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The Bond Yield And The Barricade | Lemonade Stand - Ep. 77 Premium [VIDEO] (Patreon)

Published:
2026-10-12 17:00:13
Edited:
2026-10-12 17:36:29
Imported:
2026-10
Tags:

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  • 762102931.mp4

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Content

Recorded on: October 8th, 2026

TOPICS

0:00 - Intro

3:00 - Corrections

4:45 - When People Think They Know A Place

13:20 - Modern Monetary Theory Guy (YoK mini)

18:00 - France's Financial Debt

30:57 - Social Security and Deficits

38:45 - Complications with Means Testing

43:58 - People Don't Vote Against Themselves

50:49 - New Birthrate Theory

1:01:40 - SpaceX is becoming a Mobile Network

1:04:07 - Choosing Between Chipotle and Starbucks

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Comments

Pavate

I’m so fast

Pavate

Aiden’s biggest fan, present

Ehaeka

Modern Monetary Theory folks are the communists of capitalists. Whenever it's brought up in conversation they go "Nah bro if you just follow MMT like the theory books say society will be perfect!", and then whenever it is applied (read: Sri Lanka), and the economy eventually hyperinflates and fails they go "Well that wasn't REAL MMT, if they did REAL MMT it would've been fine!", and then when you call them out on this, they go "Real MMT has never been applied! It's all fake MMT every time it failed!"

Garrett Mora

Was there ever a regular uploading schedule for the patron (I swear there was)

Ursus

Perfect timing with the Russian bot farm still burning

Peter Sadek

I feel like us humans need stuff to be black and white so that we feel like we understand how the world works. All that nuance just kills the vibes tbh.

Peter Sadek

In the AB test, can we get a fourth version where the war isn’t happening and the world is at peace?

JayRoozy

As a public employee in New York (I work for a school district) I’ll say that Aiden is correct in pensions being a bargaining chip. I make less than other people in my field who work for private companies, but the benefits I receive (including a pension) are far better than anything my contemporaries receive from their companies. If the pension was no longer an option at my place of work, I would no longer work there.

Ellie Teller

I'm shocked Andrew didn't do a graham platner interview seems right up his alley.

Robert

How Money works did that yt thing it was actually kinda cool and interesting

Wouter

It would be a bit better if foreign subjects weren't debated on US equivalents. French pensions amount to about 50–75% of pre-retirement income, if that is not above a minimum they get social security

Pavate

Aiden if you can see this, let me come on LS and we can be Lil A and Lil P

Karl Hedlund

Oof this was a hard episode to make it through as an expat living in Paris. I'm not going to defend Mélenchon's platform, but I have to push back against your representation. You're right that he doesn't expect to continue funding through debt, that's the whole left wing argument. You can't present his dismissal of debt without also discussing industrial nationalization paired with it in the platform. European leftism starts with wealth taxes at the center, extends through socialist party platforms and goes even further left before you get to the financial arguments of Mélenchon. Debt is such a small part of the financial conversation, but unfortunately it's the only thing we talk about regarding foreign politics because it's the wealth extraction mechanism. Of course I'm biased, but it's hard not to bet on France among Eurpoean countries as the only nuclear power and a massive state owned energy sector. You're all intelligent financial guys, but it's a stretch to continue applying private sector heuristics towards the public sector. Perhaps a future book club focused on public sector finance (not debt and not the FT)? Dag Detter's The Public Wealth of Cities or The Public Wealth of Nations would be a great starting point.

Vincent Martinez

Oh you got someone who argued against wealth tax, maybe y'all can get Gary Stevenson, he wrote The Trading Game

Karl Hedlund

Offering the two key arguments against means testing: 1. Financially, most studies show that the infrastructure to enforce means testing ends up costing more than the potential savings 2. Morally, the individuals who need it the most are always going to be the first people cut in means testing. No your parents might not 'need' food stamps or social security, but they are the demographic with financial means and structural engagement to navigate a testing process. Ultimately, testing further directs funding towards that middle class demographic that y'all criticize. The correct amount of waste and fraud in public financing is not 0.

Will

Pensions are to compensate for the jobs paying less. "Ah, my job pays less than the civilian counterpart, but I can at least look forward to a pension when I retire". If the pensions are removed, any skilled or ambitious employees would just go to better paying jobs.

