Jimmy Buffett's Money, Burning Man Disaster, FTX Nonsense, U.S. Gas Prices, and Silent Depression?

The dirty money we got an awesome excellent show for you today We're gonna go through a whole bunch of different topics. Let's start out with the first one We're gonna do is the death of Jimmy Buffett. Now. This is a little bit crazier than you thought We're also gonna go over gasoline tax in the United States And why does it really exist and how hard does it hit your personal pocket? Another thing we're gonna talk about is Burning Man being in Black Rock City. Let's see where that really goes Also side hustles in the silent depression, are they real have you seen the reels that are going around right now about people talking about The silent depression that we're supposedly living in and then we're also going to talk about Ryan salami and FTX And how he pleaded guilty on two separate charges this week I hope you look forward to everything that we're gonna bring you today and dirty money also, if you're listening to dirty money on a podcast make sure to give us a five-star rating and To allow us to continue to grow our channel also Whatever video platform you're watching you're listening to make sure to give us a like and click the bell so let's start with Jimmy Buffett's money Jimmy Buffett as Ridiculously famous if you haven't heard of him, he created his famous song called Margaritaville in 1974 it ended up not even being a number one hit but it catapulted this guy to being One of the wealthiest people in the world Jimmy Buffett was one of two thousand five hundred and forty three richest men in the world He was worth 1 billion dollars and all of his famed success came from his famous song Margaritaville if you haven't heard it take a chance look it up and go see if you can find it on YouTube or on a different streaming platform I Stayed away again Very famous song the song so famous it had six point three billion listeners on the radio Before there even was video or audio streaming now, it's got two hundred and thirty one on-demand audio streams But interestingly enough the song never even hit number one on the hot billboard 100 it hit number one on the contemporary charts in 1974 now Jimmy did release several songs that followed up to him But none of them really had the same success as his Margaritaville song from that song over the course of the 1970s and 80s Jimmy developed like a cult-like following of people who enjoyed his music and they liked what they Referred to as a good time feeling kind of anthem music. So he came out with Margaritaville cheeseburgers in paradise. He did another song and night in 2003 with Kenny Chesney called five o'clock somewhere all of them kind of referring to having a good time and kind of living it up partying on the beach now out of that in 1985 he decided with his manager that he was gonna Kind of kick it up a notch and not just make music because his music was no longer hitting the hot billboard or anything So he took the name Margaritaville and he opened up his first Margaritaville store in 1985 to a complete Failure the store had to be closed. It was in Gulf Shores, Alabama Few months later. He opened up in his favorite place Key West, Florida and the store was a hit It really really really well now around the same time He was sitting with his manager and his manager was trying to work out a deal with the Eagles and Corona at the time Corona was kind of like a failing beer not really popular in the United States place where Budweiser was champion throughout the 80s and He said to his manager. I want to actually Do the Corona sponsorship. So Corona said alright, we're gonna sponsor you and in 1985 he took on that sponsorship and Wrote it pretty well Corona became synonymous with beaches because of Jimmy Buffett if you're seeing a Corona ad With some people on the beach or things like that. It's because Jimmy Buffett portrayed the beach lifestyle To people and Corona was there to support him and gave him that sponsorship that really pushed it to the next level but in 2006 Margaritaville had had really pushed its single stores its restaurants its whole Imagery its whole company to the next level and was approaching, you know, half a billion dollars in revenue And so Jimmy Buffett and his team decided that they needed to make their own Personalized beer that they could serve at their restaurants and resorts They approached Corona Corona said why do we want to do a white label beer for you when we already have Corona? So they turned him down with that and Buffett went to Anheuser-Busch and said will you make us a Beer out of Jacksonville, Florida, and that's how Landshark was born. If you've never heard of a Landshark It's pretty popular beer here in the States. They also have Landshark bar and grills again part of his empire now He didn't really start growing his empire too large with the food and beverage industry until about 2002 when he partnered with Outback Steakhouse to do cheeseburger in paradise Now cheeseburger in paradise if you ever went there he's kind of mediocre with the food to be honest I went to a couple of different ones wasn't really impressed and to be honest I'm not really impressed with the margaritaville food that I've had either But the cheeseburger in paradise grew from 2002 to 2013 to 23 locations in 14 states at that point they decided to try to liquidate it