Pod Insights The Moneywise Guys 4/16/26 Mangos, Money & Machine Speed: Today's Unexpected Mix About this episode The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Thursday, April 16th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Radio Show & Podcast" call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www. MoneywiseGuys.com facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management LinkedIn: Moneywise_Wealth_Management Guest: John Cox, Business Editor for The Bakersfield Californian website: www. Bakersfield.com The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. John Cox & The Bakersfield Californian are not affiliated with nor endorsed by LPL Financial or Moneywise Wealth Management].
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Live from the basement inside the historic Woolworths Building in downtown Bakersfield.
0:05 Speaker 01 Call or text in at 661-396-1000.
0:29 Speaker 02 Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through LPL Financial. LPL Financial and MoneyWise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.
0:37 Speaker 00 Now, let's start the Money Wise Show.
0:40 Speaker 03 Welcome to the Money Wise Show. We are live from the basement of the historic Woolworths Building in downtown Bakersfield. For the next hour, you are on News Talk 96.1 and 1230 AM KERN, streaming live at MoneyWiseGuys.com. You can call or text into the show 24 hours a day at 661-396-1000. We are your hosts. I'm Sharad Waite and...
1:04 Speaker 04 Seth Perry, glad to be here, Sharad.
1:06 Speaker 03 Good having you, Seth Perry. And of course, our producer extraordinary Stephen Nicholas is here with us as usual. Again, send us your comments and questions. It can, we're live right now. Come on in, John. We're live right now, but you can send those questions or comments 24 hours a day, 661-396-1000. We have continually got some really good comments and questions. And, and we're going to start our show as we usually do, right now, by answering some of these questions. So you got that Seth?
1:39 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
1:40 Speaker 03 You start at the top?
1:41 Speaker 04 Hundred percent. Here we go. I signed my taxes last, this is, this is a story that made me smile. This is a win for somebody.
1:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:49 Speaker 04 I signed my taxes last Friday, the 10th, and I received my state return on Tuesday, the 14th. Well done on that.
1:57 Speaker 03 Fast.
1:58 Speaker 04 Expediency of that California return.
2:01 Speaker 03 That's way faster. As I looked it up, I said, what are they saying how long it's supposed to take? And they say, you know, two to four weeks.
2:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
2:08 Speaker 00 That was something that Justin brought up yesterday. He was saying that he was surprised he got it in less than a week.
2:14 Speaker 03 Yeah. So look at that. The government does surprises every once in a while. The government does somehow.
2:20 Speaker 04 Every now and again, once every three and a half years.
2:24 Speaker 03 And this is on the heels of the IRS getting cut, you know, funded, funding has been cut for the IRS. It was given and then taken away. And so.
2:34 Speaker 04 I would think, I'm not a politician, but I would think if we're going to put some money somewhere, let's get some more to get some more revenue.
2:42 Speaker 03 You would think so, right? Because that would bring, we need to balance our budget.
2:47 Speaker 04 For sure.
2:48 Speaker 03 We need to address our national debt. And so one way of doing that is making sure that people are held accountable. But I think there's, there's, I don't know why there's this political pushback against it. I mean, there's always going to be some pushback against just big government and, and big bureaucracy.
3:05 Speaker 04 Of all the things though, that.
3:06 Speaker 03 But that's one. Yeah.
3:07 Speaker 04 It's like an exterminator called to, to exterminate the cockroaches and you're going to get, you're going to have less exterminators.
3:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
3:14 Speaker 04 I don't know about that.
3:14 Speaker 03 It's the same thing with the post office, you know, like we, we, we complain about the problems with the post office, but we just keep cutting its budget. And it's like, well, you know, people complain about not getting their mail. They complain about how long things take, but, but at the end of the day, we're voting in people that are cutting that. You know, at least part of their agenda is cutting that back. And so it's just super complicated. I get it. It's not, it's not an easy solution, but that, that's great. Thank you, listener, for that positive feedback. Congratulations. Spend that money wisely. That refund that you get. Hopefully the Fed comes quickly, but the Fed came, the state return came quick. So that's.
3:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, there's, there's no rule of thumb with the tax return, but one thing over at the Perry house is always, you know, you, you maybe pay on some debt. You save a little bit, but you also spend a little bit, you know, cut up, as long as you can afford to do so, treat yourself.
4:01 Speaker 03 Yeah. Yeah. Or take part of it and treat yourself with it. Yeah. Good stuff. Come on. What's the next, what's the next message here, Seth?
4:09 Speaker 04 All right. Next one up says, what's your guy's opinion on Trump tweeting at Palantir? And do you think he should be tweeting? About certain defensive stocks to manipulate their price for his own potential gain is the speculation of a listener.
4:27 Speaker 03 So, thank you, listener.
4:30 Speaker 04 Great comment.
4:30 Speaker 03 Great comment. We really, really try to veer away from partisanship and politics. However, we do have experience and expertise in trading and in the stock market and in how that is regulated. And a huge part of how it is regulated on our end, when you're talking about in the investment world and stocks and bonds, is that there is very strict rules about what non-public information and what can be done when you have information that the public does not know when it comes to a publicly traded company. Let's say your
5:08 Speaker 03 your father is the CEO of a national bank that is publicly traded and you hear your dad talking out in the hallway about how they're going to go out of business. That person, all they have to do is tell their friend to go short the stock and somebody could make basically unlimited amount of money off of that information. And that puts that as an unfair advantage versus you and I who don't have access to that information. Now, once that information is made public, it's all, everybody, it's game on. But if that is not public information, Martha Stewart spent time in prison for it. It was such a
5:50 Speaker 03 minor, it was like a few thousand dollars that she profited off because she had some or allegedly had some insider information about a publicly traded company. So that's the standard that we're all held to. However, our politicians are not held to that standard. On a federal level, it's, it's, they have almost unlimited
6:13 Speaker 03 Control over their own investment strategy and their own investments. There was an effort through the Stock Act, which was, uh, went into play, I don't know how long ago, a year or two ago, not too long ago. And it was essentially an effort to, to rein in members of Congress to not trade on insider information. But all it really did was just make them disclose with minor penalties. It gives like a $200 fine if they're-
6:43 Speaker 04 I don't think they're gonna wanna rush out and pass a bill that could have essentially, um, shined a lot of extra light on what's going on. And we can't, we can only speculate, but we were talking about a, uh, one politician in particular, Nancy Pelosi. I don't know exactly what her husband does, but their net worth is estimated to be between 260 and 300 million dollars.
