NFTs are now WORTHLESS, IRS is Using AI, Auto Workers on Strike & The World's Most Expensive Cars

And last but not least we're going to look at the top five most expensive cars in the world and you won't believe how much the top one costs. If you're watching us on any of the podcast platforms anywhere YouTube podcasts Apple TV doesn't really matter make sure to just give us a like hit the ring button and give us a five star review. But to start off let's jump right into it and I want to talk to you about the UAW strikes and how it's going to be a huge win for Tesla. So I don't know if you're familiar with UAW it's the United Auto Workers Union. This is a is a group of workers that are grouped together to try to make sure they get equal or proper wages according to what they believe is right. So in 1937 the first union auto workers group was formed in Flint Michigan at the General Motors facility there. You know you can look into the Teamsters unionization and going back and you can see that there's you know mob ties and things like that. So it's pretty interesting to really look at the unions themselves. But right now we're not going to really dive into the union world. We're just going to talk about what's going on here in September 23. See what's going on with the unions and how the strikes going to affect our economy and affect people and workers and basically help the bottom line of Elon Musk's pocketbook. And so right now what's going on for the auto workers union is that there is they're requesting a 40 percent pay increase from the big three of American automakers. That's General Motors, Stellantis who's formerly known as Chrysler and Ford. Now they're not really targeting Ford so much because Ford's kind of doing aggressive negotiation negotiations. So there's no strikes taking place currently at any Ford factory facilities in the United States. However, Stellantis, Chrysler and General Motors have strikes and the union announced that they're going to expand the strikes to 38 separate locations and not include Ford in any one of those locations. Now a full strike would cost estimations. So that means the whole United Auto Workers does a full strike that would include Ford. Estimations from Deutsche Bank said that would cost anywhere from 400 to 500 million dollars a week in revenue for the automakers. Half a billion dollars a week or two billion dollars a month. That's a lot of money. So obviously the hopes are always to get things off the ground. Now, the United Auto Workers said if they did a full scale strike, the entire supply chain and the economy, micro economy that's around the entire auto industry in the United States would suffer about five billion dollars every 10 days. That's, again, a huge number. Fundamentally, what this is affecting is General Motors has 46,000 workers. Ford has 57,000 workers. Stellantis has 43,000 workers. So you're looking at roughly about 140,000 workers in the United States either being laid off because of strikes or striking because they want better wages. That offer was rejected. And it makes a lot of sense. If you look at like food inflation right now, you're at 29 percent year over year. They interchange different items in that basket of food, which makes it a little sticky and a lot messy. Because if the bag, for example, eggs, we all know eggs went to like eight dollars a carton. Now they're back down to two, you know, and that was an item that was removed from the initial basket that they were talking about. So when you look at inflation numbers, that 29 percent increase is taking the same basket of food from 2022 to now in 2023 and not changing out items to make sure that we have a real number of inflation based on that basket of items. And that's around 29 percent. And so the truth of the matter is, is right now the UAW is looking to get that 40 percent, you know, add 10 percent for the increase and then cover the 30 percent inflation costs. And the truth is, I think if Stellantis and UAW and everybody came together, 30 percent would probably seal the deal. This would all be over. But there was a strike in 2019. GM had for 40 days. It cost the company three point six billion dollars in revenue. That's that's pretty crazy. Just one company costing that much money. So that those are kind of interesting statistics to look at. Now, the union has lost 45 percent of its members in the last 21 years because of outsourcing to places like China where labor doesn't have a cost. It's more like forced labor for people that are prisoners and prisoners of conscience. When I talk about prisoners of conscience, I'm talking about people that have religious beliefs, have spoken out against the atrocities created by the CCP. And then they turn around and use those people for forced labor. I'm not saying they're making cars, but I do know that they make things like Homer Simpson slippers. So interestingly enough, Elon with this whole UAW thing could be a very, very clear winner. As the EV market starts to really grip hold in the United States, Elon has fought against the UAW unionizing Tesla since 2017. And right now his cost per hour for labor is around forty five dollars. And anybody who's unionized their cost per hour is around sixty three dollars per hour. So he's able to save himself a significant amount of money, therefore increasing his profits. But not only that, he has no time lapse where he's not in production, not doing sales, not worrying about people quitting on the job. But they're actually sitting there working, making money as he slashes prices left and right this year on all of the Teslas. He's taking over market share and the companies like Ford, Chrysler and GM who want to be in the EV world are having more and more difficult times going in and actually saving that part of their sector when they have things like UAW strikes. So there's a lot of people on Wall Street saying that Elon could turn it around pretty quick based on that number. Let's see how long this strike really goes on and see how much there could be saved. Another thing to look at that I want to talk about today is the IRS announced this week that they're going to use artificial intelligence to look for people in auditing. So right now, when you file your taxes, you play like the audit lottery. That means who knows if you're going to get audited, who knows not. This is according to the IRS. What they want to do is they want to take the AI and the data and constantly keep interrogating it