and It got a little bit different now the interesting thing is that when this is all going down Buffett comes out with Buffett world as you can see here Buffett world is this whole conglomerate based around margaritaville and what Jimmy Buffett created was really an empire of Entertainment based around having a good time on the beach drinking and engaging in live music and Really his legacies lived on through that and there's a lot of different other things that have come about because of it But um, the cheeseburger in paradise is actually shut down. They liquidated everything in 2020. They closed their last store now There's also margaritaville cruise stuff. There's margaritaville Places in airports and he was about ten different locations throughout airports in the United States where you can go in to a bar Restaurant have a drink Buy some merchandise and spend a little bit of time while you're waiting for your flight or getting off of your your last flight so there's a lot of different avenues that he took to be successful and It really started in 1985 and now he leaves on a legacy to his children and to everything He stood for which was pretty much just feel good. Have a good time There's other interesting things like there's lots of festivals all over the United States that have come up over the last 20 years to help kind of celebrate Jimmy Buffett and and his whole Appearance imagery and who he was so there's one festival in a place called Caseville, Michigan and it's called cheeseburger I mean, I think 10,000 people show up to this little podunk town in northern, Michigan Every year just to celebrate Jimmy Buffett songs and again that feel-good theme so, you know out of out of one guy creating a Hot billboard top 100 it was top 10 it got to number 8 So he took that song and really pushed it to the next level and became a billionaire Because he embraced what he thought was a good time and people love it You know, he's got his group of following people parrot heads is what they're called and now That's that's kind of how Jimmy Buffett became who he was He's admired by several people more or less the business world thinks of him as an entrepreneur rather than than a musician And I think he would like to think of himself as a musician who just got lucky So that being said something that's not lucky is the gasoline tax that Everybody in the United States feels now. It was interesting. I was driving across the country Last week the Northeast to the Midwest and I stopped and I saw in Pennsylvania that there was this gas tax Sign on next to the gas pump and it said 24 cents federal for diesel 17 cents federal for gas and then it had the actual state tax and I Really realized that the feds taxed gas along with the state taxing gas. So there's This tax on gasoline which I knew existed I just didn't know the level that it existed So the first state to actually bring gasoline tax It was Oregon and you can see here all the different levels of gas taxes and how much they are now This is in 2022 2022 all the ones in red are the federal tax amounts. The left is gasoline. The right is diesel and You can see that they stay pretty even but each state has their own level the top state in 2022 was, Pennsylvania But California overtook it in 2023 with 77 cents a gallon Taxed so you're getting 17 cents on a gas from the feds and then you're getting 77 cents gas tax from the state of California almost a dollar a gallon. I mean when you think about that gas price is averaging $4 Essentially, they would go down a dollar if we weren't being taxed on gas So the first place to actually tax gas in the United States was Oregon in 1919 and they taxed at one cent per gallon they said the revenue was going to be used to build roads and it was really including the Pacific Highway and the Columbia River Highway that Really helped to build up the infrastructure on the West Coast, but interestingly enough Within 10 years from 1919 to 1929 Every single state in the Union had a gas tax So within a decade of one state doing it everybody jumped on now the feds as well jumped on the bad wagon bandwagon And introduced their state tax So there are some states However that when the tack when the gas prices go really high like they did last year at the end of 2022 They'll do a gas tax holiday or they'll give you four weeks of no gas tax So the state of Florida did it in October and you can see on this map This is a 2023 map. The darkest states have the highest tax per gallon for gasoline So California is number one, Pennsylvania is number two, Illinois is number three Those places really hit you hard So That's pretty pretty interesting to think when You go, why would this state tax more than the other states? I can see California needing more infrastructure is 40 million 39 billion million people live there Pennsylvania I mean it there are people there but fundamentally it's it's just curious as to what these funds really go to and When I started to research it a little bit more all I found is they just went to road building That was basically the overall Reason for any state to have the gas tax was because they wanted to build more roads and then my mind got thinking like What is my actual? When I register my vehicle in the state and I pay anywhere from 100 to 400 dollars to register the vehicle What does that go to? So there's a lot of tax to no end when it comes to this now Some states even have gas tax and then on top of that they hit you with sales tax, which is really crazy to me So not only are you getting hit with say, California? 