It was recently announced by Coca-Cola that it would start using real sugar in its drinks.  High-fructose corn syrup has been used in Coke in the United States since the 1980s when sugar was abandoned.

The MAHA movement is celebrating this because real cane sugar is believed to be far less harmful than high-fructose corn syrup.  And, of course, Trump is taking credit for this change.

It is a bit odd coming from Trump who likes to drink Diet Coke.  The artificial sweetener is probably even more harmful than what is found in regular Coke.

Still, it is a mild win in the health movement because it means Coke might be less unhealthy now.  But even more, it shows that there are more people aware of what is being put in their food and drinks.

While Trump, the individual, can chalk this up as a win, we would be remiss to point out that this is a government created problem in the first place.

Subsidies and Taxes

While the tariff man celebrates his victory, maybe someone should tell him that the U.S. government has caused this unhealthy practice of using high-fructose corn syrup in lieu of cane sugar.

First, the U.S. government subsidizes the corn industry.

Second, the U.S. government has protectionist tariffs on sugar imports from other countries.

This makes it cheaper to use corn syrup and more expensive to use sugar.  This is a major reason that so many companies use the less healthy high-fructose corn syrup instead of real sugar.

Instead of talking to Coca-Cola about using real sugar, maybe Trump should have cut the sugar tariffs to zero.  Instead, he has been too busy hiking tariffs all over the place, which will just cause more distortions in the marketplace.

These are the subtle, yet real, consequences of government interference in the marketplace, including with tariffs.  Tariffs are taxes.  When you tax something, it gives you distortions.

Who Gets the Credit?

While Trump takes credit for this switch to real sugar, we have to consider the cause and effect here.

Did Coca-Cola switch back to real sugar because of Trump?  Perhaps that is part of it because they don’t want to be on the bad side of Uncle Sam, just like you don’t want to be on the bad side of the Mafia.

Aside from this, companies need to make a profit by pleasing their customers.  The reason we have a MAHA movement isn’t just because of RFK Jr.  It is because there are many millions of Americans who have become more aware of health and medicine, which includes what we consume.

This move by Coca-Cola is a move to satisfy consumer demand.  Sure, many in the MAHA movement will never drink Coke or soda in general because there are healthier things to drink.  But there are also many who want to enjoy the occasional soda without feeling like they are poisoning their body.

Excess sugar is not good either, but it generally isn’t really bad for most people in moderate amounts.

The good news isn’t that Trump got Coca-Cola to start using real sugar again.  The good news is that companies will feel compelled to start responding to the growing number of Americans who are aware of what they are consuming.

Donald Trump has almost become unhinged at this point.  And that is grading on a Trump curve.  When he calls his base stupid and says he doesn’t want their support if they are questioning his Jeffrey Epstein narrative, then something has gone very wrong for Trump.

Even many of Trump’s hardcore supporters are not buying Trump’s Epstein narrative.  This was an issue that Trump and his son called attention to many times before Trump became president for his second term.  And now he wants to pretend like there is nothing there and that it is another Democratic hoax.

Trump thought he could be clever by lumping the Epstein issue in with the Russia hoax, but most of his base just isn’t buying this lie.  With the Russia hoax, that was orchestrated by the Democratic establishment and pushed by the establishment media.  It was pushed relentlessly.

The Democrats were never obsessing over Epstein.  It was Republicans who were bringing up the issue and demanding answers and accountability.  The Epstein story is very real.  The only hoax is the coverup.

It is funny that many Democrats are now trying to call attention to the Epstein story because they see it as a liability to Trump.  They say that Trump won’t release the Epstein list or files because it implicates Trump.  But if this were the case, don’t you think that Biden and company would have released that portion of it?  They did everything else they could to damage Trump.

So, right now, both the Democrats and Trump are highly discredited.  The most likely reason Trump is trying to drop the whole Epstein thing down the memory hole is because Epstein was connected to the deep state and intelligence.  It is actually the same reason that Biden and company didn’t release anything significant.

The People Who Want to Forget About Epstein

Even though you will find many Democrats on Facebook or other social media trying to tie Epstein to Trump, there isn’t an obsession over this in the establishment media.  And it isn’t just because they are covering for Bill Clinton and some Hollywood celebrities.

Again, this is more about Epstein running some kind of blackmail operation.

It is also interesting how many of the Israeli firsters like Ben Shapiro are going out of their way to defend Trump and assure us that we should trust Kash Patel and Pam Bondi.  Whenever Shapiro obsesses over something, it usually has to do with defending or covering for the Israeli state.  It makes you wonder about Epstein’s ties.

And to be sure, Ben Shapiro was not a Trump supporter when Trump was delivering a quasi-peace message. Shapiro has been an enthusiastic Trump supporter for the last few months because Trump has bombed Iran and has done whatever his master Netanyahu has told him to do.  If Trump makes a turn back to a less interventionist foreign policy or makes any suggestion that the U.S. should cut funding for the Israeli state, Shapiro will be against Trump again.

As for the average Democrat on the street who is calling attention to the Epstein story, they think they are being clever because they see a fracture within the MAGA movement.  They do not understand that they are helping to undermine the deep state.  They think they are just undermining Trump.

