Get Rich Education 511: Freedom, Liberty, and Real Estate Investing
Coming to you from FreedomFest in Las Vegas, I talk with Founder Mark Skousen. He’s been named one of the World’s Top 20 Living Economists.
Also, an event summary with GRE Investment Coach, Naresh.
Learn about the deleterious consequences of rent control. President Joe Biden supports it (somewhat).
If four tenants live in identical fourplex units, it actually makes sense for them to pay different rent amounts. I explain.
We can construct more housing by relaxing zoning requirements in the right way—reduce off-street parking requirements, increase ADUs, no rent control, reduce minimum lawn sizes.
There’s higher homelessness in L.A., San Francisco, and Austin than Houston. Houston has a lower-cost market, few zoning requirements, and less NIMBY mindset.
Politicians run on platforms like immigration, abortion, and inflation. But they don’t run on reducing the debt because they don’t see it as a problem that they created.
At FreedomFest, I attended a presidential debate between the current candidates of the Libertarian Party, Green Party, and Constitution Party. Most or all agreed that the Fed should be abolished.
The common theme at FreedomFest was: “Government, get out of the way.”
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Complete episode transcript:
Keith Weinhold** ((00:00:01)) - - Welcome to GRE. I'm Keith Weinhold. I'm here at the world's largest gathering of free minds. It's a conference called Freedom Fest where I talk to the conference founder. He's been named one of the top 20 living economists in the world today, as well as a talk with one of our great investment coaches to learn what my conference takeaways are and more. Freedom, life, liberty and the pursuit of real estate and investing today. And get rich education.
Robert Syslo** ((00:00:36)) - - Since 2014, the powerful get Rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate, investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad Advisors advisors and delivers a new show every week. Since 2014, there's been millions of listeners downloads and 188 world nations. He has A-list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get Rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus has had its own dedicated Apple and Android listener.
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Corey Coates** ((00:01:21)) - - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:01:37)) - - We're gonna go from Oswego, New York to Lake Oswego, Oregon, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith, while you are inside, get rich education. I'm attending a free office live and in person in Las Vegas today. One key economic freedom and what makes a free market free is that ability for producers and suppliers and landlords to set prices based on what the market will bear, whether that's a high price or a low price. Now, what's wrong with rent control, which is a law that puts a ceiling on the amount of rent that you're allowed to charge? Well, that sounds like a nice thing to do for one set of people in the short term. Well, rent control has the same effect as price controls on consumer goods.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:02:30)) - - If the government thinks that cars are becoming too expensive, and they set up a new law that says that you can't charge more than $20,000 if you want to sell a new car, well, then those manufacturers will stop producing cars and soon enough, you, the consumer, cannot buy a car. You'd no longer have an automobile market at all. And the consumer suffers under no choice and even austerity. Put price controls on beef jerky and companies will stop making beef jerky. Put price controls on rent called rent control, and landlords have zero incentive to provide property, no motivation to improve property. And there is a raft just reams of evidence and studies out there that show that rent control, that is a surefire way to then reduce the supply of functional housing, just like the supply of cars or beef jerky would get cut. That's especially not a good solution in today's real estate supply constrained world. And, you know, here's what's interesting. The government created the inflation in the first place. That led to the high price problem that they think they can cure through rent control.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:03:52)) - - I mean, government keeps trying to solve a problem that they created. Well, just take a new course, a new direction and stop the inflation. In that way, you'll cure the higher prices long term and then near term. What you can do is relax zoning requirements in order to create more housing. I mean, in three cases here, less government cures the problems, no inflation, no rent control, and thirdly, no stringent zoning. Knock down all three of those walls and instead, now what have you done? You've encouraged a bunch of builders to come into a market. You've encouraged competition. And what does competition do? It increases quality and it yeah, lowers prices. So cure the problem by knocking down the walls. You know, you as a landlord, I don't even think that there should be laws that say that you have got to charge every ten at the same rent amount. Yeah, and that is even if each one of your tenants has seemingly an identical unit, say, in a fourplex building.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:05:04)) - - Now I'm on different fourplex buildings and I have most everyone like throughout history, I've had just about every tenant paid different rent amounts in the same building, even though all of the units were built at the same time and had the same square footage. Now a real estate investing newcomer, you know, they might think that that sounds unfair, that these tenants with basically identical units paying different rent amounts. But we all know how it works in practice, in real life. I mean, one of those four tenants might have the front unit with the best views, while the tenant with the best view. Well, of course they're going to be willing to pay more for that unit. Well, that right there, that's free market supply and demand. The fourplex unit with the best view will rent out faster and for more. But instead of that arrangement, if it's mandated, say, by the government that everyone in the building must pay the same rent, say that each of the four units must pay exactly $2,000.