77 cents then you're getting hit with another sales tax that can be 8 cents So you're almost literally being taxed a dollar to put one gallon of gas into your car So that's a bit of an interesting layout when it comes to how gas taxes work and where they came from now one place That really kind of came up on the radar this week was Burning Man. If you're not familiar with Burning Man It's an event that happens in Black Rock City. It's Northwestern, Nevada. It is a huge festival usually draws 80,000 people there every year And it's about a hundred miles northeast of Reno and It's been going on since 91 it came to be It's based around these ten stated principles that radical inclusion gifting Decommodification radical self-reliance radical self-expression communal effort civic responsibility leaving no trace and Participation and immediacy so Interestingly enough when I see radical radical radical and I hear that often stated in something. I start thinking of Saul Alinsky's rules for radicals and the perpetuation of communism which really got me thinking what is Burning Man about and You know Larry Larry Harvey the guy that created it. He seems pretty solid. He didn't seem like a crazy guy He didn't seem like a radical. He actually seemed like just a free thinker from San Francisco, which is respectable But yeah again It's interesting that this event keeps speaking about radical behavior and what it perpetuates now Harvey died in 2018 and that year after Google Took over ownership of the Burning Man in Black Rock City Google currently owns 51.2% of Burning Man now you might think Google Black Rock, you know this investment firm What's really going on here truth is is Black Rock City really has nothing to do with Black Rock the investment firm that does trillions and trillions of dollars worth of investments for worldwide companies and pretty much Controls most of the financial markets or has a very strong play into the financial markets so here you can see the article that talks about how Google acquired Burning Man now interesting Sergey Brin and The Google and Larry can't remember the other guy's name Sergey Brin and his partner at Google They had been going to Burning Man since 1999 when it moved transferred over to Black Rock City in Nevada and so They wanted obviously to have ownership in it now for what reason I don't know Maybe it's part of the 15-minute city plan maybe it's part of a couple other plans and agendas they have for trying to create a more Technologically advanced city and they can do demonstrations of this During Burning Man where one year they had a image of a Burning Man created in all drones so it's interesting to think about but getting back to the Black Rock topic is Black Rock City has again nothing to do with Black Rock the investment firm on the surface Black Rock City is called is because it's in the Black Rock Desert and the Black Rock Desert is more or less That way because it's geothermal area in the volcanic region And there's two Black Rock points west and east and the southern end of the Black Rock Range Where there's dark volcanic rocks and things like that. So that's where the actual name comes from Now, let's get into a little bit more interesting topic about the money side of Burning Man So Burning Man's annual revenue right now is around 46 million dollars I don't there is a nonprofit. So they say they use all that money for Putting on the festival what I can see you're bringing 80,000 people to a desert and you're erecting a city For a week-long party, that would make sense, but it breaks down to they have about 467 employees for Burning Man and the revenue per employee ratio is around $98,000 per employee much that's a pretty good wage if you're getting it all to your employees Bet you somebody's getting a little bit more than just the average employee down the line but in 2022 Burning Man sold out in 29 minutes every single ticket was sold at $570 75 dollars a ticket sold out in 2022 a lot of that had to do with kovat and the fact that people were Staying in their homes and not doing much for two years And so in 2020 you too, they kind of skyrocketed now the opposite happened this year in 2023 Where they were selling tickets $400 below market value And so now the whole festival and events really under a stressful situation Because they didn't bring in the revenue this year that they wanted to so Burning Man really And a lot of trouble this year and a lot of people put it on to the financial Downturn that you might not see in paper But you're kind of feeling similar to what happened before 2008 You know, there's cities and in towns all over the country 2006 705 that we're starting to feel a little bit of a pressure of economic downturn until everybody felt it in 2008 and that was when the great recession came into play and speaking of great recessions there's a something I wanted to talk about a lot of the time lately people have been seeing the Silent depression reels going around and you know, I was thinking if you have a silent depression and Side hustles everybody seems to have a side hustle now like oh I sell this stuff on Amazon. I do a YouTube show I sell stuff at events You know and the the real question