talking about somebody who actually understands the problems and how to solve them.
21:01And he said something like, you know, it takes a socialist to clean up the
21:05problems. It's like, I've never seen that happen yet.
21:08It's actually never happened. But OK, if you say so, if at some point he
21:14can stand up and say, look, this bag of rice costs less at this grocery
21:19store than at this government grocery store, then the capitalist one.
21:23Let me just inform you that that government grocery store doesn't have to pay rent.
21:29There's a huge part of its operating costs that are made by us.
21:34And it's going to cost $30 million for one grocery store.
21:38Everyone who's ever lived in New York is like, how is that even possible?
21:42It's you can buy a grocery store for like $5 million.
21:45What's happening here? James Morrow, he's.
21:48James Morrow, he's. James Morrow, he's.
21:48Yeah. an excellent guy at the Daily Telegraph, he commented about that.
21:53Years from now, there'll be an iconic photograph of Mom Donnie visiting a supermarket in
21:57the American heartland being stunned by the selection of goods.
22:01It's very funny. I kind of can't get enough of these.
22:06Jesse Kelly is like, I'm legit so excited to watch this whole predictable story play
22:10out. It's like watching Old Yeller for the 20th time.
22:13You know it's coming, but you're still watching.
22:17Oh, by the way, free buses, we're informed, will not happen this year.
22:21My friend Kelly and I always say the problem with the invisible hand is that
22:25it's simply too invisible because all these idiot leftists are like, I've got an idea.
22:31Can we orchestrate a way to get a bunch of products into one store that
22:35everyone needs and have like the right amounts and price them at the right point?
22:40It's like, yes, we have a system for that.
22:42Capitalism does it almost magically over here and you're going to try to do it
22:47with your dumb brain and it's not going to work.
22:49It's not going to work.
22:50I was actually thinking about this.
22:52There's a lot of issues that I would care if my kids were on the
22:55opposite side of me about, but the one that really would bug me would be
22:59if they were anti -capitalist because it would show that our whole education was for
23:05naught. Again, I wouldn't love if they opposed other things that I care about, but
23:11that being anti -capitalist would be like, oh, you're stupid.
23:15That would be hard to swallow.
23:17And not that I should show too much sympathy for those who don't understand capitalism
23:21while living at the benefit of it at every second of their lives, but I
23:25am shocked by how little emphasis is given in our society, in education, particularly for
23:32young people about any of this, just the underpinning of literally everything we have.
23:38And people are like, oh no, I've never thought about how Velveeta ends up on
23:42the shelf. Well, you should think about that.
23:44And I will recommend once again, both the TV show and the books, the Tuttle
23:47Twins books, because my kids run through them and they have learned very important concepts.
23:53And I try to teach them as we're out shopping, when they have questions about
23:57why things have prices, aha, price is a signal, children.
24:01Let me tell you about it.
24:03Another good one is iPencil.
24:06It's like, you could watch a short video about how the pencil is made and
24:09how many different people are involved in it and why the government couldn't do it.
24:14Yeah. Shout out Milton Friedman.
24:17Oh yeah, Milton. We love him.
24:18His old famous series, is it Free to Choose, I believe, starts with iPencil, which
24:25is a really helpful and very simple way to understand what you would think all
24:29of these Ivy League educated people would have heard, that you can't just magically recreate
24:34what capitalism creates by yourself.
24:36They try it every time.
24:37They keep just trying it.
24:39Sigh. It's like old yeller.
24:42We're going to take a short break and be right back with more on Normally.
24:49All right, guys, we're back on Normally with some fertility talk again, because we like
24:54kids and we like families and we want a lot of them and somebody flagged
25:00for me the Institute of Family Studies, who I follow and get a lot of
25:04interesting information from, but they flagged a Bethany Mandel column that noted their research on
25:11the gap in childbearing between liberals and conservatives has grown dramatically over the past several
25:15decades to the point where it now represents one of the most striking demographic divides
25:19in the country. And the divergence in, like, red state kids versus blue state kids
25:27or ideological parents having more kids than blue is quite astonishing.
25:32I mean, that blue line just going down, down, down, and the red line either
25:37steady or quite a bit up in some cases.
25:41Right. And the question becomes, do conservatives have more children because they're conservative or do
25:48you become conservative when you have children?
25:50It's sort of the line of, like, which came first.
25:53It's a chicken and an egg issue.
25:54Right. But also there was this thing.
