Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on American Family Radio. We've got 24 and a half more minutes of the show today on this Thursday, and we've got Trivia Friday coming up tomorrow. We look forward to having you join us for Learning University. J.J. Jasper will be here. I think Mark Os is going to fill in for Ed Vitagliano. He headed out of town, went to the beach, and won't come back.

Guest: You told him yesterday, "You know you're going to have to come back sooner or later, right?"

Tim Wildmon: No, I don't.

Guest: He'll have to be back, but it'll be Sunday, so he won't be on the show tomorrow.

Tim Wildmon: Fred Jackson is with me, Ray Pritchard is in Florida, we're in Mississippi, and three feet from me is our colleague, Steve from Georgia. Good morning, Steve.

Guest: Hey, everybody.

Guest: You know, I worked with Mark Os at Focus on the Family back in the 2000s.

Tim Wildmon: For or with?

Guest: With.

Tim Wildmon: Oh, with Mark?

Guest: Yeah. I was in the news department, American Family News.

Tim Wildmon: Family News with Steve from Georgia. I used to listen to you forever. You worked here?

Guest: Yes. Family News and Focus. I did that for 10 years. Mark was doing something with production, radio production. We occasionally saw each other at lunch.

Tim Wildmon: Yeah, good man. I was out there a couple of times for a meeting and got to meet with Dr. Dobson.

Guest: Yeah, I got to speak with him privately for a few minutes. What a good man.

Tim Wildmon: He really was a good man, a hero of the faith. Dr. James Dobson passed away in the last year.

Guest: He did.

Tim Wildmon: Great leader. All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio. Steve, what is your first story?

Guest: Let's talk about living arrangements. This is outrage erupting in North Carolina. Have you ever been in a neighborhood that has a homeowners association that you have to pay dues to?

Guest: I have not.

Guest: Do you have to pay dues down in Florida there, Ray?

Guest: Yes, in a sense. Up in Kansas City, it was a regular HOA with the rules and all that.

Guest: My neighborhood does have annual dues.

Tim Wildmon: So, to answer your question, that is an HOA, right?

Guest: Yes, I guess so.

Guest: In Magnolia Cove in North Carolina...

Tim Wildmon: Where?

Guest: Magnolia Cove in Sherrills Ford, Catawba County, North Carolina.

Tim Wildmon: Sure, we'll go with it.

Guest: Anyway, if you bought a house there five years ago, you were paying $158 a month to the HOA in housing costs and HOA fees. Well, they just voted this last weekend to raise the fee. It is now up to $2,500 a month.

Guest: What? Wait, that's more than double.

Guest: No, it kept raising and raising. It was $1,200 and something, and now it's $2,500 a month.

Guest: They tried to charge homeowners $7,500 a month.

Tim Wildmon: Wait a minute. When you say they voted for it, who voted for it?

Guest: The HOA council was going to charge the homeowners.

Tim Wildmon: But they're voted on by the homeowners.

Guest: The board is voted on by the homeowners, but the board decides how much everybody owes anyway.

Tim Wildmon: I guess, but the board decides how much everybody owes.

Guest: The families are paying nearly 16 times what they paid a few years ago.

Tim Wildmon: I don't want to go to that neighborhood.

Guest: I know.

Tim Wildmon: The residents went to the attorney general to see what could happen.

Guest: Nothing. There's no law that says how much an HOA can charge in North Carolina. They can charge whatever they want, as long as they follow the rules and pass the fees in the proper manner according to their bylaws.

Tim Wildmon: Is there a why to this story that you can answer?

Guest: I cannot answer that.

Tim Wildmon: What town is that?

Guest: The neighborhood is Magnolia Cove in Sherrills Ford in Catawba County, North Carolina.

Tim Wildmon: So, currently, how much do they charge?

Guest: Twenty-five hundred dollars a month.

Tim Wildmon: That's $30,000 a year.

Guest: I think that is what I'm reading. This is from a report on X, and it appears to be accurate.

Tim Wildmon: Just be glad you don't live there.

Guest: Yeah, okay.

Tim Wildmon: There is another living arrangement that I want to talk about as well. If your homeowners association representatives vote to raise your HOA from what to what, and over what period of time?

Guest: Well, five years ago it was $158 a month.

Tim Wildmon: And now it's what?

Guest: $2,500 a month.

Tim Wildmon: That's it.

Guest: Yeah, somebody's getting their yard mowed right there.

Guest: Right there.