7:06 Speaker 03 Right. That's a little bit-
7:07 Speaker 04 That's a significant amount of money.
7:08 Speaker 03 And there is some correlation between some of the stocks that they are holding and some of the industries that they are invested in, where they are also making the ra- the, the, creating the framework and the regulatory and laws around that industry.
7:25 Speaker 04 Yep.
7:25 Speaker 03 You can, that is, that is all power. Like, that is so powerful. And also, there's been a lot of studies that have shown that there is definitely, they, that Congress member, Congress has an unfair advantage when it comes to trading. And, and even if it's an, a subconscious advantage, or an unconscious advantage that they have, there's an advantage that they have.
7:48 Speaker 04 Exactly.
7:49 Speaker 03 That does not, is not great for our system. It's not great for free market capitalism. It's not great for everybody else that's following the rules. Uh, members of Congress, again, the Stock Act is there to try to help it, but there's not, there still is not a, there's no teeth to it. And it's not forcing Congress to go into what has traditionally been done by the presidency, which is they have to go into, or, or- The standard has been, the tradition has been, they go, their assets go into a blind trust.
8:23 Speaker 04 Uh huh.
8:23 Speaker 03 And that is, they don't have any, they don't have any say of how it's being managed. They don't have any knowledge about the trading that's happening. It's all happening inside a trust. They still own it, but they don't have any sort of control.
8:37 Speaker 04 So like their advisor though is controlling it?
8:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, they have a trustee. You just have a trustee that's managing it. So you have this arm's length distance from it and this is very easy to set up and you can put the parameters about, you know, what you want to happen with the money, but you're just not involved in the investment decisions. And that is something I think should be done with Congress. And my personal opinion is that should be done by our president.
8:59 Speaker 04 I believe so too. And to this listener's point, great, great point, by the way, don't just chase the headlines. You know, this could be, a lot of people are reacting and right now, kind of one of the buzzes is AI with our defense. And some people might be misunderstanding and they'll think, well, Palantir, are they designing missile systems? No, they're just processing massive amounts of information for the military and they're looking to potentially get a really large contract with the government. And so, yes, I personally think the president should probably abstain from, because of how big of an impact it has.
9:36 Speaker 03 Yeah. And there's almost, there's virtually no regulation for family members of politicians.
9:43 Speaker 04 Yeah.
9:43 Speaker 03 So it's like, well.
9:45 Speaker 04 Do you remember Elon Musk, when crypto was going crazy and he could send, he could send a picture of a Shiba Inu or whatever.
9:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:55 Speaker 04 That dog.
9:55 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:56 Speaker 04 And, and it would just go crazy. It'd go up like 30, 40% with just one tweet from him. So it's, it's an interesting time we live in with how fast information moves.
10:04 Speaker 03 Yeah. It's been, this has been a frustration of ours at MoneyWise for over 20 years. We've just, we've known that this has been a problem. It was tried, it was addressed in part by the Stock Act. And now there's a couple of other pieces of legislation that are trying to get pushed through. I don't know if it's going to be, if they will be successful. One is the Pelosi Act. They literally, they created, they're creating one. You know, specifically.
10:29 Speaker 04 The Bob Dole Act.
10:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, the Pelosi Act and the other is Trust in Congress Act or the Trust Act. And both of those are some efforts, again, to take another step towards reining in the insider trading. But that even even those I don't think go far enough. And we should be outraged as as citizens. We should be outraged by this.
10:49 Speaker 04 When they're then cutting the it's all full circle, then they're cutting the IRS, which could help us as a country generate more revenue.
10:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, there's a lot of. Yeah, there's just a lot of that. Though there's just a lot of problems that we have still.
11:01 Speaker 04 We've got one more.
11:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, let's go.
11:03 Speaker 04 We got time?
11:03 Speaker 03 Yes.
11:04 Speaker 04 All right, let's take a look here. All right, actually had another one come in. That's great. Okay. I've really enjoyed the recent talks on best strategies for paying down credit card debt. Thank you. Can you discuss how to roll over? That's a key word there. Can you discuss how to roll over funds that are currently in an Acorns account? And we were we were talking about this before.
11:26 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:27 Speaker 04 And it's not as simple as just a trustee to trustee rollover, but they have to actually go in and liquidate. Is that right?
11:34 Speaker 03 That's it. Maybe you can explain, Seth, first what Acorns is. What's an Acorn?
11:38 Speaker 04 So Acorns is an app. And their whole philosophy is that Acorns, you know, a small little acorn turns into a huge oak tree. And so what they do is they'll take a credit card or a bank account and they'll round up a purchase. Let's say I go buy this reverb coffee for $4.20. They'll apply, they'll round it up to five, and that 80 cents goes into my Acorns account. And every time it hits $5, then it actually invests in something, right? One of the problems that we were talking about are the fees. If you're a very casual investor doing Acorns and you only have maybe, I don't know, 50, 100, 150 bucks a month going into your account, you're getting destroyed by fees because their fees are monthly. They're not a percent.
12:20 Speaker 04 They're a flat rate of either 3, 6, or $12. That's why I canceled my account. I used to have a little Acorns account, a few hundred bucks in it, and I'm like, what am I doing when I started crunching the numbers?
