Matt (00:01.358)
Hello everybody and welcome to the Latter Day Lens. It is great to have you with us this week. I'm your host, Matt. With me as always is Sean and Melanie's with us this week. We're so happy to have you.

Shawn (00:12.628)
The goat, the goat, the goat, the goat. Hey Matt, I love that it's 150 episodes for you to finally, because up until we started recording, you kept telling your daughter, Melanie, hey, you eat that mic, put that mic right up close to your mouth, like you gotta talk right into the mic. I love that it's taken 150 episodes for you to give a crap, even just a little bit of care, what the audio sounds like, you being the main host and the producer. But it's taken 150 for you to care at all. To the listeners.

Melanie (00:12.941)
Woo woo!

Matt (00:36.366)
And every

And every time when someone's like, right, when people are like, how's my audio?

Shawn (00:44.724)
Yeah, to the listeners, whenever you hear guests that are like, they're like, Matt's like, it's fine. It'll work out. I'm like, it's not going to work out.

Melanie (00:51.417)
you

Matt (00:56.342)
Every single time Sean's like, okay, Matt, you're the boss. Like, yeah, that's right. I am the boss. Quality control is not my department. It's the ether. Like something out there has a job over quality control. Something other than me.

Shawn (01:07.892)
But you must have gotten yelled at enough times where you're like, Melanie, please, please speak into the mic. How do you sound, Melanie? Let's hear you.

Melanie (01:16.697)
I just think it's funny because last time he complimented me for how close I talked to the mic and then this time it's not close enough anymore so I just do what he tells me. Closer? Is this close enough?

Shawn (01:23.764)
Matt (01:24.59)
Closer Melanie, closer, closer Melanie, closer still. I'm just having fun. It's just this Sean, I'm a terrible manager. I'm a horrible boss and somebody will come and they'll say, hey, I'm gonna do this job for you. And I'll say, great, this is my expectation. And then they'll get 50 % of the way of what I expect. And I'll say, enough. And then the next time it's a little bit worse and I'm like, hmm.

I'm not happy. And then they'll be like, why aren't you happy? And I'll be like, don't worry, it'll be fine. It'll be okay. And then within two weeks, I'm like fired. I am not working with you anymore. And it's just, I just don't know how to manage people.

Melanie (02:07.565)
You've gotta set your boundaries, Dad. Know your worth and don't compromise.

Shawn (02:12.58)
Nice, Melanie.

Matt (02:13.324)
Yeah, there's definitely a skill set there that I lack. And so you never want to work for me. This is, and I think Melanie, if we're being honest, you don't really want to be my child either. It's not very comfortable.

Melanie (02:25.055)
It's all I've ever known. Most comfortable I've ever been in a parent-child dynamic.

Matt (02:29.792)
Okay, good. All right. That was the right answer. Speaking of power, one of our listeners wrote in and said, I don't think you can talk about freedom without talking about power and power relationships. What is freedom except the power to make choices?

Shawn (02:30.568)
Ha ha ha!

Shawn (02:44.788)
So that's a response to one of our episodes where we talked about it. But my comment was that power doesn't matter. My comment was that when you view relationships primarily through the lens of an imbalance of power, lots of problems start to really get created. When your only lens is, well, when you look at everyone and you go, okay, are they an oppressor?

Matt (02:49.569)
Yeah, I don't know.

Matt (03:06.264)
Yeah.

Shawn (03:13.286)
or are they the oppressed? And instead of looking at them like, okay, these people are covenant people or there's a free exchange between these or there's love or service or there's a goal for mutual benefit, like that's the purpose and nature of the relationship. Then you're always gonna be looking for which one of you is the bad guy, which one of the countries is the bad guy. it's a problem, right? Like when people are just supposed to be oppressor or oppressed. No?

Matt (03:17.166)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (03:42.146)
Yeah, my perspective is as a political scientist, this is what I view sociology as a field. This is what I think that they do, is they think about everything in terms of power and power dynamics. so whenever somebody says that, I just think, is there a sociologist in the room? Cause I feel like that's their whole field. my, yeah, that's just like as.

Melanie (03:50.422)
you

Shawn (04:00.936)
Really? whole, wait, wait, you're saying like defining sociology is power imbalance relationships? That's the whole.

Matt (04:12.826)
Sociology is a field studies society, right? And how society structure themselves and organize themselves and people or like interact with each other in society. But mostly, yeah, I think it comes down to like power imbalances, power relationships, things like that. But that's, know, that's, that's just maybe a snobby political science way to define an entire field that maybe somebody who has a PhD in that subject wouldn't feel the same. But this is the

This is a thing Sean, will say that's going to make you so happy inside because the listener wrote in what is freedom except the power to make choices. And when I was a young man roommates with Sean, Sean introduced me to Victor Frankel and Victor Frankel's thesis that Sean loved so much and he shared with me on a regular basis is what is it Sean? Yeah. huh.

Shawn (05:03.742)
thesis, the book Man Search for Meaning, that there's one thing that no one can take away from you, which is your ability to choose your response to everything. That thesis? I figured it wrong. Yeah.

Matt (05:16.258)
Yeah, that's right, that thesis. Okay, so if the question is what is freedom, except the power to make choices, can anyone take that freedom away from you? The power to make a choice, That's right, see, I knew you would love that. I think without a doubt, there are things that happen in society that limit our freedom to make certain choices. But I think that if you look at everything in society through the lens of power,

Shawn (05:25.114)
No, cannot. Good job, Matt. Man, does. That makes me feel so happy. I love it so much.

Melanie (05:28.341)
You

Matt (05:46.318)
and you equate power with freedom, then you're missing something that's a fundamental principle of the Church, of the teachings of the Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is that no matter where you are, no matter what's going on in your life, you always have the power to choose your response to the situation. Yeah?

Shawn (06:05.822)
Melody, what do you think of that? Cause cause I, I love it so much. Well done, Matt.

Melanie (06:11.097)
I think I agree with this thesis. think it's important to be able to look at society and say that there are situations that are harder for some people to overcome than others. People without money cannot, no matter what, make the decision to enroll their children in as many extracurriculars as people with money. And I think it's important to be able to look at societies and recognize how institutions and societal

Shawn (06:32.487)
Yeah, yes.

Melanie (06:39.319)
concerns can impact some degree of agency. But I also think it's important to recognize that no matter how much society may be oppressing or working against you, the most important thing is always how you choose to react to those stimuli. And so I like that thesis, that idea.

Shawn (06:54.664)
Yeah. Yeah, I love that too. I hate that we would say to someone, well, yes, you're not in a situation where you can, let's take your example of, you know, providing a, I don't know, putting my kid in basketball, cause I just can't afford it. I hate telling them, and you'll never be able to, unless we or the government or other people in power intervene. I hate that message. Like you don't have any control or power.

Matt (06:57.646)
Alright.

Shawn (07:24.102)
It's just so heartbreaking to me that we would convince people, yeah, you're not good enough. You're not able, you don't have the ability. I believe they do have the ability. And I know that makes people angry because they want to say, no, they don't. Yes, they do.

Matt (07:37.75)
Okay. Well, so next July, our country celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And so as, and so as part of that, our country, our nation is going to be having all kinds of celebrations and the Wall Street Journal has commissioned some essays about the history of the United States. And so one of them I came across recently is about slavery in the United States.