Arlo11anizer

Young men yelling at clouds again (valid)

Lemonade Stand

Here is the basic issue as I see it - He immediately wants to stop paying interest on debt - This would destroy France's bond market, France would no longer be able to raise money through bonds, money they need for their public spending - He does not have the ability to unilaterally force through wealth taxes at the speed or scale to fill the gap in their public spending that the debt fills - Therefore France's ability to fund their public spending completely crumbles - France also does not have the ability to "print" the Euro to weather this (albeit that has its own set of consequences) I don't really see how this is not a problem, even if major industries are being nationalized as you're saying. You can't just "say" debt is a small part of the conversation and not worry about it, exiting the reliance on that system takes a much longer process I think - Aiden

William Ek

From what I've heard, how many workers supported each social security retiree was much higher at the very beginning for the very simple reason that not many people had become eligible yet as the program had just started. From the 70s and onward it's been slightly above 3, which is a much less stark difference than the 22 Atrioc was talking about. And obviously productivity has increased massively since then. The main issue isn't that we don't have the money to take care of old people, it's that parasitic middle men and rich people absorb more than they did back then. Obviously France is an extreme example, with very early retirement age and insanely high pensions

Karl Hedlund

I personally don’t disagree with your points regarding how funding through debt works. I’m not aware of any proposal to stop paying interest on debt broadly. His proposals I’m aware of are a cancellation of debt held by the European Central Bank and the bank of France. Debt restructuring between public institutions is a very different proposal than negotiating with the bond vigilante type. My disagreement was with the framing of the platform. His argument isn’t that he will magically be able to continue financing through debt, his argument is fundamentally breaking away from that model and funding through public assets. The debt cycle is not sustainable for France or anyone else. Again, I’m not defending his points myself. I just wish you would engage with the platform rather than dismiss and laugh at it. The broader left needs to have these conversations internally rather than the center treating Le Pen as the less radical option. Apologies if im coming off as dismissing debt as a small problem. I'm probably projecting my own office woes. I don't mean to imply it’s nothing, just wishing we would talk about public balance sheets at some point rather than just cash flows.

Zach Lafleche

It's also important to note that a nationalization program would need large upfront financing to compensate the owners, invest in expanding the industries, and pay for restructuring costs. Meaning that would likely need to borrow in order to do this, so the conversation around debt can't be brushed to the side. The cost of debt affects the economics of nationalization as the higher the interest cost, the more of the public returns will be absorbed by financing costs.

zach mattia

Would be greaful if y'all put the social security out on youtube so I can send it to my boomer family. Great segment

Mossatron

The stuff u talk about at 12:50 is actually a terrifying and scary reality. i know u guys meant it as a joke but man, dont give these mfs that watch ur show ideas lmfao.

Theedoo

noticing a lot less atroic fans ever since the yandex servers got dronestriked

Prajwal Jagadish

Just to background view of pensions. Most pensions are essentially just collective group 401k. Most places that offer a pension don't have a 401k and vice versa. It works likewise to a 401k where instead of giving you money that you decide how much you want to put into savings, the company/district will decide how much money to add to the pension fund each year. It works the same way as a 401k where most of the money is put into the stock market/also actively managed to grow it enough so a pensioners yearly dividend is covered by the growth. 401k came around to transfer the risk and cost of management from the employer to the employee and also it allows employees flexibility to job hop. The only pensions really left are from older companies who have pension obligations with retired employees and then government jobs where movement isn't really a priority and also as a bargaining chip against private sector jobs since pensions are considered more stable since you essentially have a blank check to bail you out

Zoe smith-stoe

Fun fact! Troy's economics(the mmt comment guy) has a 3 and a half hour long video from a couple months ago about how atrioc supposedly "doesn't understand the national debt" and how he's "speading misinformation".

Adam Bonny

One clarification on what Melechon’s arguments about interest payment is because I’ve seen a lot of contradictory information about it. When I’ve listened to him speak, his plan is a bit more nuanced than “just stop paying interest”. His argument is that a big chunk of the French government debt is owned by the European Central Bank which is a public institution of the EU. Melechon’s argument is that it’s silly to pay interest payments to a public institution because that money just ends up being redistributed to the EU and ends up being sent back as subsidies to the individual states. So his plan is to strike a deal with the EU Central Bank to stop paying interest on the debt they own but to continue to pay the interest on all of the debt owned by private individuals and corporations.