12:29 Speaker 03 Right.
12:29 Speaker 04 So not that it's bad in of itself, but you really want to always check these fees that these places are are are charging you. But long answer to your question is if you're forced to have to liquidate. If you have gains, you may be liable for capital gains and the capital gains rates depends on your income, right?
12:47 Speaker 03 Right. The problem is that many of these apps, not just Acorn, but there's several of these apps out there that don't participate in what we call the ACAT system. There's a financial back system behind like a back office system that registered investment advisors and securities people are all linked to. Think major banks, major institutions that hold stocks are linked in this system called an ACAT system. And this ACAT system allows us as investment advisors to send and receive stocks, ownership stock information back and forth between institutions so that a person doesn't have to sell their shares.
13:32 Speaker 03 They can hang on to their own individual shares that they have in the stock in that company and just have it transferred to a new custodian. And that way they don't have to realize the gains or the losses that they've accumulated in that stock. So it's just huge. Like it's the, and a lot of these-
13:50 Speaker 04 Big part of what we do for clients.
13:51 Speaker 03 Yeah. And these apps aren't built that way. They're not built to really participate in the full system. You can't, the only way that you're going to get your money out is by selling off the investment and then, and then having the cash go into whatever bank account it's linked to. Then you, then you can take that cash and you can do what you want with it.
14:11 Speaker 04 And I can tell you from experience, especially with crypto, that's one problem people have is they might make a little bit of money in crypto, but then they can't get their money out. It's sometimes very, very difficult to get your money out because it has to maybe come from the wallet and then it has to go into another place to then talk nice with your bank.
14:30 Speaker 03 Right.
14:31 Speaker 04 And there's always heavy fees involved. And so that's very speculative type of, kind of, there's some regulation like with crypto and such, but it's still, in my opinion, kind of the Wild West of investing.
14:42 Speaker 03 Still the Wild West. And you said crypto, same thing with gold, especially with gold prices up right now. People don't realize, oh wait, I have to sell it? And now you're- Tax on that short term.
14:51 Speaker 04 And then who do you sell it to?
14:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:53 Speaker 04 Are you gonna go online and trust shipping some gold? Are you gonna go to Bruno down downtown Bakersfield? Like, where do you actually sell the gold, right?
15:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, and then where do you, where do you come up with the money to pay for the taxes? Cause you have that luxury tax and you have the capital gains tax.
15:09 Speaker 04 Remind listeners of the luxury tax?
15:11 Speaker 03 Anything, any precious metal or?
15:17 Speaker 04 Collectible, maybe?
15:17 Speaker 03 Collectible, yeah. There is, there is an additional tax that you have to pay on top of that. I'm gonna say it's 10%, but don't quote me on it, but you have.
15:26 Speaker 04 We'll just check the monopoly board when we get home tonight. Cause I remember I would always get hit with the luxury tax. I don't know if it was the chance or the community.
15:33 Speaker 03 Oh, really? In monopoly?
15:35 Speaker 04 You've been charged a luxury tax, yeah.
15:37 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, that's right. There is.
15:38 Speaker 04 Any monopoly honks out there?
15:42 Speaker 04 Seventy-five bucks, man. That's, that's tough.
15:45 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
15:45 Speaker 04 Tough back in monopoly days. That's the equivalent of like 15 grand.
15:49 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's, it's, it's huge.
15:52 Speaker 04 With his crazy monocle and top hat, right, Steve?
15:58 Speaker 03 Luxury taxes, as I was explaining, it's extra tax, extra tax added on when you buy high end items like expensive cars, private jets, yachts, jewelry. There's usually a price threshold, but anything above that gets taxed at a higher rate.
16:15 Speaker 04 To state or fed? Federal tax?
16:17 Speaker 03 It's federal. Yeah. I don't know if, again, I'm not sure about the state. But this, this is a federal.
16:25 Speaker 04 I don't roll in enough circles where, you know, my buddies are buying yachts and everything to ask them about their, their luxury tax. But it's definitely something to think about.
16:33 Speaker 03 So the threshold, for example, on a car, $100,000. So anything above $100,000 on a car, you got that additional.
16:40 Speaker 04 Well, that's a lot of cars now. I mean.
16:43 Speaker 03 Really? Well, yeah, that's true, but not a lot of cars on the road.
16:46 Speaker 04 Diesel are getting close to a hundred grand.
16:47 Speaker 03 Oh.
16:48 Speaker 04 If not a little bit more, yeah.
16:49 Speaker 03 Oh, really?
16:50 Speaker 04 Yeah, sir.
16:51 Speaker 03 Like the high end, uh, three quarter done?
16:54 Speaker 04 A high end, like, like a 2500 HD, I know out the door, um, in 2021, a buddy of mine bought one for 80K. And so this is, yeah, they're getting there. Or a Raptor, Raptors might be.
17:05 Speaker 03 That's what I bought my first house for.
17:07 Speaker 04 Isn't that wild?
17:08 Speaker 03 That's insane. I was a little more than that, but in the ballpark. That is insane.
17:12 Speaker 04 Yeah. Oh, yeah.
17:13 Speaker 03 Hundred thousand, I mean, you think of a hundred thousand dollar car, I think of like, you know, Lamborghini and I think of like the, the high end luxury cars. I don't think of a truck.
17:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, even some of the, you know, Lexus, some of, some of these types of like higher end models, they're, they're all around, they're out the door about a hundred grand.
17:28 Speaker 03 Dang, dang. That'd be nice. Must be nice. Uh, all right. We're gonna take our first break of the day. We come back, we're joined by our regular guest, John Cox, business editor from the Bakersfield, California. We're gonna talk about some of the stories he's written about and we're Money Wise. Don't go anywhere.
