Full Transcript for Subscribe or Die

see what I missed, and on the last purchase page, in little, teeny-tiny print, way below where they tell you the shipping cost and all the things, says, "By providing us with your address, you are agreeing to a $49 a month or a year," I don't even know, "subscription to the privilege purchasing their product at the price that they listed it at." And if w- I was to cancel the subscription, then I would have to pay $30 for the product instead of the 10 that they advertised. Michelle: It's despicable, and it's diabolical because I think the rich people are getting to, to... Get... They're, they're recognizing that we're onto them with these subscription problems and we wanna actually own things, and so they are hiding subscriptions as purchases. So I've got an example of this. 00:03:54.000 --> 06:13.000 Sure, it's yours (wink, wink) Michelle: We were trying to sell our parents' house maybe six months ago, and they have a solar panel system on their roof, and they bought their house brand new. And when they bought the house, it was intimated to them that they owned the solar panel because they signed a, a, an agreement for the solar panel, but they weren't paying monthly charges, and they were getting paid for electricity that the, that the electric- that the solar panel generated that they weren't using. So it really looked, in all the paperwork, I looked even years after they bought the house, it looked like they owned these solar panels. So when they, when I checked out the paper- the, the house-selling paperwork, I said, "Own the solar panels." And it turns out that the person who bought the house didn't like the company who the solar panels came from, and he wanted to take the solar panels off. But the free rental agreement that they've had with the solar panel company, part of that was, "We're not gonna charge you for the sol- solar panels, but you cannot take them off." And so this person said, "I don't like that company. I want to take the solar panels off," and they couldn't do it, so we had to give money back in the purchase price because it was actually a rental that was disguised as ownership of these solar panels. Okay, I have a worse one. I have a worse one than that too. Of, an example of a subscription that is disguised as a purchase, and that is iPhones. So I can buy an iPhone for $1,800, 2,000, whatever the cost is, but no, no, you don't have to pay that right now. You can pay monthly for that iPhone, and we're gonna pay a lot more for it. Let's say it takes three to five years to pay off that phone, your phone's gonna be dead by then, and you need to buy a new one. And so they wrap up the rest of that cost into your next monthly payment schedule. That's basically a subscription, 'cause you're never actually gonna get out of it unless you pay them the money for the phone, and then you own the phone, and you don't, you know, it's not working anymore. So I feel like this is another sly way to make us think that we're purchasing something when it really is just a disguised subscription or rental agreement Kimberly: So with phones also, w- what I've noticed with my iPhone, when I, when I purchase my iPhone, I can get the phone for free, but only if I get like a, sign up for like a two-year contract, and not just any two-year contract, but like one of the more expensive versions of the two-year contract. So again, yeah, free phone, but it, it's all wrapped up in a subscription, and if I cancel the subscription, then I owe for the Michelle: Oh, the phone, right. Right, so it's, it's locking us into these subscriptions. 00:06:13.000 --> 11:05.000 Runaway subscription train Michelle: So w- we're not even gonna touch on the easy ones, the, the Disney, the Netflix, the Hulu, the... I can't even count the number of subscriptions we have for entertainment. Remember we used to pay cable and it was one bill, and we got all the channels we wanted, we could pick which channels we wanted, and now we're in this Kimberly: Go further back. You could buy a television then you could get all of TV for free with your antenna Michelle: Yeah, the quality wasn't very good, but yes, you could. Y- all of the, all the TV that was broadcast free into the universe, into the, into the atmosphere, we could get that for free, right? So we could be able to buy the TV. Now we buy a smart TV, but there's no use to it unless we have some internet or some sort of s- subscription service Do you remember when we were going through our parents' finances, we're taking that over, and we go through their finances and we were looking at all of the duplicate subscriptions that they have, and how angry I was that I felt like it was elder abuse? And then we found out that there's a service called Cancel Hero, which cancels duplicate subscriptions, and they had two subscriptions to Cancel Hero Ridiculous Kimberly: That, that it doesn't even make any sense. Like h- like you're paying for them to do a service that they clearly failed at Michelle: Clearly failed. They self-failed. So not to call out, I don't want to call out Cancel Hero. There, I'm sure there are other people who