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:06:07)) - - Oh, well, then the tenant with the worst view, which then has less benefit to living there, has to subsidize the tenant with the best view that already has the best benefit of living there, because they must all pay exactly $2,000. And then what about things like several months from now? Say you have a vacancy at Christmas. Well, it's hard to get a tenant to move at Christmas to get them in there. So you'll charge a low rent just to get someone in there then. Versus how you charge more now in summertime, because tenants demand units, a lot of them want to get settled in during the summer before the school year starts. What about a tenants living in your fourplex or rental single family home for five years, and their unit hasn't been painted or renovated in a while, and the tenant has seen you already. Well, they're probably going to pay less then a new tenant will in there say freshly painted unit. So my point is that even making every tenant of one individual fourplex building have to pay the same rent amount.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:07:10)) - - Well, that is a form of rent control and that is actually unfair if they all have to pay the same rent amount. The free market is what's fair and enables a system of rent price discovery, instead of being confined and oppressed under rent control. Now here, the Freedom Fest in Las Vegas and we'll discuss the conference more. Today I attended one panel discussion. It was called How the Government Created the Housing Crisis and what we can do to Fix it, And it really gave specific solutions to provide more housing. This includes things like stop mandating a minimum square area for parking spaces. Stop mandating such large lawns. Instead, people can share a public park and relax the requirements that have so many easements out of property. Well, all that stuff is zoning in its stifles development and it leads to higher housing prices. Now, I maintain that not all zoning is bad. I don't think that you want a housing development surrounded by factories with smokestacks. So it's about relaxing zoning in the right way and promoting the right policies, like the benefits of a yimby movement.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:08:27)) - - Yes, in my backyard. Removing off street parking mandates altogether and allowing more ADUs allow Single-Family homes on smaller lot sizes. And we've already seen some of that. We're seeing home builders do more of that. They're building single family homes closer together, smaller lot sizes. But a lot of the wrong strategies exist out there. And once people get the benefits, like the beneficiaries of these wrong strategies, I mean, they don't want to give them up. Like New York's rent stabilization program that gives rent breaks to wealthy New Yorkers that also have a pricey home out in the Hamptons. Well, that's not the right policy. That's not helping the people that need it most. And you know, when the wrong policies infiltrate a market, the reaction can be amazingly rapid. I mean, how rapid? Like, do you think you would see a construction project literally halt mid construction? Yeah. You actually can like construction cranes just stop swinging. In Saint Paul, Minnesota, you saw construction cranes stop mid-air mid construction.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:09:38)) - - When Saint Paul moved toward a rent control of no more than 3% annual rent increases. Well, that's a form of rent control. When that happens, building stops because the developer knows that people don't want to buy those units or invest in those units or rent those units. And I've got more to discuss on housing shortly, but let's bring in the very founder, host and producer of Freedom Fest here. He has been named as one of the top 20 living economists in the world. Doctor Mark Skosan and you will hear some background noise in these conference interviews. We are at a conference at times. We're in the exhibit hall now. Interestingly, here with Mark, I bring up with him how much I dislike these political labels that just divide the nation. I mean, don't you agree that it would be great if the nation were less divided? Yes, we all would. Well, we can do our part by avoiding saying words like red and blue and oh, you know, I can't stand those maps.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:10:44)) - - Then you see, I've mentioned this to you before. You see these maps in political season that show where the red states are and where the blue states are. I mean, how divisive and polarizing that is not unifying in the United States of America. The fact that this conference has a non divisive founder like Mark Skosan is what attracted me here. Sure enough, here you'll hear me tell him how much I appreciate this. This was prescient because the very next day after this interview that you're about to hear, that was the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Hey, it's Keith Reinhold here. I'm at Freedom Fest with Freedom Fest host and founder Mark Scott. And thanks for having us here. Yeah. My pleasure, my pleasure. Thank you for coming. Well, I've got to tell you one reason that attracted me to this conference. I was concerned that it was going to be too politically partisan. And I respect you so much, because I know you have said that in most of all the books you've read, you've avoided these labels like liberal, conservative, left, right, red, blue, yes, progressive, conservative and all that.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:11:58)) - - So that's what I'd like hearing when we talk about this conference championing principles of freedom and liberty. What does an American really need to know about freedom and liberty that's under attack today?