Guest: I know their names.

Guest: Unbelievable.

Tim Wildmon: I find that hard to believe, but I'll go with your story there. How about this? Let's talk about this. Do you remember four years or two years ago, when a cruise line was offering a four-year cruise? You could buy a cabin on this boat.

Guest: Yeah.

Tim Wildmon: And see the world. You could cruise forever. In fact, you owned the cabin on the boat. Some people paid as much as $120,000 for permanent ownership of the cabin.

Guest: It's actually not a bad deal if you're going to sail around the world for four years.

Tim Wildmon: But here's the problem.

Guest: Okay, what?

Tim Wildmon: Fuel costs to run the ship kept going up because of the war in Iraq.

Guest: Kind of like homeowners associations.

Tim Wildmon: Exactly. The ship has docked in Cambodia. Everybody was given about a couple of days to get off the ship, and they are in Cambodia.

Guest: Stranded.

Tim Wildmon: Stranded in Cambodia.

Guest: What was the name of this cruise line?

Guest: This was the MV Odyssey. It set sail two years ago on a voyage to the seven continents, marketed as combining long-term living at sea with global travel.

Tim Wildmon: So they've been out there for two years.

Guest: They've been out there for two years. But now, basically, the cruise line company is going defunct.

Tim Wildmon: And the people who are on this cruise ship are told to get off the boat in Cambodia and find their way back to wherever their home is, the home that they sold.

Guest: A lot of people did sell their homes. They have no place to go back to.

Tim Wildmon: What do you think about all that?

Guest: I could deal with this better if the title of the story were "Stranded in Paris," right?

Guest: But "Stranded in Cambodia"? I don't know if it's a burning paradise right now, but I'm sorry.

Guest: "Stranded in Cambodia." "Stranded in Paradise" would be better.

Tim Wildmon: When a company goes belly-up like that and you've already paid them, you're out of luck.

Guest: That's just it.

Tim Wildmon: What happens to the ship?

Guest: The ship is unable to continue cruising. I guess it's docked in Cambodia. They have to pay to sail it wherever they give up the ship.

Tim Wildmon: But, Steve, what if you bought a cabin? I mean, you're out.

Guest: Can you send a repo man for a boat like that?

Guest: Maybe. I don't know.

Guest: You know what they need?

Guest: They need Fred.

Guest: They need an HOA.

Guest: They need an HOA, that's right.

Guest: This would not have happened to Steve. That would be a good HOA.

Tim Wildmon: Fred just hit that one out of the park.

Guest: There you go.

Tim Wildmon: All right, Steve.

Guest: Poor boat. Poor boat.

Tim Wildmon: By the way, I found a reason they're voting for this higher HOA fee at this community.

Guest: Are you serious now?

Tim Wildmon: I am.

Guest: The association attributes the sixfold increase to massive legal and collection costs resulting from lawsuits filed by more than 20 homeowners, along with widespread delinquency and assessments.

Guest: Well, there you go.

Tim Wildmon: So the homeowners have been suing the HOA?

Guest: Yeah.

Tim Wildmon: That's the allegation, I guess.

Guest: And then that causes their fees to go up because they have pricey lawyers.

Tim Wildmon: You talk about a dog chasing its own tail.

Guest: Yeah, a dog chasing its tail.

Tim Wildmon: What a mess. The homeowners are causing their own fees to go up because they're suing themselves. So figure that one out.

Tim Wildmon: All right, next story, Steve.

Guest: We have been talking about the approach of artificial intelligence. We talked about it last time.

Tim Wildmon: I can't get enough.

Guest: Well, you're going to get a little bit more.

Tim Wildmon: You're going to give us some more today?

Guest: Yeah. Microsoft just offered a buyout to tens of thousands of its employees. This is a huge chunk of their workforce.

Guest: One-third.

Guest: One-third of their workforce.

Tim Wildmon: They've offered a buyout, though. So if you retire, they'll pay you a certain amount?

Guest: It's voluntary right now.

Tim Wildmon: A third of their employees?

Guest: A third, 60,000.

Tim Wildmon: Sixty thousand. I've never heard of such a thing.

Guest: It's because AI is coming in.

Tim Wildmon: They're making their jobs obsolete?

Guest: Microsoft has invested a lot of money in AI. In fact, I did a story that's running tomorrow, and I'm going to preview it right now for you. I talked with Bob McGinnis, who's written some books on artificial intelligence. We've talked to him on this show, and we talked about what's coming. Let's listen to the report.

