There’s a big debate brewing: Should people be allowed to buy sugary snacks, like soda, using SNAP benefits? Glenn and Stu look at how our founders, like Benjamin Franklin, looked at poverty and social welfare. Is it a problem that the number one item purchased with SNAP benefits is soda? Should our tax dollars only help the poor buy the basics, like meat and bread?

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: I don't know. I mean, I don't want to turn anybody into Jeff Bezos.

But you might want to back off the sugar if you're on Snap. Oh, that's the word we're getting. No sugary treats, if you're on Snap.

And, you know, I'm torn.

If you are somebody who have got kids and you are struggling, you're not living off of the government. You're struggling.

I mean, it would be nice to have something. You know, an Oreo, to be able to have for dessert, or something.

But the argument is, and I agree with it, this is not good for you. We're going to cause more problems, if we're giving these really high sugary, high fructose corn syrup stuff to the people who can't necessarily afford the medical care and the medical treatment, and take care of yourself.

That's adding. That's just adding stupidity on stupidity.

But Stu and I are big fans of Benjamin Franklin. And how he looked at poverty.

STU: Yeah. Here it is.

I am for doing good for the poor.

But I think the best way of doing good for the poor. Is not making them easy in poverty.

But by leading or driving them out of it.

I observed, that the more public provisions were made to the poor, the less they provided for themselves. And, of course, became poorer.

On the contrary, the less that was done for them. The more they did for themselves. And became richer.

I'm a big believer in that philosophy.

GLENN: Me too. Me too. Me too.

STU: And I'm kind of like this with almost all government programs.

They should not give you some utopian life.

They should be something that you hate.

You should despise the fact that you have to stay on these rams.

And you should always desire to get off of them as soon as possible.

And this goes, when it comes to the snap benefits discussion. I don't -- it's not -- for me at least.

It's not about whether it's healthy or not.

I do -- you have a big place in my heart for your argument on -- that it's going to lead to a bunch of health expenses later on in life.

I think it's a real consideration.

It's not really that for me.

It shouldn't be things, that are like luxury items.

You shouldn't get a luxury item. Oreos, as much as I love them. And they feel like, it's part of my day-to-day necessity to live.

GLENN: Oh, it's the left hand side of my food pyramid. All the way to the top or the bottom, it's the left-hand side of that pyramid.

STU: Some would say, maybe not the best decision. But I'm with you on that. That should not mean, that the government provides those things for you. Like, I am like, I would rather go back to like government cheese.

They're delivering government cheese.

Government milk. They produce it.

It sucks! You hate it. You never want to eat it. That's what I want.

Do I want like -- if you are going to have a program like this.

The idea is to not make it a lifestyle. It might be something to get people through a really difficult situation. By the way, that is temporary.

It's supposed to be temporary.

A temporary situation, where you're struggling, and you help end meat.

But that means, you're alive! That doesn't mean, you're having the latest Mountain Dew flavor.

That's not what it -- you know the number one thing, purchased with Snap benefits is soda.

And I am the biggest soda advocate you will ever find. I constantly --

GLENN: Oh, yeah. You're 98 percent soda.

STU: I am. If anything, there was a story about conservative influencers perhaps getting payments to post in -- on behalf of big soda.

Which was really frustrating, and awful.

Because I didn't get an offer.

Like, I should be the number one --

GLENN: I know. I'm a little upset about that too.

STU: Where is my soda cash? I want it. You can pay me directly in aspartame. I'm fine with it. Deliver bags of aspartame to my front door.

GLENN: Honey, why is there a truckload of aspartame?

STU: Hold on, I need to post on X. So I -- from that perspective. Like I think there's a big hole here for considering what we do with these programs, and how we consider the relationship with the government and people who are on them.

People who are on these programs. Should desire to get off of them.

We shouldn't be. They used to have food stamps. Then they made the cards.

One of the talks. It's kind of embarrassing for these people who go and use them. Look, I'm not looking to shame people. You shouldn't have shame for going through a tough period.

But it also shouldn't be something where you're like, this is great. Hold on. Let me pay for all the food I have. So then I can use the extra money for liquor. Or I can use the extra money for an i Phone.

Or whatever else.

These should be desperation programs. The government, if it will provide these services at all.

Should be providing them to people who are desperately in need to get over a hump that is temporary. That should be the design of these programs.

GLENN: So do you know the history of that phrase, from Benjamin Franklin? Do you know what that's about?

STU: I think so. He was in Europe, right?

GLENN: He was in England. Yeah. He was traveling in England.

And somebody said, you know, you just -- you hate the poor. Because you don't. And he's like, no, no, no. I don't. I don't.

I'm watching what you're doing.

And everything that you're doing is making the situation worse for them. They're getting poorer and poorer and more reliant on you.

We found, you know, the churches should do it.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: And you shouldn't just give it out. We should make people uncomfortable in their poverty, so they want to get out.

STU: Uh-huh.

GLENN: You know, if you read Noah Gerald Harari. Anyway, that guy.

STU: Geraldo. Yes. If you read Geraldo's book, yeah.

GLENN: You read Harari's book, and he talks about, what are we going to do to this useless population?

Well, there's your first problem.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Okay. If you're looking at people as useless. Then you do have to do something with them.

But who is making them useless?

Our school system is making them useless.

They cannot read. They can't reason.

They can't think.

They can't do mathematics.

And then on top of it. You know, the elites are controlling all of our tech.

And it's going to get worse and worse and worse.

I mean, Stu. Tell the story about homework last night with your son.

STU: Oh, yeah.

