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Nov. 22, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:16
November 22, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Well, even uh distinguished and uh experienced and all that make uh mistakes.
And when I filled in last week and talking about the greatest economy ever, I was inundated by folks who objected to my statement that manufacturing jobs have uh have actually increased in the United States and provided some uh very persuasive uh background material telling me that I was wrong.
Here's uh some reaction.
He's uh this is uh Gary.
Roger, that guy who talked to you on the radio about what was happening to the Midwest, talking about the rust belt and hollowing out uh the economy and so forth, is correct, he says.
Low tech manufacturing jobs are still vital to our country as well as to our country's defense.
We simply cannot subcontract vital industries to other countries.
Uh this uh Roger, you are incorrect regarding manufacturing jobs in the United States.
Manufacturing jobs have been declining every year for the last twenty years.
Today you said to a national audience they are increasing.
They have dropped the fastest since the Bush administration has taken over, etc.
etc.
Uh let's see.
And here's the Bureau of Labor Statistics about Pennsylvania manufacturing and those jobs going down as well, although the average income is going up.
I did get some supportive email on this.
But it is interesting that uh it struck a nerve because well, here's Harold Myerson in the Democrats' economy wars, Washington Post today.
He writes, quote, when voters went to the polls this month, they registered not only a revulsion with the Republican regime, but also a profound anxiety about the nation's future.
They ousted incumbents who wanted to stay the economic course.
So it isn't just the war course, it's the economic course, he says, choosing instead Democratic challengers who question free trade orthodoxy.
In exit polling of plurality said they believed life for the next generation of Americans would be worse than it is today.
So what about that economy?
What about uh w how should we feel about what is happening now?
Because it is now becoming, as I guess in the mainstream media it became almost uh fact because it was repeated so many times that we're losing the war in Iraq, that we are in a declining economy.
We are once again uh I'm just struck by the number of articles.
You can pick up uh literally dozens of them on any given day, talking about uh problems in our economy.
Well, I I needed a refresher uh from uh my uh economic guru, Art Laffer, who joins us today from Athens, not Athens, Greece, but Athens, Georgia.
Professor, how are you?
Thank you very much, Roger.
I'm doing really well.
Good.
My goodness gracious, you got all those emails.
I did.
Oh, I was inundated.
So tell me first, tell me first about manufacturing jobs.
How wrong am I?
Well, I don't know how wrong you are.
I haven't looked up the manufacturing jobs.
They aren't doing as well as the rest of the thing, but it shouldn't, they shouldn't be doing as well when you have the unfunded liabilities of some of these companies like uh General Motors and Ford and the steel companies and some of the airlines.
You know, you have those problems which make us non-competitive in manufacturing.
Where we're really competitive, Roger, and where we're doing so really well is in the service industries.
And and and that's where the future is for this country.
Now, uh Art Laffer with us, but uh but Art uh then I got calls saying, yeah, the service industry uh that in effect is the hamburger flippers.
They're not making as much money as our fathers did working at the Ford plant.
What we're talking about is not only the hollowing out of our industrial capability threatening our defense, but we are talking about jobs that just don't pay as well and don't have the benefits of those older jobs.
Oh, what nonsense that is, Roger.
Those people who write that don't understand straight up from sickum.
Uh we've never had a better economy in the history of the United States or any other country.
Wages are going up like mad.
Now the reason the average the reason the median wage is not going up is because we're employing so many people and they're starting at the low rungs that the median obviously doesn't rise nearly as much as does each category above it.
And that's it's just a statistical quirk.
If you want a high median wage, which these people seem to want, you should fire everyone except for the richest guy.
And and that makes no sense.
In other words, everyone's employed, but a lot of people are employed at the lower end.
And there is a you know, and you you you love the fact that uh there's a lot of immigrants in this country, and you and I have this uh discussion once in a while because I'd like to see all of them legal Rather than illegal.