17:45 Speaker 05 John Cox. He's a man of a million words. John Cox. He's the king of the business nerds. Looks like Jimmy Elson from Superman, but a little bit taller and a bit of a tan. John Cox. He's from Bakersfield, California. John Cox. Likes stories from credit unions. It's a good thing that he's only on the radio air, or else you'd be distracted by his dark flowing hair. John Cox.
18:15 Speaker 03 Uh, we're so lucky to have John Cox here with us today. John, welcome back to the show.
18:19 Speaker 06 Thank you very much. I appreciate you putting me on right in the middle of the middle of the time.
18:23 Speaker 04 That's right. That's right.
18:26 Speaker 03 Enjoy that Coca-Cola, John.
18:29 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah. Yeah, Coca-Cola.
18:30 Speaker 04 That's what it is.
18:33 Speaker 03 John, I was looking down the list of articles that you've written over the last month or so, and you've hit all of your, all of your, uh, pet, pet, uh, topics. You've talked to the Get Bust, you've got news about Get Bust routes, you've got a lot, some farming news, uh, you've got all kinds of things. Going on here.
18:53 Speaker 04 Nothing going on at Cal State, though. Business as usual over there, right?
18:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're covering it all.
18:57 Speaker 06 And actually, you know, the credit unions, as the theme song says, I'm actually working on a story about credit unions.
19:02 Speaker 03 Oh, sweet.
19:03 Speaker 06 Well, then we will have finally checked off everything.
19:05 Speaker 03 Well, do you want to start with any scoops? You got any scoops?
19:07 Speaker 06 No, well, I mean, I'm working on a story, a couple of stories for tomorrow's paper.
19:11 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:11 Speaker 06 One of them about radio stations that have been hit by copper wire theft and been very disruptive, extremely expensive, and forced some changes in local lineup. That's, you know, kind of interesting. KCSO has made some progress on this, but it's very expensive when these stations get hit.
19:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's impacted our own station here.
19:33 Speaker 06 Yeah.
19:33 Speaker 03 Everybody is impacted by these thefts that are happening to these towers. And it happens with farmers all the time. It happens in oil. All that's probably the biggest, they probably get hit the most, right?
19:46 Speaker 06 PG&E has gotten hit.
19:47 Speaker 03 PG&E gets hit with their substations and things.
19:49 Speaker 06 Expensive infrastructure that now you have to, you have to really harden these sites, increase security a lot. And then that's what's happening. But so it's expensive.
20:00 Speaker 04 It's very expensive.
20:01 Speaker 06 To get hit, it's expensive to make sure you're not hit.
20:03 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:04 Speaker 06 So it's really unfortunate. Law enforcement is making progress, as I understand, but it remains an issue.
20:09 Speaker 04 And do you have to have a license now? I heard that recently that.
20:12 Speaker 06 To be a dealer, yeah, to buy copper.
20:14 Speaker 04 To buy copper.
20:15 Speaker 06 Right. And what they're, the arrests that have happened recently is from people living sometimes outside the area, sometimes locally, who are caught with copper wire, now allegedly, according to the reports we're getting, and are found to have not had a license. Well, that's a problem because now you're very suspicious. What are you doing with that wire?
20:36 Speaker 04 Yep.
20:37 Speaker 06 Who'd you buy it from?
20:38 Speaker 03 Well, this reminds me of the bastards that kept stealing our catalytic converters.
20:42 Speaker 06 Right.
20:43 Speaker 03 I think that's gotten better.
20:44 Speaker 06 Has that mellowed out a little bit?
20:45 Speaker 03 I think it's mellowed out because they did something similar, right, John? Where they're, where they were sort of seeing who's buying these, who, who's, you know, where the scrap yards that are buying.
20:54 Speaker 06 There was different measures that were being done and licensing and legislation. So it does appear to have reduced quite a bit.
21:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, but it's like kind of the same problem where you have these. These crooks that are taking something that is costing
21:09 Speaker 06 I call them slugs.
21:11 Speaker 03 They're costing the victims, you know, thousands of dollars so they can make 20 bucks off of your catalytic converters. So frustrating. And I hope they get these guys and get that figured out. When we come back, John, I want to, you've written again, some really interesting stories, including mangoes in the valley. Seth and I are huge mango fans.
21:33 Speaker 06 Big time mango fan.
21:34 Speaker 03 Big time mango fan. So I want to hear more about, about potential mangoes growing here in the valley. 661-396-1000. That's the number for comments or questions. We'll be back right after this quick break.
21:51 Speaker 03 Welcome back to Money Wise. I'm Sharad, your host here with Seth. We're joined by our regular guest, John Cox from the Bakersfield Californian. He is writing about lots of stuff that's going on in the valley. So mangoes, John, is it true? We're going to have, do we have mangoes growing? We don't have mangoes growing now.
22:10 Speaker 06 You know, I checked the Kern County Crop Report, the most recent one from, I think, 2024. And apparently there, there are some mangoes growing around here. It's not something you see much, but there was mention of it in sort of the miscellaneous category. So I don't know how much, but probably a very small number. But we can't say that a, a local fruit breeder, Sun World International, is now in the mango business, not for growing it for sale, but for innovating the, the breeding and not genetically modified, but just, you know, selection, non-natural selection in which you molecularly decide which are the best, you know, male and female to put together to form the new one.
22:54 Speaker 06 And then you just sort of, what is it when you?
22:58 Speaker 03 Select a breeding.
22:59 Speaker 06 Well, you select a breed it. And then, you know, the, the stuff that we buy in the grocery store, it's not like that's, you know, different every time. It's not different plants. It is the same plant being grown over and over again through sort of transplantation.
23:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. Which I I'm a huge fan of. I'm a huge fan of GMO technology. I know this isn't GMO, but just there's a, there is a broad misunderstanding about where our food comes from. Like, everything that we eat comes from three or four different mother plants that we've all selectively bred.