The Russia Hoax

Now that much of Trump’s base is not happy with him and calling into question his anti-deep state credentials, we get this from Tulsi Gabbard.  As the Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard has been doing her own little investigation of the Russia collusion story that took up so much time on the establishment media airwaves during the first Trump term.

This is actually an incredible story.  Gabbard has shown a little evidence, and is claiming there is more, that Obama not only knew about the fabrication of the Russia collusion story, but he actually was one of the main people who orchestrated it.  Obama, as the sitting president in 2016, fabricated a story to try to overthrow the elected president (Trump).

Not only is that an act of treason, but it also led to much hostility with the Russian government.  If that Russia hoax had never happened, maybe Russia wouldn’t have gone to war with Ukraine.  Instead, we get all of this anti-Russia sentiment that has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths because Americans don’t want to negotiate with the Russians and are more than willing to hit them with sanctions and allow their tax money to be sent to Ukraine to perpetrate the war.

This is a big deal.  Gabbard is referring the matter to the DOJ, which includes a major criminal act by Obama.  If what Gabbard is saying is correct, then Obama should be tried for treason and should be in a jail cell for the rest of his life.  Yet, we hear almost nothing from the leftist media.

It doesn’t surprise most MAGA people or many libertarians who saw it as a hoax from the beginning.  The surprise is that any of this is coming to light.

However, if history is any guide, Obama won’t be going to jail for a single day.  We know how this stuff works in Washington DC.  Remember, Trump was laughing it up with Obama at a funeral.  It would be amazing if Obama was hauled off in handcuffs for the crimes he committed, but it is highly unlikely that anything like that will happen.

Distraction?

Tulsi Gabbard was able to come up with results from this investigation in less than 6 months being on the job.  And this crime goes back to 2016.

One question that arises is: Why didn’t anyone in the first Trump term figure this stuff out when the Russia collusion story was actually happening?

It is easier to investigate and find evidence of something that is just a couple of years old than it is when it is nine years old.  It is easier to find evidence when the story is happening.

John Ratcliffe was the Director of National Intelligence from May 2020 to January 2021 in the first Trump term, yet we got nothing from him.  He is now the Director of the CIA.

Gabbard was able to produce all of these results in less time than Ratcliffe was in office.  This doesn’t mean that Tulsi Gabbard is lying about this stuff.  It most likely means that people like Ratcliffe are part of the deep state and have little interest in rocking the boat.

At the same time, you have to wonder about the timing of this whole thing.  Trump was losing his base because of the Epstein lies, and for good reason.  This story about Obama and other deep state figures orchestrating a coup against Trump is a big story, but it is also suspicious in that it attacks the deep state.  Trump needed a story like this to assure his base that he is still with them in going after the deep state.

So, we have two things here.  The Russia hoax and the implications is a big story, especially as it relates to Obama.  It is likely true.  Yet, it is still serving as a distraction from the Epstein story.  And we can be reasonably sure that the deep state figures, especially Obama, will not be prosecuted for any crimes.

You really have to be objective if you are going to get anywhere near the truth.  You can’t figure this stuff out if you have Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) where you are obsessed with Trump and want to criticize him for everything in life.  You also can’t figure this out if you are hardcore MAGA and think Trump is some kind of savior.

You have to be able to sort through the lies and truths.  We get both from this Trump administration.

We hear that we are no longer a united country.  We hear that the American people have lost trust in their government leaders.  This is all true.  But is that a bad thing?

If we had great and benevolent leaders in government, then maybe it would be good to have some trust in them.  If we lived in a free society where virtually everyone recognized the rights of others, then perhaps it would be good to have a united country.

But we don’t have those things.  We will probably never have great and benevolent leaders.  We are lucky to get 1 in 100.  The best we can hope for is that the politicians at least pretend to favor liberty and somewhat reflect the will of the people because the people demand liberty.

Compared to What?

There are some good people out there who say we need to unite the country and that we need to restore trust in our elected officials.  They say this because they want things to get better.  It is understandable.

But given our situation, we should have a loss of trust in our government.  Think about the COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates.  Think about how often we get lied to when it comes to starting a new war.  After the 9/11 attacks, we had a very united country.  How did that work out?

We shouldn’t trust these people at all.  In fact, you should almost assume the opposite until you can personally verify the truth.

As long as we have government officials who lie, then there should be a lack of trust.  What is the alternative?  There is no alternative of having a steady stream of honest politicians.  The only alternative from what we have now would be to just go ahead and trust the politicians.  In other words, you would have to deceive yourself and believe the liars for the sake of trust and unity.  But that doesn’t seem like a good path forward.

The government has continued to grow, but at least we have people questioning the narratives now.

If you go back 30 or 40 years, you had to mostly rely on 3 or 4 television networks to watch the news.  You relied on the establishment newspapers for the articles that got printed.  Your only choice was to believe them or not believe them.  Most people believed them.  It was very difficult to find narratives that strayed far from the establishment narrative.

Now you can find information everywhere with many differing opinions and takes.  Sure, many people live in their own bubble and only read the sources they choose.  But at least everything is out there for people who are curious.  It is hard to plead ignorance these days.  With some curiosity, you should be able to see many different viewpoints on various issues.

Give Us More Loss of Trust

If we want to regain liberty and shrink the size and scope of government, then we need even more of a loss of trust of our government officials.  It can’t just mean a loss of trust in one party or the other.  It needs to be an across-the-board lack of trust.