And I support the immigration too, but aren't immigrants driving down wages at this point?
Oh, no, they're not driving down wages at all.
And you and I do agree.
I mean, we are both of us want the immigrants to be legal.
I just want to change the laws to make the ones who are here legal.
That's what I'd like to do.
I think these people are the underpinnings for the U.S. economy, especially in California.
They provide high quality labor at low cost, it just doesn't get any better.
And they spend everything they earn and they create as many jobs as they take.
The latest take on the increase in wages, by the way, the last couple of months we've seen some heartening increase in in average wage growth uh numbers, and I think you've talked about this.
But uh I got a uh article today which said, yeah, that that's just because inflation is going down.
Well, that that's not correct either.
Uh you know, what these people do is we don't count people as working or having a wage when they have no job and they don't get paid at all.
If someone who's not been working all of a sudden gets a job at the low end of the rung, which most first jobs are, uh they then come into the wage pool and bring down the average wage.
And and that just isn't it doesn't make sense that that's a negative.
Wouldn't you rather have them have some job than no job?
And yet if they have some job, they bring the wage down.
It just makes no sense that that's a bad.
Is the middle class though shrinking?
The Democrats keep saying, well, yeah, all this is the middle class is stagnant, it's shrinking, uh, you're gonna have very rich people, you have a disparity of incomes between the uh the poorest and the and the richest.
All Bush has done is made the rich richer.
Well, let me just say this about that, if I can quote Nixon on that.
Yes, please.
You know, if if if you have a large disparity between upper incomes and lower incomes, which you clearly do, Bill Gates clearly makes a lot more than some guy at the minimum wage is a hamburger flipper in McDonald's.
That's true, and it's a huge gap.
The question is, is that gap per se bad?
And let's say we could reduce that gap by making everyone poorer.
Would you suggest that would be a good policy?
I I don't.
I have nothing wrong with the rich getting richer, and I have nothing wrong with the poor getting richer.
Uh, I'd like to see both groups get richer, and I think it's good for all America, for everyone to get richer and make higher wages, even if the gap goes up.
What the Democrats are arguing about is that gap, and they want to make that gap smaller, at least some Democrats, not all by any means.
But they want to make that gap smaller by making the rich poorer rather than by making the poor richer.
My dream in America, Roger, as you know, is to make the poor rich, not to make the rich poor.
The dream is to build the bottom, not to pull down the top.
Yep, Art Laffer with us now.
Art, uh, respond then uh to why you believe in summary, this is the best economy.
I think you've said this, the best economy in world history, much less our history.
Yeah, well, you know, if you look at the unemployment rate, it's four point four percent.
I mean, when we came into office in nineteen eighty one, it was much higher.
We'd have given our right arm for a six percent unemployment today in France, it's about nine percent in Germany, it's over ten percent.
I mean, it's just a spectacular unemployment.
We've had real GDP growth, quarter in, quarter out, above three percent, the longest run in the post-World War II era, except for the Katrina quarter.
Uh if you look at uh productivity growth, if you look at profits, no, these are real profits today as a share of GDP, Roger, are the highest they've been in U.S. history.
If you look at tax rates on the ownership of capital, the maximum tax rates are the lowest in my lifetime on dividends and on capital gains.
If you look at trade, it doesn't get any better.
The U.S. is getting huge benefits from global trade.
I mean, without without China, there is no Walmart, Roger, and without Walmart, there's no middle class or lower class prosperity.
And you know, it's just been wonderful the way this economy has been functioning, just as it should in the textbook.
And it just doesn't get any better.
The uh let's talk about a couple of things you touched upon trade.
The Congress is facing uh, for example, turning down the uh normalization of trade with Vietnam, the uh Peru uh deal is up uh in fact the president's whole ability to negotiate these deals is up in June.
Yep.
Uh and uh and it doesn't look like the Democrats want to have any of it.