23:35 Speaker 06 Right.
23:35 Speaker 03 That that has created what we have now, like corn, you know, and soy.
23:40 Speaker 06 Cause it work, cause it's the best you can get.
23:41 Speaker 03 That's right. That's right. And it was just taking that wild corn or that maize and then or our, our cavemen ancestors over the years just going, well, I like it this color and I like it this taste. And eventually just getting the seeds from that until now we have the different varieties of corn that we have. So same, kind of same thing with the mango. Are they trying to modify it so that they can be grown in other places?
24:06 Speaker 06 Well, that's, that's one of the things that they, that they take into consideration. There's a lot of things that they try to hit. And they, they, you know, look at just hundreds and hundreds, not thousands. Actually, it is thousands of different plants that then they kind of refine until they get the right mixture. That's one thing, different areas, how quickly they sort of hit the market and mature. That's very important because, you know, if you're a grower, you want to, you want your plants to come online at the time. No one else is selling any, so you've got the market to yourself. That is a big thing in grapes, for example.
24:38 Speaker 03 Yes.
24:39 Speaker 06 But a big thing with mangoes is bridging the quality gap. You know, I've seen this myself. We also like mangoes in my household and it's not consistent, especially the ripening. It's like you can get some that are really perfect and then some that just never quite, you know, got ripe at the, the right rate or something. So Sun World, a couple of years ago, bought a South African company that has a portfolio of different breeds and, and products that they're trying to refine. One of them is mango, citrus is another, and Sun World has now partnered with an Oxnard-based company that has a lot of grower contacts around Latin America and it has a special.
25:24 Speaker 06 Ripening program. They specialize on avocados.
25:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:28 Speaker 06 And so this is something they do. So now they're going to work together on not just coming up with the best mango specimen, but also how to make sure that it's consistent quality through ripening and growing conditions. And then what happens is Sun World, like another local company, it's an international leader, they will license the fruit. They won't grow it themselves. They will license it to growers around the world and take a share of sales.
25:57 Speaker 03 I see. Well, that's still kind of cool that it's coming out of Kern County.
26:00 Speaker 06 It is. You know, I've been to both of the local breeding laboratories and they're fascinating. These are very high level scientists that are working here. You kind of don't think, you don't see that in Kern County. You think that, you know, if you're in agriculture, you know, you're either managing a farm or you're working on the farm or both. And these guys in agriculture are doing very high level molecular science.
26:24 Speaker 03 It's really, really cool. It's one of our great exports. We have an example of this is our carrot exports and the baby carrots that are exported, like 80% of the world's baby carrots. My sister-in-law lives up in Oregon and she was mentioning that she was in a grocery store and she saw that it was from Grimway Farms in Bakersfield, California or something. And she sees baby carrots and her comment was, how did they genetically modify these carrots to just grow up to just be babies and then they sell them?
26:52 Speaker 06 Yeah.
26:54 Speaker 03 And I was like, oh, yeah. The baby carrots commercial. And I remember having to break her poor little heart by telling, these are not baby carrots. These are actually mature carrots that they cut in baby sizes.
27:06 Speaker 06 However, they do breed specially carrots for that and other things that they do. They are looking for specific characteristics that they do refine. But this used to be that the carrots that got thrown out are put into juice. And now with this proper processing, they can, you know, sell it as a premium product.
27:25 Speaker 04 Wasn't that cra- craisins also? That's because they were just throwing away all the...
27:30 Speaker 03 Dried cranberries.
27:31 Speaker 04 And they turn them into crazens. I believe that's the case.
27:34 Speaker 03 Brilliant.
27:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
27:34 Speaker 03 Brilliant.
27:35 Speaker 04 So, the California, we are the largest ag exporter with $25 billion annually. When I was working with a guy from the Midwest, he was, "Oh, there's no way. You know, you guys have more." In his accent, and I'm like, "Dude, let's get online and look."
27:52 Speaker 03 We are the largest producing agricultural valley in the world.
27:57 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
27:57 Speaker 03 In terms of dollar amount, in terms of dollar production, we're number one in the world.
28:02 Speaker 04 Imagine if we had more water to produce even more. I mean, there's so much
28:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:08 Speaker 04 vacant, dry.
28:10 Speaker 03 It's not-
28:11 Speaker 04 Just go up the five, go up I-5. It's all essentially the same soil.
28:15 Speaker 03 You have the demand issue. Like, we can create the supply, but that creates its own problems in the ag world.
28:22 Speaker 04 I've never really thought about that.
28:23 Speaker 03 We're seeing that with almonds, for example, you know, because almonds were so, the prices shot up just long enough for everybody to start planting almonds. And then you get, you know, you get the oversupply and then it brings it back down. So, like, every commodity is, everything that's grown has some sort of limit. Not to say that we don't have problems, you know, with our, with the-
28:45 Speaker 04 Plus, you can't grow a ton of something and then have too much supply, which makes a lot of sense.
28:49 Speaker 03 Yeah. And, you know, John, in your article, you mentioned international mango sales estimated at $49 billion last year and expected to grow 18% this year, reaching $70 billion by 2031. Those are good numbers.
29:06 Speaker 06 They are. And imagine if those were consistently good mangoes, right? Again, the part of the reason that they're even spending all this money is because mangoes are historically, you know, that kind of iffy quality. Sometimes you get a great one, sometimes it's no good. It's like, you know, watermelon sometimes, not the seedless, but the old ones.
29:24 Speaker 03 Yes.
29:24 Speaker 06 You don't quite know just how good they are until you open it up. Imagine if, like, grapes today, you know, grapes are so sophisticated. We do a lot of that around here. The ones that are grown now, the really good ones that get exported, those are just amazingly good. I don't know if you've had some of the export ones, but wow.
29:42 Speaker 03 They're so good.