are doing the same things, and I don't feel like it was intentional. I think it was just a, a major mistake Kimberly: Yeah, they were not intentional. That's the one company in the whole planet that they won't spot if you have a duplicate And that's literally their business. Michelle: It's their business Kimberly: Here's another problem that we had when we moved our parents. When they moved f- the seven years prior, they were, they had before that lived in a place where they couldn't get cable, 'cause cable didn't go out as far as where they were living, and so they had a Dish Network. And so my dad was so used to the Dish Network that when he moved in, when they moved into the new place, they had cable they were using for their internet, but he wanted to keep the Dish Network subscription because that's the one he was familiar with. we found

out when we were moving them that for seven years they had been paying for Dish Network and for cable that duplicated all of the, all... Like, they could, they basically could use one or the other and not miss any programming, and it came to about $6,000 worth of subscription that they could have saved themselves over a period of seven years if they had canceled the Dish Network and kept the cable, or other way around Michelle: A lot of people don't even think to, to look and ask these questions. Am I paying for things that I'm not using? We're just so used to saying, "Okay, that's $5 a month. That's $8 a month. Not a big deal." And you just... It accumulates, and after the, a while, it's a lot of money when it adds up Kimberly: Yeah, that's the other tricky part. So I get, um, I get things on my Apple, it comes through like Apple subscription 9.99, Apple subscription 7.99, you know? And I'm like, "Oh, that's not that much." But I got 15 of them. Then, Michelle: Right. That's, that's a lot Kimberly: a lot, and it's all... But also the subscriptions aren't from Apple, they're through Apple. But the, so I don't even always know what they are, you know, because it shows on the credit card statement is purchase Michelle: So the, Kimberly: or something Michelle: this is happening in a lot. I think it's another attempt to hide what we're actually paying for. Like, you can get... I don't, I don't know the exact companies, so please forgive me for this. I, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna use not actual companies, 'cause I'm not sure of my facts here. But I know there are companies, let's say, let's say Netflix. I'm not calling out Netflix, but let's say you can, you can f- get a subscription to Netflix. And then through Netflix, you can get a subscription to Hulu. Or you can get a subscription from Hulu to Crave or something like that. So you, you can get directly to Crave or directly to Hulu. Or you can get Hulu and Crave through something else. And so you're actually paying for your A subscription with your B subscription, but you could also get A and B, but A and B together. It just, it gets very, very, um, overlapping, and to me, it seems like a lot of, um, hand-waving to make sure that we don't know exactly what we're paying for Kimberly: Yeah. The other thing that, that they do, uh, and again, I'm not calling out Netflix because I, I kinda really like my Netflix. It's the only streaming service that I still have. But I can subscribe through Net- to Netflix through Netflix, or I can subscribe to Netflix through Comcast, I can subscribe to Netflix through my Verizon. And so I h- might have multiple subscriptions to Netflix and not even really realize it because it, you know, it's like, "Well, you got free Netflix with, with your Verizon, so..." And then I'm paying for, paying Comcast for the same thing 00:11:05.000 --> 12:08.000 But it's "free" Michelle: Well, okay, so let's talk about this, 'cause you brought up a point that really gets me in my stomach, and that is you get it free. You get it free. You get it free every, every month that's free for you for three months Kimberly: Y- oh, I hate that one. I hate that one. Yes. And, and who remembers after three months? Michelle: Well, you should put it on your calendar, but who does that? People are busy Kimberly: I ha- I, okay. Okay. I put them on my calendar. I Michelle: Yeah Kimberly: have, a separate calendar just labeled bills, every time I subscribe to a thing now, I put in, like, on this day I s- spent 9.99 and then a recurring is gonna be 9.99. So, so I actually do have them in my calendar because otherwise I will lose track of all of them. And, uh, and I mean, we're talking dozens and dozens Michelle: But that's the point. Kimberly: subscribed f- to. Michelle: Right. That's the point Kimberly: Okay, so follow the money. Michelle: I want to complain s- I want to complain some more. Give me a second. Let's see Kimberly: Mm-hmm 00:12:08.000 --> 14:38.000 Subscription for food and meds? Michelle: So let's talk about, uh, food delivery services. So food, you essentially own it because you eat it and poop it out, right? No one's gonna take that back. But now they've discovered subscription food delivery services. So some of them are very, very good. We have a, a service