Melanie (07:47.189)
Yee-haw!

Shawn (07:48.766)
You

Matt (08:05.61)
And I thought that they made interesting arguments in this essay. And I think I want to talk about some things that maybe implies. Okay. So this particular article argues that slavery was a foundational economic engine for the United States, far surpassing its common historical depiction. At its height, the total market value of enslaved people exceeded all other industrial capital in the nation, including factories and railroads.

making them the country's single largest financial asset. This human capital provided a critical source of wealth and credit because slave owners would mortgage the people they owned to finance investments. As an example, I didn't know this, but Thomas Jefferson, when he wanted to build Monticello, his mansion home, he funded it with mortgages that were backed by the slaves that he owned. So this

Melanie (09:01.399)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (09:01.996)
This human capital was a source of wealth and credit. And it integrated the practice deeply into both Northern and international finance. So we usually think of slavery as something that the South wanted because the South needed it to keep their economic engine going. But the truth is a lot of people in the North also benefited from the economic engine that came from slavery in the United States.

It also helped them develop this new kind of both management and accounting system that became widespread in the United States. So in short, slavery was foundational to the economic growth and development of the United States. And this is one reason why it took so long for the country to end slavery. And even after the Civil War, once slavery was unconstitutional, that people created other institutions

to perpetuate the same kinds of benefits that they might have had owning slaves back in the day. So here's the question. How can we do better than our ancestors? They were so preoccupied with the wealth they could generate from slavery that they closed their eyes to the immorality of the practice. How can we avoid doing the same thing today?

Shawn (10:16.884)
Melanie, you wanna run first?

Melanie (10:20.299)
I don't know, this is a question with a very, very large scope. Because I think like we all look at our lives and we're like, of course nothing we're doing is as immoral as the practice of slavery, right? But I think nobody back then thought they were doing anything super immoral either. So I'd want to answer this question by first asking what our immoralities were maybe unaware of. But that could be a huge question. So Sean, what were your initial thoughts?

Shawn (10:34.953)
Yeah.

Matt (10:46.446)
Yeah, there's a lot of things that go-

Shawn (10:49.246)
Hahaha

Melanie (10:50.521)
you

Shawn (10:52.072)
think, I mean, in what I've read, like way back, like reading books like The Puritan Dilemma or reading old writings of the founding fathers, they definitely, I think, were aware of the evils of slavery, even though many of them practiced it. They were discussing it. I think they were contesting it or it was a conflict in their minds. And I don't know, Matt, I don't see at least what I read. I'm not saying it's not, but obviously,

wealth and economics were the driving force behind it, obviously. I didn't see that in their discussions or in their literature or whatever, but so I'm curious what their motives were.

Matt (11:29.986)
Right. That's well to me, that's the challenge, right? Whenever we talk about the morality of issues today, like if we talk about the environment, do we have a moral obligation to protect the environment? It inevitably goes back to, what's your solution to solving that problem? And then that becomes an economic discussion. Well, if you do that, then you're going to hurt this and this and this. Or if we talk about the morality of like fundamentally reshaping the way that people work, or we talk about healthcare, or we talk about

Shawn (11:52.328)
Ha

Matt (11:59.574)
It's, I think it's, it's systemic, like anything in our society where we say this is wrong and this shouldn't happen. The default response that most people have is, well, how are you going to fix that? And then that discussion always leads to some kind of an economic question. And so it seems to me logical that the same thing happened with slavery. Joseph Smith was opposed to slavery. And when he would say slavery is wrong, people say, well, then what's your solution?

And so when you read what Joseph Smith says about slavery, he talks about, well, let's maybe have them go back to Africa and have their own country, or let's find a way to compensate the slave owners for their investment into that. so the inability we have as a society to separate economics from the morality of issues, I think leads us to all kinds of behaviors that may or may not be moral, because we always think about things in terms of, well, let's be practical, which means let's talk about the economics of it.

Shawn (12:53.364)
Have you seen the meme? Okay, it's two cartoon characters up on a stage as politicians in a debate. And the one politician looks at the crowd and says, I want good things. And the whole crowd goes, yeah, yeah, I want good things. Well, this is good. And they start clapping like, he wants good things. We all want good things. That's great. That's great. And he says, yeah, I want good things. And then the other candidate is looking at him seriously and goes, well, how are you going to pay for those good things?

Melanie (13:09.965)
He

Shawn (13:23.122)
And immediately the guy that says I want good things looks at it and goes, you want bad things, this guy wants bad things. And the whole crowd starts cheering in here, he wants bad things, he wants bad things. And the guy's like, I just wonder how we're gonna pay for it. I mean, there's some reality to, I guess, the economics of things, right? It has to be doable or practical, but I don't think slavery falls into that category. Like I think if the,

Matt (13:43.95)
You don't think that that came down to an economic question. If we get rid of slaves, how do we pick the cotton? If we get rid of slaves, what happens to all these plantation owners in the South?

Shawn (13:47.73)
Sure I did, yeah, of course.

Shawn (13:52.073)
Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure that's what it came down to, but in truth, there were so many alternatives to picking cotton and building an economy that didn't, wasn't real. I don't know. mean, it's easy for us to hindsight to be like, of course we wouldn't have done that. It's evil and stupid. And that's, I'm with Melanie, Matt, what, what could possibly be an example close enough to slavery today where we would have to be concerned about this? I can't think of any, I tried.

Matt (14:18.382)
I think for sure. I think for sure future generations are going to look at the way we behave towards the environment and say we were immoral and stupid and wrong. And how, could we possibly thought that we can just do whatever we want to do to planet earth and not worry about the consequences. I think that's almost for sure going to happen.

Melanie (14:36.145)
Yeah, and I also want to chime in like this question of moral issues versus economics like does an issue really have to be as bad as slavery for us to say Taking some economic hits are worth it to create a more moral and happier and healthier and more considerate society You know like I think we can look at issues in education or health care and Say providing a higher quality of life for the citizens of the United States

Matt (14:55.896)
Yeah.

Melanie (15:05.975)
would be a difficult economic challenge. But is that not worth it to make people's lives better?

Matt (15:13.774)
I think that there's a lot of money being made off of pornography right now. A lot of money being made off of human trafficking right now. There's a lot of money being made off of addictive computer software and very, there's a lot of things where people are making a lot of money today and we turn a blind eye to it.

Shawn (15:30.581)
That's why I think you can't compare to slavery, right? Because in all those examples you just gave, I could argue the opposite and say, yes, but those people have agency. We agree it's immoral. It's against our religion. We know God doesn't want it. He commands against it. He commands people to repent when they do those things. But he also allows their agency and probably we should have laws that allow people to do things like view pornography, right? I mean, it's not that we want it, but that's an agency issue.

Slavery is the opposite. It takes away the agency of humans.

Matt (16:00.704)
You don't think they made similar arguments about agency and slavery?

Shawn (16:07.988)
Of course they did because it eventually, won out on the side of agency.

Matt (16:15.448)
They would argue that the Bible supports slavery, right? They would say, look, it's in the Bible where it tells slaves to obey their masters. And so when we talk about slavery, it's not like ownership, right? It's not like an immoral thing because the Bible says that you can do it. And...

