life comes at you fast most of it is just smoke and mirrors we're here to clear the air whether
it's the can't make this up moments or the hard truths hitting our streets in our state
we're finding the signal and all that noise no spin no nonsense just the facts the fallout
and a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of humor grab your coffee it's time for the morning drip on wrto.fm radio free Georgia.
Hey everybody good morning welcome to the morning drip for Tuesday June 23rd 2026 it's me Grady D here with you this morning I hope you're doing well we're closing in on the end of the day
and it's a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit.
different way and I don't know it's I mean I don't expect to die at 60 but what's the old saying I've got more behind me than I have in front of me when it comes to life so yeah it was it was a it was a funny funny moment his response was my God like yeah I know I'm you're getting old and I know there are probably some of you out there that are a lot older than me and hey kudos
for you for you coming and listening to me live every Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday morning starting around 730 and the reason why I say around is because you know I have certain things I have to take care of in the morning and I'm I'm already up at five in the morning and by the time I get out here and I get all my ducks in a row and everything starts quacking like it's supposed to it may already be 735 we don't know you just don't know I know but anyway
in this day and age of digital audio and digital video and everything getting turned into a podcast does it really really matter if we start at 730 on the dot no it does not it does not and if you think so you're just a tiny bit too judgmental
oh well we are in the summer we have officially passed the summer solstice we are now in the official days of summer not the dog days of summer I think that's what around August somewhere in there but what is the one thing when you were growing up what was the one thing that you did during the summer I mean not not just going out and being goofy with
with your friends or you know hanging out at the pool I mean if you got to do that then you know kudos to you because you were you were special but for a lot of people this meant a summer job if you were old enough to work here in Georgia if I remember correctly with permission you can start working at 15 but at 16 you can just you don't have to have your parents permission or anything like that well it seems that the traditional
traditional summer job is becoming harder for American teenagers to find 60% of US teens work during the summer in the late 1970s but now we're looking at about one third of those in age range of 16 to 19 only one third of that age range held a job last summer and the economists and the employment experts they're weighing in
saying that the situation may be saying that the situation may be worsening as employers hire more cautiously they're also eliminating entry-level positions which is where a lot of summer help would be hired for and they are increasingly favoring experienced workers over first-time job seekers now this also to me this also touches on the whole minimum wage issue that we have in the United States and think about it
jobs jobs at fast food restaurants like your McDonald's your Burger King's Wendy's and all of that those especially in the 70s and 80s those were the entry-level jobs that teenagers were hired for those positions were never intended to be full-time positions for 16 17 18 and 19 year olds to make ends meet they literally were the summer job type openings and into
into the into the into the into the alts we started seeing more and more people in their 30s and 40s actually taking those jobs just because of no other opportunities out there especially when it came to companies that were hell bent on you having a college education which we have found that in most scenarios the college education means bupkis you're better off going to a trade school and actually learning a trade maybe in HVAC or diesel engine
repair or heavy machinery repair or heavy machinery repair or something like that I mean the technical schools are even better for computer sciences than colleges because colleges have a have a tendency to teach you the concepts the foundational principles but not the actual hands-on that you that you need that most companies that are trying to hire technical people actually need the number of stories I've heard of where
you know a green 20 23 24 year old college graduate who's got a bachelor's in computer science can't even figure out how to take a power supply out of a pc and replace it or take a hard drive out or swap out memory or things like that how to run a ping on the network to see if a device is down or not so yeah I think it connects to that that too it's hard for a teenager to get a job at McDonald's
at 16 when a 45 year old when a 45 year old is holding that job and four other ones just to make ends meet anyway I digress many teenagers report submitting dozens or even hundreds of applications without receiving offers and I've actually seen some of this in our in our local Facebook groups here in Tifton you know parents asking around who's hiring because their teenage child has submitted 20 30 40
at places that have big, bold, help wanted signs and still don't get a call back or are told the position's not available or, you know, some nonsense.
But jobs that once served as a gateway into the workforce, again, particularly in retail and food service, well, those jobs have become more competitive as businesses operate with leaner staffing models.
And again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, they prefer
a manager.
They don't want that anymore.