in Montreal called, uh, Loofa, and they take the not pretty vegetables, but these amazing fresh foods that are grown in, in our neighborhood, and they deliver it to people's houses, and I love that. So no complaints about that. I think every neighborhood has something like that. But these food services where you can sign up and get the actual meal or the, the ingredients for a meal or something delivered to you every week or every two weeks or whatever it is, they've found a way to make food a subscription Kimberly: We have a, we have a grocery store called Cub. I can get my groceries delivered through Cub, or I can go to Shipt and then I can get Cub groceries through Shipt. So Shipt is making money on the groceries that I'm getting from Cub, where I could just actually go to Cub and have them delivered directly Michelle: Scuba gear time. I have type one, I have type one diabetes. I've had for decades, like 40-something years. Very, very, very long time. There's no cure for type one diabetes, but I have subscriptions to all of my medical supplies, all of my insulin, all the things that I need to stay, stay alive. I've been paying a subscription to stay alive for 40-something years, and nobody's working on a cure, which would mean I could buy and own my cure, my, my life. No, I'm sub- I'm subscribed to stay alive Kimberly: Ouch. That one hurts Michelle: Yeah. And I think there are a lot of diseases that are like that. As long as there's, as long as there are symptom control mechanisms or something that will help keep that person alive, instead of a cure, it's more lucrative for someone to deliver symptom management than a cure Kimberly: I don't even know what to say to that. It's

despicable and, and evil Michelle: When we boil it down like that, it does seem despicable and evil. But if we look at people just trying to get ahead in the, in the world, it started with something like that. Like, "Oh, I've got a great idea. I can make some money doing this. I can feed my family doing this. I can get a, a new car and a new house," and, and all of that. And then I think it just snowballs into something where people lose track of the fact that so much of what we do now is transferring into a subscription, and that's how rich people get richer. 00:14:38.000 --> 15:55.000 Subscriptions and subdivisions Michelle: So we think about... Think about homeownership. Like homeownership in the 1800s, you found a homestead. Sometimes the government gave away free land in the, in the West, in the US, and people could just go and live in that, on that, that homestead and have their cows and their chickens. And then their kids got it, and their grandkids got it, and the great-great-grand, great-grandkids got it. And they were the homeowners. And then somewhere, somebody figured out, "You know, I have this extra piece of land. If I put a house there and I have someone else come in to pay me to live there, I can make money from nothing. I can make money on the land that I'm not actually using." And then it snowballed into this in 2026 here, our children, my children at least, are gonna have a really, really hard time buying property, and they- they're just gonna end up renting for a long time. And the owners of those properties, um, the number of owners getting smaller and smaller, and those people getting richer and richer, they're the ones who are gonna make the money. And our kids are gonna have a hard time finding property to own Kimberly: And it's not li- it's not homeowners who have a little bit of extra land and put a house on. Michelle: Right Kimberly: big corporations scooping up all kinds of housing really cheap and then renting it for really expensive. Okay, so what do we do about it? 00:15:55.000 --> 23:26.000 Business confessions Michelle: So I have a, a transition thought, and I-- it's not an, it's not a what are we gonna do about it. It is a confession, basically. So Kimberly: girl, bring it on Michelle: It is a confession, basically. So Kimberly: girl, bring it on I own my own company, Leaders in Medical Affairs, and I started the company years ago, a handful of years ago, for me to do consulting to clients. So it was working fine. They had a problem, they brought me in, I'd solve the problem, and then I would leave. Michelle: Or I- they would have a-- something they needed to grow, and I would go and do the consulting project, and then they would pay me, and then I would leave. Now I have a company. In the last two years or so, my business model is now that I go get the client, and I hire someone who's an expert, and I put them in the client site, and I charge an X number of dollars for the client for per hour for that client, and then I pay my consultant X number of dollars minus whatever percent. So I'm making money on someone else working at the client site. So they could, the client could, not just as easily, but they could go and hire an employee, and then they have that employee. That's their employee. They own that employee for the period of time that they're with them. But for me, I put a consultant in there. They're renting that employee. So I'm benefiting-- my whole business