Shawn (16:32.86)
Yeah, the other side used the Bible to argue that the Bible teaches, you know, against slavery too. I mean, you can take any word and mix it the way you want from the scriptures.

Matt (16:41.676)
Yeah, yeah. So all I'm saying is I just think that there's this natural human tendency that if something is working for us economically or if something is a path to making money, that we just stop talking about the morality of it. And we just kind of turn a blind eye to it because we don't know how to solve it and keep the economy or whatever the way we want it to be. And so we say, well, like, you know, some people would say, well, it was just a necessary evil and we just had to do it for a while.

Shawn (17:11.581)
No one would say that today.

Matt (17:11.96)
But I think, of course they wouldn't say that today, but maybe we're saying that today about other things, right? There are other things that we do as a society that maybe we turn a blind eye to. I guess we could talk about like undocumented immigrants, right? And the way some of them are being treated right now. We maybe say, we'll turn a blind eye to that. But just, think setting aside the specific examples, I just think it's important for us to think about like, when it comes to questions of morality, like is something right or wrong?

Because I believe this, Sean, I believe that if you say something is immoral and you say something is illegal, then that's when you can start to have innovative, creative new solutions. But you first sometimes have to say, this is wrong and no one can do it anymore. And then you can start to think of better ways to deal with the problem.

Shawn (18:02.93)
Yeah, but then you've got big, just as many problems, right? If you're, if, now your government is dictating and enforcing morality, now you've got an even bigger problem.

Matt (18:12.814)
Well, that's what we want.

Melanie (18:13.451)
And I have another question for you, dad. Cause I think sometimes in the context of this, like, if something is wrong, you should make it illegal. People could tie back to the prohibition movement, right? And say alcohol was this evil thing and they made it illegal. And suddenly this underground market exploded. Right. But then when they legalized alcohol again, they were able to implement restrictions and like make it more of a controlled industry, which helped with some of the

Matt (18:16.579)
yeah.

Matt (18:31.502)
Mm-hmm.

Melanie (18:41.771)
illegal activities that were arguably more dangerous.

Matt (18:45.666)
Yeah, I would say those illegal activities were artificially illegal, right? I'd say that ending prohibition increased the use of alcohol in the United States and increased alcohol-related problems in the United States.

Shawn (18:57.234)
Yeah, and I also wonder, Melanie, you tell me your opinion on this. What would have happened if we would have, as a society, allowed that experiment to continue if eventually you root out the underground mafia-driven supply and eventually society just goes, you know what, we're not fighting this anymore, and alcohol then becomes illegal. And I wonder what society would have been. Having said that, don't know that God wants us to restrict the agency of man and control them.

Because then what happens, Matt, if some politicians get together and decide that praying in public is immoral, it's infringing upon the rights of the non-religious. And now all of a sudden, Matt, their moral law applies to you and your dead meat,

Matt (19:43.95)
Okay, but I mean there are religious liberty protections, right? But I do, yeah, I would fight to keep my right to pray if that happened. But can you see on this other end, like we have this opioid pandemic in the United States. If we were to just say, you can no longer prescribe opioid narcotics as pain relief or pain, right, to help reduce pain because too many people are getting addicted to it.

and it leads to these bigger, broader societal problems. So that drug is illegal, then we would find another painkiller. We would find another way to do it.

Shawn (20:23.326)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Matt (20:24.6)
Don't you think?

Yeah, like we can make just some things illegal and say, look, this is just wrong. Now find a better way and we could lead to a better society. That's my argument.

Shawn (20:37.236)
Yeah, I just don't think there's ever going to be an opioid replacement that isn't addictive perhaps, right? Or doesn't have negative side effects to where it'll be a never ending policing of everything that comes out. Well, those Cheetos, Matt, those Cheetos do have some artificial processing. So, you know what mean? At what point do we allow government? I think we don't. Start dictating what is moral right and wrong for us. You say the opposite. I think we definitely disagree on that.

Matt (21:06.862)
But isn't that the reason I was supposed to be in support of like legalizing marijuana? Because marijuana is a pain reliever that's not addictive. So if we're legalizing marijuana, can't we illegalize opioids or something like that?

Melanie (21:20.512)
Marijuana is a non-addictive pain reliever.

Shawn (21:23.604)
Yeah, what you talking about?

Matt (21:23.714)
That's what I've been told by my friends that smoke weed.

Melanie (21:26.336)
Okay.

Shawn (21:26.388)
That's not true.

Matt (21:28.696)
Well then why do we legalize? What is medicinal marijuana? Well that's a subject for another day, but it's like... Okay. I'll give-

Shawn (21:34.517)
Yeah, bring that up one day. There is a lottery lens on this in James 4.13 though that'll support Matt. He says, to now ye that say today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and continue and buy and sell and get gain. Whereas you know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appearth for a little time and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, if the Lord will we shall live and do this or that. But.

now you rejoice in the boasting all such rejoicing in evil. In other words, think what that's saying is don't be so hyper-focused that your main priority is to get gain and to get wealth. What good is your wealth if you die tomorrow and you're not with God or you're not with your family, right? So I think there is plenty of scriptural warnings against economics being our primary decision-making paradigm. So I think you're right, Matt.

Matt (22:13.518)
Mmm.

Matt (22:27.756)
Yeah, I like that. There's a better verse that says that shorter, Sean, where it says, what profiteth a man if he gain the whole world, but looseth his soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Melanie (22:29.24)
Sean, you get my points.

Shawn (22:41.096)
Yeah, well, you didn't come prepared with that reference, and so I get to quote the one that I found that's longer, okay?

Matt (22:43.118)
Okay. All right, Sean gets the points. Good job, Sean. All right, so the federal government released the Obamacare plan prices. So the 2026 pricing for Obamacare health insurance. There's a combination of insurer rate hikes averaging 17 to 30%, which just as a side note.

Melanie (22:43.584)
Yeah, come on.

Matt (23:09.986)
I think everybody who's seeing their new health insurance premiums this year realizes that there's a huge jump in healthcare prices that everybody's facing right now. But in addition to that, the main financial shock for more than 20 million people will come from reduced subsidies from the federal government, which could sharply increase monthly costs and eliminate financial help entirely for some middle income and older customers. This looming expiration, which I think is going to happen in three weeks.

is a central conflict in congressional negotiations, threatens to strain household budgets, particularly for low income enrollees, and is projected to cause millions of Americans to become uninsured. Democrats are fighting to keep healthcare accessible for poor Americans. So my question is, is this a moral question or is this a political question?

Shawn (24:04.948)
I think the answer from each of us is to be obvious. I'll guess that Melanie and Matt say it's a moral question and I'm going to say it's a political question. Is that correct?

Matt (24:13.678)
I'm gonna say it's a moral question.

Shawn (24:16.018)
Yeah, no duh. See, I get the points for guessing what we all did. Yep.

Melanie (24:16.478)
I also think it's No, no, no, not yet.

Matt (24:22.312)
Yeah, because I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have. Okay, you make your argument that it's a political question and then we'll see if you earn your points, Sean.