by the algorithm that they have for the AI. This will create kind of like a whole different platform for them to go after. Now, the IRS plans to use the money received from the Tax Reduction Act to purchase AI technology and target larger corporations and millionaires. Now, they did reiterate again that they will not increase audits for those making less than $400K a year. But interestingly enough, they did announce this year that they're going to start tax collections on people who have made over $600 on reselling event tickets. This comes in the light of Taylor Swift's massive record-breaking tour. The new code will require the third-party ticketing agencies like StubHub and Vivid Seats to submit a file to anyone who has sold tickets totaling over $600. So the average ticket resale price for Taylor Swift's tour this year was $1,095. So if you sold one ticket for Taylor Swift's tour, you're going to have to file with the IRS. So Vivid Seats, StubHub, companies like that are now required to provide that information directly to the IRS when they file for anybody who's sold tickets on their sites. Now, I know somebody personally that made about $20,000 on reselling tickets that they had at a stadium in the Northeast for Taylor Swift's tour. They have about 20 season tickets there for football games, and they get, obviously, the first right of refusal on any concert-going tickets. So it's interesting to really think about how that's going to work and how it's going to come together along with this AI. So I wonder what the real purpose is there and how it's going to work. Obviously, they're not really on track with a whole lot of stuff. Their ability to form and function is a lot less than, I would say, a privately held company. Even though they are not technically part of the U.S. government, they're still as poorly handled as the Postal Service. So we'll see how that turns out down the road. But talking about AI, interestingly enough, there's a company called S2W Data, which is out of South Korea. They came out with DarkBERT. DarkBERT AI is the counterpart to ChatGPT. So in the Internet, you have the surface web, which is the normal stuff everybody sees. You and I are always on, like, Google, Facebook, things like that. That only consists of 5% of what's available on the total web. And then you have the dark web, where you have to use a torrent to get in, to go through and search. This is where all the illegal drug sales, trafficking, all the dark, dirty things of society take place. And so S2W is a company that's based around using AI to have data security and to prevent cyber attacks and things like that. And in the wake of what happened last month or so with MGM, I think this is about the perfect time to launch the DarkBERT. Now, DarkBERT really is interesting because when placed against ChatGPT, it wins every single time. So this company, S2W, which is really a startup company started in 2018, has 11 different investors for venture capital. And they've now filed 12 patents that are pending for crawling the web. So it's really interesting to look at how DarkBERT can affect things. And now that there's not this restriction of data. So you have companies like Meta or like Google that really restrict what information you see and you don't see. So S2W is now going to a place where there is no restriction in the entire black web world. So it's really interesting to see what's going to take place there and how this new DarkBERT is coming into play and how this web crawling technology. And really, is it going to catapult S2W into the light? And they say they're not going to offer it publicly. I think it would be very interesting if you were able to get results from a dark web AI service. I mean, that would be a little scary. And at the same time, it would be very interesting to see what kind of information it could provide. It's not like ChatGPT, where it runs a couple of years behind. It's not using live, unlike BARD for Google's AI, where they're using real time data to give you artificial intelligence. You have DarkBERT on the back end is using real time data to go through and scan everything. So I would be interested in actually asking it some questions to see what it came up with. But as we move on and we're talking about meta and we're talking about companies that have the surface web information, NFTs, non fungible tokens, really catapulted the metaverse in 2021 to being in everybody's ears. And what happened was, is you had Decentraland, which is a place on the metaverse where you could buy actual land, not actual land, but metaverse land. And some of it sold for $900,000 apiece in US dollars. And then the NFT market totally crashed. So you had in the first few days of the NFT, the first 500 days as an artist by people that sold for almost $70 million. That kind of started in March 2021, the NFT craze and everything just took off. It went pretty crazy after that, where NFTs, the average NFT price was at $3,000 per unit. I mean, this to me compares to modern art, not a super fan of it, where people are just willing to pay whatever astronomical price that comes along. So you had NFTs, the most selling, most of them were selling for almost $200,000 apiece. So in January 2022, it was $17 billion worth of NFTs that changed hands. That same amount had fallen to $400 million by November of 2022. And we have not seen a rebound in the NFT market at all. Along with the crypto market going down, but the crypto still holding strong, you have Bitcoin fluctuating between $18,000 and $30,000. But the NFT market has basically wiped out $9 billion in circulation. So the real question is, will it come back? And the truth is, is the metaverse has kind of felt the effects of it. If you're not familiar with the metaverse, that's where Google is, or not Google, where Facebook is really pushing people to experience things on the web. So the metaverse is the Oculus and virtual reality and things like that. And so a lot of their communities were funding the development through NFTs, selling land in places like I mentioned to central land and allowing it to really be catapulted by that. Now, with the death of the NFT, you kind of have metaverse at a complete stall. They haven't made money. They're losing money. They're trying to redevelop. They're coming out with the Oculus 3. They have the Oculus Pro. Apple's coming out with their vision. And so there's certain things that could help it come together. But I think augmented reality