They want you to go online.
Hell, I even saw that back in 2012.
You go online, you fill out an application and you hope and you pray.
And now with automated systems, you submit a resume and a job application, and it's an automated system that basically filters through it and deems it worthy or not to be pushed on up the chain so that an actual hiring manager gets to see it.
So let me just go.
and it's a financial franchise, whether it's a franchise, whether it's a franchise, whether it's a franchise.
into your future career, it's a stepping stone. It's like your first stepping stone. I've looked
at every one of the jobs I've had in my life as a stepping stone to the next job. It taught me
something or prepared me for something that was going to be needed in the next job that I had.
And so without that first stepping stone, a lot of this younger generation,
it's a detriment, it's a detriment, it's a detriment. It's a detriment. It's a detriment. And there are stories from around the country that are revealing growing frustration among some very motivated students who are eager to get out there and work, but they just can't get their foot in the door. And eventually some of them do find employment after months of searching. But you still have a large majority left wondering why help wanted signs seem to be everywhere.
But there are no actual jobs being offered when they go and they apply. So this is one of America's classic rites of passage, that summer job. And this generation that's having difficulty finding these summer jobs are finding out very quickly that that summer job can no longer be taken for granted because it may not actually be there. It may not actually be there.
Hey, let me know your thoughts. Our phone lines are open. 229-520-5957. Or you can send a text to that same number, 24-7-229-520-5957. Or drop us an email, morningdrip at wrto.fm.
Did you have a summer job growing up? Probably several summers. Are you a parent of a young teenager, 16 to 19, somewhere in there, that is looking for a summer job but cannot find one?
Are they running into this same scenario that we've been talking about this morning? Bunch of help wanted signs every damn where, but they can't seem to catch a break and get a job.
Let me know. I want to hear from you. We're going to take a short break. We'll be back in a bit.
Your alarm clock is a liar. It says it's time to wake up, but you're still sleepwalking through life.
Stop the snooze. Start the brew. It's The Morning Drip on wrto.fm. We're serving up unfiltered truth, questionable advice, and enough caffeine-fueled energy to power the entire Piedmont Plateau.
The Morning Drip. Because sleeping in is for people with nothing to say. Weekdays, only on Radio Free Georgia.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Morning Drip. It is me, Grady D, here with you on this Tuesday morning, the 23rd of June.
And this segment is brought to you by Visible. You've heard me talk about them. You should know them. You should love them.
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All right. So, we recently talked about job problems.
Let's talk about health care issues.
You know, the fun topics that you talk about at a little soiree where there's too much drink and probably not enough food.
A new Gallup survey suggests that health care affordability is becoming a growing challenge for Americans across nearly every income and age group.
You think? According to this poll, only 49% of Americans were considered, quote, cost secure in 2025.
And what that means is that they had access to quality health care and could afford routine medical expenses such as doctor's visits and prescriptions.
That is down sharply from 61% in 2022.
And this also is the lowest level Gallup has recorded since they began tracking this measure in 2021.
And these financial concerns are widespread.
More than half of those surveyed said that they worry about paying for medical care over the next year.
42% expressed concern about affording prescription medications.
And this is no longer limited to lower income households.
This study found that roughly one third of households earning between $120,000 and $180,000 reported affordability challenges.
And even among households making more than $180,000, about one in five struggled with health care costs or coverage.
And younger adults, not only with the job issue, but they're feeling the greatest strain.
About one third of those ages 18 to 29 have classified cost as being cost secure.
Only about one third, ages 18 to 29, classified as cost secure.
They also note that the situation may have worsened since the survey was conducted because this predates the expiration of the Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies in early 2026, which led to higher premiums for many consumers.
My family is one of them.
I have talked about this before.
I went from paying because I can only get insurance through the marketplace because I am self-employed.
All right.
And I went from paying roughly, I want to say, but for me and my wife and we had a policy and my daughter who still lives at home, another policy.
So I was covering both of these.
I want to say ours was $175 a month.
Hers was about $35 a month.
The whole damn thing went up to over $1,800 a month because these enhanced subsidies were never extended.
So we had to drop it.
We had to drop it.