Shawn (24:28.628)
Okay. So my question would be this. it's a moral... Okay. Two things. If it was self-evident that healthcare is a right, not a, I guess, privilege, right? Or not something that I have to... For example, if we three lived in a limited society and out of the hundred people we live in this society,

Melanie (24:29.068)
Yeah, work for them, work for them.

Shawn (24:58.33)
Only two people practice medicine or became healthcare providers. I don't think in our society we could just default to you guys owe us treatment. You owe us treatment. It is our right that you will put your labor towards us to make us healthy. I think that's not, there's no way God would approve that, right? These people have agency to arrange for a mutually beneficial life.

Matt (25:18.562)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn (25:24.02)
So that's the first thing. I don't think you can say that we can force people to provide healthcare against their will at a cost that we choose for them. It's just, I know it's a tough topic. So I think that's number one. Number two is this, in the current situation, if you can both give me a dollar amount or a percentage of subsidies where the moral line crosses, then I'll agree with you. Then I'll agree with you.

Matt (25:49.366)
I love the way Sean that you took a moral potential, a moral question and turn it into an economic question. That makes me super super.

Shawn (25:55.985)
you cued that statement up for like a week and a half, didn't you?

Melanie (25:58.063)
you

Matt (26:03.49)
Well, I'm not gonna argue that healthcare is a right. I don't believe that people have a right to healthcare. I believe we have a moral obligation as a society to make sure that we take care of the sick and the afflicted, especially the poor people. think that, no, we already do pay for the sick. so this is to me where it becomes a moral question. The federal government has a program called Medicare.

Shawn (26:21.236)
How will you pay for this sick and afflicted? No, I'm just kidding. That's the meme.

Matt (26:32.502)
And once you hit 65 years old, no matter what sickness or illness or problem you have, the government's gonna cover your treatment for the rest of your life. So then what becomes immoral is to say, this group of people, 65 and older, they get healthcare from the government, but everybody else doesn't get it, or you get it in different kinds of degrees. So to me, that's the moral question.

The government should treat everybody equally under the law. So if we're going to provide healthcare for the elderly, then we need to provide healthcare for everybody else who needs it. That's to me the moral question.

Shawn (27:09.778)
What if, so again, you need to show me the dollar amount or the percent or the line, like for example, should the government then is it a moral right if I have a heroin addiction, then should the government provide free healthcare for me to.

Matt (27:22.499)
If you're over 65 and you have a heroin addiction, the federal government pays for it.

Shawn (27:25.83)
No, know, but you just said if we're to provide it for over 65s, then we should provide it for everyone who has medical needs. I have a medical need. I can't work, Matt. I have a heroin addiction.

Matt (27:32.236)
Yeah, Every, every.

Everything that a person over 65 gets, everybody else should get too.

Shawn (27:41.278)
So if I have a heroin addiction and I can't work, the government should pay for my life.

Matt (27:46.264)
They should pay for your treatment, your healthcare. Yeah, so they don't have to pay for you to survive. right, social security to me is different. Elderly people get social security because they paid into that system and it's a government retirement system. So I don't think that everybody should get social security because not everybody paid into social security. So to me, that's different. But healthcare, if we're gonna provide healthcare, which by the way, if you look at the entire federal budget and you say, let's cut the federal budget, Medicare is a program.

is something like 25 % of the federal budget. It's like, if you think about everything else we spend on, it's social security, Medicare, and then interest on the debt is 90 % of the entire federal budget. So.

Shawn (28:29.364)
Matt, I'm open to change my mind on this. If you can think of one thing that you would exclude, one thing that you would exclude from being covered 100 % by the government.

Matt (28:43.31)
Plastic surgery.

Shawn (28:44.764)
Okay, so again, we're back to this agency thing.

Melanie (28:48.61)
All plastic surgeries.

Matt (28:51.084)
I'm just saying I don't think we cover plastic surgery for elderly patients. Maybe if they're in a car accident or there's other.

Shawn (28:54.772)
Why are you bringing it to the elderly? Your statement was 65 and older. Everything we give to them for healthcare, we should give to everyone who has a need.

Matt (29:01.43)
Yeah, don't think that 65 and older, we cover plastic surgery, but we might if there was like a...

Shawn (29:06.545)
What about a 25 year old who needs lip, lip, what's it called? Lip injections.

Melanie (29:11.555)
Injections?

Matt (29:12.546)
enhancements. Yeah, well if it's covered for the elderly then you need to cover it for the 25 year old.

Shawn (29:17.204)
That's your that's your standard

Matt (29:20.514)
Yeah. The moral thing is to treat everybody equally under the law. So if

Melanie (29:25.238)
See, I think that healthcare should be available for everyone. I think it should be considered a human right.

Matt (29:32.142)
Well, you have to tell us why that is morally correct.

Shawn (29:34.366)
Can you, Melanie, you stick within the confines of my initial situation where there's only 100 of us and two of us, two of us, only two of us are qualified or able to provide healthcare and you're one of the 100 and you're not a healthcare provider.

Melanie (29:48.365)
Yes, because I think in a society where there are a hundred of us and only two of us practice healthcare, probably those two who practice healthcare will not have super well-developed skills in other trades, right? I think in a community of that size, you will have people who are primarily responsible for making food, for hunting, for like, I don't know, things like that. think in a society, everybody has specific skills and specific talents, right?

And I think even in the United States, our healthcare providers like to go to McDonald's. They do not know how to make a McChicken on their own, you know? And I think even though healthcare is required to keep people alive and McDonald's may speed people along the way to their graves, I still think that the people who maybe perform less skilled tasks should still be allowed to live and should still have access to healthcare.

Shawn (30:18.707)
Yes.

Shawn (30:26.356)
Matt

Shawn (30:45.652)
Matt, Melanie just preached to us the invisible hand. The invisible hand, Matt. Yes, you did. Yes, you did. You said basically, you basically just described how capitalism will provide a decent situation, right? Because inevitably there's gonna be someone in the 100 who is offering something that those two doctors don't want, right? And in that situation, that's the person that doesn't get the healthcare.

Melanie (30:53.466)
No! No! Oh no.

Matt (30:53.837)
Okay?

Shawn (31:15.176)
So you have to either force those doctors to provide for that person, or you have to help that person realize, this doctor likes ice cream and there's no one making ice cream. Start making ice cream. And then you have something to barter with an exchange, and then you have a free society where you're providing healthcare because of free exchange, no?

Melanie (31:36.792)
I just think instead of the invisible hand, we should all just practice empathy and say, hey, even if I don't want the mushrooms that this person gathered, they are still a person and I still care about them and want to provide for them.

Shawn (31:49.621)
But Melanie, that's easy to say for everyone else, right? You're saying, okay, doctors, you should just be more empathetic and provide healthcare for me. And they're like, well, Melanie, the only thing you provide is you have the only, I don't know what, real estate in our community. Practice empathy. I want your home. Let me have your home. And you'd say, no, this is my home. This is mine.

Matt (31:51.864)
Awesome.

Matt (32:13.164)
Well, no, because in a true empathetic system, everybody would have all things in common, Sean. There would be no private property. There would be no private ownership of things. Let me tell you Sean, point number two, why it's a moral question and not a political question. The healthcare market in the United States is not a capitalist system because the government regulates, right? So the other part of this is that rising healthcare costs in the United States

Melanie (32:17.559)
Yeah.

