owns. So I'm going to have no patience, no patience with the people who say that in that first week some more people knew what to do. That just isn't a thing.

And let me say again that on January 24th I was cursing in public online saying close the airports a full week before the president did, I think something like that. Now, do I say I'm a genius because I got that right? In hindsight it looks right. I do not. That was my opinion. And when I said we should close the airports and I was damn certain about it, does that mean I was right? No. Does that mean that it turns out I was right, but did I know it at the time? I thought I knew it, but nobody's really that smart.

Do I blame the president for waiting a few days? I prefer he had gone earlier. But blame is sort of a child's game here because I didn't know what the president knew. So all I knew was there's something bad happening in China. Close the airports. Now when I said it, and many of you experienced it live, it was sort of a shocking moment where people who didn't quite know how big the problem would become, my reaction to it probably looked completely out of place.

But here's the thing. Did I do that because I was smarter than you? Did I do it because I've got a grudge against China, which I do? Did I do it because I'm some expert on epidemiology? No, I can't even pronounce it. But don't let anybody else tell you just because maybe they were on the right side and they got it early like I did. I think Jack Posobiec was even earlier than that. I think on January 22nd he had tweeted close the borders. I think he said something like close travel. But basically he was on it more than a week before the president closed it.

Do I say therefore, oh, Jack Posobiec and I were the geniuses. We knew, and gosh, anybody who didn't know and do what we suggested got it wrong? No, I don't. Because I'm a frickin' adult and I've been in the world and I know what it's like to be in the room. If you're in the room, you know a lot more than a cartoonist in California sitting in front of his iPad shouting F-bombs saying close the travel to and from China. I thought I knew and I thought it was important enough to get people's attention. So it was fully considered. But no, I didn't know what they knew. I didn't have an economist saying, yeah, if you do the math you're going to kill more people closing down the economy than if you maybe wait a little. I don't know what happened in the room. Who knows what the president was told? Who knows what the counterpoints were? Who knows what the opinions are?

So here's my thing. I'm going to say it a million times because maybe nothing has ever been more important. Judge what the administration does by their corrections, not the mistakes. Because in an emergency it's nothing but guessing and making mistakes. See what happened in correcting. So if you're only judging the guessing and making mistakes part without the correcting part, you're not part of the productive world. You're not looking at it correctly. It's not an adult opinion. It's almost like a childlike opinion. Yeah, I know what the President of the United States and all of his experts should have done without being there in the room, without having the knowledge.

All right, so enough on that. Let me give you another perfect example. The government, the administration, is looking at cash payments to citizens to keep people eating and get them through the crisis. And look at this. You're seeing a reproduction of the fog of war around this question of what to do to stabilize the economy. This is very similar in type, I don't want to make an analogy, but it's similar in type because of the unknowns to the original decision that the president and his administration had about what to do about the virus. So this new fog of war is just a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

You know some of the smartest people in the world are saying that a trillion-ish dollars should be pumped into the economy. Now remember these are the smartest people in the government are saying I think about a trillion, put it in there. Meanwhile you may know this name, Ray Dalio, said the stimulus package is way too small and should be maybe doubled. Doubled. A hundred percent difference. We're talking about an extra trillion dollars.

Now who's Ray Dalio? Do you care? Well you should, because everybody who's smart knows Ray Dalio is like the smart guy of the smart guys, right? Maybe in this world of finance and economics, the people who know this world, and I count myself at least a little bit knowledgeable about it. Mike, if anybody's new here, I've got a background in economics degree, MBA, and I've worked in corporate America for a long time. So Ray Dalio was somebody that would be very familiar to me. Actually I happen to have his book downstairs.

And if he goes in the room and says the right number is two trillion and other people were just as smart, you know, Ray Dalio, Mohamed El-Erian and all of those cats, they're all in the same room and one of them says the right number is a trillion and somebody else smart says the right number is two trillion, who is the smart one? The answer is nobody knows. It's sort of guesswork. So that's how big the difference is, that the most qualified and well-informed experts could be that far apart.

So they're going to try something, right? So in the end there will either be a check or not a check, and that check will be a certain amount and not some other certain amount. We're going to try it. If it isn't right, we're going to correct. Judge the correction. You can see this one forming. If it's too little and they correct, that was the right move. If it's too much, well I don't know if you can do too much. Can you? Is that even a thing? So look for the corrections. Fast corrections for your assumption of competence. Don't look for the first guess because the smartest people in the world are not anywhere near the same page. So you should not be second-guessing the smartest people in the world and say, well if I were there it's a trillion. I think it's 1.2 trillion. That's the right amount.

All right, let's talk about the idea itself. So the sticking point here is that at least the way it's been floated is that there'd be a $100,000, $99,000, whatever cutoff, and you wouldn't get a check if your income is above that. I don't know if that's family or individual, but the details don't matter as much as the principle.

Now what would happen to the country in terms of our unity, our national mood, etc., if only the people under a certain income get that money? And we all know, you don't have to be a genius, you don't have to be Ray Dalio to know this, that there would be plenty of people above a hundred thousand, maybe below 150, whatever the number is, they lost their job and they can't buy food. There are plenty of people, there have to be tens of millions of people in the category that they make more than that on paper but they can't buy groceries because they didn't get a paycheck this week. There have to be plenty of people.

So what happens if they don't get any money and other people do? Well there could be plenty of complaining and there's going to be a lot of people saying, you know, what's going on? So let me toss out one possibility and I'm just going to put that out there. I don't know if this is a good idea. Again, to my point, more people can disagree greatly in this field of great unknowns.

Suppose you did this, and I'll just put it out there as a suggestion. I don't even know if it's a good one. There is something very different about this situation that cannot be compared to anything that we humans and especially we Americans have ever been in. It has to do with the fact that we're all on the same team for all practical purposes. That's a different situation and it allows maybe some different strategies.

Let me just put this out here. And I said it once as a thought experiment but I'm getting more serious about it now. It's still just a thought but a little more serious. And it goes like this. Could you trust the people who have sufficient incomes to get through the emergency, I would be one of them, could you trust them to donate their money back? In other words, if you just gave money to everybody with no regard to income, could you trust that the billionaires, the millionaires, or just the people who didn't lose their paycheck, could you trust that they would donate it intelligently in their community?

Give everybody a check and say, you know, you're President of