29:43 Speaker 06 Yeah, we might see that, you know, with mangoes where it's just, you know, the best you can imagine every time.
29:48 Speaker 03 We need to have that. As you mentioned, mangoes are like that. Honeydew is like that. There are certain fruits that will screw you over. They will get you.
29:56 Speaker 06 Cantaloupes.
29:56 Speaker 03 The cantaloupes.
29:57 Speaker 06 It's a roll of the dice.
29:58 Speaker 03 You can't tell. It looks beautiful on the outside. I've heard some of these tricks, you know, which you can look for. It can kind of increase your odds, but you're still rolling the dice with some of these fruits.
30:07 Speaker 04 One of the arguments in our house is if, if, if one of us doesn't check the blackberries or the blueberries and just buys it and get home and there's a little fuzz, then the other one's in trouble. That's kind of what happens.
30:16 Speaker 03 Oh, you mean just eye for the, for the mold?
30:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, you gotta, you gotta open it up and look in there for some mold.
30:20 Speaker 03 I thought you were saying they gotta pop one in your mouth.
30:23 Speaker 04 You can do that too. You can do that too. Absolutely.
30:26 Speaker 03 John Cox joining us from the Bakersfield, California. And John, you also wrote about an energy panel that was at Cal State Bakersfield talking about the potential, some of the proposals to have data centers here in Kern County. This is, this is, this is local news that you wrote about, but this is a national, this is a global issue right now where these communities are trying to decide, yeah, we love AI and we love all these tax revenues that come in here, but they're so resource intense, especially water and power, two things that we're struggling to come up with here in California. So, what can you tell us about kind of what the, what the takeaway was?
31:06 Speaker 06 Well, I would start by saying that, that this is a place that is under active consideration for investments like that. These are big investments. Hundred million dollars is a small one. So, half a billion dollars is, you know, not out of the ballpark. And so, when you put, when you invest in something like that, you're getting a lot of property tax revenue that helps pay for public services. So, I just want to put that out there. This is why we are considering this. There are trade offs. One, one thing is obviously the water, five million gallons a day.
31:44 Speaker 06 Is apparently the the consumption.
31:46 Speaker 03 That's crazy.
31:47 Speaker 06 Lot of water in a single day.
31:49 Speaker 03 It's to keep them cool, right? I think it's to because it's used to help cool all this processing.
31:54 Speaker 06 So, you know, there's some thinking that maybe, okay, if we if we find up, find a energy and money efficient way to purify or desalinate some of the groundwater we have in like Western Kern, which is, you know, essentially useless water because it's so so salty that, you know, what are you going to do with it?
32:14 Speaker 06 It's yet to be seen what that technology is going to be, but there is hope that, you know, there's a lot we could do if we could do something without water. Then there's also question of employment. You think, well, we're bringing jobs, Kern County. This is something you hear, you know, when these government proposals came forward. We're gonna, we're gonna put people to work. With these data centers, they don't apply a lot. They don't employ a lot of people. The estimate that came out of the last week's conference is that one job for every 13 million dollars invested.
32:43 Speaker 03 So you got to invest 13 million dollars to create one job.
32:46 Speaker 06 Permanent job.
32:46 Speaker 03 It with for these, for the for data.
32:48 Speaker 04 Two guys walking around, making sure the wires are, I mean.
32:52 Speaker 03 Really what they're doing, I guarantee is they're monitoring the robots that are running the show.
32:56 Speaker 04 I know.
32:56 Speaker 03 That's they're the robot slaves, the robot human slaves.
33:01 Speaker 04 I always compliment GPT. Did it just this morning. It was helping me out with something. I said, hey, man, I appreciate that. You never know.
33:06 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
33:07 Speaker 04 You never know.
33:08 Speaker 03 Oh, they're sycophants.
33:08 Speaker 04 Stay in their good graces.
33:09 Speaker 03 Oh, they're sycophants, too. They'll they'll tell you everything you want to hear.
33:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, the AI technology and and water and energy are the two bottlenecks that that they're already seeing, and they know this, but our energy grid just cannot support what's this. It's kind of like a, we had the industrial revolution, the automotive revolution, and this is the AI revolution. This is part of it. It's interesting to see where we'll be in five years.
33:30 Speaker 06 So Kern County is considered a good place for this because we have a lot of available land. We, you know, we do renewable energy here. You could do that. You could support these things largely with, you know, by building a surrounding solar array. And so we know that there's at least two of these, or one or two projects that have been brought forward to local economic developers for site selection. You know, it's compete, we compete with other areas for these sort of investments. There's also Edwards Air Force Base that has issued a solicitation. We want to build a, or data centers in, in Eastern
34:09 Speaker 06 Kern County on the base, apparently. And this is in line with President Donald Trump's executive order saying, we need to be at the forefront of this. The, the thinking is that, you know, if we don't do it, China's going to beat us to it. And then, you know, there's only first place. There is no second place in this race.
34:27 Speaker 03 That's right. Which it kind of feels that way. It feels like there is a, it's not a, well, there's a space race happening, but it's a, it's an AI race that's happening, or, or a computational power race. Who's, who is going to have the smartest robot? Who's going to have the smartest processor? Quantum computing is something that is concerned on a national security level because these computers can be so smart that they can beat all encryption. You get a computer so smart that it can, it can bust through anything that's encrypted?
34:57 Speaker 06 Yeah.
34:57 Speaker 03 Like, this is scary. There goes your money.
35:00 Speaker 06 You heard about Anthropic just released a warning. They're not going to move forward with something. They're going to keep it.
35:05 Speaker 03 Yes.
35:06 Speaker 06 Not release it because it can break all encryption and, and for banks. And so, think about the danger.
35:13 Speaker 03 It's scary.