model is benefiting from this societal shift toward you can't own it. You shouldn't own it. It's not as good to own it. You need to subscribe to it. We got flexibility. We got cost-effectiveness. We've got blah, blah, blah. And this is my business model, and I'm aware that as angry as I am that we can't own anything in life, that we have to rent everything and subscribe to everything, my model is a subscription to people's time Kimberly: Okay, so let, just, can we just back, back the train up just for a second? Those companies never own people Michelle: True. True Kimberly: So you're not renting people over a company that could own a person Michelle: So even an employee, a full-time employee who's paid with benefits and the dental and all that, they're still renting those people. That's true Kimberly: No, but the, uh, they're... Okay, they're investing money in their time. So, so having an employee is expensive. Michelle: Yes Kimberly: And they're s- so they are saving money by not having to hire and offer all of those benefits when they go with you. Michelle: That's exactly why I'm doing it Kimberly: so I would, I would not classify that in the same sense of, like, you, you went and bought up all of the pinwheels in Walmart, and now you're gonna go and sell all of the pinwheels, a subscription to them. You know? Like, that's, that's not, it- it's not apples to apples. So I think you can maybe let yourself off the hook a little bit for your business model because you, what you're offering is a service Michelle: I think you're absolutely right, and I f- I feel like people don't apply to this subscription model because you're right, there is no ownership of people, thank goodness, anymore Kimberly: think, think they, they wish that, I think that sometimes corporations think that they do own you when you, when you work for them. Michelle: Right. Kimberly: you like they own Michelle: Right. Right. And yet we still have freedom to quit, so I do understand that. But I think, I think too, I was discussing this with a friend, we were talking about gardeners and house cleaners and nannies, and those are also rentals, but that's people. It's not the same thing. I think there's a cer- we, we need to take people and employment and services off of the counter for this conversation Kimberly: Yeah, I absolutely think we have to take it off, off the table because it, the, what we're talking about is not a subscription to an item Michelle: Yes. Yes. Or, or a service that involves a person Kimberly: but

also I would also caveat something you just said, which is we always have the freedom to quit, and that's not always true. Some people don't have the freedom to quit. yeah, ultimately that, like, down the road, like if, if you're, if you're a citizen, if you're an American citizen and you have a job, yeah, technically you can quit, but there's a lot of reasons that that would be really, really challenging to do. Um, and if you're not a citizen of the United States, maybe you can't quit because if you quit, then you lose your anchor to the country and get booted Michelle: So I was drawing a line at employees in the United States are not physically restrained from leaving. They're not beaten when they talk about leaving. They're not, um, well, I don't want to go to this very dark place, but they're not treated like people who actually were under this sick, um, category of owned in the past in the US. So that's why I was drawing the line, but you're right Kimberly: sl- it's not chattel slavery, but, but it, but sometimes it is indentured servitude. If Michelle: Right Kimberly: if you have to keep the job to keep y- your, your residency, then you're kinda stuck Michelle: We had a whole conversation about high control groups, and I think that's, that's that category. But if we're taking people off the table in this conversation, then yeah. Back to your question was, is there anything we can do about it? Kimberly: Okay, let me, let me back up then. So since we're taking people off the table, I also then will confess that my business was also a subscription business, and it wasn't subscribing to people, it was subscribing to, content, ideas. And the, the, the reality is that I had to do a subscription model in order for it to be a viable business, because I could not afford to have people, um... I couldn't, I couldn't afford to not be able to rely upon the money. So I actually feel z- zero problem with the subscription that I offered. One, because I am classically what you would call mom-and-pop business, because it was just me, and then I added a few writers here and there. So I'm not a huge corporation taking billions. Um, and two, that I always, always, always a much reduced rate if I was talking with clients that needed the product but just couldn't swing it. So I actually feel zero remorse for having a subscription business that arena. Let me clarify. It wasn't as much a subscription that went on forever it was you bought a year's worth of the product, and then you used the product for a year. They had to re-up every year if they wanted to continue to get it. So in that sense, maybe it wasn't a