Shawn (32:33.298)
That's true.

Matt (32:42.41)
in large part are caused by government laws and regulations. So for example, I was looking at moving to Mexico. If I wanted to move to Mexico, could I get healthcare? And it turns...

Melanie (32:54.296)
Also, can we revisit the whole you moving to Mexico thing?

Shawn (32:57.288)
Hahaha

Matt (32:57.538)
Well, like when I'm an old man, right? In my retirement, like, but it turns, it turns out that in Mexico, there's like hospitals that if you need some big procedure, you can go, right? You can get insurance that would cover your hospital stuff. But if all you need is a prescription for like painkillers or antibiotics, there's another clinic where they'll do a really quick exam.

Shawn (33:00.351)
that makes it better.

Melanie (33:01.503)
Okay. We've got so long until that's applicable.

Shawn (33:06.078)
Yeah

Matt (33:26.188)
and they charge you one or two dollars for their little quick exam and then you get the prescription and you can buy the medicine. But because in the United States, we require that you be licensed by the state, we require that you go to medical school, that you have all of this residency, in order to just prescribe medicine, then that end of it makes it so that I have to pay, what's that?

Shawn (33:44.244)
Like opioids? Like opioids?

Melanie (33:46.542)
you

Matt (33:49.108)
Any medicine, can't, Sean, can't even go get a blood test without a prescription. If I just want to know like what's right. And so that's the one thing like we have to pay over a hundred dollars just to see a doctor to get a prescription where I guarantee there could be an AI tool that I could tell it my symptoms and it would tell me what drug to take. That would be about as good as most of these family care physicians. The other side of it is I can't buy drugs. Drugs are less expensive in other countries and we won't let you bring them into the United States because we have regulations about that. So.

The rising cost of healthcare in the United States is a problem caused by the federal government. So the other part that makes it a moral question is that the federal government is creating this problem. They need to solve the problem. They have a moral obligation to solve the problems they create.

Shawn (34:29.776)
jeez. Do you see the irony in what you just said? Do you see the irony in what you just said? The government is the source of the problems. So the government should continue to solve the problems that they cause. In other words, they will continue to be the problem. They will continue to be the problem.

Matt (34:45.39)
Sean, that's not ironic. Like, if you have a child that makes a mess in the kitchen and you say, you're the cause of this problem, you should solve the problem. Clean up your mess. That's not like a weird thing to say.

Shawn (34:54.42)
Why are you looking at Melanie when you said that?

Melanie (34:56.502)
Though also, when I as a child would make a mess and then clean it up, I would not clean it up very well. Which I think is what Sean is arguing here.

Matt (34:58.392)
You

Shawn (35:03.06)
No. Yes, that is what I'm arguing. Thank you.

Matt (35:03.736)
Well, it's fine.

Matt (35:07.703)
Okay.

Melanie (35:07.879)
I'm not siding with Sean. I'm just expressing I think this is what he's arguing.

Shawn (35:12.83)
You're just clarifying my argument for me. Thank you. Yes, thank you.

Matt (35:13.166)
If I go make a mess in front of Sean's house, then I don't say, Sean, you gotta find somebody to clean this. I'm sure there will be an invisible hand that'll come along soon enough and clean up this mess that I made. You say to me, clean up your mess.

Shawn (35:29.456)
Okay. And then you hardly clean up your mess like Melanie said. And now.

Melanie (35:35.48)
Well, the question is, is the government a small child like me at four years old? Or is it a functioning capable adult who knows how to clean their own apartment?

Matt (35:35.63)
And then we...

Shawn (35:44.808)
That's an easy answer.

Matt (35:45.472)
Or is it better to ask the government to fix their problem that they created or just wait for the invisible hand to show up and fix it?

Melanie (35:50.884)
you

Matt (35:55.64)
The invisible for hand is like Santa Claus for a show and it's like ask the invisible hand what you will and it'll come along and solve your problem.

Shawn (36:03.824)
I'm not saying it solves every problem. I'm saying in a society as complicated as we live in where no one thing is going to solve everything, capitalism and the invisible hand do a better job at bringing more people into healthcare and into wealth and out of poverty than any other system, especially your version of socialism and Marxism.

Matt (36:25.55)
Alright.

Shawn (36:26.782)
Show me one time that ever brought people out of poverty.

Melanie (36:28.726)
I'm just saying, I've been reading some Russian novels right now, and the way they disrespect doctors? I think we could bring some of that back into our society.

Shawn (36:32.403)
Yeah.

Yeah!

Matt (36:39.266)
Melanie's solution is everybody has a right to healthcare, but it's gonna be like the old Russian healthcare that nobody liked.

Melanie (36:45.978)
I've just spent too much time with pre-med students. I don't trust him anymore.

Shawn (36:50.078)
That's awesome. Nice.

Matt (36:50.318)
yeah, I was talking to a student recently that was like, I'm going to be a doctor, but I hate all of my pre med classes. And I was like, so then why do you want to be a doctor? And they're like, well, because I want to be rich. I'm like, would you rather be rich or happy? Like, don't go into medicine just because yeah. well. Okay. For this next topic, by the way, I'm giving Melanie the points for that because she

Shawn (37:04.798)
Yeah, the money. Yep, that's crazy. That's crazy.

Wow. Wow.

Matt (37:17.62)
rightly pointed out that healthcare is a right and that in a system where that happened in the past, nobody respected doctors. And so I think that that's, that's worthy of points. Okay. For this next topic, I'm not going to wait for you guys to go first with the answer. I'm going to go first because it's a little dicey of a subject and, it's a little bit, I have to, I'll have to make myself not sound so like,

Melanie (37:24.954)
you

Shawn (37:27.156)
I'll pile on there.

Shawn (37:36.168)
Okay.

Melanie (37:39.64)
Shawn (37:39.764)
Yes it is.

You're definitely going to have to immediately give your stands on this to support why you're asking the question or rather how you asked it.

Matt (37:46.622)
supportive of... yeah.

Matt (37:53.994)
Yeah, because the question after I ask it, it's gonna seem like there's an obvious answer, but anyhow, okay. An undercover operation conducted by the Idaho Crimes Against Children Task Force led to the arrest of a 66-year-old Idaho Falls resident on one felony count of enticing a child over the internet. Using a fake online dating profile portraying a 14-year-old boy, a detective engaged the defendant, the perpetrator.

who allegedly engaged in sexually explicit messages, photos, and proposed meeting up to shower together, explicitly stating that he did not care about the detective's stated young age. Cherry was arrested on October 7th after detectives verified his identity and vehicle. Now, I know that are laws that make this behavior illegal, but in actual fact, this man

did not do anything to a 14 year old boy. He was interacting with a cop. So the question is, is it morally wrong to send someone to prison for attempting to entice a child over the internet if they never actually interact with a minor? And so I know that it's uncomfortable for me to say, yes, this is morally wrong because all of us agree that we should stop child abuse, especially child sexual abuse.

as soon as we possibly can. But the reason I say this is morally wrong is because if you look at the statistics of who is sexually exploiting minors, 50 % of it comes from somebody they know in their family or friend circle. And then the other majority of it, not exactly 50%, but close to it is groups of people who are organized and

put together these like sex trafficking rings. So the strangers that are sexually molesting children is rarely a 66 year old man in Idaho alone on an internet chatting with a cop because the people that are actually doing this successfully know better than to get caught by these sting operations by police. And so to me, I think this is morally wrong because what you're doing is, in some ways it's entrapment.

