Life Liberty and the Pursuit

LLP #139: Old Ways, New Preppers

• Life Liberty and the Pursuit

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Prices creep up, portions shrink, and suddenly dinner feels like a math problem. We take that pressure and turn it into a plan—starting with small, steady habits that build real food security without blowing your budget. From scanning the weekly ad and practicing FIFO rotation to spending one weekend canning or running a freeze-dryer batch, we map a path that trades panic for preparation and guesswork for ready-to-eat meals on your shelf.

We break down how tariffs, inflation, and shrinkflation become “hidden taxes” on everyday items, then show how to push back with timing, substitution, and smart storage. You’ll hear why pressure canning is the most affordable upgrade for turning garden harvests and bulk buys into shelf-stable meals, plus the simple safety checks that keep jars dependable. We also go deep on freeze-drying—how to find a used unit for half price, what foods store best, and why mylar plus oxygen absorbers can give you a 25-year buffer that’s light, compact, and easy to stash.

Along the way, we talk honestly about living within your means, avoiding credit traps, and building a pantry that functions like a mini store. You’ll get practical meal frameworks—rice and beans topped with jarred proteins, soups stretched with lentils and tomatoes, tacos from canned venison—and a clear view of when to DIY and when to buy ready-made long-term buckets for instant peace of mind. The goal isn’t doomsday—it’s simple resilience that steadies your week, your budget, and your family.

If this helped you rethink your pantry, subscribe for more practical liberty-minded episodes, share it with a friend who needs a plan, and leave us a quick review on Apple Podcasts so others can find the show.

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome back, everybody. This is Eric and Matt, and this is Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit. Your beacon of freedom and the American way of life. Tune in every Monday for a new episode as we dive into the world of liberty and what makes our country great. Welcome back, everybody. This is Eric and Matt here with LLP, and I hope everybody's having a great week. Welcome back. Life, Liberty, and Pursuit. Your home for all things normal in a world gone completely mad. What's up, dude?

SPEAKER_00:

Having a great day. Just enjoying my coffee, my black coffee.

SPEAKER_02:

Enjoying your black coffee, your big black coffee.

SPEAKER_00:

My BBC.

SPEAKER_02:

I see. I see. Enjoy that BBC. All right. Well, I hope everybody's having a fantastic week. We're going to get into today's show, and what we're going to be talking about today is how what is old is always new again. And what do we mean by that? In the particular case of today's episode, we're talking about the whole prepping mentality. You know, look, the economy has been absolutely crap. Prices of things are going up. We're going to talk a little bit about tariffs today and some of the economic policy. And we'll dive into a little bit of the weeds on that. We're not going to spend a lot of time talking about it, but I do want to mention some things at a bird's eye level. And we're going to be talking about how a lot of people are choosing to, you know, prep more. And, you know, people are eating out less and maybe spending more money trying to actually, you know, increase uh the viability of their long-term food storage. Um, they're they're you know getting back into more of the old ways, such as pressure canning and food preservation. Maybe they're growing more food than they used to, keeping chickens. We're gonna talk about all that sorts of stuff in today's show. So buckle in, grab a coffee or a BBC. Yes. Uh as as as Matt so eloquently put, he's gonna grab his BBC. Yep. Big black coffee. Oh my God. Okay, and we're gonna get cracking on today's show. Before we get started, I would like to thank our friends at Allegiance Gold. You ever notice how gold doesn't get much airtime until the system starts to shake? Well, here's what nobody's talking about. Starting July 1st, Basel III Global Banking Rules classify gold as a tier one asset, the same level as cash or U.S. treasuries. That's huge. It means central banks will now treat gold as the highest quality form of capital. They're not doing this just for fun. They're preparing for something. If gold is good enough for the world's most powerful banks and governments, why wouldn't it be good enough to protect your retirement? This may be the moment we've all been waiting for. Gold could reach levels we've never seen before. Whether you've got 5K or 5 million to safeguard, now is the time to act. I've seen plenty of gold companies advertise and come and go, but I chose to partner with Allegiance Gold because they actually care about their pricing, their integrity, and doing the right thing by their clients. They make it simple to move part of your 401k, IRA, or savings into real physical gold and silver. As a veteran, you may even qualify for up to$5,000 in free silver. Call 844-790-9191 or visit AllegianceGold.com forward slash veterans. That's 844-790-9191. Call today. It's simple, fast, and secure. Big thanks to our friends at Allegiance Gold for supporting our efforts here on LLP. And man, you know, the podcast has been doing great and we're really getting our stride back, and these episodes are coming together wonderfully. And I really enjoy the opportunity to articulate some of these finer points to people that maybe we don't always, or I'm not always able to do in a full YouTube video. I really like to be able to talk about some of the stuff that we talk about.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's it's better. So, guys, if you don't know this, we didn't originally do this podcast for for you guys. We did the podcast so Eric and I could sit here and chop it up for it. Give us an excuse to get together every week and chop it up. Yes. Um excuse. And the cameras are just here already in the studio. So we said one day, well, man, what if we just what if we just turn the cameras on?

SPEAKER_02:

Just record our shenanigans.

SPEAKER_00:

And we'll just talk about stuff that we want to talk about.

SPEAKER_02:

So we record our shenanigans.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and it's not necessarily always about gun content. You know, I know we get a lot of comments, and we I mean, I read the comments, you know, hey, more gun content. Like we we do gun content, but you know, we want to talk about what's on our minds, you know, and that's what it is.

SPEAKER_02:

And you know, there there's always a lot of stuff going on, and I think that where people are at right now, you know, it goes without saying, again, as I mentioned in last week's show, I like to just see what people are going through and and see where people's heads are at. And, you know, I do read a lot of commentary on social media, particularly X. You guys might not know this, but X is actually the number one news source right now. More people are getting their news from Twitter slash X uh than ever before. So make sure you follow me on Twitter. It's IRACVeteran8888. Um, look for me on there. Um, maybe I'll I'll put a screenshot or show you the link down below. Maybe Lisa can pretty please she can do that for me. Um, but make sure you follow us over there. So I'm always posting questions uh that I have for you guys to answer. Like I may put out a poll. Hey, what do you think about this? And sometimes I take that poll and I break it down into a video. So you guys actually, you know, interact with me and help me uh drive forth some of my content. So you guys are just as much a part of the content that I make as I do. I'm just the guy that articulates and reports on it, but you guys provide the commentary. So big thanks if you follow on Twitter and you are engaging in commentary. Anyway, I digress. The point I'm making is that with all of this, I like to see where people's heads are at. And lots of folks look, many, many Americans are struggling to simply put food on the table. Um, I was in court earlier. Okay, I got a freaking speeding ticket and I had to go to court for it. It was a super speeder. Well, anyway, uh yeah, I drive fast. But but look, anyway, point is um it was funny. The judge talked about, oh, we have this 30-30 program where you can have 30 days to pay off your speeding ticket or blah blah blah. And I'm thinking, what kind of world we live in where you have to have a payment plan for a ticket? Jeez. I mean, like, people are already struggling to put food on the table. And it's like, bro, I mean, like, I get it, you broke the law, the consequences, et cetera, et cetera. But what there are a lot of people who, when they get in those situations, it's a life-changing thing. It can really hem them up, even over, you know, you get hit with a$500 life fee that you didn't know about or that you weren't expecting. And that can make or break your month. And, you know, I feel for a lot of people, I have empathy for a lot of people who are living, absolutely living paycheck to paycheck, absolutely struggling in every way. And it's tough. Like I noticed there was an elderly lady at the grocery store the other day, Matt. You know, it was a it was an older lady. She was um checking out, and there was some issue with the total because the coupons didn't take off in the way that she thought that they would take off. And her total wound up being, I think, over$60, but she was, I guess, had budgeted down to the penny to spend no more than$60. And it wound up being$64 something or another. So I reach in my wallet and I grab a$5 bill here, just handle it like it's fine. But when you, you know, folks are struggling sometimes to the degree where they're having to budget every little dollar to try to find the most value to survive in this world, to simply buy groceries, even. And you know, food scarcity, I you know, food is something that we really have solved, Matt. The the world has solved the hunger issue, right? Like generally, now it's not everywhere in the world, of course, there are still many people in the world who struggle to have access to clean water, um, struggle to have access to food. But generally speaking, scientifically, we've solved the problem of feeding people, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, if you if anybody looks at if you I don't like using China as an example, but they have an entire kind of like uh what is it, the micro version of dirty jobs, but they have it like in China where they showed how they take they recycle like old food and they literally take all of this old food, send it to uh a facility, and they recreate new food out of the old food, which is kind of gross, but that's how they do it. They've somehow figured out how to solve this problem because China got a lot of people, man. Like they gotta feed a lot of people. Um, but to your point, like where there's a will, there's a way.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure.

SPEAKER_00:

The US doesn't have a problem with supplying food, they have a they have a problem with distribution, like getting the food to certain parts of the country where you've seen them called like food deserts. Yeah, you know, those, you know, for all intents and purposes do exist. There are parts of America where it's just very difficult to get fresh food. And that's just due to where that where that city lies in the US. You know, if you're like, oh, I'm in the middle of, you know, somewhere in Indiana where you're surrounded by cornfields, you're probably gonna have a hard time finding certain items, you know, it's just the nature of of the beast. It's where it is.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. You know, it's funny earlier, Matt, we were we were talking about how uh the guard was just sent out to Illinois, wasn't it? They got sent to Detroit.

SPEAKER_00:

They've been sent to a few places. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So that they've sent the guard out to these places where things are just absolutely in chaos. And again, the last thing that I would ever want to do as a content creator is, you know, create some situation where I want everyone to think that the sky is falling or the world is ending or things are going crazy. This is not some doomsday approach to uh food scarcity. But what I really wanted today's video to be about was that people are kind of reverting back to a lot of the old ways when it comes to food preservation and and food um, you know, maintaining their food supply. And you know, how does one that is on a budget, how can they beef up their food supply slowly over time and do it in a way that actually is meaningful in the long-term sense? And when you look at what's going on in Detroit, like for instance, you mentioned um, you know, food deserts, right? Like uh areas where food might be difficult to get or goods or services might be difficult to get, maybe by virtue of the geographical location, or in the in the case of Chicago or Detroit, or some of these more you know hard cities where people are, you know, committing a lot of crimes and there's there's businesses that get looted and robbed all the time. So what do they do? They shut down.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

So the corner store where you know young mother, uh uh a young mother, single mother had to go down the road to get her pampers or her or her her milk or whatever she needed to get for the house. Uh now that little corner store is not open anymore because it got robbed out of existence. So a food shortage or let's say a food desert can occur even in a major city where normally you would think that there'd be plenty of that stuff available on every corner when a business gets robbed out of existence. And that happens uh not only at a microcosm, but at a macrocosm in a huge part of the city. There's businesses boarded up and people, you know, going, heck, I can't even make a living doing this because I'm getting robbed out of existence. You know, every week we're getting robbed. What do they do? They shut down shop, they go somewhere else, and now you have all these areas where people used to be able to buy food and now they can't. And that makes life even harder. It's already hard to live in those kind of places. But imagine now you can't even walk by foot, right? A lot of people don't own cars. You know, that makes the transportation even more difficult to have to drive across town to go to a grocery store and then drive all the way back. What if you don't own a car? Now that's an even more cost that you're incurring. Uh when we look at tariffs, um, these reciprocal tariffs and everything, yes, we we brought in, I think,$22 billion in tariffs so far. Uh, and that's a drop in the bucket. Uh, we would have to bring in$1.9 trillion in tariffs to replace the money that we spend uh that we receive in income taxes. Uh I don't know if it's just income taxes or all the taxes that they collect in general, but how does society cope with an issue, Matt, where, okay, you're expected to pay, in some cases, upwards of 40 to 50% of your income in taxes, right? If you make a decent amount of money, you're gonna pay half your money out in taxes. Then when you go to the store and buy your goods that are having these tariffs applied to them, you're paying more money for the item in question, therefore, spending more money in a hidden reciprocal tax, which a tariff is sort of a hidden tax. But the idea is that a tariff is a tax that's applied on the host country that produces the item, then the item comes here. Well, do you think that they're just gonna eat that cost and that the cost of the cheap Chinese consumer good is still gonna be cheap like it was? No, they're gonna pass that price on to the consumer. Well, the consumer is the one that winds up paying the tax because now the cost of the TV or whatever they're buying, instead of being$1,800, it's now$2,400. So you're paying that reciprocal tax on that or the tariff on that particular item. So now you're getting taxed by the IRS, you're getting income taxes, property taxes, and all another litany, a whole litany of random life taxes that are applied to you. And you're getting hit with this reciprocal tariff, which is essentially a hidden tax. Then there's the hidden tax of inflation that incurs, you know, let's just say quantitative easing or worsening that occurs for the manipulation of the money supply. All right, that's because we have a system where, you know, uh they are uh free and able to just print all the money they want and send it to whatever corner of the globe they want. So when you artificially decrease the value of the existing money supply by by just simply printing more, uh now we have a fractional banking system on top of that. You have the Federal Reserve. So all these things compound upon each other. And now it becomes a system where, wow, even middle class people are having a much harder time surviving. Like, would you have ever pictured, I don't know, a person who makes 100 grand a year ever having a hard time buying food, for instance? Now imagine the person who, yeah, maybe they only make 40, 50 grand a year, whatever. I mean, I'm saying you make what you make. The point is, average Americans, you know, if you look at the average salary of your average American, it's getting harder and harder and harder for that person to survive on the money that they make. And if you would have asked any number of people, have you ever worried about where your food comes from? In years past, they would probably say, that's probably a minimal uh concern that I would ever have in everyday life, Matt. But more and more people now are talking in polls. They're saying they're there when you look at some of the polling data on this, or let's just say, you know, when people, you know, issue question-answer, you know, whatever polls, if you will, that a lot of people are saying, yeah, like maybe for the first time in my life I've actually been worried about where the hell my food is going to come from.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's a huge issue. It's like when the$80,000 and$90,000 income earners are having a hard time with the basics and and the extras, what does the lower person on the total poll they're really suffering? You have to put a speeding ticket on a payment plan.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So that's scary. I think that there is a difference between you know being genuinely um low income. Yeah. Because those that does exist. You uh it is that is a cycle that is very hard to get out of. Everything that you purchase, and I'm when I say cycle, like I it's not like oh, it's some systemic. No, I'm talking about when you look at how everything is set up for low income, it's hard to get out because let's say you go to uh the dollar store, right? You're paying a dollar for something, but it's it's a smaller quantity. So the toothpaste you're buying is it's a dollar, but you're getting half of what a normal toothpaste would be. But if you just went to the Kroger, you could get you could pay a dollar more and get triple like what you would get at the dollar store. So it's not that it and that goes across the board with anything like food, all everything is a smaller portion. So you're you're actually paying more for if you look at it like like weight, quantity, volume, you're paying more for less.