This delegitimizes government officials, whether they are elected or not.  The state relies on our consent to survive.  If they lose the consent of a large percentage of the population, then they ultimately lose power.

This is how we move in a direction of greater liberty.  The state relies on propaganda to get the consent of the people.  If the propaganda stops working, they lose support.  This means that we gain liberty over time, regardless of who gets elected to office.

The June 2025 CPI numbers came out mostly in line with expectations.  It was up 0.3% for the month and 2.7% year-over-year.

The median CPI was also up 0.3% for June, and the year-over-year median CPI was up 3.6%.

This is probably the best-case scenario for Fed officials.  It is their Goldilocks of not too hot and not too cold.

If the price inflation numbers had come in higher, this would have signaled that it is still a major problem.  It would have been very bearish for the market, as any hope for a rate cut in the near future would have been gone.

If the price inflation numbers had come in lower, this would have been taken as a signal of a slowdown in the economy.  It would have forced the Fed’s hand to start following the ideas of Trump – mainly lower interest rates.  While investors like the idea of lower rates, they don’t want lower rates because we are looking at a major economic slowdown.

Too Hot for Consumers

Price inflation is still high for American consumers, which is basically anyone living in the United States.  Even using the Fed’s own target of 2%, it is still running high.

There is nothing magical about 2%.  It just means that the central bank wants a continuous policy of mild price inflation.  For Americans, it just means that our money gets depreciated every single year.  The same dollar buys less and less.

With the CPI running at 2.7% for the last 12 months, it means we are losing this amount of purchasing power in just one year.  And this is on top of the higher prices we are already facing from the high price inflation in the few years prior.

So, while Wall Street and the Fed can celebrate the “moderate” inflation, Americans struggling to pay their bills get to see higher bills or less stuff to purchase.  It isn’t getting any better even if the price inflation rate has come down.

Recession?

The CPI numbers aren’t telling us much about a possible recession ahead.  This is why the Fed likes it right now.

But it doesn’t mean that a recession isn’t ahead.  It just means that consumers haven’t severely reacted to the possibility yet.

The boom/ bust business cycle isn’t dead.  The Fed hasn’t finally figured out some secret formula to prevent recessions forever.

The yield curve was still inverted for 2023 and much of 2024.  It hasn’t quite fully normalized yet because the Fed is not playing Trump’s game of lowering interest rates.  This is keeping the short-term yields close to the 10-year yield.  But things can change very quickly.

At the first major sign of a recession, the Fed will capitulate.  Trump will finally get his way, and he will blame the Fed for the recession because they were too late in lowering rates.  The Fed does deserve a lot of blame for the upcoming recession, but it isn’t because they were too late in lowering rates.

Trump is a maniac with these tariffs and tariff threats.  It is causing havoc in the world economy, which is made up of 8 billion people.  The disruption is mostly behind the scenes, as businesses struggle to predict what their costs and competition will look like in a month from now and a year from now.

It seems like it is a different tariff or tariff threat every day.  We may be getting a 50% tariff on copper.  Brazil is facing stiff tariffs because Trump doesn’t like the political situation there.  Should Brazilian officials have slapped a massive tariff on the United States when Trump was on trial last year?

Trump is now threatening a 100% tariff on Russia if the war in Ukraine doesn’t end in 50 days.  Of course, there are already major sanctions on Russia.  Trump could talk to Putin and promise not to expand NATO any closer to Russia.  Trump could cut off funding to Ukraine.  But no – instead we get more tariffs.  That seems to be Trump’s solution to everything.  He thinks it is a bullying tactic, which it is, but it is a tactic that will deeply cost the American consumer.

This is one of the few promises from his campaign where Trump is delivering.  Unfortunately, it was one of the bad promises, and he is putting it on steroids.  Other than some pardons and a few executive orders, most of Trump’s good promises are out the window.

Dictatorial Power

The left likes to call Trump a dictator.  Trump is doing his best to prove the leftists correct.  The problem with the left here (there are many others) is that they are hypocritical.  They weren’t talking about dictatorial power when Biden and company implemented vaccine mandates or arbitrarily declared student loans to be forgiven.  Even if the Supreme Court did overturn some of it, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a broad overreach of power.

Harry Browne (quoting Michael Cloud) liked to say that the problem isn’t the abuse of power, it is the power to abuse.

In this case, Trump shouldn’t have the power to arbitrarily hike and lower tariffs on a whim.  The American people deservedly give low ratings to Congress, but it is still generally better when things are done through Congress as opposed to executive decrees.  At least when it goes through Congress there are competing interests and the process takes some time.

With Trump just announcing new tariffs virtually every day, it is a nightmare for business.  It is a joke when Trump defenders say that he is trying to bring back manufacturing.  With these erratic policies, it will do no such thing.

Trump announces a 50% tariff on copper.  Even if it were feasible to mine additional copper in the United States, is some company really going to invest tens of millions of dollars to explore and mine for copper?  You could start your business tomorrow, and who knows how long it will take before you actually get any copper out of the ground.  It might take years.

Meanwhile, Trump could arbitrarily just eliminate the tariffs he just imposed on copper.  You just invested tens of millions of dollars for copper mining in the U.S., and now you have to compete with copper mines throughout the world once again.