Matt (40:15.256)
but you're not solving the bigger problem. You're making yourself feel good by saying, hey, we caught this man that was doing this nasty stuff on the internet. And even though he didn't actually do anything with a real person, he probably has in the past and we can't prove that. And if we can't prove he did in the past, he may do it again in the future. And so we feel like we're solving a problem without actually solving the problem.

Shawn (40:40.228)
Whoa! Melody, you wanna respond?

Matt (40:40.334)
Hmm?

Melanie (40:44.65)
so I have a couple thoughts. My first is that I really want to tie this conversation into the movie Minority Report somehow, but I don't know how to do that yet. My other thought is like, we can cite these statistics, right? And say 98 or whatever percent of these crimes are not committed by random old men who meet teenagers on the internet. But there's still that whatever half a percentage of crimes that are perpetrated by people in these situations.

Shawn (40:53.086)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Melanie (41:14.21)
And I think saying it's not a significant part of the population doesn't mean that it's a problem that doesn't need to be addressed. Like, it's still good that he's not sexually exploiting minors or trying to sexually exploit minors.

Matt (41:22.52)
But do we?

Matt (41:28.846)
But do we really want to police officers that their primary job is to go online and pretend to be a 14 year old boy and just see who you can catch?

Melanie (41:39.244)
I don't know how much of the force is devoted to that task. I don't think it should be a significant part of our police effort, but if there's one cop who's doing that, I'm okay with that.

Shawn (41:50.196)
I think I grew with Melanie and it's like...

Matt (41:50.776)
What do you say, Sean?

Matt (41:58.862)
fine. Take the safe answer. Sean, you want to read books that are safe.

Shawn (41:59.156)
What are you laughing

Melanie (42:03.61)
You

Shawn (42:05.66)
No, no, no, no, hang on. Here's the question. Did the 66 year old break a federal law in just a, you're asking the question of should the law be changed, that it shouldn't be a felony to do the soliciting that he did. That's what you're asking. Do you any understanding of what that law is? Like what does he have to do to break that law?

Matt (42:22.03)
Correct. Correct. That's...

Matt (42:29.516)
Well, so my understanding is limited to the news that I read and the court TV shows that I watch. But I read this at least once a week in Idaho. Now again, there are people where they legitimately sexually assault somebody and I have no problem with arresting people who have sexually abused people. But it's regular where it's some person did something on the internet and sexually enticed a minor, right? It's against the law to go on the internet and solicit sex with a minor.

Shawn (42:37.076)
Ha

Shawn (42:59.124)
There you go. I support that law.

Matt (42:59.274)
Which of course I understand, of course I understand why that should be illegal. I don't think that we should, but I, I don't think that we should like target people to do that. Like to me, feels like this, Sean, it feels like, okay, you shouldn't drive a hundred miles an hour in this particular stretch of road, but we're going to have a off or an undercover cop set up a race and say, Hey everybody, why don't you come and race? And you're like, well, I don't know if I want to race or not. And then the.

The cop does something to make you really excited about doing it you're like, fine. And then you drive a hundred miles an hour and then they're like, gotcha. Ha ha, I'm actually a cop.

Melanie (43:34.508)
Yeah, it's like you're chilling on I-15 going your 7580 and then an undercover cop pulls up next to you and starts revving their engine and they're like, you've got it, you've got it. And then you race them because you have to. And then they're like, site,

Shawn (43:34.612)
Yeah, but the good,

Shawn (43:47.988)
Because you have to. Because you have to. Mellie says, you have to, Matt. You have to race that guy. That idiot's honking his horn. Matt's pride would not let him go, oh, this guy's an idiot. I'm not going to go race him.

Matt (43:48.896)
Yeah, it feels like that to me. That's all called entrapment. Well, feels...

Matt (44:02.808)
Well, okay, what about this? What about this, Sean? Let's say you're in the left lane, you're passing a car. Let's say you're going 10 over to pass this car and somebody comes up behind you and they're tailgating you and you're like, okay, well, I guess I better go faster to get around this car to get this guy off my tail. And so then you go 20 miles an hour over the speed limit to get out of the way. And then that person's like, ha, gotcha. You were going way too fast in that area.

Melanie (44:02.906)
Sean, you can't say you wouldn't engage in a race too.

Shawn (44:27.52)
Here's where I'm gonna bring in the latter day lens. Matt, at the bar of judgment, you're not gonna be able to say, but Satan was tempting me. He was coercing and tempting me to do the X, Y, and Z. It's not my fault. Don't hold me accountable. So that's where I think your argument falls apart. Sure, I don't want the government to be in the practice of tempting people to break laws so that they can punish them, but there are certain,

Matt (44:44.558)
Mmm. Mmm.

Shawn (44:56.5)
egregious laws, like even in Matthew 18 six, whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it would be better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea. I think there are some things that are so egregious. It's okay for us to, I'm okay with law enforcement actually being proactive in tempting people to see if they'll break that law. I'm okay with that.

Matt (45:09.144)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (45:21.454)
So I think what's got me on this is Tim Ballard was in the news recently. I don't know if you saw this, Tim Ballard went on Instagram complaining that the church is persecuting him and excommunicated him as punishment for him deciding to run against Mitt Romney in the Senate race and that he didn't do anything wrong, right? And so like, as I read about the operation Underground Railroad, and of course there was that movie all about Tim Ballard's life. I'm like, Tim Ballard was basically doing the same thing.

Melanie (45:25.486)
Mm.

Shawn (45:38.206)
Yeah.

Matt (45:50.786)
You go into some poor city in Mexico, you say, hey, me and my rich friends want to have like underage girls to have sex with. Can you find some for us? And then they go find some girls for you. And then they say, ha, you guys are sex traffickers and we're gonna make sure you get arrested for what you're doing. And they're like, we're not sex traffickers. You offered us a whole bunch of money so we found our sisters or whatever.

Shawn (46:12.18)
Where you going with this?

Matt (46:16.598)
I feel like there are these people that say the best way to counter and fight against the evils of the world is to go in and try and trap people and try and trick people. And it makes us feel good because we feel like we're actually solving the problem. When in actuality, we have to invest resources with police who really know what's going on to solve the problem. And we should focus on that and not focus on the low-hanging fruit.

Melanie (46:42.38)
You could say that Tim Ballard was perhaps generating demand.

Matt (46:48.022)
Right. In this particular case, how do I know these police officers aren't generating demand?

Melanie (46:53.209)
Right.

Shawn (46:54.388)
I look, I think there's one category where it's okay to tempt people into exposing their true intentions. And I think this is the category. If there's ever going to be a category, this is the exact category. Like do it. I think Tim Ballard, thanks. You better.

Matt (47:04.686)
True intentions.