Narrator: Microsoft's chief people officer, Amy Coleman, sent a memo to the software giant's employees on Monday with what she called a voluntary exit offer. The company is investing somewhere between $150 billion and $175 billion on AI in 2026, and that number is expected to increase in the years to come.

Narrator: Author Bob McGinnis says Microsoft has to reallocate its resources.

Guest: All the savings is going to go to AI data centers. Others are going to do the same thing. The money that once paid salaries is now going to machines.

Narrator: J.P. Morgan Global Research projects worldwide and industry-wide AI capital spending could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030.

Guest: It's not just Microsoft. We've seen across the United States a significant increase in the number of people who are losing their jobs or not getting jobs.

Narrator: McGinnis says the world around us is about to change in a major way, but we've seen this before.

Guest: It happened in the Industrial Revolution. People left the farm and went to the factory. We went through a metamorphosis again when we got electricity, and more recently with the internet. We just have to adjust.

Narrator: He says conventional wisdom was to tell your kids and grandkids to get into computer programming.

Guest: Not anymore. That's one of the first industries to metamorphose. Medicine, the law, education, banking, and factory work are all facing massive changes. What's the advice now?

Guest: Some of the blue-collar jobs, I think, are pretty safe.

Narrator: I'm Steve from Georgia.

Guest: It's coming, and we need to deal with what's coming, these changes in the workforce.

Guest: Globally, or as a country, we will adjust. We will find new jobs. There will be new sources of work that come up to support AI, or that aren't dependent on AI, and a lot of old jobs are going to change. So we're going to be okay as a country, but individually, I cannot say. Some people will be facing some pain coming up, especially if you work for Microsoft.

Tim Wildmon: But they are offering a buyout. They might pay somebody two years' salary to retire voluntarily.

Guest: I think everybody needs to take a moment at some point and figure out what the next few years are going to hold, because our world is going to be radically different. It's going to affect every one of us, our kids and grandkids, and even us.

Tim Wildmon: It's too late for people like us, though.

Guest: I'm assuming that you're not going to want to replace me.

Tim Wildmon: I feel fairly confident.

Guest: Do you have an AI that can replace you?

Tim Wildmon: I don't have an AI.

Guest: It could do my job faster.

Tim Wildmon: I wouldn't be telling you that, Steve.

Guest: Especially Steve. We have to have a talk.

Tim Wildmon: Ray, any thoughts on this at all?

Guest: He's right. Steve's right. It's coming. We're not at the crest of the wave. This is just the beginning of the wave of change that's going to affect not just America, not just the West, but the entire world through artificial intelligence.

Tim Wildmon: What are all these people going to do, though? Steve, if we're going to start seeing layoffs in big industries, in this case the tech industry, is that going to be a trend all around the country for corporations?

Guest: We've had this kind of thing before with the Industrial Revolution. Computers, robots, robotic machines, and mass-production machines changed everything over the years. I don't know. Maybe this is just another metamorphosis.

Guest: It is, but it took roughly a hundred years for us to go from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance. It took several hundred years, frankly, and it took decades for us to go from agriculture to industrialization in this country. This is going to happen practically overnight, and the shock wave is going to be horrific.

Guest: Mike Rowe, the "Dirty Jobs" guy, has been advocating for the last few years that instead of spending $200,000 to get a degree at a university, you ought to think about blue-collar jobs. We're going to need welders. We're going to need people who know how to construct buildings and do all of those sorts of things. There's always going to be a requirement for those types of jobs.

Guest: But the big push over the last 25 years has been, "Get into high tech." AI is coming along, and we don't need as many people for that.

Guest: It's in medicine, too. There have been a lot of good advances in medicine, but you're not going to need nearly as many technicians and nurses.

Guest: Americans have a way of adapting over time. I'm sure that will happen here, but all the AI coming into the job market is going to be a game changer.

Tim Wildmon: Ray, you're 70?

Guest: I'm 74.

Tim Wildmon: You're 74, and you grew up in Alabama.

Guest: Yep.

Tim Wildmon: I remember hearing stories from folks who are a little older than you, who grew up in Mississippi, about the cotton picker coming along. Before the cotton picker came along, you had individuals out in the cotton fields.

Guest: That's right.

Tim Wildmon: Did you do that?

Guest: No, I did not.

Tim Wildmon: You did not, but you know what I'm talking about. You knew a lot of people who did, right?