I cannot afford spending $1,800 on the promise or the insurance against some major medical catastrophe just wiping us out.
I'm of the mindset, and I've said this before.
If I were to be stricken down with cancer, I've had a good run because I'm not going to put my family through it.
We're not going to be financially ruined just to try to save my life because of this fucked up healthcare industry and insurance industry that we have in the United States.
The findings of this poll underscore a broader trend that is despite advances in medicine and insurance coverage options, the ability to comfortably afford healthcare remains out of reach for a significant portion of the U.S. population, which is sad.
We are the richest nation on the planet.
We also happen to be the one that's in debt the most.
What are we at?
$40 trillion now?
Hey, Elon, now that you're the world's first trillionaire, what do you think?
Can you help a brother out?
I mean, let's be real.
I'm not against making money.
I'm not against capitalism as a concept.
And I'm not for communism or socialism, which, by the way, a lot of you fuckers out there don't know the difference.
Socialism is not communism and communism is not socialism and democratic socialism is neither one of those.
But the point is, we are the richest, the wealthiest nation on the planet.
330 million of us, roughly.
And we cannot, we can spend $120 billion.
That's with a B.
A billion is $1,000 million.
A trillion is $1,000 billion.
Can you wrap your head around that?
$110 to $120, I think is the last number I saw.
Billion dollars that has been spent on this dumbass war with Iran that should have never, ever happened.
And we're coming out of this.
We didn't win this war at all.
We're trying to figure out a way to gracefully walk out of it, to back out of it.
And the great dealmaker in chief doesn't know how to make a damn deal at all.
He's going to wind up with a worse deal with the Iranians than the one that he shit-canned when he got in office the first time around.
The one that the Obama administration worked on for years and years.
But we can spend $120 billion on this war.
We can give the Iranians $300 billion to rebuild the country that we kept blowing up.
But we cannot afford to figure out how to take care of our own citizens.
$330 million of us here in the United States.
We work.
We pay our taxes.
We pay into the system.
We do what we're supposed to do.
And then as soon as we get stricken down with some kind of ailment, it's like, oh, sucks to be you.
Hope you can mortgage, put a second mortgage on your home to be able to afford your treatments so that maybe you can eke out another 10, 15, or 20 years of life.
And don't get me wrong.
You know, if you come down with cancer and you're like, look, at all costs, I want to live because I want to be able to see my grandchildren.
I want to be able to experience as much of a quality life as I can to be with family.
I get it.
I'm not saying that that's a terrible idea.
I'm just saying that for me and my family, I've already told them that if it comes down to if I'm ever diagnosed with some form of cancer that is going to require chemo treatments or operations or something,
that is going to financially decimate our family because we cannot afford $1,800 a month for bullshit coverage, I'm just, I've had a good run.
Peace out, brother.
That's my feeling.
How are you and your family on the health insurance side of things?
Did you get screwed over when they didn't extend those enhanced ACA credits?
Do you currently have health care insurance like through a provider or something?
I'm curious.
Let me know your situation.
Phone lines are open 229-520-5957 or you can send a text 24-7-229-520-5957 or you can email us and that email address is morningdrip at wrto.fm.
We're going to take another short break and we'll be back.
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Hey, welcome back.
It's me, Grady D here with you this morning on the Morning Drip.
It is Tuesday, the 23rd of June.
We are barreling toward that 4th of July.
Y'all got plans for the 4th of July?
You going to do anything?
250th birthday of the great United States of America.
The great United States of America.
Yes, I still love this country.
I still think it's one of the greatest countries in the world.
Just not as great as it once was.
But you know what?
We can get back there.
All right.
We're in our final segment.
So if you want to call in and talk about anything we've discussed this morning, now's your chance.
229-520-5957.
Because after the live broadcast of the show is done, those phone lines go dark.
But you can text 24-7, same number, 229-520-5957.
Or shoot us an email, day or night, morningdrip at wrto.fm.
All right.
Let's talk about SpaceX.
Just 10 days after its blockbuster IPO, the one that made Elon Musk the first trillionaire in the world.
And the thing you need to understand, Elon Musk does not have a trillion dollars.