subscription model, because maybe I should have done a subscription model. Maybe, I could have kept churches on that, that didn't know that they were paying for it and made a bazillion dollars. Michelle: But here's I think a, a, a distinguishing characteristic is that when you sold them that content, whatever it was on, on some words on paper, they owned those to use as they saw fit. They couldn't sell it of course, but that's, nobody else would, nobody would think that was part of owning something. But they could use it as they see fit. And if they wanted to buy a year's worth and use it the next year and the next year and the next year, they could do that if they wanted to. Kimberly: Mm-hmm. Michelle: So it's not like at the end of the year all of their virtual content disappeared, voop, and they don't, they can- don't have access to it anymore. I think that's more of the, the, the subscription model that I'm balking against. 00:23:26.000 --> 24:55.000 Can subscriptions also be good? Michelle: And I, and I think we need to take a, a broader look now. I think I started this conversation because I'm so angry about some of these, these ownership opportunities being taken away from us, that I, I started the, with the assumption that s- the subscription model and the society going more towards subscriptions than ownership was bad. And I think there are definitely some characteristics of subscription that are not bad. As you say, you made a, a reduced rate for people. You let them own their content and have it forever. I think there are some things that are not bad about subscriptions. What, what are your thoughts? Kimberly: So like my subscription to Netflix, which again, no shade to Netflix 'cause I love my Netflix. I would be really irritated if I had to buy it every month. You know, like if I had to go and s- and, and pay them, like re- remind them that I wanna keep it. The fact that all I have to do is say, "Yes, it's a subscription," and then it just goes until I stop it, is actually really convenient Michelle: No, I think that's, that, that's, it wasn't exactly what I was saying. It's, it's the fact that it's on auto pay. Yeah, we need auto pay. We're not gonna go and pay these things every... We wouldn't. We would... Of course, they're gonna want it on auto pay because we wouldn't re-up most of our subscriptions if we had to decide every single month to do that. I think the issue is that the content will never be owned. So the minute you stop paying Netflix, you don't have access to any of your movies or TV shows. It really is, you have to pay them to get any of these things, and once they stop or once you stop, it's gone completely 00:24:55.000 --> 27:04.000 Music in the cloud Kimberly: I remember having a conversation with somebody who was more tech-savvy than I was we were transitioning from CDs for our music to having the music in the cloud. And I remember having that exact same thought, like, "What do you mean I wouldn't own a CD with the music on it that I could play any time I wanted to? Like, I, I'm gonna have to pay s- somebody for the privilege to listen to it every time I wanna listen to it?" And I understand now what, what this, this is. Um, but actually, I prefer now to have my music in the cloud because I don't have to buy the eight out of the 10 songs on the album that I didn't

really want Michelle: We're still paying, we're still paying for it. And, and, and any money that we're not paying gets out of the artist's pocket, not the company's pocket. So I, I think you're right. This, this, um, putting everything into a subscription and a, and rental of everything was really facilitated by the fact that every- that most things are now, most content is now virtual. And the, the virtual content is owned by the companies, not by us. Like I have a whole book of CDs downstairs, a whole y- just hundreds of CDs. I own those. I've got Sting's album and I've got some Wham!, you know? I've already listened to those 1,000 times. But I own it. If I wanna hear anything new or, like you say, I wanna listen to that one song but not pay the entire 18 bucks for that CD, which is what we paid 20 years ago, um, then we have to subscribe to it, and we'll never, we're never gonna own it Kimberly: all right, so here's the qu- here's... Okay, that's so, that's all right. So y- okay. All right. Deep dive. So that brings up an interesting question. What, what is the advantage owning all of the things? So if I had to go out and purchase a CD for every song that I've listened to on my Apple Music, I would not have space in my apartment for it. I would have to get a bigger apartment house all the shit that I now have to buy, that I don't have to buy now because it's all in the cloud 00:27:04.000 --> 28:25.000 The ethical dilemma of convenience Michelle: So the fact that the subscription model benefits us in some ways doesn't mean that it's not also bad. It doesn't mean it's not bad, right? But I think the fact that we, the, the, yeah, there are conveniences. I can look up any song in the universe on my Spotify and listen to it. I pay for it. I pay for that every month. I pay for that