Mark Skousen** ((00:12:09)) - - I think what we've tried to preach is the Adam Smith model, which you call the system of natural liberty. And what that meant was under the rule of law and justice and a robust competitive model. You've maximized the freedom of choice, freedom to choose your own work, your own business, how much salary you're going to charge or wages you're going to pay, whether you can hire or fire people. So within those rules, within those guidelines, you have maximum security. But in today's world, more and more everything, it's either being prohibited or mandated. So we're being squeezed from both sides. The idea of freedom of best to maximize freedom is for us to come together and find out what are the best solutions to improve our lives is the idea. So we talk philosophy, history, science and technology, healthy living, economics, politics.
Mark Skousen** ((00:13:05)) - - It's all part of the program here. But it's not just a political conference.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:13:08)) - - Part of this is lowering the guardrails and promoting free markets. The only thing that we've all seen happen in free markets is inflation, oftentimes ironically, created by some of those forces that put guardrails in place. So what does an investor there are a lot of investors here. Oh yeah. What does an investor need to know with regard to inflation today. How can the everyday person respond.
Mark Skousen** ((00:13:33)) - - So one thing is we have a whole section on financial freedom because without financial freedom you're limited in what you can do and your influence that you can have. So this is very important. We live in an era of permanent inflation. Since World War two we've had permanent inflation. We didn't used to, but now we do because we're off the gold standard. We've adopted Keynesian economics, which means deficit spending all the time. We have adopted the dollar rather than gold. So we've lost that discipline. The fed is the engine of inflation. And they even have a policy of a minimum of at least 2% inflation rate.
Mark Skousen** ((00:14:10)) - - We had a whole session. Actually Steve Forbes wasn't there, but Nathan Lewis is co-author of in the book inflation. We had a big session on what are the best inflation hedges. So we talk about gold and silver. The stock market, Bitcoin rallies, high bonds, real estate. We had all of those discussion. And that was the great thing about Freedom Fest is that you really do get answers and best solutions. At our conference, I attended that particular. Oh you did? Yeah.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:14:38)) - - From Freedom Fest.
Mark Skousen** ((00:14:39)) - - I've really.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:14:40)) - - Enjoyed this.
Mark Skousen** ((00:14:41)) - - So far. We have an exhibit hall.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:14:42)) - - Which happens to be right. Oh yeah, we have breakout sessions that attendees can go to for the sessions that particularly interest. There are then a big general session where I've enjoyed presentations from Robert Kiyosaki to Ice-T. What is the future potential for getting Fest attendees? What would you like to tell them about what this conference entails? What they can.
Mark Skousen** ((00:15:03)) - - Expect in the.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:15:03)) - - Bank that they can.
Mark Skousen** ((00:15:04)) - - Get? Well, one of the things is just the wonderful camaraderie that you feel, the buzz that you feel the meeting of like minded people who are all trying to seek best solutions rather than labels and attacking people.
Mark Skousen** ((00:15:18)) - - And, we have the presidential debate here, for example. Well, we have all the third parties come together libertarians, the Constitution Party, the Green Party. We have RFK coming. The two major parties decided not to come. So, so much for their belief in democracy. But the idea is there's a there's something for everybody here. You want to improve your lifestyle, you want to prove your financial situation. You want to have better clarity on what is the proper role of government. Read about this A conference for you. This is an annual event that we usually have in the summer in Las Vegas and then other cities, and it's only 3 or 4. You know, we live busy lives, so can we come together once a year to learn to network, to socialize and celebrate liberty? I think we can if we plan ahead. When we.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:16:06)) - - Drop these labels, we can get a clear download of sorts, remove filters.
Mark Skousen** ((00:16:11)) - - And think.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:16:12)) - - Clearly. And this is a largest gathering.