SPEAKER_02:

The term, I believe the term for that is called shrinkflation. Well, so like when when let's say a piece of cheese used to, I don't know, let's just throw an arbitrary number out there and say a one-pound block of cheese, 16 ounces of cheese is whatever, five dollars. So it's like, oh, well, the cheese is still five dollars, but it's only 12 ounces of cheese. So it's like they lower the portion of the product but charge the same money. It's it's sort of like a way for them to almost make you feel like you're not paying any more. But the reality, you are paying more because you're getting less for the same money.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's true.

SPEAKER_02:

A 20-ounce bottle of coke, now it's a 16-ounce, and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, shrinkflation, it does exist. That is a little different than you know, the the low income cycle that they're in. So that's it, it is hard to get out of it.

SPEAKER_02:

They're buying single-use something. Correct.

SPEAKER_00:

So they're they're using they're they're they're overpaying for something that it shouldn't, they shouldn't. Right. Now, let's let's get past that because that's that is a thing. But let's say you do get out of that. You know, my family got out of it. We were living in Section 8 housing, like for the longest time, you know, a single mom, two sons grew up. We we made our way. Now we happen to live in a nicer part of of Georgia. We live in in an affluent area. Um and then that when that whole like uh like uh I guess when COVID was around and when the economy kind of started to tank a little bit, and even like the last year or so, the economy's been a little bit down. You start to see on the news, oh, there's lines outside of churches for like you know, lining up to get food, right? Food banks. So and if you guys don't know how that works, you you go up, you don't really have a choice. Like you pull up, they give you a paper bag, and it has a week's worth of groceries, regardless of what you eat, what you're doing, whatever it is, like you're getting that bag, you can use that bag however you like.

SPEAKER_02:

But they're you don't get a choice, you don't get a choice, maybe what they have.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, and then they're showing it on the news, and it was in the line was like nicer vehicles. And I'm telling you guys this because I know that you went into detail about oh, you you kind of feel bad for some people. I'm kind of indifferent on that, guys. I feel like there are uh a large number of people that put themselves in a position that they should that they're getting they're reaping what they sow. And to finish that story off, they're in line to get free food at the food bank, and it's like Lincoln Navigators, BMW X5s, yeah, like Mercedes, like CMG, C AMGs. I'm like, these are hundred thousand dollar cars in line to get uh free food, and I'm supposed to feel bad for you, like absolutely not.

SPEAKER_02:

So you know, I think that people you know, there are a lot of people that have been there. Uh I mean, nobody is perfect, right? Uh and again, I agree with you. It is kind of you know odd to see a hundred thousand dollar. It's wild, man. Yeah, I mean, that is wild, and you do see that quite a bit. But I feel like while that is true, I think that there are also situations where, yes, many people do live beyond their means. Uh, they spend too much. And and let's face it, it it it is a very American trait to live beyond your means. Keep up with the Joneses. I would say that probably out of all the countries, America is a country that probably has more people that make, you know, let's just say probably less than good uh long-term financial decisions. And that's because of the the way we have things set up. I mean, like we have, you know, think about it. You take out a credit card and you go, oh, well, I can have it now. Like America is a very have it now society. And the banks and all, you know, the people making these loans, I mean, they know that people want it now. And um, it is very easy to get tied up into a situation where you've overextended yourself on credit or you've made some bad financial decisions that are then going to require some time to uh get your way out of. Or in some cases, some people can never dig themselves out of a bad financial hole and they wind up being enslaved to that process for the rest of their lives. And, you know, again, um, it's you know, I was having a discussion with someone uh the other day, and they mentioned, well, getting alone is enslaving your future self. And that is so true that yes, you are agreeing to enslave your future self in exchange for something now. And the now wears off, and then you realize, wow, the veneer of this now is not really quite so nice. But now I see the the cruel uh, you know, sort of reality that that that wow, I overextended myself on my finances on XYZ. And I'm not gonna say it's okay for it to happen, but if you continue to make the same mistakes over and over again, you really only have anyone to blame yourself. You know, hey, if you've made a mistake and you slipped up on somewhere and you've made some bad financial decisions, fix it, figure out a way, live more within your means. I mean if you're driving that hundred thousand dollar car, maybe you need to sell that son of a bitch and buy something more affordable and live more within your means. And I know sometimes that's difficult for people to accept. And it's very difficult for someone to accept when they've been used to a certain lifestyle for a certain amount of time, and now all of these crazy things with our economy happen, which essentially change the value of your money. I mean, the the value of the dollar has dropped some. I think the last time I checked, it was like, I think since 2020, since COVID, the dollar has lost some like I think 36 or 38% of its value from 2020 until now. Well, from 1990 until now, it's lost like some, I don't know, I think the last time I checked, the number was like 146%. Yeah, and someone says, oh, well, you can't say that the that it has lost all of its value just in the last five years. But if you look at that over a linear scale, okay, I'm no economist, but if you look at this over a linear scale, five years is not a long time to lose that large of a percentage of the value of the money. So again, if someone was used to living a certain way for 10 or 12 years and then they got hit with this COVID stuff, which really did put a huge damper in the economy, then they handed out all the stimulus checks. So you had this basically printing of money. Yes, it put some money into the economy, but that's still printing money that didn't exist and giving it out to people. You know, it creates a very difficult quantitative situation that eventually that has to roll downhill. That fiscal can gets kicked down the road, but it can't get kicked down the road forever. Eventually, going to kick it, it's gonna explode. And I feel like we're seeing the results of many, many years of bad government policy related to the financial sphere. And then you actually stack that back on to the Federal Reserve and their printing money and this fractional banking system and all the things we have. Now Trump added tariffs where, you know, before income taxes were a thing, tariffs are what paid for everything, for the government to run, for wars to be fought. We used tariffs as a way to collect money, uh, and we made the foreign governments pay for it. And we we tried to, you know, relieve that financial burden from the American citizen. But then we created income taxes and it completely screwed things up. So now you have tax upon tax upon tax, and most Americans feel like the tariffs are simply just one more tax that now it's for the people that are paying attention, they realize, wow, well, the cost of everything is up when it shouldn't be up. Well, that simply means that you're just paying more that someone had to have their palms greased along the way. The government had to have their palms greased somewhere to get that stuff in the country, and now you're paying more because of it. So it's a hidden tax. At the end of the day, if the government if the government gets the money, it's a tax, and that's the way you have to treat it. Inflation is at its core a hidden tax. Okay, I'm no economist, but that's the truth of it. Anyway, we're getting off more of the uh, let's just say the financial end and the economical end, and you know, exploring some of the reasons why these things might be happening right now. But what does that have to do with food prep? So now, okay, let's say you have less money than you used to have, but you still want to prep, you still want to, you know, get some things done. Um I'll tell you, I bought one of the all-American pressure canners. And I I I want to, I believe in full transparency here. Okay. I I don't want to, you know, put out any information that's gonna make somebody feel a certain way about me either way. I'll just say that, okay, um I I'm not like mega rich or anything like that, but I'm also not like doing terrible either. So, so just a lot of people think that that us YouTubers, you know, we're millionaires and all that. And that that's not always the case. Some of them are, you know, I know everybody has a certain opinion they think about the amount of money I bring in, or as a but I'll I'll just say that I do okay, you know, like I I'm not suffering for anything. I'm not one of the people has to clip coupons or anything. But point is I do have the mentality of, hey, it's good to be prepared, it's good to, you know, have a plan. All right. So I want to discuss some of the things that you can do to increase your food stores for the least amount of money possible and incrementally do so without having to break the bank every time you go to the grocery store. Um, one way that you can do so is simply buy a little bit of food extra every time you go to the grocery store. Now I know that seems simple, right? Be savvy. Look at the sales, all right? The other day, I'm not necessarily hurting for the money to buy this stuff, but if I go, all right, the other day I went to the grocery store, they have my favorite rice on sale for$1.79, and it's normally$2.79. Well, gosh, that's almost 33% off, right? Whatever. Three, you know, a third off. So what did I do? I bought two flats of rice. I bought a flat of rice, whatever it may be. Yeah, when it's on sale, buy it, put it in your cupboard. That's a smart buy. If it's a smart buy, buy it and stack it if you can afford it. You know, spend an extra$20 a week, spend an extra$50 a week, whatever you can afford. Pick a budget, stick to it. Say, hey, this month I'm gonna spend a hundred extra dollars on food, not stuff I need, stuff that I'm going to put into my uh cupboard and keep as a staple, right? Oh, they're running lentils on sale, canned lentils or bagged lentils, whatever. Buy yourself some lentils, buy yourself some soups, buy yourself some um some uh rice and things, some beans, some dried beans. Oh, they're they're burning out beans on on sale. Boom. Put that in your budget. Treat your budget as if, wow, I'm gonna maximize this sucker, right? Wow, rice is on sale. Wow, that means for the amount of money I'm gonna spend, I get more freaking rice for the money. Stock, you know, buy a bit and start stacking it back. So that's one way is to incrementally build your food stores to where one day you look in the cupboard, you're like, wow, I got plenty of rice. Well, what do you do then? You have plenty of rice. Now you start consuming that rice and rotating it out. And then you take your extra food stores, you know, first in, first out, just like a grocery store. You treat your own cupboard as if it's its own little grocery store. All right. The oldest rice you consume, the newest rice you bring in first in, first out, just like a grocery store. Treat your stock as if it is that. Consume the stock you buy incrementally and buy it incrementally. So that's one way you can do it.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. You know, uh Asian House, man, we eat a lot of rice, man. Like we pretty much eat rice with every meal. So we we have a problem stockpiling rice because we eat it all.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

But um, but seriously, that's a great point. What I would say, I would add on to that, uh, you mentioned uh pressure canning and getting the equipment for that. Um what I've noticed, and I was just while you were talking, I just wanted to double check to make sure I was giving the correct information. Because what I found is I can go on Facebook Marketplace right now and buy a freeze dryer, a harvest right freeze dryer, mind you, for half of the price that you would buy it new. And lots of times these are like one-year-old machines. And if you really want to get into um, you know, food prep and food preservation, like uh freeze drying is king. All right, you can pretty much freeze dry anything you want. You can freeze dry raw meat, cooked meat, coffee. How do you think instant coffee is made? Yeah, there's two ways they make instant coffee. They have like the sprayer method where they spray it with a chemical that kind of freezes it as it's in spray form, and then you have freeze drying. When that's both of those are used. Um, you know, any type of food, freeze dry it, it preserves it 25-year shelf life. Um, you'd obviously you don't need to freeze dry rice, uh, you can just cook that. Um soups, everything. I mean, it's it's great. Candy.

SPEAKER_02:

You can even freeze dry ice cream sandwiches.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, make the I make the astronaut ice cream, man. So, I mean, um, if you guys want to get into that game, 50% off basically, go on Facebook Marketplace. Lots of people have these. Uh machines, they get them, they don't realize how long it takes because guys, it does take a while. You're talking 24-48 hours uh to do it. Um, but it like if you're going to the store, you're getting extra, like we go to Sam's or Costco, you get a big old pack of you know, a whole tube of ribeye, like slice it up, freeze dry it, you're good to go, man. Right. You can really, really you'd be very surprised at how much you can save up and store by doing that. Yep. Um, it'll blow you away.