privilege every month. Kimberly: So maybe the issue isn't as much, like, the, the, the morality of subscriptions, maybe it has to do with it is that's being subscribed to. So I don't have a problem subscribing to music because it's more cost-effective for me, even though I actually do feel for the artists that are not making it. But that, but that's, I mean, that's not a me problem. If they actually got paid for every time I listen, they'd make a shit ton of money because I listen to music a lot. Michelle: Right Kimberly: I think the issue is when the product that's being subscribed to is not a luxury, Michelle: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Kimberly: water clothing. And when we start, if, if we start down that road of making everything, including necessities, um, y- where you only can get it if you're subscribed to it, that's hugely problematic 00:28:25.000 --> 30:10.000 Water woes Michelle: Okay, so let's look at water in California where I used to live. There is a charge for water. I think probably most places in the US they charge for water, but you have to have an account with them, right? So does that make it a subscription because you have to have the account to get the water,

and you have to have the account because you have to get water? So here in Canada, I don't pay a water bill because we have the, the largest supply of fresh water of any country in the, in the planet per capita. So we don't pay for water. We don't pay for fresh water Kimberly: right there. People can get water without paying a subscription for it. In the United States, we've chosen a system where we have to pay for water Michelle: How would someone in the US get water without subscribing to the water company? Without having, having an account that you pay month after month Kimberly: Well, right now they, there's not really any other option. That's why w- that's why it's, that's wh- that's where I would call, consider it a morality issue. That's where I think it becomes evil. Because there's no other way to get water. Michelle: Or you could buy it Kimberly: Which is you're still having to pay for it. Like, it, water should be free. Michelle: Okay, that's a, I think that's a slightly different discussion because that's not a subscription. You can go to the store and get your, your big old plastic pack of water. But that's, that's up to you to buy it whenever you want it. And then when you buy that water, it's in your house and you own it. You're not, you're not obliged to buy that same brand water again. You're not obliged to get a bill every month from your water company. That's, that's an ownership of that water. Don't, don't do that, by the way, please. Don't buy water Kimberly: No, don't buy it. No, because you're also mostly paying for the plastic Michelle: And the shipping and the... Yeah. Okay. Kimberly: and all the things. Yeah. Michelle: My little soapbox Kimberly: Uh, however it is that you do that in Canada, we could choose as the United States to do that here, and we've chosen not to Michelle: Yeah 00:30:10.000 --> 31:17.000 Wealth worship and capitalism Kimberly: Because we've abdicated all of our power, almost, almost all of our power to the rich people. So I think here's one of the problems... we have idolized people with money. We've, we've decided that people with money are people worth worshiping, and it's become a problem because now we've created, like, this whole monster class of people whose sole purpose in life is making more money at the expense of everybody else. And I think that the, the, the opportunity to have subscriptions, uh, is just exacerbating an already problematic problem Michelle: So maybe what I, like in- intrinsically what I'm not mad about is that we have to subscribe to everything. Maybe what I'm mad about is capitalism, and that we're, we're becoming a society where the people at the head of capitalism are becoming fewer and fewer and richer and richer. And the difference between have and have not is just a gaping hole right now. Maybe that's really what I'm pissed about 00:31:17.000 --> 32:53.000 Illusion of ownership Kimberly: I think also part of the problem which makes subscriptions feel worse is because even when there were rich people, say, in 1920, and there were poorer people, you could still own some things. Michelle: Right. Kimberly: And I think what's so diabolical about the subscription model is that it gives the illusion of ownership Michelle: Yes Kimberly: without actually having any, like, tradable product that is, that belongs to us Michelle: The one who owns whatever it is, is the one who gets to decide how much money people need to pay them. And I feel like with the subscription model, because they own that thing, that content or that object, whatever, that land, they're the ones who get to decide. And if we want any access to that, we're sort of at the mercy of that person. We either have it under their terms or we can't have it. Whereas if we owned something, we bought something, and we can negotiate those terms and say, "That's it, and now I have that thing." Kimberly: And it's a thing that then down the road you could