Mark Skousen** ((00:16:15)) - - Of.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:16:15)) - - Free minds. So for Mark Skelton I'm Keith Weigel. You heard Mark Skelton mentioned the presidential debate at Freedom Fest. I watched quite a bit of that. More on it later. Gray Investment coach narration is here in person with me at Freedom Fest. Coming up, he and I give you a download of some policy and real estate investing highlights that you can learn from. That's straight ahead. I'm Keith Reinhold, you're listening to get Rich education. Hey, you can get your mortgage loans at the same place where I get mine at Ridge Lending Group Nmls 42056. They provided our listeners with more loans than any provider in the entire nation because they specialize in income properties, they help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. You can start your prequalification and chat with President Ridge personally. Start now while it's on your mind at Ridge Lending Group. Com that's Ridge Lending group.com. And Your bank is getting rich off of you. The national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings.
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T. Harv Eker** ((00:18:23)) - - This is the millionaire mind trick. You're listening to the powerful get Rich education with Keith Weingarten.
Speaker UU** ((00:18:29)) - - Don't quit your day dream.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:18:39)) - - Hey, we're here talking about Freedom Fest, and I'm doing that alongside gray investment coach. The race. Hey, welcome in the race. Hey, Keith.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:18:47)) - - We are here in real life at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas, Nevada. And what Freedom Fest does is it promotes and champions the ideals of freedom in the United States, and it includes a bunch of guest speakers that have made appearances here that you got to see in person, from Ice-T to Robert Kiyosaki to a bunch of presidential candidates as well, sometimes not championing principles of things like freedom and tolerance and liberty and tyranny. And I think anyone can agree to freedom on a this basis. But when you think it through and where the discussion really begins is, oh, well, if you have freedom, does that mean you should be free to do anything at all that you want? Probably not. And that's quite a discussion or tolerance. That's an ideal. That sounds good, but oh does that mean you should tolerate absolutely anything? No probably not. So that's where a lot of the interesting policy decisions and a lot of the interesting debates come in here in the race. And I attended some of these presentations together and other ones separately.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:19:53)) - - So we have some different perspectives on what we've learned here at Freedom Fest. Grace, why don't you tell us about some of the good takeaways that you had? I had a lot of good takeaways, Keith.
Mark Skousen** ((00:20:03)) - - This is not just about freedom in the United States. It's about freedom around the world. And you even interviewed and I believe we're playing that interview soon. If you haven't already played it yet, you interviewed probably the freest nation in the world. It's a brand new nation and it's called liberalism, like liberty, land libre land in Europe. And it touts itself as the freest nation in the world. So there have been all sorts of topics happening or talked about from business, finance, economics, real estate, crypto, bitcoin, gold to non-business and financial topics, which I actually found more interesting simply because.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:20:46)) - - Most of what I listen to and what.
Mark Skousen** ((00:20:48)) - - Is business finance econ. I wanted something a little bit different, especially as a father of two young boys. There were topics on gender and sexuality.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:21:01)) - - And.
Mark Skousen** ((00:21:02)) - - Vaccinations being the vaccinated versus unvaccinated. Robert F Kennedy was the keynote speaker at this conference, and he's a major presidential candidate.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:21:12)) - - RL Jr RFK.
Mark Skousen** ((00:21:14)) - - Jr. Even though he's not part of a major party, he's probably the most popular third party candidate over the last 30 years, so he's a candidate. There were lectures on healthcare.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:21:28)) - - And.
Mark Skousen** ((00:21:29)) - - How to be a better patient. And hold your doctor and hold the healthcare system accountable. The other aspect of this conference is there are some heavy hitters just walking around freely. Like I met Matt Ridley easily, I met Robert Kiyosaki, just he was dressed in very casual clothing to where people didn't even recognize them. And I did and told him how much I appreciated him. You know, you and the great podcast and huge inspiration for me. Yeah, people like Kiyosaki walking around freely, presidential candidates walking around freely, many third party candidates, not just RFK. He wasn't walking around as freely. He was in and out pretty quickly with really heavy security.