35:14 Speaker 04 We, we do have a, a young lady with CTEC. I'm not going to put you on the spot, but she's in here listening to us. And, you know, this is what you have to look forward to. There's a lot of these wild changes coming up.
35:25 Speaker 03 I mean, it's no big deal. Like, we all have kids here.
35:28 Speaker 06 Yeah.
35:28 Speaker 03 And I think about it all the time. My kids think about it all the time. We talk about it very frequently about the future and trying to predict, you know, five, 10 years down the road. It's, it's like, in our lifetime, we had the internet, which was a, which was a technology that really transformed the way that we move through the world.
35:47 Speaker 06 Late 90s.
35:47 Speaker 03 Late 90s. And right around then, cell phones, which really changed the way that we communicate.
35:55 Speaker 03 But between the internet and cell phones, we really didn't have any big technology that was disruptive. That was totally crazy. We were hoping for that flying car. We're hoping for that hoverboard. Hoping for that robot house, you know, butler.
36:09 Speaker 06 Yep.
36:09 Speaker 03 But none of it's really happened until now. And now it really feels like there is a, there is some new technologies that are happening and we have no way of stopping it. And no way of predicting what that's going to, what, what, what the negative and positive outcomes will be.
36:26 Speaker 06 One of the ways it was put to me, I think on a documentary was, uh, imagine, and I think it's in like two years. They're going to get at this point where every AI has the capability to be basically the same IQ as Einstein. So if you had a few billion Einsteins on the planet, what's going to be the result of that? It's a little, it's a little unnerving.
36:45 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
36:46 Speaker 06 I just changed the channel.
36:47 Speaker 03 Yeah. Just plug your ears and ignore it. It'll, it'll work itself out. Uh, John, you also wrote about the Tohone Ranch. Uh, this is a story we followed since last year. The, uh, investor activist group that came into the board of Tohone Ranch and started a whole kerfuffle with the, with the governance.
37:10 Speaker 03 Nearly, uh, there were some adjustments that were made from, from these activists.
37:14 Speaker 06 Yeah.
37:15 Speaker 03 It was, you, you even reported how our local government, government all came in and stood up.
37:20 Speaker 06 Board of sues weighed in on a private, uh, well publicly traded, uh, business board of directors election. That was extraordinary.
37:29 Speaker 03 Yes. What it was, it was sort of the, the, the flax by the locals going, hey, this is our, this is our ranch. You know, this is our development company here too, even though we may not be all shareholders. We all have a stake in what Tohone does.
37:43 Speaker 06 Well, the housing is so, there's a lot of housing we're talking about if that all gets built. And I think so, so I, I have been following this whole investor activist, uh, changes. You know, they reduce the size of the board. They're, they're, they're churning out some members. They got rid of the executive committee. Um, there's been some other concessions have gone on. But to me, the, the most recent news of the. In this, because I asked the CEO like point blank, he couldn't tell me, but I said, you know, when are you going to start on any of these projects like to hone mountain village?
38:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:14 Speaker 06 Centennial and he wouldn't say that, but they did direct me to a statement in the most recent report that they're actually beginning now or soon to raise money for a mountain village to partner with someone that would, you know, actually begin to to develop the project. So finally, I mean, after a long time, decades appears that there's progress to actually starting construction on that project.
38:42 Speaker 03 That's big.
38:43 Speaker 04 We had a comment come in and you might be able to speak to this. All right, this says, hey, Money Wise, show sounds good. I wish the Californian would cover how these employees out at the Hard Rock are getting ripped off. I still haven't been able to find a reporter or the paper that will follow up.
38:58 Speaker 06 So you know what that's about? Well, I have, we have written about how the dealers there earn $10 an hour.
39:04 Speaker 03 $10?
39:05 Speaker 06 We have mentioned this in the paper.
39:07 Speaker 03 Oh.
39:07 Speaker 06 Because, you know, they're, they're off.
39:08 Speaker 03 And they have pool tips.
39:10 Speaker 06 They are, they are tipped employees and that's why.
39:13 Speaker 04 So they don't adhere to California minimum wage?
39:16 Speaker 06 They do, they do. And apparently I did ask about that. We got this report, they, they, you know, the Hard Rock likes to tout the economic development.
39:24 Speaker 04 Talk about a bad deal.
39:26 Speaker 06 Well, well, so they, you know, apparently that's about what you can expect as a server at a restaurant, you know, $10 now, you don't make the regular minimum wage because the understanding is you're getting paid more than that. I used to work, you know, for tips and, you know, the.
39:41 Speaker 04 I still got paid, I did too, but I got, I at least got my hourly rate while I was there and then I got tips.
39:46 Speaker 06 Did you get a regular standard?
39:47 Speaker 04 Yes, 100%.
39:48 Speaker 06 Yeah.
39:49 Speaker 04 That'd be a great story.
39:50 Speaker 06 I would be interested to hear, you know, what is the take home? I worked as a busboy, which is considerably lower than a waiter, by the way. I was too clumsy to be a waiter and not good looking enough. And so I got one 10th of their tips, you know? And so if you work for enough waiters, you may be, you know, like 10 waiters, which you don't do, you could make as much as.
40:10 Speaker 04 Yep.
40:10 Speaker 06 So, you know, it's, it's all this, there's this whole economy of tips. I brought it up with Hard Rock and you know, they acknowledged that they pointed me to their provisions. Now, these agreements that govern the operation of these things come from the federal level, the Department of Indian Affairs, I think it's called. And then the governor's office, working with the legislature, comes up with these gaming accords. And this is all spelled out in those. So they're not breaking the law. They're not doing anything that government hasn't said, you know, state and federal government has said, yes, this is, you're okay paying them at this rate. I'd be interested to hear, you know, how much they take home or, but to say they're ripping them off and everything.
40:53 Speaker 06 They, I would like to get paid more too. Probably a lot of us would. I don't know what the economic situation. I'd like to hear some, an actual person.