trade for something else. Michelle: That might appreciate. Kimberly: I have, I have no music to trade. Like, I get to listen to it, I get to experience, it's more of an experience than a, than a product now. But I, but I d- but all of the money that I put into a subscription so that I can have that music, I don't... Y- like you said, I've got nothing to show for it Michelle: Right. And, and what if, what if things appreciate over time? Land certainly appreciates over time, so by renting we're not participating in any of that growth over time. Kimberly: Mm-hmm. 00:32:53.000 --> 35:02.000 Can I make money on my money? Michelle: I wonder if there's any, um, corollary renting access to the stock market or something. Hadn't thought that through. But Kimberly: Say Michelle: it's one way we could participate in making money over time with interest by participating in the stock market or participating in some sort of investment, even just bonds or a bank account that has interest. We as normal middle cro- middle-class people can participate in getting some interest by owning that money and keeping that money. I wonder if there's a, a, a version of people saying, "Well, uh, you can rent your own money," or something. It's not a well, it's not a well-baked argument. I'm just think- thinking out loud Kimberly: So I, I think what you're talking about is if everybody, if everybody understood how to invest their money wisely, w- everybody would have the opportunity to make money on their money. Because that's how, that's how that, that's how those, that's how the rich people get rich. It's not because they worked harder. Michelle: No, certainly not Kimberly: If, if you, if you, if you made money working hard, then our cleaning people and the, the people taking the garbage out and the construction workers, they would be really rich, Michelle: Features. Kimberly: off. So I think that what you're seeing is that all of Am- Am- Americans and Canadians had access to the stock market, then maybe we could all do that. Uh, the,

the, the problem is that it's complicated enough that people don't all have access to it, and it's also risky enough that, eh, I, I, I don't think that most people should be playing with their money in, in an area that is so volatile Michelle: I think beyond the risk, there are very safe vehicles that don't make a lot of money, but you get more and more as time goes by. Like, you're owning something, but owning a piece of this, this economic climate. But I think it's more, more than risky. It's difficult to not spend all of our money because life is so expensive right now Kimberly: Yeah. 00:35:02.000 --> 40:40.000 Wages, inflation, and systemic squeeze Kimberly: I, uh, okay, right there, right there, right there I think is the crux of the problem. The people setting the prices have figured out how to keep prices set at a level most Americans can just only squeak by. If wages had kept up with inflation, would be doing just fine right now. But things get more expensive, and the amount of money we're making is getting less and less and less comparably. we're kind of, it's kind of like dangling a carrot. You know? Like, you're never gonna catch it. You're never gonna get that ahead to, uh, uh... And systemically, you're never gonna get ahead. So it's not Michelle: Right Kimberly: not a, an individual problem like, well, if you just were smarter about, or if you worked a little bit hard- That's not how this works. It's, it is a systemic problem, I think what you were talking about with the subscription sort of popping up as a new way of fleecing the country, it's getting worse, not better Michelle: I completely agree. There was an SNL skit 10 years ago that was talking about hardworking people, and these were people who had three jobs, four jobs. And the joke was, "I have 10 jobs." And it always struck me, like, what, what, 10 jobs isn't better than one big job, right? It's, like, in all of those jobs together don't a- add to anything else. But I think that's the, the paradigm of people who are not working hard enough. You don't ha- you could get 10 jobs, you can get 11 jobs then, and then you'll be able to s- to save in the stock market. That's not possible. People are working extremely hard. Our nurses, our teachers, our, I mean, the, uh, police officers, they're working very, very hard. That's not the issue. The dental, the dental office receptionist working really hard. That's not the issue. And getting a second job and a third job and a 10th job, an 11th job, that's not gonna solve the problem. Because I think you're right, it's the, the capitalist and sys- capitalistic system we're under that keeps everybody just unable to get their feet under them and get ahead. Not because they're not working hard. That's a ridiculous diversion of attention Kimberly: Yeah, and I think that that's intentional. I think that part of that is to keep people browbeaten. Like, if, if it's your own damn fault, well then y- you, y- y- you don't ever have a vision for