If if we you know if we stop uh free trade, I mean, you know, there are some things foreigners make better than we do.
And there's some things we make better than foreigners do, and uh we and they would be foolish in the extreme, Roger, if we didn't sell them those things we make better than they do for those things they make better than we do.
I mean, we're both winners.
If the Congress decides to restrict that trade, frankly, our prosperity will go away fairly quickly.
I mean, outsourcing is wonderful for America.
Our trade balance with the rest of the world is perfect for America.
They're investing net in the U.S. it's you know, trade has buoyed the American economy beyond our wildest imagination.
And it's just been terrific.
And if Congress stops it, I mean obviously this prosperity will stop.
In specific, this guy Garcia just got elected president of Peru, used to be kind of a socialist.
Now he's got Hernando de Soto, the uh free trade guy dispatched to uh to to DC to talk to the Democrats saying, Whoa, this deal is uh coming up for Peru.
It actually benefits the United States because whereas we've been able to sell our Peruvian stuff in the United States, we've restricted your agricultural goods.
We'll allow them in because we want even more uh of these restrictions on our goods to be taken off.
In other words, we want to sell and buy much more.
Yeah, that's just the perfect thing.
I mean, that's just what we need.
I mean, that's why I was very pleased with this administration when they did Dr. Cafta, the Dominican Republic's Central American Free Trade Agreement, which passed by one vote.
I mean, I wish the Doha round had been better.
But you know, frankly, this this administration and Clinton, great Clinton with phenomenal on free trade.
I mean, without him, NAFTA would have never passed.
Uh you know, we've had bipartisan support of free trade for a long time and it's really worked beautifully.
Let's talk about uh taxes because uh Charlie Wrangle and you had some experience with him recently on TV.
But I uh Art Laffer with us, by the way, on the Rush Show.
I I want to I want to get your take on the because Wrangles widely quoted as saying all the Bush cuts uh are not going to be extended when they expire.
I I I don't know what he's actually gonna do, but I'll tell you when I was on with him on TV there, uh he was very restrained, very moderate, very positive about working together and making sure that we don't do anything that would hurt the U.S. economy.
I I was very impressed and very uh very I was buoyed by his comments.
Now, that doesn't mean he's gonna do it when it comes down to the to the end, but bottom line is he was very moderate, very reasonable in his statements, and I just hope he follows through with that type of approach.
Which one of these is your chief concern of as the Democrats take control of Congress?
You mean chief concern whether in taxes or whether in trade?
Yeah, uh in other words, uh how do these things rank in our minds?
I think trade is extremely I don't think they can do much on taxes in the next couple of years, and to be honest with you, Roger, when they get a w if they take over the presidency or if a Republican does, no one's gonna vote not to extend those taxes in 2010, 2011.
I just can't imagine that would be suicide for the party that decided to do the biggest tax hike in the history of the world and really destroy this wonderful economy.
So I think they're gonna pass the tax the tax bills in continuation.
I'm very worried about this anti-immigration stuff.
I'm very worried about the anti-trade stuff, because frankly, it is the it is the lifeblood of this prosperous economy, and and that's the one area where I do worry.
All right.
Uh, Art Laffer, I appreciate your time, sir.
I thank you for being with us on the Rush Limbaugh program and for helping me out here uh and getting out of my uh error.
Art, thanks a lot.
All right, thanks, Art.
I appreciate it.
Art Laffer there.
And uh I don't know, some of that got cut off.
I don't know why.
But let's take a little break.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, fill it in for Russian Limbaugh.
Your reaction now to the greatest economy in the history of the world after this.
Roger Hedgecock in for Rush Limbaugh today on Thanksgiving Eve.
We were talking about Governor Bradford of the Plymouth colony and the pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving.
And the fact that as Rush pointed out yesterday, they uh prospered once they had private property and an incentive to work.
And Art Laffer is in the tradition of Governor Bradford.