A lot of people get caught up in this brouhaha of, oh, he's a trillionaire and, you know, he's worth one point whatever trillion dollars.
Okay, that means jack crap if he suddenly needed to have a trillion dollars in cash because that's not what this means.
And honestly, something that I saw before I continue with this, something I saw a few days ago was the fact that these rich people like Musk and Bezos and all that are worth X billions or now trillions of dollars should not be able to use that as collateral when they borrow money.
Because it's not real cash.
You know, collateral is supposed to be an asset, whether it's cold, hard cash or an asset that actually could be sold to cover the totality of the debt.
You know, if I'm borrowing $100,000, I need to put up collateral that if I default on the loan, the bank or the lending institution can take said collateral and sell it to recoup their money.
That's the whole that's the way finances work.
So we have this asshole Elon Musk worth over a trillion dollars now, the first trillionaire, but he doesn't actually have access to a trillion dollars.
Okay, let me get off that soapbox.
So SpaceX has experienced a sharp pullback.
Shares fell about 23% from their post IPO high.
They debuted at roughly $160.90 per share.
They climbed to $201.80 per share within days.
And then when the stock closed Monday, yesterday at $154.60, this left many retail investors who bought after the offering with little or no remaining gain.
Because that's the whole point of the stock market for investors.
You buy low, sell high.
So if you happen to buy at a certain price point and then the stock starts just coming down, you've lost money.
You have no choice but hang in there for the long term.
Which is what Warren Buffett, that's how he made his billion.
So there you go.
This decline comes despite SpaceX still carrying an enormous market valuation of roughly $2 trillion.
Remember, a billion is a thousand million.
A trillion is a thousand billion.
Wrap your head around that if you can.
It's hard enough for the average person to spend a billion dollars.
Can you imagine a trillion?
You just, it's unfathomable.
But it's rough, worthly, it's worth roughly $2 trillion.
It generated more than $85 billion through this public offering.
Investors appear to be reassessing the company's near-term financing needs after reports that SpaceX may seek to raise at least another $20 billion through a bond offering.
Some analysts are saying that the prospect of additional debt has raised some concerns about the substantial capital required to fund the company's ambitious technology, which is space and artificial intelligence projects.
The sell-off also occurred during a broader downturn in technology stocks.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite fell 1.3%.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.43%.
Investors are concerned, as they should be, about inflation.
Borrowing costs.
The massive spending requirements associated with artificial intelligence infrastructure.
And SpaceX still remains one of the world's most valuable companies.
This rapid drop illustrates a common pattern following major IPOs.
You have this initial enthusiasm that drives up the stock price sharply.
And then investors start focusing on fundamentals and valuation and future financing requirements, which is something I think you should probably go into this thinking about step one before you get caught up in all the hype of a particular stock.
Whether it's SpaceX or whether it's Amazon or any of them, honestly.
Two things you need to keep in mind.
Number one, the only thing that SpaceX has going for it that it's actually making money on is Starlink.
That's it.
And I hate to admit it because I can't stand Elon Musk, but that is some damn great technology.
If you're in an area where you honestly cannot get good dependable internet service, broadband, 100 megabit or more, Starlink is a damn good option.
It beats the pants off of the previous, which I say previous, but they still offer service like HughesNet.
And I started, I lived in rural Ben Hill County.
My options for the longest time was just simply dial up.
And then I got direct PC, which was satellite downlink to me with an uplink still over the telephone.
So I still had to have a dial up internet connection.
I still had to pay at the time it was surf south.
I still had to pay for that dial up connection.
And so what it did is it would send, like if I'm going to a website, it would send the request through the dial up, but then would pull down over the satellite link.
And I could get up to like 40 megabit or something like that.
The latency was horrible.
You did not want to try to play online games on it.
And I had a friend that lives in Kentucky that that was his connection.
He may have had the two-way because at one point they actually came out with the two-way where you didn't have to have the dial up component.
And I think that's what he had.
And I eventually did upgrade to that too.
And it was better.
The latency was still an issue.
So imagine over Skype trying to carry on a conversation while you're recording a podcast.