how it could be different And if you don't have a vision for how it could be different, then you don't move forward with actions that maybe could help you make it different. So I think that's part of the problem. Um, also, I think that capitalism in and of itself necessarily lead to this. The abuses of the system of capitalism is what has gotten us here. Because I don't think that, that these issues were as stark earlier in... Well, I can't, I can't really say that. Michelle: Oh, I think you're right. I think they, I think they are less stark. They, they were less stark at the sort of idealistic period of capitalism Kimberly: Yeah, just as far as people having access to enough money to, like, have food. Michelle: Right. Kimberly: know, there Michelle: Right Kimberly: in America, I think, where more people had the ability to have food and clothing and shelter than we have now. And I think that it's because of this funneling up of money that is, was supposed to trickle down and never has trickled down. And w- we, we need to r- grapple with that. We need to wrestle that back start putting a cap on... So I don't, I don't know a lot about, I don't know a lot about economy. I don't know a lot about economics. But I do know that some countries, and the United States at one point also, had a cap where if you made more than X dollars, you had something like a 90% or 100, 100%, um, rate of, of, of taxation, helped keep that money i- flowing back into the community, which is a good, healthy thing for an economy. And once that cap went away, um, it just was this free-for-all of, of m- money hoarders just doing whatever the hell they needed to do to get more and more and more and more and more and more and more. Michelle: This is what gives me hope for the future is exactly that issue. And, uh, if we look at Zohran Mandami in New York, he's proposing, and I think there's one in California too, proposing exactly that. You pay 100% of yourself, of your income past a certain... Like here's, here's what we as society think is enough. Let's multiply that by 10,000, and everything above that you have to pay back to the cities. So I think one of the issues is none of this is really reported by the ultra-rich as income. So I think there's gonna be ways around it. But that, just the idea that we're starting to s- to try to claw back and at least come to a, to an agreement as a society that hoarding wealth is no longer admirable, but it's a disease, that's the, the beginning of what's gonna turn this around So we started today talking about our irritation with more and more things becoming a subscription and not something that we can own and have in our lives and, and keep as long as we want to, and it turned into you and I need to solve capitalism. We got, like, three minutes left. Do you have any... I'm just kidding. It's a much bigger idea, and honestly, I think our children are gonna, are gonna tackle that. We'll do the best we can to give them guidance and wisdom, but, 00:40:40.000 --> 42:44.000 Or we could cancel Kimberly: So I, I, I guess I do have one, I do have one suggestion of something that we can do, um, to tackle the subscription runaway problem, and that is we can cancel some subscriptions to things. And I have done that. I don't, I haven't canceled everything, but, um, back in January, I was having a, a, I was having a, a, a moral ethical dilemma with myself, and so I did cancel a whole bunch of subscriptions, I haven't missed them. I haven't missed them at all Michelle: I think there's a bit of communal living as well. So I, I own a business, so I need a printer. I have a printer, I've got ink. I keep the ink stocked. None of my friends have a printer at home. They don't pay the subscription for ink. They don't pay the, the costs over and over again every time they print something. They send me a message and say, "My kid's got a report due tomorrow. Can you print it for me?" And I say, "Yeah, I'd be happy to." So looking at the community, we have one... I mean, I'm paying for it, but it's, that's not the issue. Nobody needs to have a printer in my neighborhood I mean, there are things, I th- I think it came down to what you were saying earlier, what is in the category of luxury and what's in the category of necessity? And I think moving some of the things from the necessity category into the luxury category, like the food delivery services. I, I did that for a while. Oh, it was so convenient. I was throwing away so much less food. It was delicious. It was varied. It was at my doorstep. I loved it, but I can also go to the store and get one onion and one tomato and do the same thing. And so I've, I've been doing that, and that, that subscription, that food subscription moved from necessity to luxury to me, and I got rid of it Kimberly: Good Michelle: Yeah. Kimberly: doing it Michelle: Well, I'm not gonna pat myself on the back too much. It was, it was a luxury to begin with, I should say Kimberly: food shouldn't be though. But I mean, yes, being able to have it delivered to your house Michelle: Chopped and measured food was a absolutely luxury Kimberly: Yeah Michelle: So no solution to capitalism, but I think we got to the place that we're really upset about 00:42:44.000 --> 45:26.000 Coming Soon: Abdicating Agency