The belief uh that uh economist Art Laffer has that lower marginal tax rates will incentivize people to work, save, and invest.
The economy will grow, and the c and one of the consequences will be people will be more prosperous, more jobs will be created, and every, you know, the rising tide will lift all boats, as John Fitzgerald Kennedy once said.
Again, another part of the Democrats of that era that you don't hear much today.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
A growing economy benefits everyone.
Democrats of today don't believe that.
The fact is that the other side effect of lowering marginal tax rates and incentivizing people to work, Save and invest, uh, as the Plymouth colony found out, as Art Laffer has explained to us over the last thirty-five years.
Uh the other part of that is government actually gets more revenue from lower tax rates and a growing economy than if the tax rates had been kept high.
How many times do we have to prove this before we don't before we get these stupid and you've seen them in your I'm sure you've seen them in your local paper uh the newspaper, all these columnists uh that oh the government revenues don't get when you cut taxes.
Oh no, they don't.
Well, they do.
And the facts are there.
Here's Jack in Philadelphia.
Jack, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Thank you, uh Roger.
I want to say megadidto's from Philadelphia, and you are a worthy associate professor in the Limbaugh Institute.
Well, thank you, sir.
All these small errors to the contrary aside.
My question is, why don't people see the facts?
They've been presented by you, Governor Bradford, Art Laffer.
There they are.
Why can't they see them?
Because the drive-by media is dedicated to the notion that socialism works no matter how many times it is proven to the contrary.
They're dedicated to the notion that liberal uh democracies of Western Europe are our model rather than uh growing capitalist models.
They are dedicated to the notion that the Democrats are the natural party of governance.
The Republicans are just uh a bunch of people that need watching, that are trying to shred our constitution, that are trying to, you know, all this other stuff you hear.
But on the economic level, what you continue to hear is denial and deception uh about this economy.
It is the greatest economy in the history of the world, and nowhere do you see that in the drive-by media.
Roger, you're correct, but I think the root of the problem goes deeper than just the drive-by media, which I agree with.
That is a symptom of the problem.
Uh you had talked about the pilgrims and the Christianity and why are the public schools and this and that.
I think we have a problem in America that goes deeper than all of that, that precipitates the drive-by media, that precipitates the liberal liberals.
May I share it with you?
Go ahead.
I mean, uh in summary, we've got about a minute.
Go ahead.
I believe it's what I call partial birth Christianity.
And I've written a book on it.
And it what it does is it exposes what I consider to be the missing link in America understanding the problem.
And the problem is we have tens of millions of people who attend a building on Sunday, and they say they're Christian people.
My book challenges that.
And I believe that if people who said they were Christian people were Christian people, we wouldn't be having this problem today.
And in specific give me an example that how that relates to the economy.
The way that would relate to the economy is the facts are the facts.
And if you, whoever you are, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, uh Charlie Wrangle say, well, no, no, no, no, that's not a fact.
Uh I believe the issue of telling the truth comes into play.
And if you are a building goer or a pew sitter, you have an obligation to tell the truth.
Now, that gets to the point, well, how would you do we know whether they're telling the truth or not?
Okay, so I no, I understand what you're saying.
In other words, in the past, Christianity has at least been a force for for promoting individual integrity, truth-telling and other attributes of uh following Christ's principles.
Okay, I understand that.
Uh now there's no substitute that is telling people uh it's better to be honest, it's better to tell the truth, that it's wrong to lie in pursuit of your uh of your uh political gain.
Well, but but Jack, uh I mean, all we have to do is look back to Marx.
Uh the liberals have been hijacked by Marxism and in in this respect that uh Marxism and Lenin was famous for this, Stalin was famous for this.
It doesn't matter what you say as long as you achieve your political goal.
Honesty is a bourgeois trait that is obsolete, uh that is uh uh completely inconsistent with achieving what should be achieved.
In other words, the ends uh do uh justify the means.