Matt (47:11.19)
Okay, you can get points. I'll give you points for that, Sean. I'll give you points for that. And listener, just so that everybody knows, I'm not in favor of sex trafficking or child abuse. I'm opposed to all of it. I just think we need to fight it where it happens and not do these other things. Okay, here's the big question. Data collected by the Federal Reserve and released recently on this link in the show notes.

shows that Idaho residents have the highest debt to income ratio in the country. The average in Idaho is 2.06 per household. That means that households carry about $2 in debt for every $1 they have in annual income. So Idaho is tied with Hawaii for the highest debt to income ratio, followed by Arizona, Colorado, and Utah, all at 1.84. See, the reason I mention this is because this is where a lot of members of the church live.

I didn't know this, but Hawaii is the fifth state. We have the fifth highest per capita members of the church in Hawaii. So these states that I just listed all have the highest per capita members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that live in them. So in 1998, President Gordon B. Hinckley said, I urge you to be modest in your expenditures, discipline yourselves in your purchases, to avoid debt to the extent possible, pay off debt as quickly as you can,

and free yourselves from bondage. So based on this fact, the question is, is President Kinkley's council outdated? Is it unrealistic to believe that people will ever be debt free?

Shawn (48:46.032)
Next.

Shawn (48:49.566)
But I don't think he's saying be debt free, right? He's not saying that. That wasn't the gist of his message, correct?

Matt (48:55.522)
He said in that talk, he talked about how president Faust paid off his home and had no debt and how wonderful it was. He's like, we should have no debt.

Shawn (49:01.704)
Yeah, but it took him, it took him. Yeah, but it took him the majority of his life to be able to do that.

Shout out to President Faust. That man is amazing.

Matt (49:09.259)
Okay, so.

Yeah, yeah, I love President Faust. But this suggests that the states with the highest per capita members of our church that live in them are the states with the highest debt to income ratio in the United States. So that suggests that in terms of debt, members of our church maybe are taking on more debt than people who are not members of our church.

Shawn (49:23.102)
Yeah. So.

Shawn (49:33.022)
So this may, I think I'm safe to bring up a controversial response in light of the last topic where Matt will overshadow, Matt's response will overshadow anything that I say right now. But I've lived in Utah and I've lived in many other states and I've never lived in Idaho, but I'm assuming it's somewhat similar to Utah. Is that correct? The culture, the lifestyle.

Matt (49:59.619)
Yes, Eastern Idaho is pretty much the same as Utah.

Shawn (50:03.89)
Okay, I don't know why, but I do feel, now of course I feel this in California, I feel it everywhere, that there's this general human nature of keeping up with the Joneses. Wow, look at my neighbor, look at all the cool stuff he's got, I gotta go have it, I gotta go have it. But for some real reason, I feel that a little more in Utah. I don't know why. There's a lot of that in Utah. Why is that? I don't know why.

Matt (50:28.608)
More than in California? You live in like San Diego County, Sean. I would think keeping up the Joneses would be worse there.

Shawn (50:35.262)
don't feel it as much. feel like the people who, there's a couple of neighborhoods where I feel it a little bit, but for the most part, a lot of people here are like, they can afford to be here. And those who can't, they don't live here. Whereas I feel like for some reason in Utah, as it grew so quickly, people were like, wow, look at the homes these developers are building. They're these giant mansions. I think that's what happened, Matt. For a long time, it was affordable to build the big homes in Utah. And so for a pretty affordable price, you could get this giant home.

Matt (50:45.261)
Yeah.

Shawn (51:04.948)
Well, as more people started moving in and the price started going up and up and up and up, the developers continued to build those giant mansion homes, these McMansions. And so people were like, well, gosh, my brother has that home. I should have that home, but it's $500,000 more than it was. And so I'm going to go into greater debt to get it. I think that maybe has something to do with it. I don't know that it has anything to do with being members of the church. I think it just has to be within a growth area. Real estate grew and I don't know.

What do you think, Melanie?

Melanie (51:36.683)
Yeah, I've, I was thinking a little bit about the housing market too, just like the little I know. And I wonder if it's not even necessarily the pursuit of the McMansions, but just the fact that members tend to be more inclined towards having a lot of kids. And when you have a lot of kids, you want a bigger home, and a bigger home tends to be more expensive.

Matt (52:01.24)
Mm-hmm.

Melanie (52:01.816)
So I feel like that's the merciful take I could have. And there's also the part of me that wants to say, I know way too many college students with extensions and dyed hair and professionally done nails 24 seven. And there's no way that's an affordable lifestyle.

Shawn (52:04.606)
These are safe. These are safe answers.

Shawn (52:17.16)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's a gym.

Okay, well done, Melanie, for bringing in your generations, probably being the main culprit of the problem. Because I do feel like it's true. mean, most of my friends who are millennials and younger, they view the world, I've seen, this is just my judgmental mind, but I've seen they go, okay, fine, houses are so expensive, we can't afford them. Forget it, we're gonna go spend our money on vacations, really nice cars, latest technology, lots of phones.

Melanie (52:28.73)
Hey! Hey!

Matt (52:33.697)
Yeah.

Shawn (52:50.684)
Every time an iPhone comes out, I'm getting the new one. And I've seen in their mindset, they go, I justify this because I can't afford that home. But they're still for whatever reason behaving in a way that puts them into debt. That doesn't make any sense to me, but that seems to be your generation.

Matt (53:07.662)
So I would say, I think it's a couple years ago, our mission president, President Merrill passed away. And I remember Sam and I went to visit President Merrill and his wife shortly before they passed away. I think they knew that the end was coming for them and she had saved letters from the mission that she wanted to distribute. So I remember sitting in their house, me and Sam and President and Sister Merrill.

And I remember looking around their house. Now he had been a professor at BYU. He was retired. He had lived a life full of service, but he was also like a, a world renowned, mechanical engineer. And I remember him telling me about this process he developed when he was in graduate school and that it became really profitable and just really important. So I'm saying this to say like, he wasn't a poor person, but I remember being in his home and saying, wow, this home is small.

And this is where they raised, think they had five kids. They raised their five children in that home. And as the world around them expanded, they lived in Orem. And so as the homes got bigger and bigger in the Provo Orem area, they never said, Hey, let's sell this house and move to something bigger. I know that they didn't have enough bedrooms in their house for each of their children to have their own bedroom. it's, so it's, it is clear to me that things have changed for us generation upon generation where

Something that was more than enough for a previous generation was not enough for the next generation and is not enough for the next generation.

Shawn (54:41.364)
I like this. I like this. Let's pile on to millennials and make Melanie.

Melanie (54:46.522)
So I feel like the importance of the council isn't necessarily to never incur debt. Because I think we live in a world where just logistically for my generation that's nearly impossible. yeah, I think the important council is to remember to live modestly. Because we can look at the world and there can be a lot of things that we want. But not everything we want is something that we need.

Matt (54:46.872)
But it's not just-

Shawn (54:52.659)
Right.

Shawn (54:58.344)
For any generation that's impossible.

Melanie (55:13.112)
and it's better to learn to be happy with the simple things and live as modestly as possible.

Shawn (55:18.068)
Yeah, and you're terrible representation of the millennial generation.

Matt (55:21.806)
She's too much like her mother. I was hoping we were gonna go the other direction on this because you can also make the argument that these states are where home values are insane. So a starter home in Utah is $300,000. If you wanna live in like a two bedroom condo, it's gonna cost you $300,000, which is a payment. So if we say the debt to income is $2 for every dollar you bring in.