Pierre Stuck

While I do agree that pensions are one of, if not the main Issue that's going to plague social security systems around the world in the coming decades, I always find a bit of a problem with the framing that we just spend way to much money in pensions. This often makes old people seem like a monolith, when there are in fact a LOT of old people living in poverty, and the problem as per usual is rich people hoarding wealth. In Germany for example the pension payments as a percentage of the state budget used to be higher than today for decades, and the % amount of the budget used to stabilise pensions also used to be higher, like 31% in 2004 and somehow it wasn't that big of a problem back then even though the economy as a whole made less money. Another mistake a lot of people make is taking old people as the only group that 'costs' the state and society money. Children and most teenagers don't work, they're still dependents, they need education, daycare etc. and their number is dropping at similar rates as the amount of old people is rising, at least in Germany. So the amount of dependents has not drastically changed, just their distribution of age. Another thing that is almost never taken into account when people say 'there's just less working people now for each pensioner' is the increases in worker productivity. The average worker just produces way more value nowadays than they did back in the 90s. I'm aware that this is more a question of wealth distribution and wages compared to company profits. But this is I feel one of the key factors in making a pension system that can sustain itself long term: If people individually make more money, they can pay more into pensions and sustain the system even when there are less people. Still a great episode, enjoyed it a lot :)

Chase LaPointe

The reason I still don't think it is a great idea is because all that does is kick the can, France cannot balance a budget (no developed nation outside of like Germany can) so all that does is temporarily relieve some of the pressure, and than when france needs to next borrow they are in a worse spot

Adam Bonny

I agree with you in the scenario where the government doesn’t change anything except these interest payments. Then it’s useless. However, where I think Melechon’s plan could work is that this decreased burden gives France more wiggle room in the short to medium term. If you take that chance to reform taxes, invest in local manufacturing and infrastructure, go after financial fraud, optimize government spending and reduce subsidies to massive corporations then that can be a helpful tool.

Rohit

The key distinction is that MMT countries do not face crippling sanctions and wars from other countries though. I think it’s unfair to compare that to communists who have faced extreme brutality by those same capitalists

ThatDanMan

The real downer here is that Doug doesn't get a pension for being a YouTuber

ThatDanMan

As someone who is nearly 30 in a blue area of Georgia, the absence of kids in public spaces is definitely not something that I see. Granted, it may be and likely is still a reduction from say 30 years ago, but I certainly don't see a lack of young parents out with their kids. This is not a criticism of LA - just a comparison.

G4MM4

Honest question: does worker productivity consider inflation in «value production»? It just doesn’t make sense to me that value is proportionally up per individual if living wages were more manageable before. Is it the expected value output (that the average company has) having gone up considerably , resulting in detractions from the value going to to the worker?

Billy Graham

exactly! teachers are already hard to find as it is, there wouldnt be any without the pension

Pierre Stuck

Most models that I am familiar with at least take inflation into account. They do this through using real GDP, aka taking into account the output volume per worker/hours worked and not just the price increase. The issue is simply that around the 1980s ( depending on the country) wages stopped growing at the same rate as company profits. Or to put it simply (like you said) most people have been getting less and less (percentage wise) of the output of their work reflected in their paycheck. And not just since yesterday but for several decades.

Zack

If I had to choose between means tested or not means tested, I would personally lean towards means tested. If there were literally any other option I would opt for that one over either of the previous. I don't feel convinced by means testing or social security conceptually.

Zack

LOL

Rachel Cunningham

35:08 the pensions are partly funded by your employer like a match, and you as an employee pay into it. it's no different than a 401k except you can't outlive it. unlike social security, the pensions invest the money you contribute to them and have actuaries figuring out how much they need to fulfill their obligations

Elijah Flores

Banger of an ep all around. Great discussion around taxes, welfare, and population that flowed very well throughout. Even the fun/small bits at the end rounded it out nicely. This is what I’m here for 🙏🏼

kittenchaser

I might be wrong as I’m not American but isn’t the bigger issue with social security that you have a max cap on contributions, which makes it a regressive tax? I just know I’ve seen clips of Sam Seder ranting about it saying that if they took of the cap allowing high income earns to pay more into it there wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