And you are absolutely correct, and there are two uh major points here.
First, this is why the Liberals want the Bible out of the public schools and out of American culture.
Because it is the only thing that can determine right and wrong.
Right.
As absolutes.
No, they don't even believe in absolutes of any kind.
Hey, Jack, I'm running out of time, but I appreciate everything you're saying.
By the way, I don't like anything that the Republicans have done in the House of Representatives since this election either.
I don't think they're I don't think they're getting any of the lessons that the voters were trying to administer to the uh ruling party.
And I'm gonna come back and give you some concrete examples and see if you agree with me uh on that.
We're gonna later in the program, of course, talk about the war, talk about environmental extremism.
Is it snowing in Florida during global warming?
Yikes.
Roger Hedgecock, in for rush, back after this.
Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh program, Thanksgiving Eve edition here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Roger Hedgecock from COGO Radio, K O G O in San Diego filling in today, and thank you for uh rush for the opportunity.
I do have uh I'm sorry, I don't want to stray uh, but uh look, uh the truth is the truth, so we relentlessly pursue it.
Did the Republicans in the House of Representatives and in the United States Senate understand the depth of their core voters' disenchantment with their performance, not their performance on the agenda of the liberal drive-by media in the Democratic Party, not that standard, their performance by the standard of the contract with America, their performance by the standard of conservative principles.
And apparently the answer is no.
Here's what I'm talking about.
There are huge appropriations bills coming up, or they were going to come up in this lame duck session before the transition.
The idea was that the uh appropriations bills for this, some of which have not been passed for this fiscal year were already in.
This already is a comment on uh on Congress's ability to deal with reality.
Uh they still haven't passed appropriations bills on matters that have been adopted by law for uh to start on uh on this uh this year's uh this fiscal year, which already is what, two months done.
So here's the appropriations bills, and here's the problem with them.
They are larded with earmarks with pork, and it's Democrats and Republicans, no question about it, but since the Democrats got the edge on the Republicans on this culture of corruption issue, on this pork issue, and the Democrats did get to conservative voters, uh 10, 15, 20 percent of whom would vote for Democrat opponents, by the way, uh in these House races.
They did get to conservative voters with this thought that the Republicans had simply given up on the contract with America, had become as bad as the Democrats in this earmark and pork and all this stuff.
So here come these appropriations bills that had been marked up before the election with all the Christmas tree of goodies for everybody on it.
The Republicans in the lame duck session had an opportunity.
The opportunity was to clean out the earmarks.
Tell the Democrats, okay, we get the message.
We're gonna give up our earmarks, but we're gonna strip out all your earmarks too, Senator Byrd and all the rest of you guys who are worse than ever.
We were.
And we're gonna live up to our reputation that we don't do business that way.
It's open, it's transparent, there should be committee hearings, there should be this and that.
It shouldn't be middle of the night, uh last minute.
Here's my bill to you know to fund uh the Byrd uh uh sanctuary study program for 900 million dollars down here in uh my my district.
So all that stuff is gone.
By the way, hundreds of millions of dollars.
Hundreds of millions.
Did they do that?
No.
No, they didn't.
They passed the buck.
They passed resolutions to keep the government open on an uh a pay as you go basis on a not pay as you go, but on an interim basis until the appropriations bills could be taken up by the new Democrat majority in January, uh and let them deal with it.
In other words, toss the hot potato to the Democrats saying, okay, you won on this culture of corruption, you tell the public what you're gonna do about earmarks.
And I appreciate the juvenile I I went through these kinds of politics in junior high.
I appreciate the the attitude.
It is just bunk from the standpoint of Americans' expectations.
Republicans muffed a major opportunity to give those appropriations bills uh, you know, a thorough cleansing.
Say, you know what?
You're right.
We should never have done business this way.
It isn't the way the public expects us to do business.
The judgment's been rendered.
We're going to go back to the contract with America.