It is completely ridiculous that this one person has so much power to disrupt.  Congress should take back its authority to tax.  If Trump doesn’t obey, he should be impeached.  We know that Congress will do no such thing, just as it doesn’t do anything to stop illegally declared wars.

TACO Trump

There is an acronym now to describe Trump’s tariff policies.  It is TACO, or, Trump Always Chickens Out.

The problem with this acronym is that it challenges Trump’s manhood in a bad way.  What if he decides to fight back against this label?  That means he has to not chicken out.  It means he has to follow through with his steep tariffs.

In April, after his stupid “Liberation Day”, we got instant feedback from investors when stocks tanked.  Trump then started to walk back some of his tariffs.  Now, stocks are hitting new all-time highs.  Investors either believe TACO will continue, or they simply just don’t care about tariffs.

We are in an Everything Bubble.  Perhaps these tariffs will speed up the popping of the bubble.  Maybe they will just make life even more miserable for Americans when a recession does hit.

Since March, virtually everything that Trump has done is bad.  Why should we expect him to correct course now?

And to be clear, Trump deserves no credit if he repeals his own authoritarian edicts to impose tariffs.  It is just like he doesn’t deserve any credit for getting a ceasefire in Iran.  No ceasefire would have been necessary if he hadn’t helped start the war there.

Trump has lost the game on foreign policy.  He has lost the game on civil liberties.  He has lost the game on Epstein, which is actually turning some of his base against him.  Now he is going to lose the game on the economy.

He is almost unhinged at this point, and he is so unpredictable, it isn’t good for wealth building.  Trump is doing everything he can to prove the left correct.

The Trump administration has assured us that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide and there is no Epstein client list.  It is especially remarkable coming from Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, and Pam Bondi.

The first two were questioning the whole Epstein story before they were part of the Trump administration.  Meanwhile, Bondi had previously said that she had a list on her desk ready to be reviewed.

Kash Patel was more recently on Joe Rogan saying that Epstein committed suicide and that we should just trust him on this.  He gave us his version of, “Would I lie?”

Actually, yes, Kash Patel, you would lie.  Why am I just supposed to take your word for it?  Just because you once seemed like a disruptor of the establishment?  I can think of a lot of reasons why you would be lying.  It tends to happen to people when they get in positions of power.

Ben Shapiro is telling us that we either need to believe Patel and Bongino, or we need to trust the conspiracies of Alex Jones.  He said those are the only two choices, although I can certainly think of other choices.  Shapiro always seems to have a strong opinion about an issue if it has anything to do with Israel.  It makes you wonder why he has so much interest in assuring us that Epstein committed suicide and didn’t have a client list.

Trump is Pathetic

This was a new low for Donald Trump, also known as Bibi’s B**ch.  As he was hosting Netanyahu, Trump’s team was asked by a reporter about the Epstein files.  In fact, the reporter actually mentioned Alex Acosta, who was Trump’s Labor Secretary in his first term.

(When Acosta was asked about giving a lenient plea deal to Epstein the first time, Acosta said that Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave him alone.  Why has Congress never pulled Acosta in front of them and asked him who told him that?)

The reporter asked this question to Pam Bondi in a sloppy way, but it was still asked.  Before Bondi could answer, Trump stepped in and gave a non-answer.  He didn’t address the issue of Epstein belonging to intelligence at all.

Trump said that this was old news, even though it was less than two days before that his own administration had declared that there was no Epstein client list and the case was essentially closed.

Trump also pathetically said, in effect, how dare you ask that question when we just had tragic flooding in Texas.  It almost makes you wonder if his administration dropped this news in tandem with a tragedy happening in the country on purpose.

Of course, Trump had plenty of time to host his master, Bibi, at the White House.  He had plenty of time to field other questions not related to flooding in Texas.  This was Trump’s pathetic attempt to silence any more questions on the matter and to move on.  He really came off as a total sleaze bag in his response.

After Trump gave his non-response, Pam Bondi gave a more detailed response that tried to address some of the criticisms that have gone her way.  She really didn’t do herself any favors.  She came across as weak, and she came across as a big, fat liar.

It Isn’t Just the Child Trafficking

The Trump administration is now lying to us about Epstein’s whole operation.  They are now saying that they found all of this inappropriate video of children, but they are only implicating Epstein.  This is really the first time that anyone in power is implicating Epstein as some kind of pedophile as opposed to running a trafficking ring and possibly a blackmail operation.

Many people who question the Epstein story think that it is being kept secret because there are some big names in Hollywood and politics that would be exposed.  And perhaps that is part of the story.

Many people on the left think that Trump was doing inappropriate things with underage girls, and that is the reason that this is being covered up.  Of course, the left has been out to get Trump for 10 years now and have no problem making stuff up about him.  If the Biden handlers had evidence of Trump doing inappropriate things with underage girls, wouldn’t they have released that evidence?

I can’t say for sure, but I actually don’t think Trump did do inappropriate things with underage girls.  I’m not saying it is impossible, but I don’t think that gives an adequate explanation of what is happening here.

The reason that Trump and his people are covering this whole thing up is because of what Acosta said many years ago.  Epstein belonged to intelligence.  He was likely running a major blackmail operation.  The biggest question, perhaps, is whether it was Israeli intelligence, the CIA, or both.