is really what society is going to push forward. And as soon as we have a headset that's more like a pair of glasses like Google Glass, you can see a lot more integration initially until society is so miserable to be in that people just want to live in the metaverse. Which part of me thinks that that's the plan is to make society that miserable. I hope it never gets that way. I hope that everything looks OK. But with a company like meta dumping billions of dollars into it and then using NFTs to sell parcels inside the central land, we'll find out if it's really worth what's being said and how it's working. But ultimately, I don't see virtual reality taking a very strong hold into the marketplace until it becomes a lot less cumbersome for the actual hardware. Now, touch a little bit more lightly. One thing I want to talk about is the top five most expensive cars in the world today. We're going to start at number five, the Rolls Royce Sweeptail. It's coming in at 13 million dollars. This is a one of one car. Number four is the Spyros Panopolis. And it's an ultra car. It's 14.4 million dollars. Then we have number three, the Pagani Zonda HP Barchetta. That's 17.6 million dollars. Another supercar. They're only making three of these. Then there's the Bugatti LaVouteur Noir. It's 18.7 million dollars. Again, this car is just a beast with a B16 engine. And last but not least on this list is the Rolls Royce Boattail coming in at 28 million dollars. Look for Rolls Royce in the next decade to start putting out yachts. These two cars on the list are definitely boat worthy. Now, when I initially started looking in this, I was like, OK, so Bugatti is going to be, you know, maybe three, four or five million. They don't even make the list with that number. Now, Bugatti did make the top five list, but four and five million dollar cars are way down on the line. The number one most expensive production car today is called the Rolls Royce Boattail. This car is 28 million dollars and there's only three of them to be made. But it is a ridiculously expensive car. It's bespoke. I mean, you're talking about a coach build. It's just a really awesome, awesome car, you know. But but for 28 million dollars, I mean, you could buy a whole lot of Ferraris for 28 million dollars and different things that no one would even know. But these these are pretty much for the the sultans and the people in the Arab Emirates who who, you know, I've seen stories about how Rolls Royces are left dead on the side of the road. So this Rolls Royce is by far one of the coolest looking ones I've ever seen. Yeah, this is it. That's the Boattail right there. It's got a crazy amount of unique features. If you scroll down a little bit, you'll definitely see that there's a whole bunch there for these vehicles. And Rolls Royce, you know, again, bar none. They take two of the top five spots, actually, with the most expensive cars. And the Boattail comes in at number one with 28 million. And there you can see it. It's got kind of this classic look. You can see how it's got the similar boat tail that you would see on the back of a yacht or a speedboat where it's kind of looks like it's got the wood inlay. I'm pretty sure that's carbon fiber. But it's a it's a unique looking vehicle. You know, I don't think many people in the world recognize it. They think, oh, it's another Rolls Royce until they realize that it's, you know, a 28 million dollar vehicle. Next on the list is a Bugatti LaVetteur Noir. Now, the Bugatti comes in at number two at 18.7 million dollars. Fifteen hundred horsepower with an 8.1 liter B16 engine goes zero to 60 in 2.4 seconds and a top speed of 260 miles an hour. I mean, I don't know what else you get, but the next one on our list is the Pagani Zonda HB Barchetta, which is 17.6 million dollars. And that's number three on our list. Again, this is one of the vehicles that's truly special. It's a 25th year kind of anniversary edition of the Bugatti of the Pagani Zonda. It's commonly known as the Barchetta. It's it's just a really unique looking vehicle. It kind of gives you that old style feel when you look at it. And if you scroll down, you can kind of see where it's at. Yeah. So you can kind of see like that older race car with the mirrors on the sides and it's kind of got that. But it's got the rear covered wheels. It's a pretty amazing vehicle. Again, 17.6 million. Now, number four on the list is by a Greek automotive maker. They call this the Chaos. Now, the company that makes the Chaos is the Spyros Pananopoulos, which released two ultra cars. They're not even calling them super cars. They're calling them ultra cars. And when you hear about how this car is, it makes sense why they're calling it an ultra. This thing has a carbon fiber turbo. Along with that, it goes zero to 60 in one point nine seconds. Now, I was in a Porsche and came in and I went zero to 60. I thought it was pretty ridiculous. One of my friends thought he was going to black out. It's a pretty intense thing that happens in those vehicles. Now, with this car, it's got 2048 horsepower with a V10 engine. And that's the base model starting with 2048. And there it is. The car looks absolutely stunning, but fully loaded. You're talking about 3065 horsepower going from zero to 60 in one point five seconds. Just absolutely mind blowing how fast this car can go. A few things that really stuck out to me is 3D printed magnesium wheels and brakes. That's that's some next level stuff there. Definitely Formula One status on this vehicle. And last but not least is another Rolls Royce sweeptail comes in at 13 million dollars. It's one of one. They're not going to make a lot of these. It's a one off car, but it is again, it's got that kind of boat feeling for for the back of the car. And if you move down a little there, you'll see that the whole car kind of gives you that that feeling of being on a on a nice high end ski boat like a Mastercraft or something like that. So so again, Rolls Royce is leaning more towards the yachts. And I wouldn't be surprised to see Rolls Royce in the next decade, try to branch into the yacht world. That to me is what's their design models are starting looking for and where they're headed at. So if you enjoyed listening to and watching Dirty Money, make sure to follow us for all the great, exciting, fun information. And if you have anything that you want me to talk about, research, find out, let me know. I'd be happy to do it. And that's today's Dirty Money.