We're going to go back to fiscal responsibility.
And oh, by the way, all you Democrats who had all these earmarks too and were holier than now during the election, live without them now, because they're out of there.
Did they do that?
No, they did not.
I think it is a major, major problem.
And I I listened to the new Republican National Committee General Chairman Senator Mel Martinez of Florida.
He says, There's nothing wrong with our philosophy, he said.
There's nothing wrong with our principles.
We need to go back to restoring the faith of the people.
Well, Mel, nice try.
But it's not going to restore the faith of the people.
If you take a pass on making up for the fiscal irresponsibility of these spending bills and just take a pass and uh and throw it in the Democrats' lap.
So that's the Associated Press uh latest here, quote, Republicans vacating the Capitol are dumping a big spring cleaning job on Democrats moving in.
GOP leaders have opted to leave behind almost a half trillion dollar clutter of unfinished spending bills.
My goodness.
We could have done a lot better.
Here's Randy in uh Citrus uh County is it, Florida.
Go ahead, Randy.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hey, I think you're doing a good job, Roger.
But I just want to talk uh I didn't catch your guru's name there that was talking a few minutes ago that said that the illegals were not driving the wages down.
That's economist Art Laffer, yeah.
Go ahead.
Uh where does he get his facts at?
Because I actually work out in the construction field and see that, you know, the the guywallers here were making uh you know thirty dollars a board to hang board.
Now the Mexicans are doing it for thirty dollars a day.
You know, instead of you know six hundred dollar paycheck a day, it's a thirty dollar check, and they're only hiring the illegals.
So in that aspect they have.
And they're also starting to run equipment.
They're uh taking jobs from you know in larger companies that are coming in with full crews of illegals.
I mean, how can an American company compete with that company?
There's no way.
So they've got the wages down all over the place.
Yeah, this is one of the areas where Ard Laffer and I disagree.
There isn't any question in the San Diego economy, and I think it's the same in Florida, that illegals have lowered uh the cost of labor to employers, that illegals are working for less, that illegals are taking jobs from Americans and not doing work Americans won't do.
In fact, it's gotten so bad here.
You talk about you talk about hanging the uh the the wall board, the drywall.
Uh the fact is here in construction that one wave of illegal drywall hangers after another, they're finally competing with each other.
They're down to four cents a foot or something like that.
That's right.
To me, if they take one American job, it's too many.
I mean, if if they're coming here illegally, I mean I'm not against immigration.
Bring them over legally all you want.
But if you're coming here illegally and you're taking a s uh a job for my son or my brother's son or someone, that's just too much.
And I think we ought to start protecting our borders and can consider an invasion because they are starting to colonize the lower states, they're not trying to assimilate, they're taking our jobs.
I mean, people need to wake up and see that and see that it is it's not just a friendly coming over here looking for a job situation.
I mean, Randy, I'm on a on wealth.
I'm a hundred percent, I'm a hundred percent with you, my friend.
I've been preaching this stuff for twenty years on the radio in San Diego, and I think the rest of the country is starting to get this uh issue that and there's a poll out today, you know, Americans want to uh uh uh make uh legalize somehow all the twenty million of illegals that are here.
But if you actually read the poll instead of the mainstream media, the drive-by media's account of it, the real poll is that an overwhelming number of Americans, much more than want to legalize the existing illegals, a a much larger number want to secure the border first.
And that's something that George Bush has fallen flat on his face in doing, and I think most of the public wants it done and understands why it has to be done.
Steve in Wilkes Bar, Pennsylvania.
Uh Steve, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hey, how are you this afternoon, Roger?
Good.
Good, Steve.
Uh well, looks like this is maybe uh construction day and and Mr. Laffer.
Uh I too am involved in the construction industry, and my perspective has to do more with as as Mr. Laffer was speaking about the fact that some comp or some countries make items that are better than we make, and we make items that are better than another country and we should engage in free trade.