With how vocal Ben Shapiro is on this issue, it would seem to implicate the Israeli government.  Given that the worst things Trump does while in office are usually a result of following the directives of Netanyahu, it seems to implicate the Israeli government.  But it also isn’t hard to imagine that the CIA was part of the whole thing.

This is one of the ways that the deep state lives on.  If you get the most powerful people in a position where they can be blackmailed, then you never have to worry about them disrupting the system too much.  It doesn’t mean they will never do something right or do something that is anti-establishment.  But on the really big things, like supporting certain wars and interventions, they can always count on the status quo being continued.

Intelligence (Israel or the U.S.) may have something on Trump.  It doesn’t necessarily mean the worst, but it could just be some embarrassing things.  Whatever it is, it seems that Trump is fully under the control of Bibi.  He really is Bibi’s B**ch.

The Good News

While this can be demoralizing for Trump supporters and anyone who wants to see the deep state torn apart, there is reason for optimism.

Most people aren’t buying the BS that is being sold by Trump.  Even many MAGA people are calling BS on the Trump administration for this.  It is such an obvious and blatant lie that only the most diehard MAGA supporters are trusting Trump and Kash Patel.

The whole system is losing legitimacy at a fast pace.  It is hard to say how this will manifest in the future.

The dying animal that is Washington DC and the deep state is flailing around and will cause great damage. But it is also fighting for its life.

A majority of people just aren’t buying what is being sold to them anymore.  We shouldn’t complain about this loss of trust in the system because the system doesn’t deserve any trust.

There was a recent episode of the Choose FI podcast discussing the middle-class trap.  I have been a long-time listener of the podcast.  FI stands for Financial Independence.  I have praised the podcast in the past, so it pains me to have to write this critique.

The name of the episode was “Deep Dive: Putting the Middle-Class Trap to Bed”.  The host, Brad, and his guest, were in agreement that the middle-class trap is essentially a myth.  I absolutely despised this episode, and I thought it showed a lack of empathy and showed they were somewhat out of touch with reality.

There is much discussion in the financial independence community on the middle-class trap.  For purposes here, the middle-class trap refers to the typical middle-class person or family (by American standards) who follow the guidelines of building wealth by buying a house and contributing to retirement accounts.  Even though their net worth may be high, they do not feel wealthy and have a feeling of being trapped in their lifestyle.  Their net worth is largely inaccessible.

Think about a person who has $500,000 in a 401k plan and $500,000 in home equity and not much else in terms of financial assets.  On paper, they are a millionaire.  Yet, day-to-day, they don’t really have much liquid money.  They pay their mortgage, pay their other bills, and contribute to their retirement, but they don’t have much, if anything, left over.  They really don’t feel wealthy at all unless they plan to sell their house and cash-in on their retirement, if that is even possible.

Trust the Statistics?

When I listened to this Choose FI episode, I genuinely felt like I was being lectured to by a politician.  We were told this middle-class trap is all a myth.  Supposedly this episode was putting this discussion to bed.  It was supposed to be the final word, I guess.

It reminded me of a politician saying, “You just don’t understand how good you’ve got it.  Inflation is low.  Unemployment is low.  GDP is growing at a healthy rate.  It doesn’t matter how you feel.  The statistics say you are doing well.”

Maybe that wasn’t the intention of Brad in this episode, as he usually is rather humble.  But that is the vibe that I got listening.  He said, maybe you “feel” this way, but that is not actually the case.  In other words, he is saying that he knows about everyone’s situation better than they know themselves.  He uses the term “feel” a lot here, as if to dismiss what people are actually going through.

They also used these absurd examples of people who made a middle-class income and are now millionaires. Of course, this assumed that a couple started contributing 20% to their retirement plans when they were young and kept doing it the whole time.  It assumed they got raises equivalent to inflation along the way.  It also assumed investing 100% in stocks and getting the returns of the bull market of the last 20 years.  One of the examples discussed a couple who spent $45,000 per year.  What world does this take place in?

It’s not that the examples weren’t realistic.  I’m sure you could find someone who fits these examples.  The problem is that they aren’t typical.  I don’t even think they are typical within the FI community.  These examples might resemble 5 to 10 percent of the population, at most.  What about everyone else?

The Problem with Retirement Accounts

In the podcast, they incorrectly said that you can access your 401k.  They talked about ways to avoid paying a penalty.  The penalty is really just an additional tax, which you can also pay to withdraw money before 59 ½.

This is not true for many people.  If you still work for the same employer that sponsors your 401k plan, then you are not typically allowed to withdraw “your” money.  You can sometimes take out a loan, but then you would immediately have to start paying yourself back (into your locked account) with interest.

You may also be able to take a withdrawal if you can prove some kind of financial hardship, but that is meant for people who are in special circumstances of financial hardship.

The reality is that, if you are still working and younger than the age requirement, you typically can’t access the money in your 401k plan.  The same would go for most pension plans.  Unless you are ready to quit your job and take the 10% extra tax, then “your” money is not accessible at this time.

Retirement Assumptions

One thing I realized in listening to this episode is that there was a major disconnect.  Just because this is a FI podcast, it doesn’t mean everyone is FI.  It doesn’t mean that everyone has retired early.

A lot of the discussion was based on the notion that someone is already there.  It is not recognizing the fact that many people are trying to do “the right thing” by buying a house and putting money into retirement accounts.  When doing that and supporting a family, there isn’t a lot left over for their bank account.  This is the trap.

