Can One Income Feed a Family of 4?

0:00 What's up everybody, welcome back to The Classic Man. Thank you guys for being with us. Remember, y'all, like, subscribe and share. That's right, here with my main man Carter.

1:05 I don't know that it's possible right now, just because inflation is, is crazy. It's pretty high.

2:16 I'm gonna say, well, "somewhat decent job," you said. Yeah, I'm gonna put that right around 30,000, 40,000.

3:19 off of today. Off 60,000, can you support a family of four? And I gotta say no. I would, I would say that would be tough, man. You know, I make a decent amount, being retired from the Army and working, and so I think it's feasible, but you have to be really strict at that. You have to be real strict.

4:21 have to even make that much in the first place. And then what happens is you start to make poor decisions. So that poor decision-making then plays even more into that poor mental health and that sad mental landscape. And then you start to spend money on things that you shouldn't in order to feel better, in order to get that, like, dopamine rush that fakes, right, feeling.

5:23 to be able to make the best choices for yourself but also not get screwed over by these companies?

6:27 every morning get up, you know I mean?

7:31 and I went through the process of creating a cup of coffee with what I felt like were solid numbers. Like, I gave a little extra in the numbers just to make sure it was fair, right? And what I came up with is, for less than two dollars I can make a cup of coffee.

8:33 have in some of these companies. Now, on the flip side, the pass-off was more than just the cost of inflation. So if inflation rolls the price of everything that Starbucks had to pay for by five to six percent, just throwing a random number out there, then the margin that they increased it was closer to ten percent. So they still picked up an extra four percent per cup of coffee.

9:33 I'm still paying them more on the same time. So I understand that incentive, because as an investor we're giving you money and hoping that you're doing the best thing possible, and obviously you're doing something right with record profits. But from a morality standpoint, is it something wrong when you're adding an extra four percent that's unnecessary?

10:33 eating that cost so far and trying to keep prices where they are. So tell me what you think in that realm.

11:42 we're countries doing it to us?

12:46 now we're trying to cut some taxes off of Americans and essentially tax other countries to make up that difference, right? And it's going to look a little ugly for a little while as we figure it out a bit, but as things get sorted out and as dollar amounts get put in the right place, and the fact that 90 percent of countries' debt is in the American dollar...

13:51 is gas prices jumped once that war popped off, and everybody's like, "Stop trading with Russia, stop trading with Russia," right? Prices jumped. Okay. Now, the price per barrel started to come down as we sorted out how we were going to offset the roughly 15 to 20 percent of oil we were getting from Russia, right? Not 50 percent, not 80 percent, 15 to 20 percent. All right. So that balanced itself out, and the price of the oil itself started to come down. Okay. However, in the States we still saw prices hold significantly longer than what they were buying it for. So much so that in New Jersey, one of the state, either senators or house reps, I can't remember which branch it was, but one of them decided to launch an investigation into the gas companies.

14:57 Yeah, to see whether or not they were using corporate greed. Whether it was corporate greed and nobody checking them, like, "Hey, we're big oil, we can choose to keep prices wherever we want, and you guys are going to have to pay it because we said so." Price gouging.

16:02 not religious, whatever, do people believe other humans are innately good or innately bad? Where do people stand on that? What would you guess?

17:09 where that disconnect is, like, why I feel like on a personal level that people are good, yet on a big-picture level people are not.

18:17 is either for the government to fix it, that would be if you're blue, right, and that's a bigger government, bigger centralized government. Okay. And so one government is going to take care of everybody, that's the thought process. And so when you have people who need things, where do they go? They go to the government, and the government gives them food stamps, government gives them assistance, this and that, right? On the other end, you have the mindset that there needs to be smaller government, less government, centralized.

19:19 somewhat different laws, somewhat different living arrangements, living styles, living, you know, and you move to the state that you want to move to. You vote with people who vote like what you vote like, and then the state will either give you assistance, or what they prefer is they prefer for religious institutions to give you assistance, right?

20:22 to help figure it out for you. And they can, because they're in the communities, right? They know the people, they know the need.

21:25 And it's such an external problem. Somebody else is going to fix this, and it's not going to be me that fixes it, right? And then we run into this issue of, okay, well, you have the 911 dilemma. All right, I'm not sure if you heard about this.

22:26 having problems. We say, "Oh, somebody else is going to help them. Oh, somebody's already done whatever. They're just not looking for the help." Right? No, you go help them. You go figure out what they need. If there is an organization, you connect them with that organization. You give them a ride over there. You ask them about how it went. You keep in contact and in touch with them. And if I'm doing that for my two or three people, you're doing that for your two or three people, right?

23:26 a person work so much more that they feel like they have less time to give?

24:28 money, the other two pay the bills, but it still took two to pay the bills in the first place.

25:29 whole way, you know. I don't think I've ever been on that... is a long, straight stretch.

26:31 made cities. It's the infrastructure that we have currently. And the question becomes, well, I mean, how do you fix it? How do you take a city and create it in such a way that everything you need is within walking distance? And let's call walking distance one mile. Okay, so your kids have to go to school within one mile. You got to be able to go to the grocery store, the gym, the movie theater, everything within one mile.

27:34 of San Antonio, two and a half million.

28:43 run? Is that individual run, like private, so private people trying to make money? I mean, Dan Gilbert, who's the owner of the Cavs, he was buying up a lot of the land in Detroit, a lot of the houses, trying to redo the houses and kind of flip that city around. I feel like he's one of the few who didn't inflate the prices so much for greed.