Mark Skousen** ((00:22:09)) - - But you had other third party candidates, like the Libertarian Party candidate and the Green Party candidate walking around freely. I ran into Vivek Ramaswamy, his campaign manager, while getting pizza. We are both standing in line getting pizza. We ended up having about almost a two hour lunch. One day talking finance business Vivek's policies his future. So overall this conference very educational, inside the classroom, very beneficial outside the classroom. We're going to bring some guests on the great podcast. We met at this conference, publicists who we met at this conference who represent good guests, some business development opportunities, maybe some not just good guests, but people who we would recommend their newsletters, maybe even outside of the real estate industry, people, contacts within the real estate industry. So it's not all about what you learn in the classroom. It's also about who you meet, the networking, the business development. Overall, just a really, really successful experience. There were a few.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:23:11)) - - Shows that snagged me as a guest while here as well.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:23:15)) - - I'm talking about American freedom here chiefly. But you did mention Lebanon, a startup nation between Croatia and Serbia. That's seven square kilometers in area. You know, I think there are a lot of people at a conference like this and just anywhere in society where if you ask them, well, hey, if you think you could run the nation better if you were starting it all over again, how would you start a nation from a clean slate and actually got an opportunity to do that? Well, I'll be interviewing the president of Lebanon here, where this country is trying to seek recognition from any nation. They want to start their own country, and they want to do freedom and really begin a country of their rights.
Mark Skousen** ((00:23:55)) - - And see is, is is.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:23:57)) - - Is is.
Mark Skousen** ((00:23:57)) - - Bitcoin I think not just crypto but it's bitcoin. And it's interesting because you hear a lot of times you don't like the country that you live in, go somewhere else. These people took it to a whole new level and said, well, we're just going to start our own country.
Mark Skousen** ((00:24:10)) - - And and it's about three square miles. So it's about the size of the area that I lived in. Tampa, not even Tampa, just almost the neighborhood that I live in, Tampa. So it's not a huge country, but it's interesting talking to them. And as you'll hear in the interview, hearing about what it's like to start a new country and there's a lot that you have to go, you know, there's a lot of fundraising if you want to call it that, that you have to do. It's it's a lot it's bigger than the business.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:24:37)) - - You'll learn more about that on an upcoming episode of the show with the nation of Berlin. I attended a presentation called A Forgotten Solution to the Housing Crunch. Most people think of real estate development is either single family homes or multifamily properties. This espoused the building of light touch density of 2 to 4 unit properties, and how that increases the density. But it maintains character. And they showed an awful lot of photos in the presentation where from a street, a four unit building can actually like a single family home when it has the right design and therefore you don't get this NIMBYism pushback.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:25:16)) - - I saw a number of smart design examples of that. And you know what this does? Will this help keep the cost of housing down in an area? What it allows for in a society is it allows the children who grew up in an area to afford the housing there without being priced out. Also called this multifamily missing middle 2 to 4 unit housing. You don't have the NIMBYism pushback that you do with multifamily housing. There are an awful lot of opinions here about people that want to avoid rent control, about how that's typically the bad policy. And many likened rent control to bombing American cities over time because landlords don't have an incentive to improve anything. So rent control is not a good solution to increasing the housing supply. And a lot of the discussion was how you get politicians to say no to rent control, sharing with them. Cato Institute studies on how the free market really makes for a higher housing supply, because that makes developers want to come into the market. And it was noted in one of the panel discussions about rent control and about providing more affordable housing.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:26:27)) - - But if there's a four unit building of owners of all four units of that building, how that's deemed as less threatening than if there's a four unit building of renters.
Mark Skousen** ((00:26:38)) - - So question for you, the housing panels that you attended were these people, were they private investors or they worked for private equity companies? I think maybe a documentary filmmaker who does real estate documentary, what was their background?
Keith Weinhold** ((00:26:50)) - - Think tanks and yes, a documentary filmmaker of a film called Shabbat Vacation. And I did not get to see the film about the perils and ills of rent control on Shabbat vacation. But I talked with one of the people that worked on the project and basically that movie. It does glorify the landlord that was brought up. And typically in popular culture, you don't glorify the landlord. I mean, the landlord is kind of the beleaguered party in this, and it was critical of rent control there. And so it's helping to spread an awareness of how that really doesn't help the housing supply. Quantity work quality over time. I attended another presentation.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:27:33)) - - It was called Homelessness California versus Texas and Homelessness. Of course, it's a multifaceted problem. There are a number of reasons that it occurs, but they really brought up that it often results from the loss of family connection a lot more often than what some people think. And it really brought to light that Houston has a lower proportion of homelessness in L.A. and San Francisco does. What are the reason this that that is the case. And that is because Houston has a lower proportion of homelessness, because it's a lower cost to build there, and Houston has way fewer zoning requirements, you see, almost like a hodgepodge of building across Houston. You have substantially less NIMBYism in Houston. You just have a culture there that doesn't push back on buildings. So those are really some of the key parallels between why the homelessness crisis is worse in California than it is in Texas. In most places, Austin actually has policies that are so agricultural to the rest of Texas, giving Austin a somewhat higher homelessness rate.