Think about the difference between these two people who are each 40 years old.  You have one person with $500,000 in a retirement account that can’t be accessed and essentially no liquid savings.  You have another person with $250,000 in a retirement account and another $250,000 that is easily accessible in brokerage and bank accounts.

On paper, these two individuals have the same net worth.  Neither are close to retirement yet.  However, they are in very different situations.

The person with no liquid savings is living on the edge.  A major house repair will require credit cards or a loan.  There is certainly no option of not working unless he plans to quit his job and tap his retirement and pay the additional tax, which isn’t usually a good idea.

The person and his family with $250,000 in easily-accessible money is in a completely different situation. They have the freedom to take a nice vacation for the family.  They have the option of investing in a side business.  They have the option of paying cash for a new roof.  They have the option of taking a one-month leave of absence to take the kids to Europe if the employer would allow.  The list can go on and on.

The person with the substantial liquid savings has a lot more options, even though his net worth on paper is the same.  I’m sure you could come up with your own list of things where one is far advantageous over the other.

Most people who are younger than 59 ½ are not retired.  That includes people listening to financial independence podcasts.  The middle-class trap doesn’t really apply to someone who has $2 million in a 401k plan if they are already retired.

I think Brad and his guest missed the mark in a major way.  It sounded way too elitist.  “Just start putting away 20% when you’re young.  Keep getting raises that at least keep up with inflation.  Invest everything in stocks.  Make a great return, as stocks always go up in the long run.  Retire early.  There is no middle-class trap.”  That is the summary of this episode.  It all sounds so easy, but I think many Americans “feel” differently because they are living a different reality.

It was 249 years ago that the American colonists declared their independence from the British crown.  In 2026, we get to celebrate 250 years.

There is a lot to celebrate, and there is also a lot to not celebrate.  The spirit of independence and liberty has somewhat lived on for two and a half centuries.

At the same time, it is hard not to notice people lighting off fireworks and celebrating our freedom while we live in a semi-authoritarian state.  Just in the last few months, we have seen higher tariffs, higher debt, higher spending, bombing Yemen, bombing Iran, and an ever-expanding surveillance state.

It is hard to say precisely, but when the colonists fought for independence, the British crown was taking perhaps around 1% in taxes.  Now, the national government spends nearly $7 trillion per year.  If you include state and local government spending, government at all levels is consuming nearly 40% of our income.  When you factor in regulations, the story is far worse.

Is this really what the colonists declared independence for?  With all of the problems with a king thousands of miles away, I think I would gladly take the taxation of the British crown from 250 years ago.

The United States Were Great

Most people think of the U.S. Constitution as the foundation of our country since the beginning.  When the colonists won independence, they lived under the Articles of Confederation.  Actually, that was effective from 1781 to 1789.  There really was no national government from 1776 to 1781 because the colonists were at war and not following the dictates of the British crown.

One of the criticisms of the Articles of Confederation is that the national government was too weak and impotent.  Of course, this should be considered its strength for anyone who cherishes liberty.

The Constitution was generally a well-written document, but it did centralize power.  Now we have the largest and wealthiest empire in history.

The relatively capitalist system led to great wealth.  Unfortunately, since liberty was not guarded closely, it has led to great wealth for the U.S. government, which has enabled it to intervene in countries all over the world.

We are a long way from the Articles of Confederation and a loose alliance between the states.  The United States – plural – has become the United States – singular.  The United States were great.  The United States is not great.

American Spirit

Even with this monstrosity of a national government, there is still something special about America.  Sure, things have changed, but there is still a certain spirit of independence and rugged individualism.

Americans are far more defiant than most other people in the world.  There is less obedience and less trust in authority figures.  This may sound hard to believe, but there is even greater brainwashing in other parts of the world.

Even with the Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates, there was a sizeable percentage of the population that refused to go along.

And if you think things have gotten continually worse, that is also not the case.  The government is as big as ever, but there is actually less trust today in politicians than was the case 50 years ago.

There is still great propaganda that comes out of the establishment media, and many people still buy it.  But there are fewer people today who buy the propaganda than what was the case 20 years ago or 60 years ago.

How many people were questioning the Federal Reserve system in 1960 or 1990?  It was almost nobody.  Today, you can find videos and discussions everywhere.

If the government tried to enact a draft for another Vietnam-type war, how successful do you think that would be?

How many people talked about a deep state 20 years ago?

How many people homeschooled their children in 1980 as compared to now?  It was barely legal to do in 1980.

Sure, there are many reasons to be pessimistic, and it is certainly a tragedy that we have lost so much liberty. Still, there is reason for optimism.

For liberty lovers, July 4^th shouldn’t just be about recognizing how much liberty we have lost.  We should still celebrate the liberty that we have and the possibilities for what lies ahead.

Unbelievably, U.S. stock indexes are at or near their all-time highs.  The S&P 500 closed at a record on Friday, well above the 6,000 mark.  The Nasdaq is above 20,000 again.  The Dow is sitting close to 44,000.

It was only on April 2, 2025 (the day after April Fool’s Day) that Trump announced his liberation day tariffs.  It was supposed to liberate us Americans from inexpensive foreign goods.  The S&P 500 was down nearly 18% for the year in April as stocks sold off.

