Vote Your Conscience with Kevin Stolla
Jun 21, 2026 · 51 min · 13 segments
Episode 38: How Much Government Is Enough? Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have proposed wealth taxes and even government ownership stakes in AI companies. Supporters argue these measures are…
So in the first place, we've been in a spending deficit for the last, I believe the last time that we had a surplus was during Clinton's presidency in the 1990s.
The way that they get this money to spend is that they can print money through the Federal Reserve Banking System, and they can also sell bonds to other countries, China, Japan.
You can go and buy U.S. Treasury notes and give money to the government, and they will pay you interest.
So the problem is there are people on one side saying, hey, we need to reduce the spending.
And then there's people on the other side that say the government needs more money so that we can fund things like extra welfare and pay higher Social Security, disability, get universal health care and everything like that.
My main goal of this podcast is to get people to understand that most people on either side of this issue or almost any issue, the reason that they have an opposing view to you is because they think that will lead to a better outcome.
It's not because they want to see people suffer and struggle and they just hate this country and want it to be destroyed.
There are some people with that view, and there's people that even they seem to have that view, but it's not what they mean when they want to destroy America or, you know, mostly they just hate the system we have.
So I always want to try and promote that as the main thing that we have to get an understanding.
Otherwise, we can't even discuss these issues because people automatically start with hate.
The reason they want these things is selfish, and it's only so that they can be doing well.
But it is a lot deeper than that, where people have different ideas about how the community is going to thrive.
So on the one side, people think more government spending is going to benefit the community.
And on the other side, people think paying less taxes is going to benefit the community.
I tend towards the paying less taxes side, but I do see a need for some amount of welfare.
So in the first place, we've been in a spending deficit for the last, I believe the last time that we had a surplus was during Clinton's presidency in the 1990s.
The way that they get this money to spend is that they can print money through the Federal Reserve Banking System, and they can also sell bonds to other countries, China, Japan.
You can go and buy U.S. Treasury notes and give money to the government, and they will pay you interest.
So the problem is there are people on one side saying, hey, we need to reduce the spending.
And then there's people on the other side that say the government needs more money so that we can fund things like extra welfare and pay higher Social Security, disability, get universal health care and everything like that.
My main goal of this podcast is to get people to understand that most people on either side of this issue or almost any issue, the reason that they have an opposing view to you is because they think that will lead to a better outcome.
It's not because they want to see people suffer and struggle and they just hate this country and want it to be destroyed.
There are some people with that view, and there's people that even they seem to have that view, but it's not what they mean when they want to destroy America or, you know, mostly they just hate the system we have.
So I always want to try and promote that as the main thing that we have to get an understanding.
Otherwise, we can't even discuss these issues because people automatically start with hate.
The reason they want these things is selfish, and it's only so that they can be doing well.
But it is a lot deeper than that, where people have different ideas about how the community is going to thrive.
So on the one side, people think more government spending is going to benefit the community.
And on the other side, people think paying less taxes is going to benefit the community.
I tend towards the paying less taxes side, but I do see a need for some amount of welfare.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.