Mark Skousen** ((00:28:38)) - - Wow, that's a lot of real estate content that you got there.
Mark Skousen** ((00:28:42)) - - Anything else? Keith?
Keith Weinhold** ((00:28:44)) - - Another presentation I attended was called Permanent Rising Prices. What are the best inflation hedges? And, you know, for a while they didn't even put real estate up there as one of them. And I was almost foaming at the mouth getting ready to ask a question. But they did bring in real estate at the end. When it comes to inflation. Many of them brought up the fact that we have multi-trillion dollar deficits even when we're in good times. I had never thought of it that way before. If most people would look at the history of the world and what's happening with the nation while they're running multi-trillion dollar deficits, they probably think that they're trending toward poverty and austerity. But that's not the case. This is what's happening in good times. And politicians, they really don't run on a platform of reducing our debt. You notice that none of the politicians do that. Instead, you see politicians run on platforms like immigration or the housing shortage or abortion. But, you know, politicians, they don't run on a platform of reducing our debt.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:29:42)) - - And that's because they all see it as a problem that they didn't create, and they don't really want to work their way out of it either. So that's why it doesn't come up. Also, with the best inflation hedges, they showed the rank of asset performance for the last 200 years of five items stocks, bonds, treasury bills, gold and the dollar. And really it was coming down to two guys debating on whether stocks or gold were better. They both made their case either way. And they didn't bring in real estate until the end. But when they brought in real estate, they broad brushstroke and do what so many do, and they just looked at it as an asset class in what is its capital appreciation over time. Yeah. And you know, they didn't separate out income property as its own class like we would. But some of the panelists, they did not like real estate. They talked about how it's not liquid, about how you have to borrow funds, about how there's a maintenance burden and a repair burden with real estate, and you have tenants and management and some things like that.
Mark Skousen** ((00:30:40)) - - Fair, all fair.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:30:41)) - - All fair points. And one panelist brought up that gold has outperformed the gold mining stocks just historically over time. So those are some of the inflation hedges and some of the other issues with inflation that you don't think about very much as you have policy advocates and politicians addressing.
Mark Skousen** ((00:30:57)) - - Well, I'll say gold mining stocks and most traders will tell you traders by gold mining stocks, not investors. So gold mining stocks are meant to be held over the short term. They are not meant to be held over a long period of time like physical tangible gold is. So for people to say, oh yeah, gold outperforms gold stocks over a 30 year period. That's true. But most people are buying gold stocks Like gold mining, stocks are only holding over a short period of time.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:31:29)) - - Well, housing and inflation were such widespread themes here since it has been such a problem, much of it wrought by the pandemic. As we wind down here summarizing what we've experienced at our first Freedom Fest, for each of us, have any last thoughts with respect to housing and inflation since they were such overarching themes?
Mark Skousen** ((00:31:49)) - - Well, the common theme here at Freedom Fest was government got out of the way because if you let the free market work itself out, if you let people be, people work themselves out.
Mark Skousen** ((00:32:01)) - - But the onus on people to take personal responsibility, that in and of itself solves the inflation problem because you don't have government restrictions, government mandates, and And this was a major topic and that was the lockdowns of 2020. The mandatory vaccine mandates of 2021, those were all inflationary because when you have people fired from their jobs or dropping out, quitting their jobs because they didn't want to take this job, that means prices are higher and lower. Workforce means you have to pay the whoever is there higher wages. And that's what ended up happening. So it's not just about dollars and cents. It's something as simple as getting a job caused inflation. And ultimately when inflation goes up, of course that's going to affect rents, that's going to affect housing. There was a major savings rate, which I'm sure you covered in 2020, where people were saving money, being locked down at home. And once things started opening up, that money was spent and that created inflation. And people, as soon as they could get out of their house said, hey, I want to move to Florida, or I want to move to Texas or Utah or where we are here in Nevada.