It looked quite disastrous for investors in April, but things have turned around as quickly as Trump changes his tune on various issue positions.

In terms of tariffs, Trump has certainly walked back from where he stood in early April.  It was somewhat of a self-correcting mechanism, as he received instant feedback from the marketplace.

But let’s be clear that increased tariffs are still an issue.  In fact, on Friday when stock indexes were hitting all-time highs, Trump announced a breakdown in trade talks with Canada.  Many people don’t know that Canada is the U.S.’s largest trading partner.

The fact that investors brushed off this news tells you one of two things.  Either investors aren’t too concerned about increased tariffs (as long as they are not obnoxiously high), or they don’t take Trump’s announcements seriously.

Tariffs Don’t Generally Cause Recessions

Tariffs are a tax on imported goods.  They can certainly make life more expensive for the people in the importing nation.  Sometimes they simply reduce trade, as people seek alternatives to what they otherwise would have purchased.

So, tariffs do impact our living standards.  We are generally wealthier when we have the advantages of open trade.  It is better to trade with 8 billion people than 340 million people.

With that said, higher tariffs or taxes do not generally cause recessions.  Just look at the markets right now.  The tariffs are lower now than what Trump announced in early April, but they are also higher now than when Trump took office.  Yet, stock indexes are near all-time highs.

If all you have are higher tariffs or any kind of taxes, people can generally adjust as long as the future is somewhat predictable and the rates aren’t overly confiscatory.  If the government implements a 90% income tax on every dollar of income, that will obviously destroy nearly everyone’s living standards who lives under that regime.  But that isn’t really a recession.  It is just a step turning the country into a poverty-stricken, third-world country.

Recessions are not really thought of as a permanent decline in living standards.  A recession is supposed to be a correction.  It is a reallocation of resources, as resources had been previously misallocated in places that weren’t in accordance with consumer demand.

What Causes Recessions?

Recessions generally happen because of tampering with the money and price of money (interest rates).  In our modern world, central banks control the base money supply and, to a certain extent, interest rates.

When the central bank creates money out of thin air and artificially lowers interest rates to help the government finance its deficits, this creates bubbles and misallocations of capital.  It sends false signals to market participants, including consumers, sellers, and entrepreneurs.

You can call this the Austrian Business Cycle Theory or whatever you want, but it is generally the central bank in today’s world that causes recessions.  The recession, or correction, is the readjusting of resources after the damage has been done.  The recession is when things seem to be the most painful, but it is actually correcting the past mistakes, or at least trying to.

Sometimes recessions can lead to more central bank intervention, which ultimately makes the problems even worse down the road.

Government taxes and regulations make us poorer, but this is on a consistent basis.  Barring any shocking and sudden changes, government policies do not really cause recessions other than the fact that they legalize the monopoly over money by the central bank.

The Coming Recession Doesn’t Need a Trigger

All of this is to say that we don’t need a trigger event to cause the next recession.  We don’t need an announcement of a breakdown of trade negotiations.  We don’t need another war.  We don’t need a tax hike.  A recession will come when the malinvestments have been exposed and people run out of money or the will to keep the bubble economy going.

When the 2008 financial crisis happened, there actually wasn’t really a triggering event.  Financial institutions began to collapse because they had too many bad loans and weren’t getting repaid.  But this was the recession.  This is how the misallocation of resources manifested in that recession.  There was a massive housing bubble, and people took out loans for houses that they couldn’t repay.  As soon as housing prices started to go down, the loans started to go bad.

We already had an inverted yield curve in 2023 and much of 2024.  It has somewhat normalized, although short-term rates are still close to long-term rates because the Fed is not cutting its target rate.

It is somewhat amazing that stock indexes are hitting all-time highs, and it seems that any sign of a downturn is short-lived.  It has made investors incredibly complacent.  We have to come to expect that any downturn in stocks will just turn around within months.

At some point, this will no longer be true.  The 2008 financial crisis is now almost 17 years old.  Someone who is 30 years old today was only about 13 years old when that happened.  Most 13-year-olds are paying attention to friends and activities and certainly not financial markets.  Someone who is 30 today has never really experienced a hard downturn in U.S. stocks that has lasted more than a few months.

This will not continue forever.

“No matter whom you vote for, you always wind up getting John McCain.”  ~Tom Woods

The U.S. is now at war with Iran.  We will have to wait and see if it escalates into something more serious.

After Israel attacked Iran, the U.S. initially denied involvement.  Many people warned that the U.S. is obviously involved, yet some Trump defenders tried to deny it.  Now that the U.S. government has bombed Iran, these people look foolish.  Of course, even if the U.S. government hadn’t directly bombed Iran, we know that it provides funds, weapons, intelligence, and defense for Israel, so it is still foolish to say that the U.S. wasn’t involved.

Iran sent in 14 missiles into Qatar where American military bases reside.  This was Iran’s “retaliation”.  It is reported that Iran actually let officials in Qatar know about the missiles in order to avoid casualties.  The real reason is that Iranian officials want to be able to tell the Iranian people that they retaliated without escalating the war.

This act by the Iranian government destroys the myth that Iran is trying to obtain a nuclear weapon so that they can use it against Israel and the United States.  The people in Iran, including government officials, don’t want to be obliterated.  That’s why they announced the missile attack in Qatar.  That is also why they wouldn’t nuke the U.S. unless they felt they were going to imminently die anyway.

