Okay I finally listened to the debate…
“Painful” is a good word. You just have to listen to it.
It’s just remarkable. Two incredibly wealthy guys who could not possibly have more polarized understandings of the world. It’s just incredible.
The only thing that hurts the entertainment value is the way (ironically) Peter’s guest doesn’t stop talking and Peter has a hard time getting a word in to make it a conversation.
(Usually it’s Peter who doesn’t stop talking…especially when he’s a guest. On that note I really think he has a hearing problem that makes it difficult for him to know when the other person is talking when he’s hooked into the sound as a guest on a tv show. The equipment limitations and settings can cause enough problems, but it happens to Schiff so much I have to believe he has a physical issue. There’s no way he could just keep talking like this and not even get flustered. I don’t think he’s that rude in the first place, but even if he was, I don’t see how anyone can just power through their own statements without even flinching while someone else is talking in their ear the entire time. I’m surprised the host didn’t consider that possibility. That was definitely the worst example I’ve seen but it’s quite often he obviously doesn’t know the host is trying to switch gears or ask a question.)
Getting back to this interview…I was definitely right when I mentioned how someone could be (apparently) so good at working within the market process, and create so much wealth, and yet have such a distorted (and ultimately opposite) understanding of how it all happened. This guy is quite possibly insane. Granted there are a couple of times when Peter confronts him logic and he recognizes the fallacy of his position and has to try and dance around it (like when Peter asks if jobs are created by people buying stuff, where did the buyers get the money…and Hanauer has to backtrack to his “feedback loop” thing…which as I said before, directly negates his entire notion of jobs being created by buyers. It’s either a loop, or it’s linear. This moron really thinks he can have it both ways.)
Then he calls says Peter’s comment is “nutty”. I kid you not.
The golden nugget…possibly one of the best lines in this year of radio comes at 6:52 when Nick Hanauer says, and I quote: “Peter, if there was a shred of truth to your argument, then the most prosperous on Earth would be the places with the least government.”
I cannot tell you how I almost hurt myself from the physical laughter reaction that spontaneously occured the second he finished that sentence.
(What’s even more, what Peter was talking about at the time really didn’t even have much to do with government. It’s like Hanauer is the most perceptive idiot on the face of the earth, or he got kind of sideways lucky and accidentally picked up on a point Peter would make.)