And I, of course, am in total agreement with that.
Uh my problem is that our choices in many items that I buy in the construction uh field are so limited in their availability as coming from the United States that the American consumer effectively has no choice other than to buy uh you know foreign-made items.
And uh they are just not well made.
They do not perform well, they're they're very, very cheap, and uh it it's become kind of a a major issue with give me an example.
Give me an example, Steve.
In in the sense of hardware.
I mean, we you know, we're in the restoration business, but we we use some hardware that of course has to be specially fabricated, and you know, maybe it's gonna be made in the United States.
There are other items that, of course, if I'm uh, you know, in a hurry and we have to get things that are available from one of the large uh building products, retail centers, you know, I go there.
The the selections at those places are generally limited because their main marketing staff is geared toward providing uh the cheapest available goods.
Uh now they generally don't have a problem.
If you're unhappy with it and you want to take it back, you can take it back, and they don't typically give you any kind of grief over it.
But by the same token, they're not really giving you a choice of two items, one made in the United States and one made in China, let's say.
And if you're if you're having to buy the item that's made in China and you get back to the work site and you try to install it and the screws are stripping out or snapping off or or you know, other such uh kinds of malfunctions, then it it becomes very aggravating.
And people don't generally have the kind of free time to go searching out.
I mean, as I do, I put a lot of research into checking things out on the internet or going to uh restoration shows and finding products that will do the kind of things that we need them to do.
Well, Steve, you might be in it, you might be in a niche there because I just built a house and I went through, believe me, four years of looking at every single detail and what was available and what was the best and all of this, and sometimes it was foreign-made and sometimes it was U.S. made.
And uh I was looking for the best, and I found the best.
Uh, you know, and and so I you know, and I also think in the in if you look at the uh the auto industry, here's a a non-union Toyota or Honda or uh Beamer uh BMW plant uh there the uh that's that's making here's an American worker making a quality car that beats the pants off of anything made by uh Ford or GM in terms of the quality ratings, and it's an American worker making it.
Uh so there are manufacturing plants, there are foreigners coming here talking uh doing doing better at manufacturing than we are doing for a variety of reasons that uh you know deserve a lot of attention.
But there's no question that we're going through a big transition as we globalize.
Some things are going to be lost, some things are going to be gained.
Uh and uh I think what we're gaining is a rising standard of living overall.
The uh United States economy has added gross domestic product equal to about a quarter uh of our gross domestic product just in the last couple of years.
We are growing spectacularly.
None of the other G7 nations, none of the other really uh older economies in Europe particularly are growing anywhere near with the dynamism of the United States because of our faith in free trade.
Are there bumps along the road?
Plenty.
Uh that's what capitalism and competition is about.
There isn't any certainty.
There isn't uh the there's a lot of uncertainty.
There's a lot of uh concerns, and there's a lot of old ways slipping around.
I understand all that.
But what's coming is, I think, on the whole, better.
What do you think?
On the Rush program, I'll take your call.
1 800-282-2882 after this.
Sorry, here we go.
Um sometimes I think Florida has all the uh fun news.
Stony Creek High School in Rochester Hills.
Is this out of Detroit?
Oh, I'm sorry, this is not Florida.
Okay.
Uh let's see, Oakland Township home.
Uh Theago Olson, age 17, has built a nuclear fusion reactor in his home.
He apparently is the latest of uh it took him two years and a thousand years, a thousand hours of research to build.
Nuclear fusion.
He apparently is the eighteenth amateur in the world to create nuclear fusion.
Now we know that that might be uh a great thing to do.
Uh but on the other hand, uh maybe not.
Good grief.
I mean, just a question for everybody, too.
With the assassination of Lebanese Christian politician and minister in the Lebanese government, Pierre Gamayel, Oh w well, let's see.
If you follow the Democrats' line that it's American troops that create terrorism, chaos, civil war, and unrest.