This accusation that we can’t let Iran get nuclear weapons is foolish.  The only country to actually use nuclear weapons is the main one dictating that Iran can’t have nuclear weapons.

Iran doesn’t want war.  It is obvious by its actions.  Why would they have ever offered to negotiate if this was the case?  The only reason it would use nukes is if it was backed into a corner.  Of course, even if Iran had nukes, there would be no way to use them to strike the United States.

The Sloped Roof Theory

We get all of these ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims about Iran.  One of the latest is that they want to assassinate Donald Trump.  Of course, it is actually Trump who has been threatening to assassinate the leader of Iran.

When Trump was shot in the ear in July 2024, do you think there is a better chance that the CIA was behind it or the Iranian government?

It is unbelievable to hear all of these clowns say that Iran wants to assassinate Trump.  Yeah, I suppose it was some Iranians who came up with the sloped roof theory.  That’s why the Secret Service couldn’t be stationed on the roof from where Trump was shot.

How can anyone actually say this with a straight face?

Ted Cruz said that Iran wants Trump dead.  That’s his proof that Iran wants to assassinate Donald Trump.  If that’s his proof, then half of Democrats in this country want to assassinate Trump.  They would say that they prefer if he were dead.

These claims are completely laughable and ridiculous.

Sponsoring Terrorism

Another claim the war hawks like to throw out there is that Iran is the number one sponsor of terrorism.  They say this with absolutely no evidence to back it up.  It is also a very subjective claim.

You can call this “whataboutism” all you want, but the hypocrisy here is stunning.  The U.S. funded Osama bin Laden.  The Israelis funded Hamas (probably with U.S. funds).  The U.S. helped foment war in Syria which has now been taken over by a known terrorist.  We all should know who the number one sponsor of terrorism actually is.  It is the entity with the biggest budget in the world.

Even if Iran is helping to fund “terrorists”, it is completely subjective.  One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.  If the U.S. didn’t keep bombing and occupying other countries, maybe some of this terrorism wouldn’t exist.

Iran’s Threats

People like to say that Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map.  They want to wipe America off the map.  They chant “death to America”.

Some of these claims are only loosely true.  There was a translation of it being said that they want Israel wiped off the map, but this was clarified a long time ago by Iranian leadership saying that they want to get rid of the state of Israel or the Zionist regime.  They mean no harm to the Jewish people.  Anyway, this statement is now 20 years old.

Maybe you think that in itself is unacceptable, but it doesn’t mean Iran will actually do anything.  Of course, Netanyahu actually does want Iran wiped off the map.  He wants it part of Israel.  He is actually attacking Iran with missiles and bombs.

Did you know that there are Jews who live in Iran?  The numbers used to be far larger, but there are some who are still there.  Sure, they must follow the laws there like everyone else, but they are allowed to practice their religion and generally live in peace (when they aren’t being hit with missiles from Israel).

Most Iranian people don’t hate Americans, but they hate the American government, and rightly so.  There is a long history going back to at least the 1950s where the U.S. government toppled the Iranian leader.  It is probably not a regular thing for Iranians to be chanting “death to America”, but who could hardly blame them at this point?  If your neighborhood was being bombed by another country, you don’t think you would hear some of your neighbors calling for death to the country bombing you?  We can already hear some Americans calling for death to Palestinians without that happening.

The Iraq Playbook

In 2015, one of the things Trump said in his campaign for president is that Bush lied us into war in Iraq.  Trump was able to get the Republican nomination in spite of this, or maybe because of this.

Now, Trump is acting like Bush.  The same lies we heard about Iraq are being repeated with Iran.  They are not always exactly the same, but they are incredibly similar.

If you are not old enough to remember the leadup to the Iraq war in 2003, it was all about how Saddam was a bad man and that he might use weapons of mass destruction against us.  It was actually sold as a defensive move to pre-empt any attack from Saddam.  But no matter what Saddam did or said, it was never enough to prevent being attacked.  It was always portrayed as “Saddam is stalling” or something like that.

Once U.S. troops actually invaded, the story changed quite a bit.  It went from WMDs to liberating Iraq.  The narrative shifted to it being about humanitarianism, even as tens of thousands of people were being killed and cities being destroyed.

Another parallel here is that they use multiple arguments at the same time.  They like to shift the argument whenever one of their arguments is challenged.  If you say that even U.S. intelligence has said that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon or the capability to get one in a short amount of time, then the argument will change.  They’ll say that you love Iran or that you love terrorism or that you think it’s ok for Iran to have a nuke.

The arguments constantly shift with multiple pieces of propaganda.  Most of it is lies or things that can’t be proven.  They like to demagogue anyone who questions it.  “Oh, so you think Iran is a great place?”  “Oh, so you think it’s ok to fund Muslim terrorists?”

Wait, what happened to the argument that Iran was about to get nuclear weapons and use them against the United States?

It is the same act as 22 years ago.  Either Trump is just another neocon war hawk or he is very easily duped.  It is probably both.  Either way, Trump is a war criminal and has completely betrayed the people who voted for him in the hopes that we might get some peace.

Even if the war with Iran doesn’t escalate much from here, it is still absolutely inexcusable what Trump has done.