He and I had to learn this trick of gauging because for those who are technically inclined, the average latency on HughesNet is about 700 milliseconds.
A thousand milliseconds is a second.
When you're trying to have a conversation with someone, that latency, you can wind up just stepping all over each other.
Starlink uses LEOs, which is low-Earth orbital satellites.
The latency is on par with like cable broadband and DSL.
Not as good as fiber, but you can do voice communications over it.
You can actually do online games like World of Warcraft.
Maybe not first-person shooters that requires a little bit of latency, but I don't know.
You may can still do that.
But if you're in an area, and I'm not stumping for Starlink.
I'm just simply saying that it's a good product.
I hate to say it because I can't stand Elon Musk, but it's a good product.
That's the only damn thing that SpaceX actually makes money off of.
The rockets and all of that, that's subsidized by the federal government.
We pay for that.
And in my opinion, NASA has shirked its duty and responsibility to be the leader in space exploration.
We're now relying on private companies, well, now publicly traded companies.
SpaceX, Blue Origin from Jeff Bozo Bezos.
Yeah.
So if you got caught up in the hype, I mean, I had the opportunity to buy some of this stock because
it was available on Robinhood, which is the only way I can afford to buy stocks.
I have to buy it in partials, which I am so happy that there's a company like Robinhood out
there that lets me do small investments like this.
And I, and I realized, you know, if you, the old adage, go big or grow home, that's the way
it is in the stock market.
If you can't put a lot of money into the stock market, you're not really going to see the
returns.
The second thing, before I forget, the stock market is not the damn economy.
Okay.
It's not, it's not the economy.
The economy is us buying groceries.
The economy is us buying gasoline.
The economy is us trying to afford healthcare.
That's the economy.
So when someone like a Pam Bondi is saying the Dow is over, the stock market's over 50,000,
that only matters to the rich people.
It doesn't matter to me and you.
Those of us who are just trying to make ends meet and buy groceries, put foot on the table,
make sure that we can continue to keep a roof over our heads and pay our mortgages.
And our homeowner's insurance and our car payments and the insurance on our cars and
all of that.
That's the economy and hopefully can have a little bit of discretionary funds left over
at the end of the month.
So maybe you can go out and enjoy a nice meal with your significant other or your family or
what have you.
That's the fucking economy, people, not the goddamn stock market.
I don't have a bone to pick with the stock market, but it's gambling.
That is all it is.
And the mere fact that an individual like Donald Trump can make comments that affect whether
the stock market goes up or the stock market goes down.
He comes out on Truth Social and says, we have a framework for a deal.
We're going to end this war with Iran.
The stock market goes up.
A day later, it all falls apart.
The stock market goes down.
I don't have millions of dollars in the stock market that I see those kinds of gains and losses.
I pay for gasoline at the pump.
I buy groceries from Walmart.
My budget used to be $125 a week on groceries.
I can't get by with less than $150 to $175 on average.
I'm tracking.
I think my average monthly now is about $680 a month from January.
It's already $20 higher per month than last year.
So pardon me if I don't give a rat's ass about what SpaceX stocks are doing.
Okay, anyway, that's it.
I'll get off the soapbox and I'll let you get on with your day.
I want to thank you if you were here listening live Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning around 730 a.m.
If you were here, thank you for taking the time out of your busy morning to listen to the show.
I'd love for you to weigh in whenever you get an opportunity.
But as I'm ending the show, the phone lines are now closed.
But you can still text 24-7-229-520-5957 or you can send us an email.
And that email address is morningdrip at wrto.fm.
If you weren't fortunate enough to listen to the show while it was live, don't you worry.
Go to morningdrip.show.
All of these episodes are converted into podcasts that are free for seven days.
And then if you want to listen to the back catalog, it's just $7 a month.
Become a member.
I would greatly appreciate it.
All right, everybody.
I hope you have a wonderful Tuesday.
The weather looks like it's going to be, I guess, decent.
At least the heat index is not going to be 105 today.
But take care of yourselves.
Have a wonderful Tuesday.
And we'll see you back here in the morning with me, Grady D, for another episode of The Morning Drip.
Good morning, everybody.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.