Bettman

Which countries are you referring to when talking about MMT countries? To my knowledge they don't exist at all and remain purely theoretical. The short bursts where this policy is applied is so bad and brutal for the countries that they revert back within a very short timeframe

Jesse Myers

I can speak to the parents issue. I just turned 28, I’m married with 3 kids - 3.5, 1.5, and 3 months old. I live in a pretty rural area. My experience is that (for the most part) older people are much more willing to make concessions, accommodations, and assist with my kids than people my age, or even older millennials. And, the difference in ostricism I've experienced going from 1 to 2, and now 2 to 3 has been staggering. I get the sense my peers from college view spending time with my family as a burden now, even if they're not asked to do anything to assist with my kids. The most blatent thing is the lack of willingness from younger people to engage with children. My 3-year-old daughter is very smart and talkative, she can carry an intelligent conversation in full sentences, she LOVES talking to people. But, overwhelmingly, younger people are not willing to take her seriously enough to answer a question, return a wave, or listen to a story. It breaks my heart to see the loss of collective responsibility towards children.

Bird

I don't think these are arguments against means testing, they're arguments against poorly done means testing... Which in 21st century America is the same thing but it doesn't have to be. There is absolutely a way to means test programs, especially ones as expensive and all encompassing as social security without spending more money than it would bring in, and without being draconian and unreasonably confusing to navigate. I'd start by looking for successful examples of means testing and targeted aid, they mentioned Estonia's modern and digital civil service in this episode but I'm sure while no perfect examples exist there are better ones we can learn from.

Karl Hedlund

Ok, lets run with this. We want to means test SS. How much income do retirees make? Definitionally, not much. So are we means testing wealth? If we are, where are we setting that bar for wealth? Is it above or below the line of individuals actively hiding wealth? Let's say we set the bar high so that we don't have old people dying in poverty. So we’re establishing the infrastructure necessary to levy effective wealth taxation, and using that mechanism to impose an insanely regressive flat tax on wealthy individuals through social security? These aren't technocratic disagreements we're having, there seems to be a fundamental political priorities difference. I'm going to argue that the potential savings of testing are worth leaving on the table to treat our neighbors with dignity. I would take a second to look into the amount of elderly people in poverty in Estonia before you go citing them too broadly.

Bird

I apologize for the length of this comment 😔 So I'm seeing a lot of comments here in the range of "Pensions aren't social security but instead a contractual incentive for someone to take a specific job, generally a lower paying public sector job". And that's generally right. (At least this is my understanding of the strong majority of American pensions. I don't know how this applies in France.) Plenty of jobs offer retirement and incentive schemes like 401k matching, stock options, etc as an alternative to direct compensation, and don't get to retroactively ask for those benefits back because they were poorly negotiated. The issue is that pensions are another 21st century example of the previous generation writing a bad check and expecting us to pay it. When a achool district, or city, or state, makes a contact with a pension they are generally deffering part of the cost of hiring that employee. (Most have some contribution or payment system to fund pensions but almost never cover the actual full cost of the program, especially in the public sector) But, with that said, someone who took a pension job like a teacher did so with a pension being part of their contractual compensation package. That person was likely taking less salary, or not getting other retirement incentives in exchange for the pension program. To cut or change existing pensions has, in my mind, the same problems as defaulting on debt, if you make a habit of reneging on or renegotiating deals after the fact, no one will trust and work with you later. It sucks that the previous generation negotiated stupid pensions and stupid debt, now we have to deal with it. Would a person who is making less money in the public sector and thus be unable to fully fund an independent retirement be willing to keep working there if they know their contractual retirement benefit can be taken away when convenient? (I don't know what can be done, maybe if we converted all existing pensions to a standardized payout it could prevent the credibility loss issue, but it's is absolutely playing with fire.) With that said, I obviously don't think this is sustainable. It is irresponsible to offer lifetime pensions funded by future generations, especially ones that scale with other mechanisms like the UK's tri-lock. The net result is we are trying to manage a mountain of debt and obligation left by the boomers, a desire to have quality of life today, and trying not to leave an even bigger shit heap for future generations. New hires today already get worse pension terms such as lower payout rates and higher ages of retirement. Moving forward we either need upper limits (i.e. a cap on how many years will be paid out) or to just convert the system to personal retirement mechanisms like 401k which are more volatile and market dependant, and make these positions less competitive to the private sector. I have no idea how to deal with public negotiations to build a new system because Atrioc is right that there is no profit function to act as the bedrock of labor negotiations in the way it does for a for-profit company's union. But teachers and public employees are already getting a pretty raw deal more often than not, and I don't want to make all public service so bare bones that only the truly desperate who can't find work anywhere else would go into it.