Guest: That's exactly right. They picked cotton by hand.

Tim Wildmon: Then the cotton picker, the field machine, the motorized cotton picker came in, and that changed everything.

Guest: I'm old enough to remember back in my elementary school days in Alabama, going back into the 1950s, when they let classes out in the fall for cotton-picking time.

Tim Wildmon: That's the whole point of daylight saving time, which we're thinking of doing away with, wasn't it? To let kids out for the summer?

Guest: It may have been, but I know there were states that grew cotton.

Tim Wildmon: What I'm talking about is that the field machine came in and changed everything. It did away with all the cotton pickers in the fields. People might say, "They're going to be laid off. They're not going to have jobs. What are they going to do?" We've always had advancements like that since the Industrial Age.

Guest: Back in the heyday of cotton, when cotton was king, you had people come up from Mexico and work seasonally in the Mid-South and other parts of Oklahoma, Texas, and the big cotton states. They were migrants. They would come up and work seasonally, pick the cotton, go back to Mexico, and come back the next year. There may not even have been any border checks, I don't know, but there wasn't a problem with massive illegal immigration. They came and went home when their jobs were over.

Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio. Tim, Fred, Steve, and Ray. Next story, Steve.

Guest: One of the ballot issues that Californians will be voting on this Tuesday is what's being called a wealth tax. It's one of the first proposals of its kind. It's called Proposition 40, and it would tax the accumulated wealth of any individual worth a billion dollars or more.

Guest: There's a problem here. If the Democrats have their way and start giving away free things, they're going to need to lower the threshold of who they're going to tax. Billionaires, millionaires, and rich people don't have bank accounts with a billion dollars in them. Their stock is worth a billion dollars, or they have ownership in a company or property worth that amount. All of that is included in their net worth, and they're considered a billionaire because of it.

Guest: So where is the cash that this tax is going to come from? Are they going to get the cash? They're going to have to sell or move. If this passes, California is getting ready to lose an awful lot of the capital of its rich people. There are a lot of rich people there. They think that by taxing them, they can pay for all their needs.

Tim Wildmon: I'm always amused by this. You're telling me that citizens of the state get to vote on whether to tax their fellow citizens?

Guest: That's what they're voting on.

Tim Wildmon: A proposition that would institute the tax?

Guest: Yes.

Tim Wildmon: Is it favored to win?

Guest: I did not look up the polling before I should have.

Tim Wildmon: We're always in favor of taxing the rich, right?

Guest: The rich pay more money.

Tim Wildmon: I don't fall into the category of what you would call rich or super-rich. Everybody has a different view of that. My dad used to say a rich person is somebody who makes more money than you do.

Guest: If that passes, people are voting on a tax on billionaires.

Tim Wildmon: Let me tell you what the billionaires are going to do. They're not billionaires because they're dumb.

Guest: That's right. They'll move.

Tim Wildmon: Why would they stay?

Guest: This is my personal opinion. I think it's immoral to have the masses, who aren't billionaires, say, "We're going to take 5% of your net worth because we want to," just because we're Robin Hood.

Tim Wildmon: Despite what you may think about the super wealthy, I'm just saying it's wrong to steal. To me, that's almost stealing somebody's money. No matter how rich they are, that's their money. If you want to make it part of the normal income tax system and not single these people out, then maybe that's different.

Guest: Those people will leave. They'll go to Florida or Texas, and they'll take their businesses and the jobs with them.

Tim Wildmon: Yes, they will. That'll be interesting to see, whether it passes or not.

Guest: The Berkeley IGS and Los Angeles Times poll from October 29 had it at 50% against and 42% for, so it was an eight-point margin.

Tim Wildmon: That it will lose?

Guest: That it will lose.

Guest: It's polling to lose, but they're going to be put on notice.

Tim Wildmon: If it loses, that will say something. It will show that the people of California realize they're going to hurt their own state if they run these people out because they make a lot more money than they do, perhaps.

Guest: They provide jobs, too.

Tim Wildmon: That's right.

Guest: I've never seen a poor person hire people.

Tim Wildmon: That's true. All right.

Guest: Thanks so much.

Tim Wildmon: You bet. Thank you.

Tim Wildmon: Thanks to Fred and Steve and Chris and Adam and Cole. Adam and Cole are behind the scenes, but they have value. They're doing very important jobs, and I'm not going to sock them with the homeowners association increase.

Guest: No, I'm not.

Tim Wildmon: We'll see you tomorrow, everybody.