So we had baseball. By the way, Zach two for two with the triple. So we get back from the game, and it's late. And he's been -- from the moment we left school, it was baseball all the way. And it's like 9:15. 9:30. He's done with the shower. He's beat. He's -- you have to run for a triple at that speed. That will do you.

So he has the homework. And he has math homework. He's in some advanced math class. Where he's now looking at -- he's to the level now in seventh grade, where he is beyond what I can actually remember and do easily.

You know, he's like, can I help me with this.

GLENN: I remember that hit me with my kids in first grade.

STU: It's some advanced graphing formula.

And I'm like, I sort of remember seeing something like this 30 years ago.

It's beyond my level.

GLENN: Right.

STU: So when these things happen.

I've been using. Like ChatGPT.

Or Grok, or whatever. To kind of reteach it to me in a brief lesson. So I can talk him through it.

It's really helpful like that. Don't let your kids get access to it.

GLENN: Right.

STU: Right.

So what I usually do, is I'll be like, hey, help me understand this and explain it to a seventh grader. And it gives you like a little outline of, like, okay. Here's a formula. This is how this works.

Then it kind of comes back to you. It's like a language you maybe learned a long time ago.

When you get kind of a couple of words, it starts piecing back together in your mind. So it's been really helpful.

But last night, I'm tired. He's tired. It's late. And I am like, I just -- even after I did that exercise, could not really remember how to do whatever he was attempting.

And so I was like, well, let me just try to type it out. And have -- graph the thing for me. Maybe it will set me up. I do that, I type in the question he's got on his paper. It does the homework and graphs it up for me. And I'm like, wow, that's amazing. But still, I'm at the point, my brain is not working, I cannot get there.

Then I wind up taking a picture of his actual question, just a picture of it. Input it into the AI, and it reads the question. It then explains it to a seventh grader step by step. And then answers it, at the bottom.

And so I have him, I'm like, you read this.

I'm legitimately not getting this. I read this. He reads the step by step. You know, how to understand what's going on. What each thing means.

And, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is easy.

Before he gets to the answer.

GLENN: You gave him the answer?

STU: I didn't give him the answer.

It was at the bottom. So I made sure to not get to the --


GLENN: All right. You just know, it's my son. He's never going to read all the way to the end.

STU: I think what you want to do.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Glenn. Because you're the AI expert here. What I should have done is say, don't give the answer at the end.

GLENN: Well, you could have, cut it off for you. So you could have it, and check his work.

STU: That's what wound up happening.
It's fascinating. And then I started thinking, I'm super restrictive on phones.
My kid doesn't have one.

Every single thing is locked down. They can't even log into their devices, where they're coming to me and make me type in or give my fingerprint to get in. I'm obsessive about this. I've read Jonathan Haidt's book.

GLENN: That is terrifying, by the way.

STU: The Anxious Generation, read it. Hopefully before they turn of the age where you might be considering giving them a phone.

GLENN: I wish I would have read that. I wish it would have been printed before I did. Because I gave my kids a phone when they got into high school.

Because the school said, they have to have one.

STU: And that's late.

You already did a great job of -- of --

GLENN: Oh, we just.

STU: It's so hard.

GLENN: I'm sure every parent feels like this.

You just feel like a failure.

Because everything is so overwhelming.

And you never dealt with any of this stuff.

It's not like our parents -- I mean, kids hadn't changed that much.

Life hadn't changed that much from the '60s to the '80s. It's totally different now.

You just feel like a bad parent at times.

STU: We were at dinner with some of his friends after baseball.

Five kids at the table. Four of them are on phones, at the table. My son is the only one without one. I'm sure this is going to lead to all positive things in the future.

GLENN: Oh, it will. It will.

STU: I do believe it will, for him. He will have some tough times.

My point there though, is that I'm obsessive about this. I lock all that stuff down as much as I can. It's still difficult.

Most of the parents I know, are like, they're going to get it anyway.

I can't sit here and obsess about freaking screen time all day.

So, you know, they're good kids.

Look, I -- I don't know -- was I a good kid? I don't know. But I will tell you, if I had access to that, I would be taking a photo of every single one of my questions and having ChatGPT or whatever answer them.

Filling it all in.

Getting on with my life. When I went to play video games.

And we're seeing it now. There was an instructor, who teaches a college course.

Been teaching it for years and years and years.

He said, all of my students seem brilliant all of a sudden. And it's funny because none of them come for help after school and office hours. None of them ever ask any questions in class. They all get incredible grades, and until we have an in-room exam! And then they all do worse, than everybody else.

From the previous years.

And he's like, what's happening?

Is -- ChatGPT. I think it's a coding thing. Their -- ChatGPT is doing all the coding for them, or AI or Grok or Gemini. Or whatever.

And they're not learning it. They don't have any of the process. They don't know how to answer the questions.

They don't know how to think through the problems. What -- what does that lead to?

GLENN: Stu, do you remember when I had Ray Kurzweil? 2008, 2009.

And he said, that this was coming.

And I said, Ray, that's going to make us incredibly lazy.

He said, no. It will give you time to think about other things.

And I thought, okay. You don't know who humans are.

I use it that way. I know people who do use it that way.

It's enhanced what they do.

And I said, oh, my gosh.

I can create so much more.

Most people are not like that. That's the spirit of the entrepreneur that is like that.

That's the discoverer in some people.

Most people are like, I just want to get by.

I just want to get by.

And I just want to do my thing for a few hours every day, just be left alone. Those are the ones that are going to be left way behind. Because they will use it to complete their work.

And not to help them learn or think.