Craig Carlson

I feel like you should move corrections to the full episodes, seems a little bit fox-newsy to put them in patreon only videos.

Craig Carlson

Feels like declining birth rights could be tightly paired with giving women the access to birth control, and when women have the ability to choose, the number goes way down.

kittenchaser

Atrioc brought it up, but the idea that social security has capped contributions is insane to me. That makes it a regressive tax on workers. Insane!

M C

Hearing Chipotle right as I’m trying to pick dinner living in Japan is actually cursed. My option is getting on a train to get to Tokyo for some pseudo-decent Mexican or eat something else which inevitably is going to make me sad that it doesn’t have carnitas in it. Good episode but I have been triggered and I’m not happy about it haha.

gooberlicious

I think that woman who made the AI video of her brother was just fishing for attention. Seems like she just wanted to make the trial about her by throwing in the AI video. Considering it was totally out-of-the-blue, she brought it forward, didn't clear it with lawyers, and then did a media circuit with her brother's stuff staged behind her. Call me a cynic, but, to me, she was just doing a self-insert. Now, may that have been a result of her trauma from losing a loved one in such a horrible way? Perhaps. However, that still doesn't make the admission of an AI impact statement any less horrible for society.

Username Guest

Hey I think Aiden’s mic is too high in volume or atrioc’s is too low

Claiming Light

Even if/when social security ultimately tanks-- fine, let it. You'd see congress moving fast as hell to implement a new fix. After all, it's not like we're going to have the elderly starving on the street. Yes, most of taxes go toward elder care and the military, and that can't change unless we plan to send our retirees to fight our wars, I guess. I suppose, you could do something with policy to help mitigate the costs, like two years of mandatory nursing home service after high school. Or a cultural push toward multi-generational homes. But why stress at all? If we do UBI-- and we should-- then there's no need for a retirement fund. Because we'd all be on the dole.

viabee

As a teacher, I can say that teachers unions at least (if not other public unions) have been acting as a stopgap to prevent more job hemorraging. Teachers are paid less than private employees with comparable degrees and ususlly have a more demanding job, even in districts with very high union membership, and salaries are even worse when union participation is low. Unions also often provide other benefits, including professional liability insurance and legal support, which teachers need more than most other workers (since we work with kids and are now facing rising pressures from awful state laws). And it's also already illegal to strike as a public employee, which severely hinders bargaining power from the union side. Maybe they're not a permanent solution, but if teachers unions were abolished now, that would just worsen teacher shortages.

nick

in my neighborhood in boston (J.P.) there are tons of young adults with kids and adults with kids in general. I have no idea how much it would be compared to stockholm, but there are tons of playgrounds, schools, and walkable areas where you see kids playing or with their parents. may be an LA thing just due to the nature of hollywood/celebrity it has

retrogr8de

I think there's a particular misery that comes with living in America (due to city planning/geography, general stresses of work, modern news cycles, etc) today that makes having children a zero sum game for everyone involved unless you really REALLY want children. The 'don't ask, don't tell' culture only doubles down that misery, so to me, declining birth rates in the states is nor surprising.

Chase

i am just wondering this about taxing the billionaire class, or even below that. if there are taxes that do effectively tax wealth and are enforced, surely those people will just move to a tax haven. its not like they operate in a localised community, i understand this doesn't count for all billionaires and millionaires who do have some strong ties with their country, (it would be hard for Jerry Jones to just leave forever), but for the majority wouldnt it be true. Id love for the guys to respond to this in some way

alone_x

Id be careful with taking Andrew Callaghan "at face value". I know he likes to do his "I'm an on the ground unbiased journalist" shtick but he very often has an angle he's trying to push as well, some of the beliefs of which are extremely wacky

K1000IN

Is impressive how big A always manages to get his mic to be considerably more quiet than Aimen's and Doug's