Maybe it's time to pull out of Lebanon.
Because here's what we've done.
We've we've, you know, we've we've created chaos, civil war, unrest, and now the assassination of this.
Oh, we don't have any troops in Lebanon?
They withdrew in 1983.
Okay, well, that's enough for that theory.
Let's go to the phones.
Ralph in Cartersville, Georgia.
Ralph, welcome to COGO.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program, too.
Roger, wonderful to speak to you.
Really enjoy listening to you when you fill in for Rush.
Thank you.
Um the uh the economy, uh, get into that.
The economy is gonna keep going strong for the next two years.
The uh the Democrats have been throwing out um, you know, just the liberal bites here and there and see if they're working, and they're not even in power yet, and they're they're backpedaling like like on Mertha.
And and the people on Wall Street, they're not Democrat or Republican.
They're not conservative or liberal.
They're they're greedy capitalists.
And for the stagnation that's gonna take place in the next two years, unless Bush just keeps, you know, giving up everything to the Democrats.
You know, they the the street's gonna like that.
They don't they don't like uncertainty.
It's certain that these two these two uh aren't gonna get along.
And as far as the Republicans are concerned, the the Republicans of O six are not the Republicans of uh when when Gingridge swept into power.
Yeah, I know.
No, you know what, Ralph, it's a it's a very astute uh comment, and I think I think it's right.
Uh I mean I enjoy hearing uh opposite point of view, but I think it's right to say that the Dow Jones Industrial Index at least, with its uh day after day, week after week uh new highs, is indicating a confidence in the economy that basically has been interpreted as far as I've seen in the financial papers as uh maybe Congress just deadlocks uh Democrats versus uh Bush, uh nothing much happens, that's okay, everything going right now is all right.
All these tax breaks don't expire till 2007, some of them, but mostly 2008 and into 2010.
So we have a great economy now, record profits, record uh investment, uh record jobs, record uh and rising uh incomes uh for everybody, uh obviously CEOs, uh, but everybody else as well.
And maybe we get a minimum wage boost, so what?
It's the lowest uh in terms of inflation adjusted that has been for thirty years.
Uh we can live with that even.
I think that's what Wall Street actually is saying.
I agree with you.
Ralph, thanks for the call.
Uh we're gonna take a short break.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, back with more after this.
Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Roger Hedgecock here is filling in for Rush here on Thanksgiving Eve, talking about uh the things we should be thankful for and why, and one of them is the finest economy in the history of human beings on this planet, in terms of spreading the benefits as widely as we have been able to do.
There is no other human society that has ever been able to do that.
Are the rich richer?
Of course.
Are the poor much richer than poor elsewhere?
Look around.
They are very much richer.
When the poor are complaining that their cars are old and their TV isn't yet an HD, uh, you know that we have a relative poverty.
Bill in Huntsville, Alabama is next on the Rush program.
Bill, hi.
Thank you, Roger.
Long time listener, first time caller.
Thank you.
We've got about a minute.
Go ahead.
Okay, I I work in the defense industry here in Huntsville, and I hold a security clearance, and I'm wondering even if uh Representative Hastings will be able to get a security clearance based on his past.
Well, as I said, if he was applying or if he was in the defense industry as you are, or applying to be uh uh entry-level junior analyst at the CIA or the NRA or uh or any place, uh NEA uh uh any place, whatever, uh it would be it he would not get it.
Uh but what happens is that members of Congress are gonna get it because they are uh they are who they are.
They're members of Congress.
They're in the majority, they control the money.
The Pentagon's gonna give them a clearance.
They're gonna give them the the uh they're gonna give them the and hopefully they're gonna give them the the briefings, and hopefully the FBI will be watching.
This guy is a prime target of espionage.
He uh it's just un inconceivable that Jane Harmon is gonna be passed over for Al C. Hastings by Nancy Pelosi, and I think it's a test.
So watch this one.
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