41:01 Speaker 04 Crunch some numbers. Yeah.
41:02 Speaker 06 Yeah. How much are they making? Is it enough to support, you know, yourself and a family?
41:07 Speaker 03 So while we were just talking, kind of did, just, you know, did a little investigation. State of California requires that servers must be paid at least the minimum wage. And then the tips are in additional, or in addition to.
41:20 Speaker 04 And no tax on tips now.
41:22 Speaker 03 And now there's no tax on tips. Yeah.
41:23 Speaker 04 Which for some servers, I mean, they, they live on those tips. So that's like a huge pay raise.
41:28 Speaker 03 Yes. No, it's, no, it's great. It's great for, for those people who, who, you know, depend on the tips. But there is a carve out for casinos because casinos operate by, that are operated by Native American tribes or governed by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and their own tribal sovereignty. So they are not held, even in the state of California, they are not held to that same standard. So they can pay them below, their, their wage can be below. So I think like what Stephen was saying, the complaint is, I'm over here busting my tail.
42:04 Speaker 04 Ten bucks an hour.
42:04 Speaker 03 And I'm getting 10 bucks an hour. And then all the, our tips are being pulled and spread out to other ways. So I'm not getting my fair share. Like they're not getting, they're not getting compensated.
42:13 Speaker 04 Yeah. If the, if the listener's on right now, let's, let's get some figures, you know, how much? You know, what are we talking about here?
42:19 Speaker 06 Yeah. Email me, [email protected] .
42:22 Speaker 04 Hey, you're into this and this is your jam. It's the first time I've gotten to meet with you. How'd you get into reporting?
42:27 Speaker 06 Oh, the newspaper business?
42:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, good question.
42:30 Speaker 06 It was a bad decision.
42:31 Speaker 04 No.
42:31 Speaker 06 1988 to sign up for J1.
42:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. That was the golden years, the 80s, man.
42:39 Speaker 03 That college course and then you got looped into the college paper, right?
42:42 Speaker 06 Worked for the college paper, went to university, worked for that paper and then wrote on the, you know, the lighter paper on the side. And then I was very fortunate, got a, you know, what was a freelancing gig, right out of school with a big paper. And then I have gone from paper to paper over the years. I started with the Californian in 2006, left for a couple of years, came back. San Diego is hard to, hard to pay for. And so, you know, the fortunate aspect of having a journalist who's been in your community for the same times, you get to, that person gets to know about these different industries, you know, and I, and I know a lot about oil. I know a lot about agriculture and different things. Not a lot, but enough to be able to write knowledgeably about it.
43:25 Speaker 04 For sure.
43:25 Speaker 06 So, you know, not, not every newspaper or TV station, et cetera, has that, you know, someone who's been around long enough to see these cycles and things. So I feel very fortunate to be in this.
43:37 Speaker 04 I'm seeing a lot of, I'll read an article and then they're just bold. They say this was written by artificial intelligence.
43:43 Speaker 06 Yeah, we don't do that.
43:43 Speaker 04 That's what I figured.
43:44 Speaker 06 We don't do that on our newspaper.
43:45 Speaker 04 That's what I figured.
43:45 Speaker 06 Maybe one day. I mean, I don't know. I don't think that, that AI is going to be doing the kind of thing I do, going and interviewing people and thinking about, you know, what different sources to use.
43:57 Speaker 03 There is the big difference that people don't realize. You have this slop that's out there that's either AI driven or there.
44:04 Speaker 04 You can tell in two seconds.
44:05 Speaker 03 There's no editorial policy. The, the, the references that they make are from themselves.
44:12 Speaker 04 Misspelled words, dude.
44:13 Speaker 03 They're self referencing.
44:14 Speaker 06 There's so many misspellings.
44:14 Speaker 03 So there's no outside, outside verification of information and they're just quoting their own people inside their organizations. Like this is like journalism 101.
44:27 Speaker 06 Well, I can see that can be helpful in certain kinds of stories, like for example. earnings reports, you know, this was this was in that income. This is sales year over year. This is what happened with the stock performance, all that. Okay. Certain things and even maybe certain news releases from the police. But there are some stories that are overarching or even more more complicated than that. That that AI isn't close to being able to do what I do, which has taken to a bigger perspective. And and then call, think about who is going to comment on this. This can help bring the story to life. The people are going to read it, you know, AI doesn't write interesting stuff necessarily.
45:06 Speaker 03 Yep, right. And it goes beyond just the AI. It's this, the quality of journalism in general, like the media, the news media out there in large part is not true journalism. It's rehashing stories or it's them taking some story and making it just redoing it themselves. But and then not doing like the work that actually takes to it get into an in depth to a true story like you do where you're you're quoting outside sources. You're getting that context from people that are outside.
45:39 Speaker 06 And no tips, no 10%.
45:41 Speaker 03 No tips. I know.
45:43 Speaker 04 That's why I feel like we have job security here as financial advisors. You have job security because people want the truth. They don't want just AI watered down.
45:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, I hope so, too. I hope so, too. We always encourage all our listeners to go out and support your local media, especially the Bakersfield Californian. It's our only, it's our only local newsprint media that we have here. And it's so critical to have people like John Cox and others there at the Californian that are that are our watchdogs. They're the ones that are out there to, you know, looking out for the for the weird stuff to protect us citizens. So go support the Bakersfield Californian. John Cox, thank you so much for taking the time. Appreciate it.
46:18 Speaker 06 Appreciate it.
46:18 Speaker 03 Want to remind all our listeners, if you miss this or any of our past programs, go subscribe to the Money Wise Podcast. It's commercial free on all major podcast platforms like iTunes, Apple or Spotify. And remember, be smart, be safe and always be money wise.
46:34 Speaker 02 Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through LPL Financial. LPL Financial and Money Wise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.
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