SPEAKER_02:

One thing I wanted to mention about pressure canning. The reason that I like pressure canning as an option is because one, the entry, the cost of entry is very reasonable to get into pressure canning. Extremely. Um, really, so the all-American pressure canners are definitely worth every penny. They are a little pricey, they do represent a certain investment, but you can get the basic all-American pressure canner. I think they're like$300. So, yeah, it's$300, but once you have it, if you take care of it, it literally just lasts freaking forever. Um, it takes a lot for those things to go south. I mean, if you have to abuse them for them to not last. They last practically forever, okay? And you buy your mason jars, you know, and your and your lids and your rings and all that. And there's a little bit of basic equipment to get started doing pressure canning. But the reason I like pressure canning is because it allows you to take all your fresh veggies. So let's say you are in the uh, you know, in the garden and you're doing some gardening. So I would say having your own garden is a really great way to stock a lot of food. You can grow a bunch of corn, you can grow a bunch of green beans, you can grow a bunch of stuff that's easy to pressure can, potatoes, all these sorts of stuff. You can buy meat in bulk, like Matt talked about, and you can pressure can your meat and have it ready to go. It's ready to eat right out of the jar. Now, does pressure canned food last as long as freeze-dried? No. A pressure now, there's some contention about how long a food can actually be stored long-term in a pressure can, like, you know, properly canned, because people worry about botulism and they worry about, you know, bacteria and things. And yes, it can have botulism in it if you're not careful. You know, if you look around the ring and you see rust or you see mold or you see anything weird like that, you need to discard that item. If you push the little popper thing and it's popping, guess what? That it's it's compromised. Okay. Yeah. If you open that food, you should pop that lid. The underside of that lid should be clean. You smell it, it smells good, it smells normal, you're probably fine, right? Again, botulism is a concern, but it's only a concern if you don't follow the proper protocol and fill the jars to the proper headspace and lubricate the tops of the lids and clean them and sanitize them like you're supposed to. There's a whole process to do in pressure canning. As long as you are disciplined and methodical, you will always have good, healthy food. You can do shredded chicken, uh, you can do beef. You can, if you shoot deer, you can have you know pressure can all your deer meat and have it ready to go. You can do ground beef, though there's nothing better than having ground beef from deer, from venison. Venison, ground, ground venison, and then take that out of the jar and warm it up in a pan with some veggies and make yourself some freaking tacos with deer meat. Ain't nothing better than some deer meat tacos. Add some taco seasoning, and man, you got your good healthy meal, and it's so cheap. If you go out and do your own hunting and harvest your own animals, grow your own food, you'd be surprised that your long-term food viability is actually gonna be quite good as long as you're not afraid to put in a little work. So I think that both pressure canning and um freeze drying both have their place. Now, how long can a pressure can item last? If you keep it in a cool, dark environment and it's properly done from day one, I mean, you're talking anywhere from eight to 12 years, you know, a considerably long time, possibly longer. Again, it is an honest point of contention. Some people go, Oh, I've got pressure canned stuff I've been eating after 15 years. Well, I think the bulk of people would have the attitude that if you keep something that long, you probably should have consumed it way before then, right? Is that to say it won't last that long? That's a big if. I think from my point of view, I would prefer to regularly consume and use those items before they get, you know, a few years old. You know, two or three years, yeah, you're perfectly within the bounds of what's acceptable for long-term food storage from a pressure can, a jar, you know, jarred food. When you start getting past that four or five year mark, I mean, yes, it is edible. The quality of the food degrades considerably. Now, how long does freeze-dried food last? Now, Matt had mentioned going on Facebook Marketplace and buying yourself a harvest right freeze dryer for half off. That is a fantastic idea. Yes, you can save your food for a long time. You have to use mylar, which are those silver-looking packages, kind of like a little thin metal almost, right? Or tin or whatever you want to call it. Freeze-dried food packaged in mylar and sealed properly can last upwards of 25 years.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. With the oxygen savers and your I mean, that's a long dang time.

SPEAKER_02:

We're talking steaks, even. You can have a steak in a bag and const reconstitute that bad boy 25 years later. Now I don't and the thing about freeze-dried food is that it retains a hundred percent of the nutritional value. Pressure canning food does break down some of the nutritional content and the processing when you do it. So those are your options for those.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I I'm a I'm a huge fan of freeze-dried food. It has its place. It does if you're it stores very compact, it's very light, um it's good for traveling, it's good for storage. If you have a space in your house, like we have a whole closet where we just keep all of our buckets of of freeze-dried food. If you have access to plenty of water, it's great. If you have access to no water, it's horrible. You can't eat it. You might as well, you might as well just be looking at sand in the desert. Like, what are you gonna do with it? So, you know, pick and choose wisely, maybe mix and match. But um, you know, every every style has its has its place. Um, I would say you know, um jarred food is great, but you did nail you nailed it when you said after about the four-year mark, it starts the consistency of the actual texture of the food starts to break down. Um, if it's like green beans, kind of mushy. Um, yeah, like ground meat, kind of spongy a little bit. If you could, I mean, again, if you can deal with it, that's great. Um, but I mean that just reminds me of when we would go to deer camp, we'd you know, drop some off, and every year you go back to deer camp, you have food there. Like you're just like, hey, deer tacos, like this. Like, so you you you're kind of like consuming it as you go.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's just as good as the day it was came.

SPEAKER_00:

It was great, man. We had like deer tacos one night, we had like um backstrap steaks the other night. Like it's it is, man. It's it's good. And as long as you're consuming it and rotating it out, you're fine.

SPEAKER_02:

So that lays out some basic ways that the average person can begin to increase their overall food stores. Um, and and of course, there are different, you know, tiers of uh, let's just say, approachability in terms of what it's gonna cost to get set up. I mean, buying food as you go is an option, then one tier up is doing pressure canning, then another tier up is doing um freeze drying. Freeze drying is certainly going to represent the highest cost of food preparation and food storage of those things. Now, speaking of food storage, I want to give a quick shout out to the show's um next sponsor, and that is my Patriot Supply. So if you're ever, you know, looking for, let's just say, a situation where you know you want to buy some freeze-dried food already made, and you don't want to have to uh you know necessarily do it yourself, uh, there is an option of going through places like my Patriot Supply. So let's check it out. Cold weather will be here before you know it. And you know what that I realized the other day? If the power goes out when it's really cold, I have no way to keep myself and my family warm. Isn't that crazy? We could actually freeze. But when I heard about the Vesta off-grid space heater from our friends at My Patriot Supply, it's a space heater that doesn't use electricity. It runs on something called canned heat, which is an indoor safe fuel with a Vesta stashed in my closet. I know we can keep warm no matter what, and it doubles as a stove to boil water or cook food, which is pretty cool. Like in the case of what we talked about on today's show. If you have your, you know, you need to reconstitute your um your food, you can do so. Nice. Now, the best part is that you can get yourself a Vesta and a bunch of other free gifts when you order the winter prep special from my Patriot Supply. Just go to mypatriotsupply.com forward slash LLP to see everything that's included. This offer won't last long, and neither will this nice fall weather. So go to mypatriotsupply.com slash LLP today. That's mypatriotsupply.com forward slash LLP. That's Lima Lima Papa. Now, even if you don't uh engage with the Vesta heater deal that uh we mentioned here on today's show, you can absolutely check out their um their freeze-dried options. They have a ton of long-term storage food for all of your needs. So they are a great sponsor for today's show because that they they sell the stuff that we're talking about absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, and the nice thing about that type of food is it's really for a long-term storage. You want to have some food on hand for in case things get really bad. You know, the nice thing about purchasing food like that in the containers is one, is it's sealed up really well. You can leave it sealed. But two, let's say that your budget, maybe you don't have the storage space to, you know, store extra rice or other things in your cupboard along with your normal food you're consuming. You can still go to the store and buy all the normal food that you would consume on a regular basis. And then maybe once a month you budget in for a certain amount of freeze-dried rations, have those sent out, and wow, before a year uh is up, you realize that wow, I've got a little hidden area in my house or a little, you know, room out in the garage full of freeze-dried food. And each of those large containers, I think, is like a 45-day supply or 30-day supply for an average family. So, yes, it is a little bit expensive to buy freeze-dried food in that way and like a bucket ready to go and sealed up. But let's say that money isn't an option and you want a much easier and direct way to just boom, have the instant uh security. That is a great way to have instant security. Okay. So just keep that in mind. If money's not an option, you can just buy the freeze-dried buckets and boom, you're good.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's it's fast, guys. Uh, we we're talking about ways to save money. And when you save money, typically that means you have to do it yourself. So a little bit of sweat equity, right? I remember like uh you you uh Eric would do like canning days when you get like uh a deer, a couple deer, or a hog. We went and got those hogs, like it took days, days to like can a bunch of stuff. Here, go online, click, click, boom. You can literally have an entire year's worth, 365 days worth of food dropped on your doorstep. Yeah, like and it'll be delivered in a couple days, like and it's good, and it's good. You couldn't freeze-dry that much food with home equipment if you wanted to, like, it takes a long time to do it.