25:57Do you remember the Roe effect?
25:59James Toronto coined it in the early 2000s about how it was liberal women having
26:04abortions at a much higher rate than conservative women.
26:07Right. And he was like, they're going to have kids that also lean conservative.
26:11So, you know, it doesn't always work out that way, but it's the trend line,
26:16right? A liberal parent will have liberal children.
26:19A conservative parent will have conservative children.
26:21And you could see it in, you know, happening in action 20 years or so
26:25later. Well, I think a lack of children.
26:28So if you grow up in a liberal area where everyone has one or two
26:32kids, right, it's going to seem very outside the norm for someone to have even
26:36three or four. Four would be crazy.
26:38People look at us around here like we're crazy.
26:41But because of that, it's a reinforcing cycle because the fewer kids that are around,
26:48the less comfortable you are doing more with your kids because people are less used
26:53to having kids around. And then it becomes harder to be a parent, which means
26:56you don't want to be a parent four times over.
26:58It really reinforces itself. This is something that, you know, I think companies, Disney in
27:04the past has dealt with a bunch of adult patrons at Disney parks and they
27:09want adult patrons, but they also are trying to be careful of the fact that
27:13if you diminish the number of kids, the number families will go down because fewer
27:18kids equals less easy to have kids in that space.
27:22Right. Right. And so I think that happens in communities and conservatives surround themselves often
27:29by communities and people who have more kids who make it easier to have more
27:33kids around. Yeah. You could see it in Europe.
27:36You know, the fact that hotel rooms are really not designed for you to come
27:39there with kids or everything there is not really designed for you to have more
27:44than one child. You could also see it.
27:46You know, there's a story right now.
27:47Hampshire College is closing its doors.
27:51Hampshire is like I actually visited it when I was touring colleges.
27:54It's like the super hippie school in rural Massachusetts.
27:59And it was I mean, it looked like the 1960s, even in the 1990s.
28:03Super, super liberal school. No grades.
28:06I mean, it's you know, it's that kind of school.
28:08And it's like nobody's talking about the fact that it could it be that there
28:12just aren't enough liberal kids to go there anymore because the birth rate has fallen
28:17so far and no conservative is like pushing their kid to go to Hampshire.
28:21So they're treating themselves out of things that they like.
28:26Well, and I've seen people writing on X sad about how their kids don't have
28:33cousins because only one of the kids in a family of two or three ended
28:38up having kids. And so every family function you go to ends up being harder
28:43because you're the only one with young kids.
28:45You don't have that passel of cousins, which I'm very thankful that we have for
28:49our kids to run around with.
28:52And the thing that's challenging about this is that many European countries have implemented many,
28:56many government programs to make it, quote, easier to have more kids.
29:00And the fact is that a lot of the programs and the subsidies don't do
29:04the trick. Bethany has a great line, which is if there's a path forward, it
29:09begins with recognizing that the fertility crisis is not just about what people can afford,
29:14but about what they believe is worth doing.
29:17Yeah. And that's that's the part where I try to help because like I'm I
29:21try to be a PR campaign for like this is very fun.
29:24I'm enjoying myself. Best, actually.
29:26It's so good. Do you remember there was a thing in Spain gave men extended
29:32paternity leaves to increase their birth rate?
29:35And it had the opposite effect because men were like, this is really hard to
29:39go back to work, which listen, there's also a difference between men and women.
29:45Yes. You know, men having an extended paternity leave is not the same as a
29:49woman having an extended maternity leave.
29:51It is true. But yeah, worth doing.
29:54I think that's the that's the thing is that you and again, I think during
29:57COVID and I learned how valuable cultural norms like going to restaurants that are open.
30:06That's important. Going to restaurants that are open like that.
30:10Those are important things to movie theaters.
30:13And everybody kind of thought you could pull the plug and just plug everything back
30:16in. But if you lose a habit, that's hard to get back.
30:21And if the habit is procreation, that's going to be pretty bad for your society.
30:26Yeah. So if only somebody had known.
30:29Yeah. Yeah. I feel like somebody had said something.
30:35That's right. Have more babies.
30:37Have babies. We will applaud you all the way and pray for you if you're
30:41not there yet. Because those who want to I want them to be able to.
30:45Absolutely. Thanks for joining us on normally normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays and you can
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30:53Get in touch with us at normally the pod at gmail .com.
30:56Thanks for listening. And when things get weird, act normally.