Mark Skousen** ((00:33:10)) - - And that's why housing values exploded. So the inflation was caused by government. It wasn't just the government spending. It was actual psychological and physical things that the government or the policies of the government did that created an inflation. The government spending, the low Federal Reserve interest rates are just a piece of the pie, or they're just a couple of pieces to the pie. And so it was interesting to learn that all these other areas, all these other, like I said, policies that the government enacted. And that's what Robert F Kennedy Jr, RFK, talked about in his keynote speech. All of these policies affected the purchasing power of our dollar.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:33:53)) - - We have all had more dollars chasing fewer goods and services, one of those being housing itself. Hey, it's been great to meet up here in real life at Freedom Fest this year in a race. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. Thank you Keith. I'm great. Yeah. Narration I enjoying freedom Fest here. Oh, there's such a wide variety of vendors and viewpoints all around this concept of free thinking, typically with getting government out of the way.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:34:29)) - - In fact, in the exhibit hall, which is right across from where the speaker discussions are, there are booths for gold, real estate, cryptocurrency stocks, a dating app for unvaccinated people, self-directed IRAs, a program for teaching capitalism to school children. There is even a book that espouses biblical capitalist virtues. And then elsewhere in the exhibit hall, atheist virtues. There was also a promoter of a currency called the Nevada Gold Back, and what it is is 1/1000 of an ounce of 24 karat gold. And it is physical like gold back. It looks sort of like a dollar bill, just much, much more in the exhibit hall. Now, one concept that I did not hear any criticism about was Trump tariffs. Tariffs are not free market. In fact, it's akin to erecting a trade wall. And maybe there is a session about it. But there are many sessions going on concurrently and I can't attend them all. And in other sessions I was asked to be a speaker and was interviewed. Like you heard.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:35:45)) - - Doctor Scholes had mentioned there was a presidential debate here. Now the two major party candidates didn't attend. I watched RFK Jr speak here, an independent candidate, and he was not in the presidential debate, though he spoke separately in the security for RFK Jr was formidable, even though he spoke the day before the Trump shooting. The presidential debate was among three different parties. It was Jill Stein at the Green Party, Randall Terry of the Constitution Party, and Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver, who is a particularly bright, articulate guy, and most or all of those candidates, they agree that we should end the Federal Reserve. And the presidential debate, interestingly, was moderated by Congressman Thomas Massie, who has more formally proposed ending the fed outside of the presidential debate. I also attended a different session. It was a Bitcoin debate called Will the Bitcoin bubble ever burst? And you had two guys promoting and talking about the virtues of Bitcoin. And then you had two guys criticizing Bitcoin. And one of the two bitcoin critics was Whole Foods founder John Mackey.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:36:58)) - - So this really got interesting. Now I like a lot of the benefits of Bitcoin personally, but I must say in this particular debate the Bitcoin critics decide that Maggie was on. Oh they won this. The proponents best points were the people back in the day said electricity in the internet word feasible. They weren't going to last, but electricity and the internet won and Bitcoin will to the pro camp also espouses that Bitcoin is the first time we've had absolute digital scarcity. You cannot copy and paste bitcoin, but yeah, the critics did a better job. They said that Bitcoin is always made future promises, but it falls short like its awful acceptance rate as a currency. Still today its price levels are dreadfully volatile, just miserably volatile. You can't count on it then as a store of value. John Mackey said that Bitcoin produces no goods, no services and no cash flow. The Bitcoin critics also asked more than once this question how has Bitcoin made anyone's life simpler, easier or better? There really weren't any good answers to that question, and they even critiqued that with its fixed supply at 21 million will, then it cannot grow with the economy.
Keith Weinhold** ((00:38:21)) - - And then what this can do is create deflation and depression. And I would like to adhere myself that each Bitcoin is already divided into 100 million tiny pieces called satoshis. And it might be able to be divided smaller than that eventually. But yeah, the Bitcoin critics won. It is quite a win for bitcoin, in my opinion, that this nascent digital asset that was only worth a few pennies 15 years ago when it came out, I mean, it was something that only cryptographers and digital geeks understood. Well, today you've got presidents discussing bitcoin. So it's certainly had some success just in branding and name recognition alone. That is just about a wrap from Freedom Fest this year here in Las Vegas, there were record breaking temperatures outside in the Mojave Desert in the middle of summer. Inside, it was a celebration of ideals like life, liberty, prosperity, and of course, freedom. Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Wendel. Don't quit your day, dream.
Speaker 6** ((00:39:35)) - - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice.
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Keith Weinhold** ((00:40:03)) - - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com.