is is do do people need the side hustles? Do they want the side hustles? And are they really Helping people are they just taking away from what you would consider family time traditional development How does it really work out for individuals when they're putting together their side hustles? I mean, so I don't know if you've seen this reel with the silent depression I heard a new term on tick-tock today that made me stop in my tracks We are living in the silent depression. This guy believes we are not just living in worse than the Great Depression We're living in the silent depression the average annual income in 1930 for an American individual was a little over forty eight hundred dollars sounds like nothing But if you adjust that for inflation a little over forty eight hundred dollars a year in 1930 is equivalent to almost eighty five thousand dollars annually for the average Salary for one person right now. The average annual salary is fifty six thousand dollars a year We currently are making less than the height of the Great Depression in 1930 gas was on average ten cents a gallon That would be about a dollar seventy three in case you haven't filled up your car lately Average cost of a gallon of gas is three dollars and fifty five cents to buy a new car in 1930 would have been about $860 worth about 15 grand the average cost of a new car today is Forty eight thousand dollars and of course the most coveted aspect of the American dream being able to buy a house in 1930 cost about thirty nine hundred dollars less than seventy thousand dollars. I spend way too much time on Zillow So maybe this isn't surprising to me, but the average price of a home in America today is four hundred and sixteen Thousand dollars, how could we be living through worst cost of living and wages then? 1930 and no politician. No media outlet. No one is talking about it. That's by economics It's about growing an economy by strengthening the middle class It's really interesting when you look at that and you think like whoa, is that really real? It's a are we living in a silent depression? So I was like, let me just go through and look at what the Depression was so When you talk about the Depression and you say four thousand eight hundred dollars was the average income That was based on the IRS's revenue in 1930 with 1.7 million people submitting Their income to them. The truth is is if you look at the numbers, it was more like $1,300 and Then if you look into it a little bit more deeply the actual Unemployment rate during 1920 1930 was at 18% that is One out of five people didn't have a job and claim that they were unemployed Now if we had that happen today, we would see a complete Collapse of our economy one out of five people couldn't find a job So to really say that we're living in a silent depression is a is a bit of a stretch now. Don't get me wrong Inflation is a hidden tax and The way that our money is chewed up by the government is pretty ridiculous But how the Great Depression happened is is it was kind of like the perfect storm, right? 1929 you have the stock market crashed famous infamous 1929 stock market crash the stock market literally goes from 300 points down to a hundred and eighty One day done. So almost half of the stock market evaporates overnight And then you have like it's called the smoothie smooth Holly Act Which broke down international trade put crazy tariffs on everything and made it pretty ridiculous and then you have the worst drought the United States has ever seen take the planes where all of our food and a lot of our economy and a lot of our Our GDP came from at the time was selling food So you kind of had this perfect storm for the Great Depression Now whether that was Orchestrated by some powers. I don't know but what I'm saying is is it was a perfect storm and it allowed for our entire country to get hit now the factors that really happened is is by 1933 our international trade had gone down 76% from its height 1929 that rate there is a ridiculous amount the world GDP fell 15% in those four years now, we went through a great recession. Some of you might remember it our GDP in the world went down 1% We're talking 15% GDP worldwide the whole world basically economically collapsed for an entire decade and So when you talk about the cost of living and things like that people weren't even registering and purchasing homes People were living on the plains Building homes they were they were buying kits From Sears and Roebuck to build houses on their land Without any type of permits or any type of things that were needed to build a home So to compare apples to apples from that time period to ours is it's almost unrealistic You're talking about a hundred year time gap. Now. Do I think that we're living in a time period where our Financial worlds are being suppressed and that our money is being taxed beyond Recognition and that we're we're constantly paying for goods that we don't need That we're creating our entire Society that revolves around money worship. Yeah, of course, but really To compare our finances now and say we're in a silent depression I mean in the Great Depression It was hard to get food at times I am yet to find somebody that is truly having a difficult time to feed themselves in the United States now I've seen people that don't eat because they have addiction issues They choose to live a certain way, but if