Michael Knowles

Now you can argue that that's made elderly people more prosperous, that's fine.

Because you pay them to do their chores, now they feel like they're giving you a service in exchange for the thing.

It is a gigantic social welfare system that's bankrupting the country.

But it is true that governmental systems tend to crowd out individual virtue and social virtue.

And so without the pay, they're going to stop doing the thing, right?

It's a Pavlovian incentive structure.

And so I think one of the things this comes down to is you guys have both seen Cinderella Man.

And so I think that's a huge component of this.

I mean, why don't any of these people who are defrauding people millions of dollars feel guilty?

There's that great scene in Cinderella Man where Russell Crowe is James Braddock.

He's a down-on-his-luck boxer.

And he ends up on welfare and he goes and becomes champion and he goes back to the welfare office with a roll of bills and he puts it back through the slot and he gives it back.

There is not a single human in America who would do that with any form of taxpayer benefit today.

It says something about our sort of collective morality.

And I think it's also one of the reasons, one of the things that's sort of fascinating is that this story that Luke uncovered here has done outsized political work.

I mean, the reality is that it's, you know, you've got all these politicians, vice president on down, who are taking notice of this and saying they want to do something about it.

But I will say that in terms of sort of spectacular traffic, you know, gigantic public attention,

It hasn't done the same sort of numbers.

And I think the reason for that is not because of the quality of the story.

The story is incredible.