SPEAKER_02:

So you could, but you'd have to be very disciplined and it would take a while. And like Matt said, you know, yes, if you are gonna save money on food preparation, and really it could be anything, whether it's you know, gun practice, like we talked about gun training in the previous episode, whether you're you know, looking for cheaper ways to practice with your firearm, or you're looking for cheaper ways to um, you know, grow your own food or produce your own food or and otherwise prepare and save for the future, whether you're saving money, whatever you're trying to save or put back for tomorrow, yes, it will often require a bit of sweat equity when you're not necessarily rolling in the dough. I mean, let's face it, not all of us are rolling in the dough, and that's understandable. We've all been there. We've all been in situations where we want to increase our overall survivability, we want to have more food on hand, we want to be better prepared to survive adversity. I mean, let's face it, the world is not necessarily getting to be an easier place to live in. And, you know, the more and more these governments uh meddle in our affairs and create all of these problems for us, the harder it is for average people to meet their basic needs. And, you know, I don't think we're at a point of no return. We certainly are not. Uh, we are well, well far away from the point of no return. However, it does make one believe man. Um, it does begin to sow the ideas of uncertainty in people who might not have had the idea of uncertainty in their head. And it's not, okay, the sky is falling, chicken little complex, and everyone's worried about X, Y, Z. It's just a general feeling of uncertainty. And when these uncertainties um surface mat, what gen what tends to happen is the economy does some really weird things. Like people hold on to their money, they don't spend as much. So it's not necessarily that people aren't making decent money, they're not, you know, holding on to money. They're simply just not spending money on crap they don't need. So consumer confidence as a whole begins to be something that is very much a factor in all of these things, right? We see that anytime that the that the Trump, let's just say a Republican administration is in charge and we have a Republican majority, a minority, and a president that's Republican, like what we have now, or I'm sorry, majority in the House, Senate, presidency. Let's just say, for all intents and purposes, a Republican-controlled government. Yeah, like the gun industry tends to go down because people aren't quite so much worried about their rights anymore. And they think, oh, well, I'm not under any kind of threat because the Republicans are in charge. What do they do? Well, right now the economy is a little in shambles, maybe not so much in shambles for some people, but let's just say for average people, yeah, there are things that make it a little harder to survive that are going on that are beyond people's direct control. Yeah, people don't purchase as many firearms during um Republican control government. So there are always gonna be these societal factors that can make consumer confidence lower, right? Whether it's consumer confidence or by virtue of, okay, they're not worried about the government going after this particular widget or whatever it might be. So therefore, I'm not gonna really focus on that because I don't really uh feel like I have to do this in a timely manner because it's not under attack right now. So there are many factors that determine the way that people spend money and how they spend their money, how they save their money. So I'm not gonna have this chicken little complex of saying, well, the reason are things are the way they are is simply because people don't have money. I don't think it's that people don't have money, y'all. I think they're just being very, very, very stingy with it and they're holding on to it and they're being careful and they're speculating accordingly, and and they're choosing not to buy crap that they don't need out of uncertainty.

SPEAKER_00:

Noah, uh it's true. I mean, you know, we obviously we own you guys know that I own a jiu-jitsu academy, and you know, we have memberships. Like you pay to come train with us. It's and it many times it's you know, you'll see that you know, students have to cut back. They're like, oh, you know, uh, I'm a little uh uncertain about you know my job, or I'm uncertain about you know this next promotion. It's not inexpensive by any means. I mean, it's a monthly membership, but you do see it, and I see it quite a bit. And when those things happen, we try our best. We're like a family, we extend them like, hey, don't worry about it. Just continue to train, we'll figure it out, especially like parents with kids. We want to make sure that they remain with us and they still, you know, are part of the family. Um, but you know, unfortunately, you do see that, Eric. And it's like, hey, you know, what does the future hold financially? Um, and I think we talked about it. There are people that are living a little bit outside their means. Um, and when they need to save and they need to cut back, uh, unfortunately, they never cut back on the things that people that they that they want people to see, like the car payments or the house, because that's you know, you have to give the illusion that everything is fine. They start cutting back on the things that people don't see, which is oh, maybe uh, you know, the tutoring, maybe the school. I know people that had to pull their kids out of private school, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. Um, which is unfortunate.

SPEAKER_02:

Or maybe they're taking less trips, buying less things, you know. Oh, well, we were thinking about replacing the washer and dryer this year. Let's hold off, et cetera, et cetera.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I was gonna, you know, we had to sell a couple of the horses, we couldn't afford the upkeep on the feed, you know, the groundskeeper, we had to let him go. Yeah, you know, so it's like hit its own.