they needed food Most of the time people have access to it. There's food shelters There's there's you know Food cards that are available state to state federally There's a lot of different welfare programs in the United States that allow people to feed themselves back then there weren't any and people were Struggling just to survive Considering that they couldn't even grow foods because there was a drought Where the breadbasket of the world was? so there's a lot of different things to think about when you're comparing apples to apples or oranges to apples are really I would say this is more of like a watermelon comparison to to a grapefruit like they're just They're both fruits, but really it's not something that you can say is equally understood So when you see silent depression Think a little bit more outside the box And and look at it from a fundamental perspective educate yourself a little bit more on the Great Depression How it looked how it started You know our country was roaring in the 20s, and then it just fell apart I think there's a lot more to that Maybe I'll dive into it on another show Where we talk about the Great Depression and what were the catalysts to it? I think a lot of that has to go back to the Federal Reserve and the IRS creation in 1913 under Woodrow Wilson, but that's a whole nother story for a whole nother day Last but not least I want to talk about the infamous FTX so Ryan Salami an executive at FTX was tried this week for two counts one he actually Admitted to committing them he pled guilty One was the federal campaign finance and another one was the money transmitting crimes now if you don't know about FTX FTX is the Former cryptocurrency trading company was endorsed by people like Tom Brady where lots of famous people lost millions of dollars and Totaling billions of dollars in loss and Sam Bankman freed was the person that basically created a large Crypto Ponzi scheme, but but it looked more or less like it was a big laundromat for people to put money in and out of So interestingly enough Salami's gets Brought up on charges pleads guilty. He's got a return and forfeit 1.5 billion dollars but his federal campaign finances because there was about 80 million dollars over the course of the midterms in 2022 where he directly financed political campaigns and then another thing is is that The money transmitting crime so I kind of had to look this up, you know money transmitting crimes is so according to the US Code 5 53 30 failing to properly license a money transmitting business can result in five thousand dollars in fines and Can bring up to five years imprisonments for each in violation of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business now interesting enough It keeps on bringing up money doesn't say currency. It says money so what is money money is a current a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and bank notes So interestingly, they keep saying that it's money transmitting crimes Truth is is what kind of were they physical coins or were they digital coins? What was the regulation of these coins and really were there any bank notes involved at all? And so When you look at it, I think there's a little bit of Something else that's underneath the the wool here that we're not being brought to light but the money transmitting crimes is basically taking people's money and then turning it over and Returning it to them. So Right now the coins I guess you could say FTX handled crypto coins. But again, that's an unregulated currency It's not the coin that's referred to in money Those coins are the physical coins that you have and you live with day to day, you know these coins That's what they are. It's not the standard coins that you see digitally so when you really start to think about all of this it makes you wonder like Why did he fund so much political campaigns? He funded Democratic campaigns they funded When I say he I mean salami and Freed they funded Democratic they funded Republican. They put a lot of money backing political campaigns in the United States and The federal campaign finance law. It's a whole laundry list of things You can go just google it look it up and you can start to educate yourself on that. But but the truth be told is that Why were they donating so much to these political parties? What made that such an interesting thing if you knew that you were, you know doing something Illegal, why would you turn around and make yourself so well known to donate to these massive campaigns? What kind of intelligence were you really trying to operate under and so? When you look at the Sam Bankman freed and now Ryan salami is is where where does this all go? And how do they become? better Through this and if they are gonna be better and if if they were, you know told to do this or you know This or that how does that really turn out for both of them? Freed's gonna go on trial here in October and Salami, I think it will you know get whatever he gets but he did plead guilty. So we'll see how that goes So that's pretty much it for today's 30 money if you have any Questions comments things ideas that you'd like to bring out about the show put it in the comments below if you're watching us on YouTube ganching world or Anywhere else, please just leave a comment and a like we'd appreciate it and download our podcast wherever you listen to it there and That's it for dirty money