Shawn (55:27.924)
What? Which?

Matt (55:49.838)
Let's say you make in Utah, $100,000. Then if you bought a home with a mortgage of $200,000, then you're at a $2 debt to income ratio, right? That the highest in the nation. So I thought we were going to go down the path of saying, well, it's real estate prices are so crazy that you can't.

Melanie (56:06.998)
Yeah, can we talk about the insane student housing situation in Provo?

Matt (56:11.636)
Not just student housing, all housing in Provo is insane, right?

Shawn (56:14.61)
What is it, Melanie? What's the insane? I like, I yeah.

Melanie (56:16.954)
So I currently live in a six-person apartment. There are six of us. One toilet, one shower. My rent averages to like $4.25 a month.

Shawn (56:24.51)
Good.

Shawn (56:30.452)
Wow.

Matt (56:30.67)
So then you times that by six and it's 2400 a month for a three bedroom place.

Shawn (56:34.996)
It's high demand where you're at.

Melanie (56:35.352)
And this is like some of the cheapest stuff. I have yet to find an apartment cheaper.

Shawn (56:38.996)
Yeah. So that is the downside of a free economy, of capitalism. Where there's a high demand, they're going to be able to charge you crazy amounts of money.

Matt (56:39.342)
But this is what's crazy.

Matt (56:49.902)
But this is what's crazy. Melanie is if you said, I want to buy a condo, a three bedroom, one bath condo close to campus, it's going to cost you $350, $400,000. And your mortgage on that would be $3,500 a month. So even though you're paying 2,400 a month, 2,400 a month in rent is still less than what a mortgage would be in that same area. Yeah. So I thought we were going to, I thought somebody was going to maybe, because to me, I want president Hinkley's

Shawn (57:01.044)
Less? It could be less.

Melanie (57:04.334)
Yeah.

Shawn (57:10.596)
I see you're saying.

Matt (57:19.63)
advice to be outdated because I'm tired of my wife saying to me, we need to pay off our debt. We need to pay off our debt. We need to get out of debt because I'm tired of paying off debt. And I want to be to her like, no, we live in a new world where I don't have to pay off all that debt.

Melanie (57:25.57)
you

Shawn (57:27.348)
But hang on, hang on.

Shawn (57:33.792)
you're crazy. But I think the message, President Hinckley's message consistently on top of the quote you read was just spend less than you earn. And that's doable with a mortgage. That is absolutely doable with a mortgage. It is too. What do mean?

Matt (57:45.838)
Nah, it's not Sean. It's not anymore. Well, it's not in Utah and Idaho at the moment, right? When I lived in Logan, we were paying $1,500 a month for a three bedroom, two bath townhome. And then some of them would pop up for sale and they would be like $350,000. And I'm like, okay, a mortgage on that is $3,000 a month. So am I supposed to double my rent payment just to buy the same thing that I'm living in now?

Like it really is cheaper to rent in Utah and Idaho than it is to purchase. So at the moment, the market's very weird in that place. And so it's probably best to not purchase right now, but to wait until prices come down.

Shawn (58:29.332)
Yeah, I mean, that's fair. But I mean, 300,000, 40-year mortgage, more like two grand a month at 5 % interest.

Matt (58:38.798)
40? You can do 40? I think you have to do 30.

Shawn (58:42.74)
I guess it just depends on the lender. I mean, there's got to be a local bank or a community bank somewhere that's going to offer something nice. That's again, the benefit of capitalism. You shop it out and do your work. You're to find someone that gives you a pretty good deal. And yeah, you get a 40 year mortgage and you're like, okay, now I own something for 2,500, the same amount that I'm paying rent for. And I'm going to rent it out to my roommates and now I'm going to earn money.

Matt (58:44.968)
okay, man.

Matt (59:09.25)
Yeah.

Shawn (59:12.244)
And now I've got some equity. I think the bigger problem is, again, I see a lot of young people looking at their dad's house and go, I deserve that now. And if I can't have that, I'm going to go travel and spend a ton of money on travel. I'm going to spend a ton of money on phones and a ton of money on like every app. I don't know why they've defaulted to that. And I don't know if it's like that in Utah, but yeah, it's definitely a spending problem.

Matt (59:24.547)
Yeah.

Matt (59:41.304)
They buy a lot of, they buy really nice cars. When I go to school, some of the cars I see,

Shawn (59:43.794)
Yeah, why Melanie? Why do you guys buy these cars? Melanie...

Melanie (59:47.515)
So I do also want to chime in on the idea that like you've just got to shop around and you'll find the right bank to give the right deal because there is that bank will only give that deal to so many people. Right. And so you can't expect every single member of my generation to be able to put in that work and find the same deal because there's limited, there's limited demand or limited supply of the good deals.

Shawn (59:55.091)
Yes.

Shawn (01:00:07.038)
You're triggering me Melanie, you're triggering me.

Shawn (01:00:15.546)
I disagree, Melanie. think if, obviously it takes work, but I promise you, if you put in the work or someone puts in the work to find a crazy little home that's not perfect, but is real estate and you do the work to find a bank that's going to fund that, you're going to find magical situations that just work. You're going to. Like I know that because I've seen, I I did that my whole life and I've seen people today do it. A buddy in my ward just did it, young guys.

Melanie (01:00:17.741)
You disagree?

Shawn (01:00:45.736)
they bought in a questionable area, but it was safe enough. It's safe enough. And he, and he just like barely did it and he worked hard to find a lender and dude, he built that thing so crazy. put a bed or a, he's renting out one of the like basements. He made it into like a mystery, one of those things called the escape rooms. it was, well, it's an, it's a Airbnb and his gimmick is it's an escape room down in the basement.

Matt (01:01:08.014)
escape room in his house?

Shawn (01:01:14.888)
So people are like, yeah, I want that. That's cool. want to, anyway. So he's making money off of it. He lives upstairs. Yeah. it's awesome situation. And so you get creative and you get aggressive and the thing has increased in value over the time he's lived there and he's ahead.

Matt (01:01:19.394)
But does he live there?

man. man.

Melanie (01:01:24.153)
Okay

Matt (01:01:34.026)
My solution is rent rent when it makes rent until buying makes sense rent and save. But if my wife's listening, sometimes she listens to the podcast. It's okay if we're in a lot of debt. We don't, we don't have to pay off our debt right away. That's that's

Melanie (01:01:34.295)
Okay.

Melanie (01:01:51.596)
It's okay to disregard the council of prophets who've died.

Matt (01:01:55.79)
That was 27 years ago. Are all prophets...

Melanie (01:01:59.93)
And the Book of Mormon was 400 years ago. No, it was way more than 400. 1800 years ago. So like, who cares anymore?

Shawn (01:02:07.06)
Well said, Melody.

Matt (01:02:09.07)
we're gonna let Melanie, she's gonna have the last word. That was beautiful. Thank you, Melanie. Careful with your sarcasm. Sometimes we end with it. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to us. We'll talk to you again next week.

Shawn (01:02:12.798)
Yes, it was.

Melanie (01:02:13.38)
come on.

Shawn (01:02:17.46)
Hahaha