SPEAKER_02:

And all of those things trickle downhill to the in-person. I mean, you know, when you think about all the goods and services that are changing hands and the way they're doing it, um, that is your economy. That is, you know, the economy in motion. And, you know, when when the when the groundskeeper doesn't have a job, when all the the subset of people begin to not have jobs, that stuff floats downhill to uh the greater part of society. I mean, so it's it's kind of an interesting thing that's going on right now. I mean, yeah, I understand the tariffs are bringing in money, but who's it benefiting? I mean, because at the end of the day, the consumers pay it more.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I mean, the consumer's paying more, they're passing the buck along because it was like you think that the company that you're buying, whatever this widget or clothes or whatever it may be, but you know, it it doesn't stop anybody. That's the problem. The tariff doesn't stop the consumer from buying what the consumer has to buy, it's just more painful when you buy it. Um, and I'll use a good example. Like we had to order a uh uh uh Halloween costume for my daughter. And the viewers out there, if you have children, and maybe if you don't have children, uh you probably know the Netflix uh the amazing Netflix uh show or movie called K-pop Demon Hunters, which has taken the world by storm, and every single little girl wants to be one of the K-pop demon hunter characters. Uh, my daughter is no exception. She wants to be Rumi, which is the lead singer of the group Huntryx. Okay. So we had to go and find a Huntryx or a Rumi costume. Well, they're all made in China, all right? They just are. We ordered it from China, it was a good price. Of course, you had tariffs on it, but that's besides the point. I will tell you we might be in we we're cooked, boys and girls. We are cooked on the manufacturing side. Because I will tell you, this costume came in. We paid$70,$70 for this costume, and I was expecting like those kind of costumes you get from like the Halloween store where it's like super thin and like supplementing, it's gonna fall apart like a one time bro, bro. This thing came in and Lisa and I looked at this, and this costume looks and feels like what uh what a performer would wear on stage, like the jacket is like full sequence, it's got like custom embroidery on it. Wow, it's got metal accoutrements on it.

SPEAKER_02:

Really?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, not accoutrements, yes, like all the chains, that's all metal, like a shoulder gauntlet, like the the skirt is like leather with sequence and zip, like it all it blew me away, dude. Wow, and I mean I'm not one to like say, hey, China manufacturing, but to have that you know how to make stuff, man. Dude, I mean I don't I can't explain it. I can't explain it, I can't justify it, but I can tell you that's the best dang costume that I've ever seen, and it was made the perfect size. Like, dude, the sizing is like spot on. If it's like a custom thing, you just give them the sizing. Like, how do you how do you like what do you do? I don't know what to do, people.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, what's crazy is you know that there's a lot of situations where when someone thinks made in China, they always typically will say, Oh, it's just it must mean that it's super cheap. Like they think like a dollar store knife or something, you know, like a cheap knife. But the thing is, is China makes what people tell them to make. So if they come and say, Hey, make me the cheapest guitar you can, all right, we'll make you a$99 guitar. It's gonna be a$99 guitar. Yeah. But that same company, let's say I come to them and I say, make me a nice guitar. How much are you gonna charge me for something nice? I want this, this, and this, and high quality electronics, and I want, you know, all XYZ, et cetera. I want like something pretty nice. Yeah, they'll make you a guitar that you can sell for$1,000, and it'd be like, whoa, really high-end for that type of money. So China makes what people pay them to make, and they have a sort of a reputation for making crap, but that's because people pay them to make crap. But they make some really high-end stuff. So I was at the knife show one, it was the blade show there in uh Atlanta. And the last blade show I went to, I talked to the owner of Ricky Knives, and he's Chinese, and he is a very, very, very good knife maker. I'm talking, this guy just doesn't make regular ass knives. Okay, he makes high-end knives, really high-end knives, knives that cost four or five thousand dollars for one knife. Dang. And I'm talking, man, you look at this knife and it looks like something a Space Ranger would have on his belt. Like it looks like a knife from the future. It doesn't just look like any damn regular knife, it looks like a knife that got in a time machine from 2130. Like it's crazy what these knives look like. And they're made with love and care and attention, and this guy is an absolute knife nerd. So it's funny how everyone thinks China means bad quality, and that's not necessarily always the case. I mean, they can make anything uh at any price range and in any quality range if if that's what the uh what they want, what what someone wants when they buy it.

SPEAKER_00:

You know what you you know what I believe we did when we got that costume. I saw that like we were kind of going down the rabbit hole looking for these costumes, and we saw that same costume on American websites being sold for like$400,$500. I believe we found the source of the of the costume, and we got it for what they like the cost of them making it, and then the people selling them are like the the drop shippers, so they're turning around and selling that same costume for like four or five hundred dollars because it feels like that thing should cost like it just blew us away. Really? Yeah, so I was so I I think that we just happen to do enough digging on the interwebs and we're like we found it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, but hey, and you know what? That's being savvy. Yeah, I mean, the thing is people are having to hunker down a little more and be a little smarter with their money and a little bit more stringent with how they spend their hard-earned dollars. I mean, let's face it, things are not getting necessarily any easier. You know, I think there's been talks. It's only talks or or murmurs, if you will. I've heard that Trump is talking about eliminating the income tax, federal income tax. I mean, with these tariffs, that would be at bare minimum, in my opinion, would be to at least eliminate the income tax.

SPEAKER_00:

It may justify it.

SPEAKER_02:

It would well, the only justification that it needs to not exist is that it shouldn't exist.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, no, meaning it may justify the tariffs.

SPEAKER_02:

It may justify the tariffs, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Income tax, no.

SPEAKER_02:

Income tax, no. But but what I'm saying is there's been talk that they're gonna potentially do away with the income tax. And I think they should, because it's it's an antiquated thing. They only came up with this with this tax to help pay for wars and stuff, and it was never meant to be permanent. They know it wasn't meant to be permanent. And see, if anything, it's a dangerous precedence that gets set. Is anytime you give the government a shred of power and say, here you go, and you're asking them to actually give up that power, oh no, forget it. I mean, think about like a toll road. Oh, we're gonna set this toll road up to pay for the road. All right. When the road is paid for, we'll stop collecting the toll. Nah, nope. Nope. Nope. The infrastructure's here. We're collecting that toll in perpetuity.

SPEAKER_00:

Which we which we have experience with here in Georgia, with Georgia 400. They it was originally a toll road. It was supposed to stop collecting tolls, and they continued collecting tolls for like the next 10 or 15 years. Oh, yeah. Even after the date. They made money on it.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah. I mean, they're and they're continuing to make money. And so there are enough life fees on the table already that people already have to pay. There's so many freaking taxes on the table that if you have a dollar, you might as well consider 70 cents of that dollar going to someone else other than you. But in time, it's all said and done.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And the big team of things. And that's scary. Like, no person should give up 70% of what they own just to exist within society. And it should never be acceptable for someone else's hard-earned money to be taken from them, you know, just so society can have a bunch of free stuff or whatever, whatever it is, I mean, that that we're supposed to be paying for here. And then um, I suppose the other aspect of it too is you know, not only is it that concept, but also property taxes. Another thing that really gets me on that is even though you own a piece of property, you never actually own it. The government, if you don't pay them taxes, can just come and take it at any time. And that's even if you own it. You own it clear and free, it belongs to you, but it never really belongs to you. The two worst taxes are income tax and property tax.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

So imagine that you can't actually own it, it's never actually yours. I find that to be horse crap.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, the problem with the property taxes isn't that the government will take your house because the government doesn't want your house. It doesn't do anything for them. What the government wants is for somebody else to buy your house for the tax lien and then charge them property tax moving forward. So it's they just want someone to take over that obligation of paying the property taxes. Um that's jacked up.

