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Jan. 14, 2021 - Epoch Times
07:06
Larry Elder: Where Socialists Get It Wrong On Inequality
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Hi, I'm Larry Elder, and this is the Larry Elder Show for Epoch Times.
This episode is about inequality, or more specifically, the Democrats' attempt to end inequality.
Here's Bernie Sanders.
It is not acceptable and it is not sustainable that the top one-tenth of one percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.
When you hear the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, they often do so by households.
Here's the problem as explained by Thomas Sowell.
You quote disapprovingly this assertion in the Washington Post.
The incomes of most American households have remained stubbornly flat over the past three decades.
I say you quote that and then you go on to demolish that.
Would you demolish it for us please?
That statement as it's made has some semblance of validity.
But the problem is you're talking about households rather than about flesh and blood human beings.
One of the real fallacies that runs through a lot of talk about income is confusing statistical categories with actual flesh and blood people.
Households are of different sizes.
They vary over time.
They vary from one group to another.
They vary from one income level to another.
So, for example, there are 39 million people in the bottom 20% of households and 64 million in the top 20%.
So you're talking, you're saying, yes, 24 million additional people do tend to have more money.
The household thing is really a tip-off, I think.
Whenever I see somebody quoting household income, he's trying to make things look bad.
It's as simple as that.
Alright, there's a rule of life.
Yes.
For example, over a period of about 30 years, household income rose by only 6%.
Over those same years, per capita income rose by 51%.
Because the number of people per household was declining all the while.
I see.
I see.
And when you're comparing income brackets, the number of working people in the top 20% is some multiple of the number of working people in the bottom 20%.
And in order to address wealth or lack of it, if there's a system better than capitalism, I do not know what it is.
Remember Phil Donahue?
He disparaged capitalism.
Unfortunately for him, his guest was economist Milton Friedman.
Watch this.
When you see around the globe the maldistribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries, when you see so few haves and so many have-nots, when you see the greed and the concentration of power within...
Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea to run on?
Well, first of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed?
You think Russia doesn't run on greed?
You think China doesn't run on greed?
What is greed?
Of course, none of us are greedy.
It's only the other fellow who's greedy.
The world runs on individuals pursuing their separators.
The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.
Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat.
Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade.
If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that.
So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear.
That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise.
I have a personal story of inequality I'd like to share with you.
When I was a kid, I had a very good friend.
Let's call him Paul.
Knew him in the second grade.
He later on became the quarterback for the football team, the starting shooting guard for the basketball team.
He was a pitcher for the baseball team.
He never took a tennis lesson, picked up a racket, hit it against the backboard for a couple of weeks, tried out, and made the tennis team.
That's how gifted he was.
But he also had an attitude.
He would brag about how good he was, and he was good.
And he would beat the opponents and would demean them after he beat them.
So he became very, very unpopular.
He also had an attitude about coaches.
Didn't like authority.
Frequently he'd come to practice late.
One time a coach threatened to bench him.
And Paul took off his jersey, balled it up, and threw it at the coach's face and said, I'm going to start.
Either I start next game or you lose.
He started.
They won.
Well, when the college coaches came to recruit him, and they did.
Notre Dame came.
UCLA came.
Marquette came.
North Carolina came.
The coach had to tell the truth.
He is a coach killer.
He's the kind of guy, kid, who will ruin your program.
Bye-bye Notre Dame.
Bye-bye UCLA. Bye-bye all the major teams.
He ended up going to a small college that was not known for basketball.
Did he double down?
Did he try much harder so that he would prove that these scouts were wrong?
He did nothing of the storm.
He skulked.
He got mad.
Started smoking dope.
Conceived this whole argument that he had been messed over by the white man.
He and I got into a fierce argument.
I said, Paul, we had the same teachers, went to the same school, lived in the same neighborhood.
Our houses were designed by the same architect for crying out loud.
How come I'm successful and you're not?
He had no response.
Honestly, the rules apply irrespective of your race.
Work hard.
You can't make it in America.
You can't make it anywhere.
This is a country where you can go from nothing to something in one generation easier than any other country in the history of human civilization.
Embrace America.
Take advantage of America.
I want to end on a note of socialism.
Maggie Thatcher famously said, the problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money.
Or check out the way the Dodger famous play-by-play announcer Vin Scully put it.
Socialism failing to work as it always does, this time in Venezuela.
You talk about giving everybody something free and all of a sudden there's no food to eat.
And who do you think is the richest person in Venezuela?
The daughter of Hugo Chavez.
Hello.
Anyway, 0 and 2.
Hi, this is Larry Elder and this is Larry Elder's show for Epoch Times.
Hope you enjoyed this episode.
We're going to bring you a whole lot more.
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