SPEAKER_02:

What if you're on a you know fixed income? What if you're that's exactly the problem? If you're older and you can't afford it, you know, what if you can't work anymore? It's a you know, it's it's jacked up. Like, I think the whole idea of an inheritance tax is jacked up too. Like, you know, if your family leaves you money and you we have to pay inheritance taxes, we have to pay death taxes. There's all these freaking taxes in place. It's like everywhere you turn is a freaking life fee.

SPEAKER_00:

That's why you put things in a trust, all right.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, yeah, put it in a trust, but that's a future video.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. But no, I agree that I mean there are gonna be states like Florida and Texas that um you know have no income taxes that would be like havens for high income earners to get. And they know it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

If you eliminate the federal tax, oh my gosh, that makes Florida even more attractive because now you don't have state tax or federal tax. Now, granted, the property taxes are high. But hurricane taxes and all the property taxes are really high, but yeah, you know, I guess all the tourism, they bring in a lot of money from all the tourism, and and I guess state taxes, like you know, all the people buying their Mickey Mouse hats, I guess that ends up being a lot of dang money.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, it is what it is, and you know, taxes definitely are not not a good thing because, like you said, people are losing 30 to 40 percent off the rip, like every dollar. I mean, imagine, man. Imagine. So here's the thing about uh taxes in general income taxes or just taxes to your paycheck. Imagine if you had to pay those up front. How many people would be up in arms? If you said, hey, we're going to collect this tax, but you have to pay for it uh up front, not at the end of the year. Yeah, like that would be you'd see a lot more people like up. They'd be royally pissed. Oh, yeah, pissed. They'd be they'd actually do something about it.

SPEAKER_02:

And they'd have the right to be pissed.

SPEAKER_00:

And the government knows what they're doing. They're like, I'll just keep kicking the can down the road till the end of the year, and we'll give you seven thousand dollars back out of all the.

SPEAKER_02:

And even if they don't collect the taxes, they're still just going to print the money anyway.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. Which is why we have to do that.

SPEAKER_02:

But really, the function of collecting taxes is not about money and revenue, it's about control, it's about them just. You know, subjecting you to a humiliation ritual. That's really what this all is.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, think about the speeding ticket that you were just t discussing earlier, Eric, when you said, Oh, you had to go in and you had to pay a fine. Speeding tickets in general only serve one purpose, and that's a revenue generating uh item. Because if they really wanted to make it about uh reforming your behavior, they would make it to where the ticket costs nothing. You lose points on your license. At the end of this, you just simply get your license suspended. And then if you can't drive, which is what they do anyways, they just charge you for every ticket that you that you get for the only purpose of generating revenue.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

If you took that component out, it would still work the same.

SPEAKER_02:

Imagine what would happen if they said that every time you got a speeding ticket, you're not gonna pay a fine, you're gonna get ports on your points on your license, and you have to spend 30 days in jail.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh god.

SPEAKER_02:

Imagine now, granted, there'd be a lot of people in jail, but you better believe once those people got out of jail, they wouldn't speed anymore. You better believe it'd be the last time they ever sped. What? So if it's actually about reform and it was actually about keeping people from engaging in the behavior they don't like, they would make the punishment way worse. No, they make the punishment easy, they make it where all you have to do is just pay a life fee and you can get out of it. Well, if something is legal for a price, is it really illegal in the first place?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, good point. Why don't they give you a choice? Why don't they say, hey, you could do a hundred dollars of community service or pay the fine?

SPEAKER_02:

You know what they pay people for community service?

SPEAKER_00:

What?

SPEAKER_02:

If you're working off something, ten dollars an hour.

unknown:

Wow.

SPEAKER_02:

Like, imagine what kind of person works that has get paid ten dollars an hour. Who makes ten dollars an hour anymore? Yeah, nobody. That's not that's not even minimum wage.

SPEAKER_00:

Really, it's seven dollars after taxes, right?

SPEAKER_02:

That's what I'm saying. That's barely minimum wage. Like, god dang, you can't even bill your time for what you're worth. Like, damn, that's what you're worth to them.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, jury duty's worse, man. They pay you like five dollars a day or something like that. Yeah, it's like you're loot, dude. You lose absolutely so much money.

SPEAKER_02:

That is bonkers to me that you can be required to do that, yeah, and they can just say, Oh, your time isn't worth anything to us, and and just you get screwed.

SPEAKER_00:

Like, yeah, it's rough, man. Especially like especially you're talking like single single parents, they go in, they get a little sack lunch, five dollars, and that's it. Man, that sucks.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I hope everybody enjoyed today's show. Um, that's gonna pretty much get us to the end here. And um, you know, I I hope that you guys take something away from today's uh presentation. I know we we talked about a lot of different ways that you can increase your overall food stores and your survivability and those sorts of things. So um hopefully you took something away from today's show and I hope you enjoyed it. Uh let me know what are some of the things, you know, in the comment section below, let me know what are some of the things that you do to increase your food supply incrementally, to harden yourself up and survive the, you know, weather the storm, for instance, okay? What are some of the things that you do that we didn't mention? I'd like to know. Uh we post every Monday at 9 o'clock Eastern Standard Time. Uh, we have been posted on Sunday occasionally. Uh let me know if you prefer Sunday or Monday in the comment section below. But so far, right now, we're posting every Monday at 9 a.m. here on YouTube if you want to see the video form of LLP. Also, you can find Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit on all of your favorite places that podcasts are served. Um, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, etc., all the usual suspects. Make sure you give us a good rating so that we show up higher in the search results. That would really uh help us a lot. We got a lot of downloads on the show, so thank you for listening. If you're listening in audio form, also if you're watching us in video form, we're over on iRACVeteran8888. Again, follow me on Twitter, uh www.x.com forward slash IRACVeteran8888. And you can take part in all the polls that I put out and some of the commentary related to the show and uh some of my personal views as well, which some of you may or may not like. But hey, you know, uh take a chance. You never know.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, man. Guys, if you're listening to this on audio format on uh our number one uh platform is Apple Podcasts, no surprise there. Guys, leave leave a good review for us on Apple Podcasts, that really helps us out. We have uh, you know, we have an amazing rating with Apple Podcasts, so don't ruin it. But at the same time, leave a good comment.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Um, guys and girls, thanks so much for watching today's show andor listening. Have a great week and we'll see you soon.

SPEAKER_00:

Bye, everybody.

SPEAKER_02:

Thanks for listening alike Liberty and Thursdo. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else podcasts are found. Be sure to leave us a five star review. We'd really appreciate that. You can support us over on Ballistic Inc. by picking yourself up to merch. And remember, guys, dangerous freedom. Have a good one.